"Pretension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stuff, furbished up at a moment's notice. We carried the election. Cobden sent me a challenge to attend a public discussion of the subject. Whether this was quite fair, I am not certain, for I was young, made no pretension to be an expert, and had never opened my lips in parliament on the subject. But it afforded me an excellent opportunity to decline with modesty and with courtesy as well as reason. I am sorry to say that, to the best of my recollection, I did far ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Uncle Bacchus now, Mr. Barbour," said Alice; "do look at him walk. Is he not a curiosity? He has as much pretension in his manner as if he were really doing us a favor in ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... island in the Tuscan archipelago, and, as he told you to-day, has founded a commandery. You know the same thing was done for Saint Stephen of Florence, Saint George, Constantinian of Parma, and even for the Order of Malta. Except this, he has no pretension to nobility, and calls himself a chance count, although the general opinion at Rome is that the count is a man ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... instant, acknowledging the appreciation by yourself and the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, of the merits of my lamented son in the Burke and Wills Exploring Expedition in Australia. That he, and he alone, was the only one who had the least pretension to the title of geographer, is manifest; —therefore it is not strange that Dr. Mueller and my friends in Australia should feel somewhat annoyed in the matter of ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... he knew the quintessence of jewels and that he was skilled in cookery. We have made proof of him in cookery and have found him the skilfullest of men; and now, if we send after him and prove him on jewels, [the truth or falsehood of] his pretension will be made ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... every literature; yet the mighty we does not even know the word for bread in Armenian. It knows bread well enough by name in England, and frequently bread in England only by its name, but the truth is, that the mighty we, with all its pretension, is in general a very sorry creature, who, instead of saying nous disons, should rather say nous dis: Porny in his "Guerre des Dieux," very profanely makes the three in one say, Je faisons; now, Lavengro, who is anything but profane, would suggest ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... and he was very proud of them; while conversing he would often look at them with an air of self-complacency. He also fancied he had fine teeth, but his pretension to that advantage was not so well founded as his vanity on ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... modestly, though he had become the most important person of the party for the time being. There was not a particle of the "brag" and pretension which had caused me to distrust everything he said. As we walked from place to place he kept at a respectful distance from the passengers, and never intruded himself upon them, though he was always ready to answer ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... him whom a wild opinion of the dignity of perseverance, in whatever cause, disposes to pursue every injury with unwearied and perpetual resentment; with him whose vanity inclines him to consider every man as a rival in every pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts his friend's affairs or secrets in continual hazard, and who thinks his forgetfulness of others excused by his inattention to himself; and with him whose inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of choice ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... difficulty in winning his way wherever he might think it desirable to make a favorable impression. Though he was evidently highly educated, and had been brought up in a superior circle to ours, and, for aught we knew, might be very wealthy, yet his whole manner was so free from pretension to superiority of any kind, that we never felt the least ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... idioms of the Latin and English will allow;" and to be "printed for the use of schools, as well as of private gentlemen." A few moments' perusal of this work will satisfy the reader that it has not the slightest pretension to be considered a literal translation, while, by its departure from the strict letter of the author, it has gained nothing in elegance of diction. It is accompanied by "critical, historical, geographical, and classical notes in English, from the best ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... through some secret aperture, he returns as quickly through another equally unseen passage. Upon an average, I set his bibliomaniacal peregrinations down at the rate of a full French league per day. It is the absence of all pretension and quackery—the quiet, unobtrusive manner in which he opens his well-charged battery of information upon you—but, more than all, the glorious honours which are due to him, for having assisted to rescue the book treasures of the Abbey of St. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... may not be a desirable power. The further question therefore arises as to the mission of Israel in history to come as well as in history past. History seems contradicted by the claim made by Judaism. Jews are quick enough to see the weakness of the pretension made by certain sects of dogmatic Christianity that it is the last word of religion, that all saving truth was once for all revealed some nineteen centuries ago. History, says the Jewish controversialist, teaches no such lessons of finality. Forces appear, work their ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... education. We become mercenary or self-denying, very much as we are instructed. In this country, it must be confessed, fortune-hunting has made giant strides, within the last few years, and that, too, with an audacity of pretension that is unrestrained by any of the social barriers ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... was said, corporal Strides, as the serjeant persisted in terming Joel, on the ground that being but one step higher himself, the overseer could justly claim no rank of greater pretension, approached the captain, taking care to make the military salute which Joyce had never succeeded before in extracting from him, notwithstanding a ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... that Anderson had tones and expressions for her that no other woman could win from him; and looking back to their conversation at the Glacier House, she realised, night after night, in the silence of wakeful hours, the fulness of his confession, together with the strength of his recoil from any pretension ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in. Mrs. Clandon is between forty and fifty, with a slight tendency to soft, sedentary fat, and a fair remainder of good looks, none the worse preserved because she has evidently followed the old tribal matronly fashion of making no pretension in that direction after her marriage, and might almost be suspected of wearing a cap at home. She carries herself artificially well, as women were taught to do as a part of good manners by dancing masters and reclining boards before these were superseded by the modern artistic cult of beauty and ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... sensitive excitement that even through the unconscious irony of this speech he was noticing the difference between the young English girl's evident interest in a political problem and the utter indifference of his own countrywomen. Here was a girl scarcely out of her teens, with no pretension to being a blue stocking, with half the aplomb of an American girl of her own age, gravely considering a question of political economy. Oddly enough, it added to his other irritation, and he said almost ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... our manliness. In France there are no unmarried women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid. 'What striking sacrifices of sexual honour does this one fact argue!' The French style is remarkable for simplicity—'a strange pretension for anything French;' but on the whole the intellectual merits of their style are small, 'chiefly negative,' and 'founded on the accident of their colloquial necessities.' They are amply compensated, too, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of course, a considerable loss to Barnum's estate, for the house had cost about $150,000. It was also generally regarded as a public calamity. This house had been the only building in its peculiar style of architecture of any pretension in America, and many persons had visited Bridgeport every year expressly to see it. The insurance on the mansion had usually been about $62,000, but Barnum had let some of the policies expire without renewing them, so that at the time of the fire there was only $28,000 insurance on the property. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge? We dare say that, because in his version of the Wallenstein there are some inaccuracies, those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in this particular pretension. But, to a certain degree, they will be wrong. Coleridge was not very accurate in any thing but in the use of logic. All his philological attainments were imperfect. He did not talk German; or so obscurely—and, if he attempted to speak fast, so erroneously—that in his second ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of that "Golden Age of the Renaissance" in which it took place; when real devotion to all arts, sciences, and amenities of a higher civilisation went hand in hand with crime of the vilest and treachery of the basest description. Well might Barbarossa, and such as he, laugh to scorn the pretension that his Christian enemies were one whit better than were they, when they could point to the fact that, to serve a private revenge, a great Christian king could betray his co-religionists to their Moslem foes. ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... basement hall leading to a kitchen, which, even at that moment, he noticed to be in trimmer condition than is usual where much housework is done, but he saw nothing that bespoke tragedy, or even a break in the ordinary routine of life as observed in houses of like size and pretension. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... playing was addressed rather to the hearts than to the sensitive ears of his audiences, and during his later years he adopted certain mannerisms by way of distracting attention from his somewhat imperfect performances. He never made any pretension to being a musician of the modern school, nor of any regularly recognised school of music, but his concert pieces were his own compositions, of no great merit, and he still more delighted his audiences by playing national airs as no one had ever played them before. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... at the same time. It is not essential that the unstudied cuts and scratches on wood should have any significance or be capable of intelligible rendering. Though blacks profess to be able to send messages by means of sticks alone, the pretension is not recognised by those who ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... fixed itself in Pearl Street, and gone quietly into business without friends, acquaintances, or endorsers; and in a single year had secured both credit and respectability. And it had done this on what is too frequently mistaken for energy and enterprise—show and pretension. ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... has never placed the war which she has waged upon the ground that our Army occupied the intermediate territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Her refuted pretension that Texas was not in fact an independent state, but a rebellious province, was obstinately persevered in, and her avowed purpose in commencing a war with the United States was to reconquer Texas and to restore ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... doubt a pirate direct and indirect, and occasionally commands excursions in person, or employs the Illanuns of Tampasuk, and others to the eastward, who for their own convenience make common cause with him. He has no pretension to the territory he occupies; and the authority he exerts (by means of his piratical force) over the interior tribes in his vicinity, and on the island of Palawan, is of the worst and most oppressive description. This seriff has probably never come in contact ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the hall from Susan, in a closet so dirty that no one could have risked in it any article of clothing with the least pretension to cleanness. It was no better, no worse than the lodgings of more than two hundred thousand New Yorkers. Its one narrow opening, beside the door, gave upon a shaft whose odors were so foul that she kept the window ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... extreme perturbation he could be sure of that. As, bending under the lamp-shade to arrange the wick, she exposed her features to the bright light, Edwin saw a face marred by anxiety and grief and time, the face of a mature woman, with no lingering pretension to girlishness. She was thirty-four, and she looked older than Maggie, and much older than Janet. She was embittered. Her black dress was shabby and untidy, her finger-nails irregular, discoloured, and damaged. The aspect ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of her boldnesse; Tell skill, it is pretension; Tell charity of coldness; Tell law, it is contention; And as they yield reply, So give them ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... nor noteworthy work of art pleased the eye in this bare, strangely narrow room. The weapons and pieces of armour of the aged champion of the faith, which hung high above the window, made no pretension to beauty. Besides, the rays of the dim candle did not extend to them any more than to the valueless pictures of saints and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... appears to be gone by when men of great original gifts could find satisfaction in reproducing the thoughts and words of others; and the work, if done at all, must now be done by writers of inferior pretension. Among these, however, there are still degrees; and the experience which I have gained since I first adventured as a poetical translator has made me doubt whether I may not be ill-advised in resuming the experiment under any circumstances. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... By pretension to Second Sight, no profit was ever sought or gained. It is an involuntary affection, in which neither hope nor fear are known to have any part. Those who profess to feel it, do not boast of it as a privilege, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Alfred Austin, "it must seem a reproach never to have had a pope in the family, and you will with difficulty find a villa of any pretension, certainly not in Frascati, where memorial tassels and tiara carven in stone over porch and doorway do not attest ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... answered Gabrielle, mournfully. "Listen, wise Ruth, I shall be a mother soon; and to my child, if it is spared, and to you, I devote myself. You have seen the Misses Erminstoun—you have seen vulgarity, insolence, and absurd pretension; they have taunted me with my ignorance, and I will not change it now. The blood of the De Courcys and O'Briens has made me a lady; and all the wealth of the Indies can not make them so. No, Ruth, I will remain in ignorance, and yet tower above them, high as the clouds ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... seven days." "And why," asked Benaiah, "didst thou jeer when thou sawest the conjuror at his tricks?" "Because," said Ashmedai, "the man was at that very time sitting on a princely treasure, and he did not, with all his pretension, know ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... to whom birth or education gave a claim to the title of gentleman. To those who derived no pretension to it from either of those sources, he never showed a want of attention, unless they exhibited any traits of vulgar assurance, or upstart insolence; to those he unsparingly dealt the full measure of contemptuous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... council-chamber was offered the purple to salute much more graciously than at any former time. Diocletian was the first who introduced the custom of offering reverence to the emperor after this foreign manner and royal pretension; whereas all former princes, as we read, had ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... to leave Dufresnoy at Metlaoui. In him I often admire that fine trait of his race: the clarifying instinct. He possesses—with no pretension at knowledge beyond his mining sphere—an innate rigour of judgment in every matter of the mind; he avoids crooked thinking by a process of ratiocination so swift and sure as to appear intuitive. Even as a true collector of antiques has quite a peculiar way of handling ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... present condition is unmeasured. "The notion almost reminds us of the cruel jest of Mezentius, who bound the living bodies of his enemies to corpses." It is the contempt both of a great scholar and a great Englishman for ignorance and a somewhat ludicrous pretension. "The caput orbis has become provincial, and her authority is spurned even within her own borders." England could not kneel at this Italian footstool without ceasing ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... motive—declared or unjustifiably implied—into new contact with a royal maiden, whom a qualified judge described as possessing "a keen and quick apprehension, being straightforward, singularly pure-hearted, and free from all vanity and pretension." In the estimation of this sagacious well-wisher, she was fitted beforehand "to do ample justice both to the head and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the men embrace the women— ever yet got any permanent good out of a book unless he enjoyed its perusal. Jno. J. Ingalls says that everybody praises Milton's Paradise Lost, but nobody reads it. Ingalls is mistaken. Everybody making any pretension to culture has read the book—as a disagreeable duty; but that man don't live—at least outside of the lunatic asylum —who can quote a dozen lines of it. Same with Dante's Divine Comedia and a host of other books with which people are expected to inflict their brains. Read few books and those ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... old saying is aptly introduced, 'A pound of good luck is worth a ton of merit.' Thou, who, in comparison to me, art doubtless an ignorant dunce, without rising early or sitting up late, or, indeed, exerting the least industry: without any pretension more or less than that of being breathed upon by knight-errantry, seest thyself created governor of an island as if it ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... government has sanctioned. It denies first principles; it contradicts truths, hitherto received as indisputable. It denies to the judiciary the interpretation of law, and claims to divide with Congress the power of originating statutes. It extends the grasp of executive pretension over every power of the government. But this is not all. It presents the chief magistrate of the Union in the attitude of arguing away the powers of that government over which he has been chosen to preside; and adopting for this ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... it as a gift, and it must come into us before we can be in it. The point of comparison between the recipients of the kingdom and little children does not lie in any sentimental illusions about the innocence of childhood, but in its dependence, in its absence of pretension, in its sense of clinging helplessness, in its instinctive trust. All these things in the child are natural, spontaneous, unreflecting, and therefore of no value. You and I have to think ourselves back to them, and to work ourselves back to them, and to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tenour of the explanations here given, it will perhaps be inferred that the perfection of the Atlas has been the principal object of concern; in fact, having no pretension to authorship, the writing of the narrative, though by much the most troublesome part of my labour, was not that upon which any hope of reputation was founded; a polished style was therefore not attempted, but some pains have been taken to render it clearly intelligible. The first ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... vulgar and pretending, than the simplicity and natural ease of the refined. Their own notions of elegance lie so much on the surface, that they seem at first to suspect an ambush, and it is probable that, finding so much repose where, agreeably to their preconceived opinions, all ought to be fuss and pretension, they imagine themselves to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... useful also in the discrimination of moral character. In private life it has enabled us to distinguish the virtuous from the more vicious part of the community[A]. It has shown the general philanthropist. It has unmasked the vicious in spite of his pretension to virtue. It has afforded us the same knowledge in public life. It has separated the moral statesman from the wicked politician. It has shown us who, in the legislative and executive offices of our country are fit to save, and who to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... and the argument valid, if we were previously assured that all and every part of the Old and New Testament is the voice of the divine Word. But, except by the Spirit, whence are we to ascertain this? Not from the books themselves; for not one of them makes the pretension for itself, and the two or three texts, which seem to assert it, refer only to the Law and the Prophets, and no where enumerate the books that were given by inspiration: and how obscure the history of the formation of the Canon, and how great ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... instead of studying the phenomena, in order to grasp their laws and apply them to his needs, he fancied he could, by means of peculiar practices and consecrated forms, compel the physical agents of nature to serve his wishes and purposes.... This pretension had its root in the notion which antiquity had formed of the natural phenomena. It did not see in them the consequence of unchangeable and necessary laws, always active and always to be calculated upon, but fancied them to depend on the arbitrary and varying will of the spirits and deities it ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... is built in the form of a cross, as is, I believe, invariably the case with every Catholic church of any pretension. At its northern end are two towers, and at its southern is the celebrated chapel of Henry VII. This chapel is an addition, which, allowing for a vast difference in the scale, resembles, in its general appearance, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... vocation for a profession. She did not look strong-minded; besides she had no need to work for her living, this ward of a rich man, who was altogether the most brilliant and beautiful girl in school. Yet everybody knew that she had a strange tenacity of purpose, and there was a lack of pretension, and a simplicity that scorned the deceits of school-girl existence. Everybody knew too that she was not a commonplace girl, and her younger friends made her the heroine of their fondest anticipations and dreams. But after ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... nation shows that it has evidently this pernicious disposition, and that it considers no right as sacred, the safety of the human race requires that it should be suppressed. To form and support an unjust pretension is to do an injury not only to him who is interested in this pretension, but to mock at justice in general, and to injure all nations."—Ibid. ch. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... soldier he, but all untried.' We had never yet seen active service, and our tents were still white and unstained. The ground had been once the lawn of the deserted house—in the long ago probably the home of a planter of some pretension; and, as we lay there under the trees watching the boys over the fires, kindled for their evening meal, the blue smoke curling up among the trees, it made, as I have said, a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... carefully reconnoitred the place from the cliff above it. There was a tower, and a small harbour with several small craft and boats at anchor in it, and two or three better sort of houses, besides numerous cottages and huts, and, at a little distance, a chateau of some pretension to architecture. They would have preferred a place where there were no gentlemen, who would naturally be less likely to believe their story. In other respects, they could not have desired to reach a more satisfactory locality. The cliffs appeared to be ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... towards Faringdon; and had promised him tickets for some ladies, lionesses of his, who were coming up to the Commemoration. He was a shrewd, easy-tempered, free-spoken man, of small desires and no ambition; of no very keen sensibilities or romantic delicacies, and very little religious pretension; that is, though unexceptionable in his deportment, he hated the show of religion, and was impatient at those who affected it. He had known the University for thirty years, and formed a right estimate of most things in it. He had come out to Oxley to take a ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... in the absence of all control over the subject of African slavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for other men's sins. [Laughter.] Who gave them a right to decide that it is a sin? By what ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... the ceremony to be delayed some months, at least; and I wished it too. It seemed a horrible thing to hurry on the inauspicious match, and not to give the poor creature time to think and reason on the irrevocable step she was about to take. I made no pretension to 'a mother's watchful, anxious care,' but I was amazed and horrified at Mrs. Murray's heartlessness, or want of thought for the real good of her child; and by my unheeded warnings and exhortations, I vainly strove to ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Proudie; "it is the most impudent piece of pretension I ever heard of in my life. Mr. Slope Dean of Barchester, indeed! And what did you do in the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... often become very musical: it is a sort of pretension to intellect that suits their capacities. Plutarch says somewhere that the best musical instruments are made from the jaw-bones of asses. Plutarch never made a more sensible observation. Lord Erpingham had of late taken greatly to operas: he ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... production, the service would be rendered by the second-rate boulevard that conducts to it, adorned with inferior cafs and tobacco-shops. Here, in a respectable recess, surrounded by vulgar habitations, and with the theater, of a classic pretension, opposite, stands the small "square house," so called because it is much longer than it is broad. I saw it first in the evening, in the vague moonlight, which made it look as if it were cast in bronze. Stendhal says, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to hoodwink, I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think), Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst E'en the Giver in one gift.—Behold, I could love if I durst! 260 But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake God's own speed in the one way of love; I abstain for love's sake. —What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small, Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch; should the hundredth appal? In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... thought of my correspondence? What estimate did she form of Dr. John Bretton's epistolary powers? In what light did the often very pithy thoughts, the generally sound, and sometimes original opinions, set, without pretension, in an easily-flowing, spirited style, appear to her? How did she like that genial, half humorous vein, which to me gave such delight? What did she think of the few kind words scattered here and there-not thickly, as the diamonds were scattered in the valley ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... state, and that entire freedom of speech was their ancient and undoubted right, transmitted from their ancestors. The king, in reply, told the Commons, that "their remonstrance was more like a denunciation of war, than an address of dutiful subjects, and that their pretension to inquire into state affairs was a plenipotence to which none of their ancestors, even during the weakest reigns, had ever dared to aspire." He farther insinuated that their privileges were derived from royal favor. On this, the Commons framed another protest,—that ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... pretension to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, Owen Meredith, which run, as ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... thorough good-nature which immediately ranked her next to Jenny Hitchcock in her fancy. Mr. Bill Huff followed, a sturdy young man; quite as plain and hardly so sensible-looking, he was still more shining with good-nature. He made no pretension to the elegance of Mr. Juniper Hitchcock; but before the evening was over, Ellen had a ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... of the island in 1592. From that time until the final establishment of the English rule in 1803, it was repeatedly captured and burned by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English; it consequently presents no architectural monuments nor any pretension to antiquity. ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... in general outline the century story of McGill University. They have no pretension to the title of detailed History, for it has been possible to chronicle only the circumstances which shaped the University in its infancy and the important events of its succeeding years. The story is one of struggle and disappointment, of discouragement and controversy, and of ultimate success ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... first discovered, it was found to be inhabited by a race of savages, divided into several tribes. They had no manufactures; they had no knowledge of art or science; they lived in the impenetrable woods in huts, having no pretension to architecture; they went almost entirely naked, were extremely warlike, and fond of hunting, and were known to devour the enemies ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... evil, that "the truth abode not in him," because there is no material sense. Matter, as 18 matter, has neither sensation nor personal intelligence. As a pretension to be Mind, matter is a lie, and "the father of lies;" Mind is not in matter, and Spirit cannot 21 originate its ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker G. Eddy
... there was certainly much vague admiration and pretension amongst young Englishmen in this matter; but thought that profounder views were to be gathered from these sources than was ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... fifteen years the Spaniards had been burning English seamen whenever they could catch them, plotting to kill the Queen and reduce England itself into vassaldom to the Pope. The English nation, the loyal part of it, were replying to the wild pretension by the hands of their own admiral. If Philip chose to countenance assassins, if the Holy Office chose to burn English sailors as heretics, those heretics had a right to make Spain understand that such a game was dangerous, that, as Santa ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... occasionally they may seem to disguise and distort it. There is no monopoly of poetry for particular ages and nations; and consequently that despotism in taste, which would seek to invest with universal authority the rules which at first, perhaps, were but arbitrarily advanced, is but a vain and empty pretension. Poetry, taken in its widest acceptation, as the power of creating what is beautiful, and representing it to the eye or the ear, is a universal gift of Heaven, being shared to a certain extent even ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... A very unpretending entrance admitted him into a spacious hall, the hall being the largest and best part of the house. Those great iron gates and the hall would have done honour to a large mansion; and they gave an appearance of pretension to Deerham Court which ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... receive, hereafter, an ample equivalent in the bales of goods, for all the vices we export."[27] With what obstinacy an idea once mooted is cherished, may be inferred from an opinion afterwards expressed by an authority of still greater pretension:—"The most sanguine supporter of New South Wales system of colonisation, will hardly promise himself any advantage from the produce it may be able to supply."[28] Its corn and wool, its timber and hemp, he excludes ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... a short gentleman, with a sloping forehead, a prominent nose, a clean-shaven, High-Church face, narrow, dogmatic views, and small, twinkling eyes; not the sort of person whom one would naturally associate with financial acumen, but endowed with an air of self-confidence, and a pretension to private information, which would have done credit to any ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... authorities, denounced as "a dreadful, a savage act, the inhuman slaughter in cold blood, of fifty-three human beings, a large number of them citizens of the United States, shot without lawful trial, without any valid pretension of authority, and to the horror of the whole civilized world." England also filed its claim for the loss of British subjects, and payment was soon after made "for the purpose of relief of the families or persons of the ship's company and passengers." In his Cuba and International Relations, ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... solve which is one of the most pathetic facts of human history. After he had made one or two mistakes in following the dicta that Sampson uttered with all the diffidence of a papal encyclical, Millard became aware that in social matters pretension is often in inverse ratio to accomplishment. About the time that he gave up Sampson he renounced the cheap tailor into whose hands he had unwarily fallen, and consigned to oblivion a rather new thirty-dollar dress-suit in favor of one that cost half a ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... nuns could boast of having any privacy, any little corner of their own to turn into, any place where they could enjoy the luxury of retirement, any private study such as every boy nowadays, in a school of any pretension, expects to have provided for himself, and without which we assume that nobody can read and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... self-conscious, mannered and affected. The number of things that a small dog does naturally is strangely small. Enjoying better spirits and not crushed under material cares, he is far more theatrical than average man. His whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in a vain show, and in the hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your puppy for a walk, and you will find the little ball of fur clumsy, stupid, bewildered, but natural. Let but a few months pass, and when you repeat the process ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sure, is Kur-Brandenburg, though under pawn!" argued Friedrich—and, I almost guess, though that is not said, produced from his own purse, at some stage of the business, the actual money for Jobst, to close his Brandenburg pretension. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to the oven right (droit de four banal) as well. But the intendant, ever the tribune of his people, sternly set his foot on this pretension. In France the seigneur insisted that the peasantry should bake their bread in the great oven of the seigneury, paying the customary toll for its use. But in Canada, as the intendant explained, this arrangement was utterly impracticable. Through ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... neither pompousness nor insincerity nor pretension of any kind, and therefore no real vulgarity. It is true they were a little bit noisy there sometimes, but only ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... marries an heiress, he does not impale his arms with hers, as in the preceding examples, but bears them in an escutcheon of pretence in the centre of the shield, showing his pretension to her lands in consequence of his marriage with the lady who is legally entitled to them. The escutcheon of pretence is not used by the children of such marriage; they bear the arms of their father and mother ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... designated victims, a symbolic representation would have gradually developed, and been kept up, though losing its religious character. We merely call brief attention to this obscure problem, not having the pretension to solve it.—Revue d'Ethnographie. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... log-tenements of the interior. Most of it was rude, and to the last degree rustic; but there was a clock, with a handsome case of dark wood, in a corner, and two or three chairs, with a table and bureau, that had evidently come from some dwelling of more than usual pretension. The clock was industriously ticking, but its leaden-looking hands did no discredit to their dull aspect, for they pointed to the hour of eleven, though the sun plainly showed it was some time past the turn of the day. There was also a dark, massive chest. The kitchen ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... causes," says Mrs. Gore, "which render the pursuit of wealth a bitterer as well as more pardonable struggle in England than on the Continent, is the unequal and capricious distribution of family property.... Country gentlemen and professional men,—nay, men without the pretension of being gentlemen,—are scarcely less smitten with the mania of creating 'an eldest son' to the exclusion and degradation of their younger children; and by the individuals thus defrauded by their nearest and dearest, is the idolatry ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... conception seemed, of a person of the inferior class claiming equality with them, or exercising authority over them. It hardly seemed less so to the class held in subjection. The emancipated serfs and burgesses, even in their most vigorous struggles, never made any pretension to a share of authority; they only demanded more or less of limitation to the power of tyrannizing over them. So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... were made upon him. Con Crawley, we are told, was of a bilious, saturnine constitution, even his talent being but the result of disease. These physical disadvantages, combined with an education 'whose object was pretension, and whose principle was arrogance, made him at once a thing fearful and pitiable, at war with its species and itself, ready to crush in manhood as to sting in the cradle, and leading his overweening ambition to pursue its object by ways dark and hidden—safe from the penalty ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... responsibility for his morals. Accordingly, this must be assumed of course to exist amongst the positive objects of every boarding-school. Yet so far are the laws and arrangements of existing schools from at all aiding and promoting this object, that their very utmost pretension is—that they do not injure it. Much injustice and oppression, for example, take place in the intercourse of all boys with each other; and in most schools 'the stern edict against bearing tales,' causes this to go unredressed (p. 78): on the other ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... The appearance of the place and nature of the buildings differ little from those of the generality of Malayan bazaars, excepting that its superior wealth has occasioned the erection of a greater number of public edifices, chiefly mosques, but without the smallest pretension to magnificence. The country above the town is highly cultivated, and abounds with small villages and groups of three or four houses, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... his power felt, he forced himself rather to disguise it under flattering words, did not show the least resentment for former injuries, extended a hand to everyone who came to him, listened to every complaint that had anything legitimate in it, entertained every pretension that was at all reasonable, and seemed disposed to base his government upon skilful concessions and not upon useless rigour. His star was believed in, his moderation inspired confidence, and people grew ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... doctrine among them; some also impute to the Druse nation a dash of the blood of the Crusaders. One of their chief religious doctrines was that of divine incarnations. It seems to have originated in the pretension of Hakeem to be himself one; and as organized by the Persian mystic Hamzi, his Vizier and disciple, it included ten manifestations of this kind, of which Hakeem must have formed the last. Mr. Browning has ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of worship were the theatres and cafes of the place. No evening in the week but brings throngs of the young and beautiful to the chapels and meeting- houses, all dressed with care, and sometimes with great pretension; it is there that all display is made, and all fashionable distinction sought. The proportion of gentlemen attending these evening meetings is very small, but often, as might be expected, a sprinkling ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... London accepts the mediation of Russia, and requests the mediation of the Emperor, she declares, that she is ready to make peace, as soon as the league between France and her revolted subjects shall be dissolved. That this pretension had met from the Court of France the contempt which it deserved. She on her part has declared, that if this proposition contained the last determination of England, it would be in vain to think of peace; and she has desired the English Ministry to give a positive answer on the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... looked much like an old military officer if his face, besides its real energy, had not affected more. There was the same defect in it as in his pictures. Conscious of not having all the strength he wished, he endeavoured to make up for it by violence and pretension. He carried this so far as to look fiercer than usual when he sat for his picture. His friend and engraver, Mr. Houghton, drew an admirable likeness of him in this state of dignified extravagance. He is sitting back ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... assumption of power in all the documents which have come from Rome—a pretension to supremacy over the realm of England, and a claim to sole and undivided sway, which is inconsistent with the queen's supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation, as asserted even in Roman ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pleasure of saying pretension and pomposity do have a wonderful effect here in New York. I don't know whether it was the missionary or the plenipotentiary that brought my cousin to her oats, but rather think it was the latter—having a foreign twang to it, of course, it ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... important armament; and in spite of the general mediocrity of his talents and his very slight experience in the art of war, his partial mistress had the weakness to indulge him in this unreasonable and ill-advised pretension. The title of general of the queen's auxiliaries in Holland was conferred upon him, and with it a command over the whole English navy paramount to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... they now and then relapsed into inquiries about the laws of Crete, they more often discussed positive and scientific theses, and rather resembled our chambers of agriculture than bodies of more learned pretension. The academy of Dijon was one of the earliest of these excellent institutions, and on the whole the list of its theses shows it to have been among the most sensible in respect of the subjects which it found worth thinking ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... feeling is equally opposed to another distortion of character, not less at variance with a sound condition of the mind. This is what may be called religious pretension, showing itself by much zeal for particular opinions and certain external observances, while there is no corresponding influence upon the moral feelings and the character. The truths, which form the great object of religious belief, are of so momentous a kind, that, when they are ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... appointed that the power of hell shall not prevail." In such a state of things the first duty of German Catholics is that they be united. It is necessary that the German church should remain in intimate union with the Holy Apostolic See, relinquishing all pretension to be ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... upon dress had been bestowed; the simplicity of his costume was absolute and severe. On his plain shirt-front there gleamed not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled not a ring. Enguerrand, on the contrary, was not without pretension in his attire; the broderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by the Queen of the Fairies. His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and wrist-buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double the rental of Rochebriant, but probably they cost him nothing. He was one of those happy Lotharios ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what follows?" answered Ferdinand, with a cool and temperate voice. "My resentment and immediate defiance," replied the other; "for the only alternative I propose is, to forego your design upon that lady, or to decide our pretension by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... youth; for as soon as I heard that my rival was supported by the Cardinal, who did him the honour to own him for his kinsman, I sent the Cardinal word, by M. de Raconis, Bishop of Lavaur, that I desisted from my pretension, out of the respect I owed his Eminence, as soon as I heard that he concerned himself in the affair. The Bishop of Lavaur told me the Cardinal pretended that the Abby de La Mothe would not be obliged for the first place to my cession, but to his own merit. This answer exasperated me. I gave a ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... the late Provost, I had seen before and knew; a great mathematician and optician, and a discoverer in those matters; with a clever little Wife, who has a great deal of knowledge, quite free from pretension. Owen is a first-rate comparative anatomist, they say the greatest since Cuvier; lives in London, and lectures there. On the whole, he interested me more than any of them,—by an apparent force and downrightness ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... session of the royal Audiencia was held; the fiscal set forth the right of the cabildo, and justified their government; but notwithstanding this the governor declared himself for the bishop of Troya, and displayed the [written] opinions mentioned above, with which he confirmed the former pretension ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... articles largely contributed to maintain the reputation the Athenaeum had already acquired for impartiality at a time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was notoriously venal.' He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met with but little ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... historian of a medium such as this are too patent to need pointing out. Pretension and conjecture will be avoided, because unnecessary. The most trifling thought or deed of any person connected with the history of the ring is laid open to direct inspection. Were there more such talismans as this, the profession of authorship would become no less easy than delightful, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... their neighbor as themselves; and to be a thorough Christian without being a gentleman or lady is impossible. Wherever we find the rich without arrogance, and the poor without envy, the various members of society sustaining their mutual relations without suspicion or pretension, the family circle free from rivalry, fault-finding, or discord, we shall find nothing ungentle, for there the spirit of Christianity reigns. He who is pure in heart can never be vulgar in speech, and he who ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... frequently fall in love with women of sanguine complexion and robust appearance. Donna Tullia was a fine type of this class, and was called handsome, though she did not compare well with women of less pretension to beauty, but more delicacy and refinement. Del Ferice admired her greatly, however; and, as has been said, he admired her fortune even more. He saw himself gradually approaching the goal of his intentions, and as he neared the desired end he grew ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... carried to Westminster, attended by the apprentices and seditious multitude, who besieged the door of the house of commons; and by their clamor, noise, and violence, obliged them to reverse that vote which they had passed so lately. When gratified in this pretension, they immediately dispersed, and left ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... had very little benefit of sun or moon; very seldom seeing the face of either the one or the other. And yet, even under these circumstances, the weather, for some days past, could not be called very cold. It, however, had not the least pretension to be called summer weather, according to my ideas of summer in the northern hemisphere, as far as 60 deg. of latitude, which is nearly as far north as I ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... Grant was elected in November and seated in the following March. As he took the oath of office there were few, North, South, or West, who did not rejoice in his election; he had defeated the Greenback pretension, which endeared him to the East; the West remembered that he had been born and bred in the Mississippi Valley; and to the South he presented the clean hands of the regular army officer, and the welcome promise of his letter of acceptance, "Let ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... dignity of her person, assisted by the dignity of her movements, a stranger would have been disposed to call her at a distance a woman of commanding presence; but never, after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice, of practised effect, or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence, the sweet feminine timidity, and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression was purely gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... their head. Our party managed to establish itself in a position conveniently close to the General, to whom, moreover, we had the honor of an introduction; and he bowed, on his horseback, with a good deal of dignity and martial courtesy, but no airs nor fuss nor pretension beyond what his character and rank inevitably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a schoolboy, the letter throws an interesting light on the standard of education aimed at by those who, despite the imputation to the contrary, had no pretension to belong to the recognised blue-stocking coteries of their day. And the father of that busy, happy circle, in the seriousness of his own life and aims, presented the same contrast to many of his contemporaries which was ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... a man not merely to submit to Necessity,—Necessity will make him submit,—but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;—that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... great faults—profusion and pretension. There was, in fact, ten times more on the table than was necessary; and the entertainment was far above the circumstances of the person by whom it was given: for instance, the dish of fish at the head of the table had been brought across the island from Sligo, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... others have done—upon what very slight grounds, and with what slender pretension, my Confessions have met with favor at the hands of the press and the public; and the idea has occurred to him to indite his own. Had his determination ended here, I should have nothing to object to; but unfortunately, he expects me to become his editor, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... adv. Haeres. Proem. p.3 Dr. Middleton (Free Inquiry, p. 96, &c.) observes, that as this pretension of all others was the most difficult to support by art, it was the soonest given up. The observation suits his hypothesis. * Note: This passage of Irenaeus contains no allusion to the gift of tongues; it is merely an apology for a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of passion ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that they claim our attention. Their influence is incontestable, and still, notwithstanding, their doctrinal value is nothing. They form merely a literary branch of the positivist school engrafted upon the eclecticism of M. Cousin. We find in their writings the pretension to limit science to the experimental study of nature and to humanity. We afterwards find there the pretension to understand and to accept all doctrines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics bestow particular attention on the phenomena of religion, of art, and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... Haynes, introduced in our last chapter. He is nearly two years older than Frank, and about as opposite to him in personal appearance as can well be imagined. He has a thin face, very black hair is tall of his age, and already beginning to feel himself a young man. His manner is full of pretension. He never forgets that his father is the richest man in town, and can afford to give him advantages superior to those possessed by his schoolfellows. He has a moderate share of ability but is disinclined to work hard. His affectation of Superiority makes him as ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... portions of the globe, those incidents in our Dog's life which he has been too modest to relate himself, in order that after-generations may fully appreciate all the goodness of his character. To greatness, he had no pretension, although few animals are aware how close is the relation between these ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... all one shout, in the midst of which poor Philetus took himself off as speedily as possible. Before Fleda had dried her eyes her attention was taken by a lady and gentleman who had just got out of a vehicle of more than the ordinary pretension and were coming up to the door. The gentleman was young, the lady was not, both had a particularly amiable and pleasant appearance; but about the lady there was something that moved Fleda singularly and somehow touched the spring of old memories, which she felt stirring at the sight of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Union' is sure to be distinguished by an excellent spirit. The 'Greek Church,' a Sketch, is well put together; and, though slight, will be found to contain as much real information as many a book of greater size and more pretension."—The Guardian. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... studied lapse, in Waymarsh, of betrayed concern. As if to make up to his comrade for the stroke by which he had played providence he now conspicuously ignored his movements, withdrew himself from the pretension to share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and, clasping his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot, clearly looked ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... "Of all the countries that we know, there is none which is so fruitful in grain. It makes no pretension indeed, of growing the fig, the olive, the vine, or any other trees of the kind; but in grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundredfold, and when the production is greatest, even three hundredfold. The blade of the wheat plant and barley is often ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... far as it made any pretension to methods of cure, was either purely empirical, or founded upon the one notion that descended from generation to generation from the earliest antiquity—that there was an excess of bile in the blood, and that it must be expelled by ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... "but occasionally I've had the chance of visiting hospitals and dissecting-rooms, besides hearing lectures on anatomy, and I have taken advantage of my opportunities. Besides, I'm fond of mechanics; and tooth-drawing is somewhat mechanical. Of course I make no pretension to a knowledge of regular dentistry, which involves, I believe, a scientific and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... issue in his campaign, Polk, after his election in 1844, pressed it upon the attention of the country. In his inaugural address and his first message to Congress he reiterated the claim of the Democratic platform that "our title to the whole territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable." This pretension Great Britain firmly rejected, leaving the President a choice between war ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... are indebted for information on many of these points: 'teneva mal animo contra Spagna e pretension in Francia.' ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... which forms the basis of all Talmudic and Cabalistic writings, be regarded as of purely Jewish origin; the ancient Egyptians likewise believed themselves to be "the peculiar people specially loved by the gods."[51] But in the hands of the Jews this belief became a pretension to the exclusive enjoyment of divine favour. According to the Zohar, "all Israelites will have a part in the future world,"[52] and on arrival there will not be handed over like the goyim (or non-Jewish races) to the hands of the angel Douma and sent ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... writers of the dramatic miscellanies just noted. And then beyond these unequal wits arises the figure of Shakespere; and the greatest work of all literature swims slowly into our ken. There has been as yet no history of this unique phenomenon worthy of it: I have not the least pretension to supply one that shall be worthy. But at least the uniqueness of it shall here have due celebration. The age of Pericles, the age of Augustus, the age of Dante, had no such curious ushering-in unless time has dealt exceptional ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... could he ask of her, indeed, after this assurance right out of the earnestness and honesty of her pure heart? It was enough to satisfy men with far greater claims than he had ever put forth, and far more pretension than he had ever dreamed of cherishing. The Wise Man supplied him with two or three phrases of reply—neat little phrases, that would have bound her forever, and yet saved his self-esteem. He turned them over in his mind and on his tongue, trying to add a ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... make the young people care for their books and their school-work, or to present to the clever idle ones among them the most enticing motives to exertion. "He got them on," the fathers and mothers said, and though he made no pretension to being a very good man, and sometimes used sharper words than were pleasant to hear, he loved the truth and hated a lie, and lived an honourable life among them, and all men regarded him with respect, and ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... sufficient compensation for the sneers of press and public which fell to his share. As he surveyed the dispiriting prospect from his office window, on that late February afternoon, he was near to resigning his position, and with it all further pretension ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... a remarkable instance, the President has treated the pretension of State Rights with proper indifference. Quietly and without much discussion, he has constituted military governments in the Rebel States, with governors nominated by himself,—all of which testifies against the old pretension. Strange will it be, if this extraordinary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... known the ludicrous surprise, the convulsion of inward disgust and contempt, that seized upon many of the persons who were present,—had guessed what a sudden flash of light it threw on the Dutch gilding, the pinchbeck, the shabby, perking pretension belonging to certain social layers,—so inherent in their whole mode of being, that the holiest offices of religion cannot exclude its impertinences,—the good man would have given his marriage-fee twice over to recall that superb and full-blown ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with gay and fanciful colors, chiefly yellow, red, or blue; the roofs of tin or zinc, and nearly all of a bright green, giving them a very lively effect in the sun; nothing grand or imposing about them in detail, and but little pretension to architectural beauty. Very nearly such houses may be seen every day on any ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the whole "matter and copy of the father—eye, nose, lip, the trick of his frown." It is just such a swaggerer as contemporaries have described old Ben to be. Meercraft, Bobadil, the Host of the New Inn, have all his image and superscription. But Mammon is arrogant pretension personified. Sir Samson Legend, in Love for Love, is such another lying, overbearing character, but he does not come up to Epicure Mammon. What a "towering bravery" there is in his sensuality! he affects no pleasure under a Sultan. It is as if ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... conceals their real character, and women have found it profitable to encourage the deception. But though every normal man thus cherishes the soothing unction that he is the intellectual superior of all women, and particularly of his wife, he constantly gives the lie to his pretension by consulting and deferring to what he calls her intuition. That is to say, he knows by experience that her judgment in many matters of capital concern is more subtle and searching than his own, and, being disinclined to accredit this greater sagacity to a more competent ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... other things, he said that he was the first white man who had visited this quarry, and induced geologists to name the pipestone "Catlinite." Mr. Sibley, in his communication to the legislature presenting this slab, in answer to this pretension, says: ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... following after, eight of the tribunes publishing the bill, a consul putting the question at the centuriate assembly, all orders and individuals pressing it on, in fact, with all the forces at its command. Nor is it the case that I afterwards made any pretension, or am making any at this day, which can justly offend anyone, even the most malevolent: my only effort is that I may not fail either my friends or those more remotely connected with me in either active service, or counsel, or personal exertion. This course of life perhaps ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... same evening I installed myself in the apartments. You must think that this was a fresh cause of chagrin, and created me more enemies. There are certain families who look upon the court as their hereditary domain: the Noailles was one of them. However, there is no grounds of pretension to such a right. Their family took its rise from a certain Adhemar de Noailles, of Toulouse, ennobled, according to all appearance, by the exercise of his charge in 1459. The grandfather of these Noailles was a domestic of M. de Turenne's, and his ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the superior Estates in their contests with the Crown; and the new Parliament pursued the aims and the tactics of the old Great Council, with all the advantages conferred by an exclusive right to grant taxation. For more than two hundred years it was a popular assembly in form and in pretension alone. The most active members of the Lower House were drawn from the lower ranks of the territorial aristocracy; and the Commons were bold in their demands only when they could attack the prerogative behind the shield of a faction quartered in the House of Lords. ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... every way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. The Preface commences thus: ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... people. Having seen something of this person, and been myself a victim, I have felt it due to my friends in Portland to put them on their guard. He is the son of a merchant in Trieste, driven from his home and his friends in consequence of his crimes. His pretension to any of the titles he claims is altogether without foundation. After exhausting Europe, he has within a few years turned his talents to good account in our country. He made his appearance here about two years ago as Consul-General and Envoy from Greece, in which capacity he was very free with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Map, or Chrestien de Troyes, or both, or neither, to whom the glory of at once completing and exalting the story is due, I at least have no pretension to decide. Whosoever did it, if he did it by himself, was a very great man indeed—a man second only to Dante among the men of the Middle Age. Even if it was done by an irregular company of men, each patching and piecing the others' efforts, the result shows a marvellous "wind of the spirit" abroad ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... brass bannisters led them to an ample landing-place, on which opened a door, now closed and by which sate a boy who collected the tickets of those who would enter it. The portal was of considerable dimensions and of architectural pretension; it was painted of a bright green colour, the panels gilt. Within the pediment, described in letters of flaming gas, you read, "THE TEMPLE ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... to enter now upon any prolonged account of the origin, of alphabetic writing. There is, however, propriety, if not necessity, for the present writer, when making any remarks under this heading and under some others in this paper indicating special lines of research, to disclaim all pretension to being a Sinologue or Egyptologist, or even profoundly versed in Mexican antiquities. His partial and recently commenced studies only enable him to present suggestions for the examination of scholars. These suggestions may safely be introduced by the statement ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... odious to the aristocracy; we see from Suetonius how it was that they became the idols of the people. Many of the details are extremely disgusting, but this strong realism is a Roman characteristic, and adds to their value. To the higher attributes of a historian Suetonius has no pretension. He scarcely touches on the great historic events, and never ventures a comprehensive judgment; nor can he even take a wide survey of the characters he pourtrays. But he is a faithful collector of evidence on which the philosophic ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... There is no man whose genius would entitle him to half the arrogant self-conceit of this young member. Acrid, venomous, rasping, he injures his own cause by the very excess of his gall and by the exuberance of his pretension. He also saw that the riots would do no good, and he hinted darkly of what he called "ordered resistance," whatever that means. But, on the whole, the advocates of the Orangemen made a ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... and another noise of children. More sliding? Oh no! This is a sport of higher pretension. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and his own pretty little boys, and two or three other four-year-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of joy and wonder! Oh what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... with the state apartments, a long ambulatory, called the Stone Gallery. Then returning to our first post of observation, and taking a bird's-eye view of the whole, after examining it in detail, as before mentioned, we come to the conclusion, that, though irregular in the extreme, and with no pretension whatever to plan in its arrangement, the Palace of Whitehall is eminently picturesque, and imposing from its vast extent. If taken in connection with Westminster Hall, the Parliament House, and the ancient Abbey—with the two towering gateways, on one of which we, ourselves, are perched—with ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth |
