"Paucity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had as to the consequences of this engagement which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of money. Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which might serve some "plodding fellow of a German" to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... after the settlement of his business, which had never been in a very prosperous condition. On this, under the exercise of extreme frugality, she had been enabled to live for nearly a year. Then the paucity of her little store made it apparent to her mind that individual exertion was required, directed toward procuring the means of support for her little family. Ignorant of the way in which this was to be done, and having no one ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... sophistication and a greater worldliness may smile at the artlessness, and, if one will, naivete of a man like Jammes. It is true that his art is limited, and that if one reads too much at one time there is a note of monotony and a certain paucity of phrase, but who is the writer of whom this is not equally true? The quality of beauty, sincerity, and a large serenity are in his work, and how grateful are these permanencies amid the shrilling noises of the countless conflicting creeds and dogmas, and amid the poses and vanities which so ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... think the place was an oubliette," said I. "As a matter of fact, the path down is an easy one, there are no flints, and there is a singular paucity of seaweed of any description. On the other hand, the sun is hot, the sand is soft, and I have already selected that rock, in the seclusion of whose shade I shall prepare myself for the waves. Sorry it's too dangerous for you. I'll write about some bathing-machines to-night. Do you like ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... give a lead, but the pupil should not send her horse at a fence until she has seen her pilot safely landed and going away from it. She should occasionally assume the lead, in order that she may not always rely on the guidance of others. Unless there is a paucity of obstacles, no fence should be jumped twice, and the companion or attendant should be a man who knows the country, so that he may direct his pupil to obstacles without going out of the way to meet them. The more ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... him?" "Too much for any of you to pay," said I. "A horse like this is intended for other kind of customers than any of you." "How do you know that?" said one; the very same person whom I had heard complaining in the street of the paucity of good horses in the fair. "Come, let us know what you ask for him?" "A hundred and fifty pounds!" said I; "neither more nor less." "Do you call that a great price?" said the man. "Why, I thought you would have asked double that amount! You do yourself injustice, young man." "Perhaps I do," said ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Bjrnson's patriotic songs and poems of public agitation. Those who read or hear or sing them are made to think, or at least to feel, the unwritten poetry between the lines. Scarcely less notable is this paucity in the expression of wealth of thought and feeling in the memorial and other ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... and, from the sympathizing countenance of her fair sister Monimia, I expected every moment a similar offer from her. The Williamses, and old Harry Lambert and his son, were the only others I could catch on so short a notice; but we all determined to make up in friendliness for the paucity in numbers, and give young Frank a hearty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... purpose of ekeing out the limited remarks here made. This intimation may be equally applied to the whole subject of New Holland: about which the reader may promise himself very ample satisfaction in the course of this collection. Let this then be accepted as a pledge in apology for the paucity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... and dibbling is used only in small patches of ground near the houses when they aim at neatness. The soil, being in general loose and sandy and free from stones, is worked without much difficulty, but it seemed to require a good deal of manure; and this necessary article from the paucity of domestic animals is extremely scarce. Very few sheep or cattle were observed, yet there was an abundance of land that did not seem for many years to ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Greeks to steer by Ursa minor instead of Ursa major; and other astronomical observations are assigned to him. But his writings are lost, as is also the case with those of Phocus the Samian, and the history of astronomy by Eudemus, the pupil of Aristotle; hence the paucity of our ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... strove to dissuade him from descending. She threw herself in the dirt; but, when he continued down the trail that spiralled the pit-wall, she followed, cringing and whimpering her terror. That the red sphere had been dug out as a precious thing, was patent. Considering the paucity of members of the federated twelve villages and their primitive tools and methods, Bassett knew that the toil of a myriad generations could scarcely have ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... would have resorted to. The preceding chapters show how impracticable it would have been for us to have consumed our small stock of provisions while manufacturing a fish-net from bark; and how we did resort to every method at our command of procuring food. Unfortunately we fell upon a year of paucity. The old men of the country bore witness that never before within their memory had there been such a ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... picture gives it singular dignity and repose. Classic in its clearness of outline and paucity of detail, mediaeval in sentiment, since the great Norman church dominates the whole, its appeal is at once wistful and severe. And, this afternoon, just as the nearness of the sea tempered the atmosphere lifting ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... quite excellent, epigrams have escaped him, either because he never read them or because he was at the moment of reading less attentive. But the paucity or lack of selections from a given writer should not be taken as an indication of ignorance or indiligence in that case. Rather, he confidently professes to have exerted the greatest patience and industry—patience, since so many were so bad. His hope was ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... appeared that their numbers previously had been held down by the paucity of ferrous compounds in their regular diet. The lack led to a low birth rate. Now, supplied with great quantities of iron by their unremitting industry, they were moved ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... audience as well as genius from the author. Though Shakespeare is for all time, he is part and parcel of the Elizabethan drama. If his plays are Elizabethan in their defects and limitations, such as their trivial puns and word-play, their overcrowded imagery, their loose and broken structure, their paucity of female roles, their mixture of comic and tragic, their reliance on disguise and mistaken identity as motives, their use of improbable or absurd stories; they are Elizabethan also in the qualities of their greatness, their variety ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... harmony, strange but perhaps the result of intention, between the character itself and this reserved or parsimonious method of depicting it. An expressiveness almost inexhaustible gained through paucity of expression; the suggestion of infinite wealth and beauty conveyed by the very refusal to reveal this beauty in expansive speech—this is at once the nature of Cordelia herself and the chief characteristic of Shakespeare's art in representing it. Perhaps ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... made in stage dancing within the last generation has been very pronounced, yet so gradual has been this growth and improvement, that only the elders of the present time can visualize its progress, and that only by a backward look to the period of paucity and monotony that ruled in their junior years, and contrast the dearth of then with ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... that has felt, while anxiously waiting for definite news of our forces in France, that the communications from "an eye-witness present with General Headquarters" are better than nothing, has probably wondered at the recent paucity of despatches from this descriptive writer. Is it possible that the following has strayed into our hands from its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... Gardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille Jullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs on Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but the extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of the early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made by Fustel de Coulanges in La Cite Antique, which offered a complete interpretation ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Hanse; tanta integritas ... in contractibus, ut uno tantum verbo res ipsas indicarent omni verbositate in fraudem emptoris omissa. (Herberstein, 52.) In the England of the present day, the custom of marking each piece of goods with its price is very general. Concerning the rapidity and the paucity of words with which prices are settled in that country, where business men do not even salute their customers, nor customers the business man, see C. G. Simon, Observations recueillies en Angleterre, 1835, I, 129 f. The ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the most shallow of all the lakes, its average depth being only sixty or seventy feet. Owing to this shallowness the lake is readily disturbed by the wind; and for this reason, and for its paucity of good harbors, it has the reputation of being the most dangerous to navigate of any of the Great Lakes. Neither are its shores as picturesquely beautiful as those of Ontario, Huron, and Superior. Still it is a lovely and romantic body of water, and its historic memories ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to the truce of nonsense, apostrophizing the cooking of the Best Swell Place, setting exclamations to their glimpses of people passing in the street. For they had never wanted for words when talking across the barrier; there was paucity of conversation only ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... value of the compositions brought forth in the United this year; an increase which may be fairly declared to constitute a true elevation of our intellectual standard, and which undoubtedly compensates for the present regrettable paucity of amateur publishing media. In verse, particularly, is the advance notable. Some of our poets are securing recognition in the outside world of letters, whilst many lesser bards show a steady upward trend in their amateur efforts. Prose continues to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... on him and called him Sonny and Mother's Darling Boy; and Matt, having, in the terminology of the forecastle, come aboard through the hawse pipes, knew himself for a man and a sailor, despite the paucity of whiskers on his big, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... comparatively small numbers. Botha was an acute observer and had learnt the moves of the British autumn manoeuvre opening, a holding attack on the centre not intended to be pushed home in order to eke out paucity of numbers operating on a wide front. Lord Roberts, in spite of his superiority of strength, could not hope to inflict a decisive defeat upon Botha's well-posted commandos, but only to remove them out of striking distance of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... little trust and no faith in the gossip and hearsay-anecdotes of the early Fathers, Irenaeus not excepted. "Within less than a century of St. John's time." Alas! a century in the paucity of writers and of men of education in the age succeeding the Apostolic, must be reckoned more than equal to five centuries since the use of printing. Suppose, however, the truth of the Irenaean tradition;—that the Creed of Cerinthus was what Irenaeus states it to ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Pullman section. Its distinction was that it had a port-hole of its own through which I could freely admit the local climate. When I first surveyed the contracted proportions of this stateroom, the paucity of its fittings and entire lack of the usual accommodations, I was filled as full of acute melancholia as an egg is of meat and had I not paid the passage money I would have bolted from the Cork out into utter darkness; but I was "in ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... instructions of the continental congress heretofore referred to, Governor Arthur St. Clair, in the year 1788, opened up a correspondence with the tribes of the northwest in order to bring them to a treaty. The government, though suffering from a paucity of funds, had determined to enter into engagements looking to the fair and equitable purchase of the Indian lands. It was plainly to be seen that unless an accommodation could be arrived at with the tribes that the government either had to abandon the territory ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... too, it may be, from the very paucity of the vegetable forms they could find to copy among the flora of this colder clime; and so, stopped short in drawing from nature, ran off into mere purposeless luxuriance. Had they been able to add to their stock of memories ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... since that remains the same, or is rather lesser, by how much the moon is nearer to the horizon. It remains therefore that the true cause is that affection or alteration of the visible appearance which proceeds from the greater paucity of rays arriving at the eye, and which I term FAINTNESS: since this answers all the forementioned conditions, and I am not conscious of any other ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... and that trees can be fertilized, sprayed, injected or treated with them in other ways to insure their growth, health, crop bearing ability, longevity, disease—frost—and drought—resistance. There still exists a paucity of scientific explanations on these subjects, but there is already a good deal of scattered information, which it is my purpose to draw to your attention. People do not care about scientific facts if they can obtain results without them, and then scientific concepts too may ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Villanueva except for the listing of his name by Cano, p. 43, as having arrived in the Philippines at an unknown date. The destruction of the early records of the Augustinians when the English sacked Manila in 1762 accounts for the paucity of information, but there are a few references which throw some little light on the two Villanuevas. San Agustin, p. 212, says that when Herrara sailed for Mexico in 1569 he left in Cebu only "P. ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... introduce the little girl only, alas, by revealing to her so attractive, so enthralling a name: the side-shows, each time, were sixpence apiece, and the fond allegiance enjoyed by the elder of our pair had been established from the earliest time in spite of a paucity of sixpences. Small coin dropped from her as half-heartedly as answers from bad children to lessons that had not been looked at. Maisie passed more slowly the great painted posters, pressing with a linked arm closer to her friend's pocket, where she hoped for the audible chink of a shilling. ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... been much interested by your letter of the 28th, received this morning. It has DELIGHTED me, because it demonstrates that you have thought a good deal lately on Natural Selection. Few things have surprised me more than the entire paucity of objections and difficulties new to me in the published reviews. Your remarks are of a different stamp and new to me. I will run through them, and make a few pleadings such ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... or "Journal des Debats" at Paris, and then look at the broad double sheets of the "Times" and other morning papers, with the columns of information and original matter which they contain. Compare the flimsy sheets, bad printing, and general paucity of information of the continental daily press, with the clear types, rapid steam power called into action, the outlay, enormous expenditure, and rapid information obtained by our leading journals from ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... have yet attained it. The principles of language are equally simple, and, if correctly explained, may be as well understood. But the difficulty under which we labor in this department of science, is the paucity of means to trace back to their original form and meaning many words and phrases in common use among us. Language has been employed as the vehicle of thought, for six thousand years, and in that long space has undergone many and strange modifications. At the dispersion from Babel, and the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... population of 750—and the Catawbas, on the Catawba river in South Carolina with only 150 persons. These latter were remarkably adventurous, enterprising and courageous; and notwithstanding their remote situation, and the paucity of their numbers, frequently traversed the valley of Virginia, and even penetrated the country on the north branch of the Susquehanna, and between the Ohio river and lake Erie, to wage war upon the Delawares. Their success in many of these expeditions, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... globules consist of PURE OXYGEN, given out by the plants under the stimulus of light; and to this oxygen the animals in the tank owe their life. The difference between the profusion of oxygen-bubbles produced on a sunny day, and the paucity of those seen on a dark cloudy day, or in a northern aspect, is very marked." Choose, therefore, a south or east window, but draw down the blind, or throw a handkerchief over all if the heat become fierce. The water should always feel cold to your hand, let the temperature ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... villages. They held Trones Wood and were in Delville and High Woods. A footing was established on the Ridge where the British could fight for final mastery on even terms with the enemy. "Slight losses" came the reports from corps and divisions and confirmation of official reports was seen in the paucity of the wounded arriving at the casualty clearing stations and in the faces of officers and men everywhere. Even ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... for the last train to Boston, and then I had to go home without the hope which Miss Bentley's first rally had given the doctor. My wife and I talked the affair over far into the night, and in the paucity of particulars I was almost driven to their invention. But I managed to keep a good conscience, and at the same time to satisfy the demand for facts in a measure by the indulgence of conjectures which Mrs. March continually took for them. The doctor had let fall, in his talk with me, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... words amongst the American Indians. Regarding "T.T.'s" doubts as to the Mandans being descended from the followers of Madoc, I confess that my opinions on the point do not differ very widely from his own. The circumstances attending Madoc's emigration, in the paucity of its numbers and the entire separation from the mother country, with the character of the Indians, would almost ensure the ultimate destruction of the settlement, or the ultimate absorption of its remains by those who might ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... history to bring before us past events in their true proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in modern history is the increased attention which is paid to the social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. The paucity of our information and the difficulty of realising the conditions of obscure multitudes will always make this branch of history very imperfect, but it is one of the most essential to the just judgment of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... this of woman's achievements on the field of Jewish scholarship, the results recorded must appear meagre, owing partly to the paucity of available data, partly to the nature of the inquiry. Abstruse learning, pure science, original research, are by no means woman's portion. Such occupations demand complete surrender on the part of the student, uninterrupted attention to the subject pursued, and delicately organized woman ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... and then, with a chivalrous determination to vindicate their written word; they had embarked on a troublous sea for which they had "neither mast nor sail, nor chart nor rudder." So they went bobbing about in a tub, and we, with a like paucity of ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... The decorated side-bar buggy might be well meant; the village band need not have been interpreted as an ironical compliment; the rest of the celebration might indicate paucity of resource rather than facetious intent; but surely the figure of fun before us could not be otherwise construed than as a deliberate advertising in the face of success of the town's real attitude ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... added to the scene by the picturesque uniforms of a couple of officers of an Algerian regiment who were consuming unlimited cigarettes and Turkish coffee, and commenting cynically in fluent French on the paucity of pretty women to be observed in the streets of Montricheux ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... was not necessary, provided the focal image were conveyed into a dark apartment and there properly received by reflectors.... The conversation then became directed to that all-invincible enemy, the paucity of light in powerful magnifiers. After a few moments' silent thought, Sir John diffidently enquired whether it would not be possible to effect a transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of vision! Sir David, somewhat startled at the originality of ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... me that, perhaps, if I had him all to myself, I might even yet bring him back to me—might reconcile him to my paucity of attractions, and persuade him of my honesty; but what chance have I, when every day, every hour of the day if he likes to put himself to such frequent pain, he may see and bitterly note the contrast between the woman of his choice ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... with sex desire, his imagination reverted always to lustful scenes. But what really prevented his returning to a loose woman, over and above the natural squeamishness, was the recollection of the paucity of the last experience. It had been so nothing, so dribbling and functional, that he was ashamed to expose himself to the risk of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... House of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls," and "Tanglewood Tales," besides the story of "The Snow Image" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short "Life of Franklin Pierce." The previous paucity of encouragements to literature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour a full current if only left ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... some extent systematises the hitherto somewhat vaguer custom; the transition from the aparchai to a feast was perhaps in practice still somewhat incomplete. In the paucity of positive data one is justified, however, in speaking of a substantial agreement, inasmuch as in the two cases the idea of the festivals is the same. Very instructive in this respect are two sections of Hosea (chaps. ii. and ix.), which on this account deserve to be fully gone ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... cares begotten, none the less, of that same "judicious" sacrifice to a particular form of interest! One's work should have composition, because composition alone is positive beauty; but all the while—apart from one's inevitable consciousness too of the dire paucity of readers ever recognising or ever missing positive beauty—how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn, how, as to immediacy and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity, positive beauty might have to be sweated for and paid for! Once achieved ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... remarkable dignity of mien which Spartan and Norman alike possessed, but also that fastidious self-respect which would have revolted from exhibiting a spectacle of debasement to inferiors. And, lastly, as the paucity of their original numbers, the perils that beset, and the good fortune that attended them, served to render the Spartans the most religious of all the Greeks in their dependence on the Divine aid; so, perhaps, to the same causes may be ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reference to a changeable, and practically unauthoritative board of judges. Moreover, this government, weak and unorganized as it was, was withdrawn on the adjournment of Congress; for the Committee of States, appointed to act in the recess, was useless, as well from the paucity of its powers, as from the fact that a quorum of its members could seldom ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... return to the argument in hand: our knowledge, I say, is not only limited to the paucity and imperfections of the ideas we have, and which we employ it about, but even comes short of that too: but how far it reaches, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... interrupted was, however, ultimately carried into effect. Miss Gentle, regardless of poverty, the absence of prospects, and the certainty of domestic anxiety, agreed to wed Mr Enoch Blurt and nurse his brother. In consideration of the paucity of funds, and the pressing nature of the case, she also agreed to dispense with a regular honeymoon, and to content herself with, as it were, a honey-star ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... High-and-Mighty, we will see what happens to girls who are so very superior to other girls but can read their letters and sneak boys into our school against rules," and back she sped to the house, filled to the brim with knowledge, but with such a paucity of wisdom in her brain that it was a wonder she kept to the path. It was a pity that no one was at hand to quote for her benefit: "Knowledge is haughty that she knows so much, but Wisdom is humble that she knows ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... which ascribes ubiquity to "Scots, Newcastle grindstones, and Birmingham buttons." A tidy, bustling landlady, very American in her phraseology, but kind in her way, took me under her especial protection, as forty men were staying in the house, and there was an astonishing paucity of the softer sex; indeed, in all my subsequent travels I met with an undue and rather disagreeable preponderance of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... had been relieved of his duties in Madrid was never divulged. But gossip supplied the paucity of fact with the usual delectable speculations, the most persistent of which had to do with the rumored birth of a royal child. The deplorable conduct of the Queen after her enforced marriage to Don Francisco D'Assis ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... warn't thar, ye wouldn't hev believed me," Lora-linda Byars said drearily, when certain disappointed wights, who had sought elsewhere and far a-field, repaired to the cabin laughing at their own plight and upbraiding her with the paucity of the cache. "I knowed all the time what war in that box. The man lef' it thar in the niche arter he war shot, it bem' heavy ter tote an' not wuth much. But he brung the money with him, an' tuk it off, bein', he said, ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... as little consequence in life as it is in my history, for almost everybody in the fishing villages of that coast was and is known by his to-name, or nickname, a device for distinction rendered absolutely necessary by the paucity of surnames occasioned by the persistent intermarriage of the fisher folk. Partan is the Scotch for crab, but the immediate recipient of the name was one of the gentlest creatures in the place, and hence it ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... many families, the attendants were few. But the young voices were conducted, rather than accompanied, in pious melody by a cornetist who worthily thought to amend, in his single person, what lack of volume this paucity occasioned. He was a slender young man in hot black clothes; he wore the unfacaded collar fatally and unanimously adopted by all adam's-apple men of morals; he was washed, fair, flat-skulled, clean-minded, and industrious; and the only noise of any ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... welfare of a great republic, the Federal system smoothed the obstacles which they might have encountered. The confederation of all the American States presents none of the ordinary disadvantages resulting from great agglomerations of men. The Union is a great republic in extent, but the paucity of objects for which its Government provides assimilates it to a small State. Its acts are important, but they are rare. As the sovereignty of the Union is limited and incomplete, its exercise is not incompatible with liberty; for it does not excite those insatiable desires ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... I was invited to join the Life School of the Hibernian Academy, as there happened to be a paucity of students at that institution, and in order to secure the Government grant it was necessary to bring them up to the required number. But here also there was no idea of proper teaching. Some fossilised member of the Academy would stand about roasting his ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... and he could only muster the support of seventy members against three hundred and ninety-four. This motion greatly damaged the prestige of Mr. Disraeli: it was thought that he was not competent to lead a great party, and but for the paucity of talent in the conservative ranks, his leadership would have immediately terminated. In the country generally, but especially in the large cities and manufacturing districts, the speech excited a stronger political hostility to Mr. Disraeli ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... situated in the island of Leyte, and includes the adjacent islands of Poro and Panan. Although the principal part of it (namely, five villages) is included in a narrow circuit, the remaining part, because of the paucity of inhabitants, and their destruction by the Mindanaos, extends for sixty leguas—and more rather than less. Throughout its extent it has the following villages, each village ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... were waiting for work, and the official at once sent them over, sending also by one of them the way-bill and all the papers connected with the delivery of the boxes at Carfax. Here again I found the tally agreeing exactly. The carriers' men were able to supplement the paucity of the written words with a few more details. These were, I shortly found, connected almost solely with the dusty nature of the job, and the consequent thirst engendered in the operators. On my affording an opportunity, through the medium of the currency of the realm, of ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... bamboo huts of the pattern of those of the Malays. If, then, we take from the forest folk the arts taught them or imitated by them, we reduce them to a very low level of intellect and a remarkable paucity of products from their own powers ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... paucity of matter appears. What Mr. Richard Holt Hutton says in his essay on the poetry of Arnold is so apposite here that it will be best to quote the passage. He is speaking, in an aside, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... may be gathered from folk stories and heroic legends, whose interest offers rich rewards in suggestions of a time when honour rested with the sex to whom the inheritance belonged. Thus, the difficulty of establishing a claim for mother-right and mother-power does not rest in any paucity of proof—but ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... The paucity of measurements has already been explained, but those that were taken are given here for what they are worth. I do not attempt to draw any conclusions from them or undertake any discussion other than that already given in ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... facts in the records of Shakspere's life. They, however, are not the important facts. The main fact in his life is his work, the matchless collection of literary masterpieces that bear the imprint of his genius. It is also well to keep in mind that our paucity of definite documentary records is not characteristic of Shakspere alone. We may know little of Shakspere, but we know less of Marlowe, his ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... civilization, more than is warranted by the facts of our history or even by the capabilities of human nature in its present stage. And this, too, arises from a false estimate of the difficulties which have beset us on every side, and from the paucity of the world's experience, and consequent knowledge, of such experiments as our own. The march of human advancement has but just begun in this its new path; and it is but little wonder that, excited by our past successes, and stimulated to an inordinate degree as their ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... British Association in 1891, Dr. Huggins adhered in the main to the line of advance traced by Vogel. The inconspicuousness of metallic lines in the spectra of the white stars he attributed, not to the paucity, but to the high temperature of the vapours producing them, and the consequent deficiency of contrast between their absorption-rays and the continuous light of the photospheric background. "Such a state ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... streets, were now in the hands of the mob. The few legions who were in the city had been cut off from the Palatine, and though they were making vigorous efforts to break through the close ranks of the crowd, they had, up to this hour, been wholly unsuccessful, owing no doubt to the paucity of their numbers, since the bulk of the army was not yet home from that insensate ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... must depend on the vigor and activity of thought, and the acquisition of general ideas. Language is thus the best index of intellectual progress, the best standard of the intellectual attainment of an age or nation. The language of barbaric tribes is exceedingly simple and meagre; the paucity of general terms clearly indicating the absence of all attempts at classification and all speculative thought. Whilst the language of educated peoples is characterized by great fullness and affluence of terms, especially such as are expressive of general ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... not answer; and the two walked on in silence until they reached the Verein, and entered the long, resounding hall, which was nearly empty. But the few members who remained were making up for their paucity of numbers by their mirth and noise. As Beratinsky and his companion took their seats at the upper end of the table the chairman struck his hammer ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... were not many of them, as I could judge by the whistling of their departing wings and by the silvery furrows where they had left the water. It is curious how strong the daylight must become before the eye can distinguish a duck in flight. The comparative paucity of numbers, I reflected, was probably due to the fact that the ducks used this pond merely as a loafing place during the day. Therefore I should anticipate a good flight as soon as feeding time should be over; especially as one end of the pond proved ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... certainly get into magazines, why should not you deal privately beforehand with some bookseller, and have a second edition ready to appear soon after mine is finished? The difficulty of getting my edition at first, from the paucity of the number and from being only given as presents, will make the second edition eagerly sought for; and I do not see why my anticipating the publication should deprive you of the profit. Rather than do that, I would print a smaller number. I wish to raise an additional ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... one week before the Andover game, when such blows always fall. The Roman called him up after class and informed him that, owing to the paucity of evidence in his daily appearances, he would have to put him to a special examination to determine whether he had a ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... question, we have examined briefly the extant evidence regarding the actor's employment of gesture and business, his delivery of the dialogue, make-up and character delineation, and found a disappointing paucity, but a general and irresistible trend towards liveliness, vivacity and broad undiluted comedy that must have been the sort of dramatic fare demanded by the primeval appetite of the Plautine audience. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... are dullards whom no cannon stuns, That they should be as stones. Wretched are they, and mean With paucity that never was simplicity. By choice they made themselves immune To pity and whatever mourns in man Before the last sea and the hapless stars; Whatever mourns when many leave these shores; Whatever shares The ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... in Saint-Saens's opera. It is frankly a piece for the lyric theatre, albeit one in which adherence to a plot suggested by the Biblical story compelled a paucity of action which had to be made good by spectacle and music. The best element in a drama being that which finds expression in action and dialogue, and these being restricted by the obvious desire ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... The paucity of his thoughts is very remarkable. It is impossible to look without amazement on a mind so fertile in combinations, yet so barren of images. His amatory poetry is wholly made up of a very few topics, disposed in so many orders, and exhibited ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Eusebius: "Nor were the apostles of Christ greatly concerned about the writing of books, being engaged in a more excellent ministry which is above all human power." Eccles. Hist. 1. iii. c. 24.—The same consideration accounts also for the paucity of Christian writings in the first ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... occupies—Self and Here, and, if need be, Now and Thus, are the fundamental elements of primitive conception and description, and these elements are implied and exemplified, rather than expressed, in thought and utterance. Accordingly there is a notable paucity in names, especially for themselves, among the Indian tribes, while the descriptive designations applied to a given group by ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... thrown in by way of apology for the paucity of facts adduced by Sir Charles Lyell to prove the antiquity of man, but merely to illustrate the force which it is possible, in certain circumstances, for a single fact to have. Thus, for instance, the Scotch fir is not now, nor ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences, but the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such subjects, gave me a distaste for them. When I began to study man, I saw that these abstract studies are not suited to him, and that in diving into them I wandered farther from my real object than those who ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... were any true adjectives in that language, it can easily be imagined that the subtlety of the transitive principle had not been sufficiently analyzed; but the remark is here quoted in relation to the paucity of adjectives. ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... and his diction was elegant and copious, but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has done well.' Ib. viii. 386. See ante, i. 312. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 200) ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... about him, must have imbued me with some of his own singularity of mien. If their great-grandfathers were such redoubtable starers in the Doctor's day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors to the little town, except for market purposes, and I question if Uttoxeter ever saw an American before. The only other thing that greatly impressed me was the abundance of public-houses, one at every step or two Red Lions, White Harts, Bulls' Heads, Mitres, Cross Keys, and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Repeal Association, which has constituted itself the protector, par excellence, of the Irish people. May we not fairly suppose that, when Mr O'Connell denounces his friends, he would not hesitate to drag his political opponents to the bar of public opinion; and that the paucity of facts which he is able to adduce against the landed gentry, is a proof that they have not neglected the duties of their station, in so flagrant a manner as his wholesale denunciations would lead us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... fourth sub-group, Camarhynchus, is slightly parrot-shaped. Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends. In a like manner it might be fancied that a bird, originally a buzzard, had been induced here to undertake the office of the carrion-feeding Polybori ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Indians have learned to be a little less wasteful than for- merly, and to restrict their kill more nearly to their needs, though during the winter I was there hundreds were slaughtered for tongues and sinew alone. Large quantities of the venison are dried and stored up against a season of paucity. Pemmican, which was formerly so largely used by our western Indians, is occasionally though not generally made by those of Labrador. When deer are killed some bone, usually a shoulder blade, is hung in a tree as an offering to the Manitou, that he may not interfere with future ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... of desire is whatever is of advantage to the desiring person, an object of aversion whatever is of disadvantage; with both one person enters into relation by turns. On account of the comparative paucity of the objects of desire, and the comparative multitude of the objects of aversion, both may be comprised under the general term, 'object of aversion.' Now, these objects of aversion we mean when we use the term 'causes of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... of the innocent and primitive beings who dwell in sunny archipelagos far away to the South; they suffer in the cause of fashion as the youth of the city promenade suffers. The chief longing of the judicious savage is to shave, but the paucity of metals and sharp instruments prevents him from indulging his longing very frequently. When the joyous chance does come, the son of the forest promptly rises to the occasion. No elderly gentleman whose feet are studded with corns could bear the agony of patent leather boots in a heated ballroom ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... describe him as he had looked in the years gone by. This afforded Mange, such was the name of the dismissed policeman, no indication whatever by which he could profit. He, nevertheless, was not disconcerted by the paucity of information. He knew that young Morcerf was searching for a man who had been one of the party engaged in the attempt to rob the Monte-Cristo mansion on the Rue du Helder, and that knowledge was sufficient for him. ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... paucity of information as to the Government plan, I think it can be safely said that no scheme even remotely resembling any of those presented in connection with the two previous Bills can be put forward now. Each of those schemes would involve the Irish Parliament ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... offered less scope for the exercise of artistic talent than the history of Susanna or even than that of Bel and the Dragon. The nature of its contents, which consists in the main of a prayer and a song, reasonably accounts for this paucity of illustration. It does not lend itself so readily as its two companions to pictorial treatment. Nevertheless a certain number of ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... languages, where the personification of ideas, or sentiments, frequently compensates for the paucity of expression, it could hardly be expected that death should be omitted. The soul, or spirit, deemed to be an invisible essence, is denominated Ochichaug; this is the term translators employ for ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... plods through life with downcast eyes and a vision somewhat dimmed by indifference; forgetting, as he progresses, the small scraps of knowledge he acquired by looking sharply during the period of boyhood, when every living creature excited his attention. In Italy, notwithstanding the paucity of bird life, I believe that the peasants know their birds better. The reason of this is not far to seek; every bird, not excepting even the "temple-haunting martlet" and nightingale and minute golden-crested ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... fulness about his stomach; these complaints increasing, his abdomen gradually enlarged, and a fluctuation in it became perceptible. He had no anasarca, no appearance of diseased viscera, and no great paucity of urine. Purges and diuretics of different kinds affording him no relief, my assistance was desired. After trying squill medicines without effect, he was ordered to take Pulv. fol. Digital. in small doses. These producing ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... the interior. He conducted a masterly retreat and wiped up eight of 'em. He knew jolly well he'd no right to go out so far, so he took the initiative and pitched in a letter to his colonel, who was frothing at the mouth, complaining of the 'paucity of support accorded to him in his operations.' Gad, it might have been one fat brigadier slangin' another! Then he went into the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... attitude, a cold listener, obviously impermeable to mere verbiage and affected by the logic of facts alone, he had a ruthless finger ready to poke into the interstices of a loosely-woven argument. Clemenceau spoke but rarely, in low even tones, with a paucity and awkwardness of gesture surprising in a Latin; he was chary of eloquence, disdaining the obvious arts of the rhetor, but he had at his command an endless string of biting epigrams, and his satire wounded ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... are the various rewards bestowed by Fame upon the claimants for her favour, including the ready grant of evil fame to those who desire it (a bad name, to speak colloquially, is to be had for the asking; and the wonderful paucity of those who wish their good works to remain in obscurity and to be their own reward, but then Chaucer was writing in the Middle Ages. And as pointing in a direction which the author of the poem was subsequently to follow out, we may also specially notice ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... more danger of censure from the multiplicity than paucity of examples, authorities will sometimes seem to have been accumulated without necessity or use, and perhaps some will be found, which might, without loss, have been omitted. But a work of this kind is not hastily to be charged with superfluities; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... shore of Syria is pre-eminently deficient in natural harbors, or facilities for harbors—those which exist have been formed by art and severe contest with the opposition of nature. Hence their extreme paucity, and hence their disproportionate importance in every possible war.] from the accident of being the very first fortified town to those entering Palestine from the side of Egypt. On the 4th of March this place was invested; on the 6th, barely ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... wishing to lose the reputation he had so recently won. Yet owing to the fact that it was expected of him, he entered his name, actuated by no other motive than to distinguish himself as a scholar. As there was then a paucity of literature on slavery in England, his first researches in this field were not productive of gratifying results. "I was in this difficulty," says Clarkson, "when going by accident into a friend's house, I took up a newspaper ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... traditional has much greater inconvenience than that entailed by a paucity of proper names. In the Black Forest and in Huttenberg you will see him in the dog-days wearing a thick fur cap, because it is an historical fur cap—a cap worn by his grandfather. In the Wetterau, that peasant girl is considered the handsomest ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... The History and Development of English Gilds. An essay prefixed to a volume of ordinances of English Gilds, edited by T. Smith. Brentano's essay is only referred to because of the paucity of works on the subject, as it is fanciful and unsatisfactory. No thorough and scholarly description of the craft gilds exists. On the other hand, a considerable body of original materials is easily accessible in English, as in the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... first of a long line of English visitors to express the conviction that many things in Chicago were untoward not through paucity of public spirit but through a lack of political machinery adapted to modern city life. This was not all of the situation but perhaps no casual visitor could be expected to see that these matters of detail seemed unimportant to a city in the first flush of youth, impatient of correction ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... embarrassment and annoyance, and he quickly changed the conversation, but with a wandering mind, as Count Victor could not fail to notice. The little man, to tell the truth, had somehow laughed at the wrong moment for Count Victor's peace of mind. For why should he be amused at the paucity of the visitors from Argyll's court to the residence of Doom? Across the table at a man unable to conceal his confusion Montaiglon stole an occasional glance with suspicion growing ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Then what paucity of ideas is revealed in the fact that a number of names are simply common nouns, or, worse yet, spinster adjectives, "singly blest"! Such are Hill, Mountain, Lake, Glade, Rock, Glen, Bay, Shade, Valley, Village, District, Falls, which might profitably be joined in holy matrimony with the following,—Grand, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... say, a host in himself. He was a fine tall man, with very popular manners; and though he showed that he would not allow tricks to be played, he ingratiated himself wonderfully with all classes. He took great pains to conceal from the Dutch the paucity of our numbers, and hinted that as long as the inhabitants behaved themselves he would keep his troops on board instead of quartering them on the town. These troops were represented by the idlers of the different ships ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... affairs (1680) armed bands of the Iroquois suddenly appeared in the Illinois territory and produced a panic among its timid inhabitants. Tonti, acting with spirit and decision as their ally, now intervened, and enforced upon the Iroquois a truce for the Illinois; but the former, on ascertaining the paucity of his means, recommenced hostilities. Attacking the fort, they murdered Pere Gabriel, disinterred the dead, and wasted the cultivated land of the French residents. The Illinois dispersed in all directions, leaving the latter isolated among their enemies. Tonti, who had at last but five men under ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... what the result would be, and then, despite a certain jealousy, not confined entirely to savage rival leaders, Lame Wolf had confidence in Stabber's judgment. Ray had expected long range flank fire, and possibly occasional resistance in front; but, assured of Stabber's paucity in numbers and believing Lame Wolf too busy to send Stabber substantial aid, he thought a sharp lesson or two would clear his front of such Indians as sought to check him, and so rode serenely forward, rejoicing in his mission and in his game and devoted ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... the Squire's wife after a considerable interval, I asked whether her husband had been behaving well. She replied 'As usual.' Whereupon the Bibliotaph said, 'You mean that his conduct in these days is characterized by a plethora of intention and a paucity ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... like the lustre of precious stones, their luminous colour shines from the centre, not from the surface. With such a mine of rich ore as the works of Rembrandt contain, it is necessary to apologise for the paucity of examples offered, for in a work of this kind I have been obliged to confine myself to a certain brevity and a limited number of illustrations; still I must do my publisher the justice to say, he has not grudged any expense that would be the means ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... habit of meeting at all, or, at least, not in such familiar intercourse prior to the arrival of the white people. This single cause, with the diseases and miseries which it entails upon the Aborigines, is quite sufficient to account for the paucity of births, and the additional number of deaths that now occur ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... entirely absent from such a moral and religious state, on account, perhaps, of the paucity of ideas by which the heart is ruled, and perhaps also on account of the artless simplicity which characterizes every thing in primitively-constituted nations. And, wonderful to say, without any mysticism there is often among them a perfect holiness of life, adapting itself to all circumstances, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... suggestion I have noticed is that of Eligio Ancona, who, claiming that Mayab is the correct form, and that this means "not numerous," thinks that it was applied to the first native settlers of the land, on account of the paucity ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... dearth, paucity, scarcity, deficit. Lame, crippled, halt, deformed, maimed, disabled. Large, great, big, huge, immense, colossal, gigantic, extensive, vast, massive, unwieldy, bulky. Laughable, comical, comic, farcical, ludicrous, ridiculous, funny, droll. Lead, guide, conduct, escort, convoy. Lengthen, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... him; and such was his imitative turn, that he himself could preach by the hour, in the manner—so far at least as voice and gesture went—of all the popular ministers of the district. There was, however, rather a paucity of idea in his discourses: in his more energetic passages, when he struck the book and stamped with his foot, he usually iterated, in sonorous Gaelic—"The wicked, the wicked, O wretches the wicked!" while a passage of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... exaggeration and misrepresentation were then almost so consistent with honesty, that any one who essays to digest trustworthy history from them may be more embarrassed by the abundance than he would be by the paucity of his materials. Our author has spared no pains or expense in the gathering of plans, pamphlets, and solid volumes, in procuring copies of unpublished documents, and in consulting all the known sources ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... of the precinct of Savoy is difficult to treat in a volume like the present, because it requires a book to itself. It is not the paucity of material, but the quantity, that is embarrassing. The great palace which stood here first was built by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, one of the Barons to whom our present Constitution is due. By one of the frequent vicissitudes ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... after a long while, and was most plentiful, . . . . so that, having measured our appetite in anticipation of a paucity of food, we had to make more ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... serve to reconcile the opinion now generally entertained of the richness of the gold deposits by the few experienced miners who have seen the Couteau country, with the present paucity of production. ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... love, you'll soon invention find And not to cunning tricks and freaks be blind; The youngest 'prentice, when he feels the dart, Grows wondrous shrewd, and studies wily art. This passion never, we perceive, remains In want from paucity of scheming brains. The god of hearts so well exerts his force, That he receives his dues as things of course. A bucking-tub, of which a tale is told, Will prove the case, and this I'll now unfold; Particulars I heard ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... perhaps the failure is alone due to my own unmitigated stupidity. Rivarol had hung about the skirts of the University for several years; supplying his few wants by writing for scientific journals, or by giving assistance to students who, like myself, were characterized by a plethora of purse and a paucity of ideas; cooking, studying and sleeping in his attic lodgings; and prosecuting queer experiments ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... This paucity of results in no way lessens the merit of the movement from the West Indies to the continent. It was indubitably correct in idea, and, as has been pointed out, the conception was Rodney's own, the possibilities were great, the risk in many ways undeniable; ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... casuistry was no inspiration. The voice of a man who gets his message at first-hand from God has a ring in it which even dull ears detect as something genuine. Alas for the bewildering babble of echoes and the paucity of voices to-day! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... only animal the Tasmanian sheep-farmer is annoyed with; and from its paucity, they have not, as in New South Wales, the trouble of securing their flocks in yards ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... to pass that Milby respectability refused to recognize the Countess Czerlaski, in spite of her assiduous church-going, and the deep disgust she was known to have expressed at the extreme paucity of the congregations on Ash-Wednesdays. So she began to feel that she had miscalculated the advantages of a neighbourhood where people are well acquainted with each other's private affairs. Under these ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... seamen made up in activity in a great measure for the paucity of their numbers, and for the weakness of the rest. Paul, Abel, Tom, and Peter, and the rest literally flew about the decks, and handled the guns as if they were quakers made of wood and ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... hung festooned in every possible form above our heads, many hanging down straight to the ground, while numberless curious air-plants hung suspended from the branches. Now and then gaily-plumaged birds were seen flitting amid the thick shade; but we were surprised at the paucity of animal life which existed. Not a quadruped was to be seen. A few monkeys and parrots were occasionally heard, though rarely caught sight of. We had numerous streams to cross; often, indeed, the same stream to cross several times. Frequently the passage ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... The compass of the heart, in the musical style of expression, is much more bounded than that of the imagination; so the notes of the former are extremely apt to run into one another; but in return for the paucity of its compass, its few notes are much more sweet. I must still give you another quotation, which I am almost sure I have given you before, but I cannot resist the temptation. The subject is religion—speaking of its importance ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of Wales. Of Welsh or ancient British words, Charles Bucke, who says in his grammar that he took great pains to be accurate in his scale of derivation, enumerates but one hundred and eleven, as now found in our language; and Dr. Johnson, who makes them but ninety-five, argues from their paucity, or almost total absence, that the Saxons could not have mingled at all with these people, or even have retained them ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... themselves at one period of their lives. Why these people are called Miguelets it is not easy to say, but it is probable that they have derived this appellation from the name of their original leader. I regret that the paucity of my own information will not allow me to enter into farther particulars with respect to this corps, concerning which I have little doubt that many remarkable things might ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... strikes an experienced eye in New York's great thoroughfare is the paucity of loiterers: he sees, at a glance, that the flaneur is an exotic here. There is that in the gait and look of every one that shows a settled and an eager purpose,—a goal sought under pressure. A counting-room, office, court, mart, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... it was rescued and brought ashore in triumph. Best of all, the siege had been too short to bring famine in its train. The loss of life was inconsiderable, and in prestige the soldiery of New France now stood on a pinnacle which they had never before attained. When we consider the paucity of the forces engaged, this repulse of the English from Quebec may not seem an imposing military achievement. But Canada had put forth her whole strength and had succeeded where failure would have been fatal. In the shouts of rejoicing which followed ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Christian Associations. The life there was healthful and athletic, but too juvenile. For me it was too late. I was not boy, nor youth, despite my paucity of years. I had bucked big with men. I knew mysterious and violent things. I was from the other side of life so far as concerned the young men I encountered in the Y.M.C.A. I spoke another language, possessed a sadder and more terrible wisdom. (When I come to ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... persons connected with the merchant service or the military profession; and who, by a residence intended only to be temporary and official, contracted a preference for the climate; where they found great respect and deference, by the paucity of their numbers. It was their example which finally overcame the reluctance to settle, which no mere offers of the ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... retarded not only their political development, but their progress in all those arts and pursuits which imply a tolerably large and varied society. The note of South African life, the thing that strikes the traveller with increasing force as he visits one part of the country after another, is the paucity of inhabitants, and the isolated life which these inhabitants, except in six or seven towns, are forced to lead. This is the doing of nature. She has not severed the country into distinct social or political communities by any lines of physical demarcation, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce |
