"Sober" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Paul asked a woman to give him four dances; and as he claimed Honor for the first of them, he wondered whether his new-found boldness would carry him farther still. Her beauty and graciousness, her enthusiasm over the afternoon's triumph, exalted him from the sober levels of patience and modesty to unscaled heights of aspiration. But not until their second valse together did an opening for ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... done," said Nick in a funny, sober way; "a scout is supposed to have his sleep, that's the most important rule of all, you said so yourself. I can't sleep till I've had a squint at that cup. Come on Fido, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... talk about it! Alas! the days are passed when you could tell an Englishman from every other man, even by his gait, keeping the middle of the road, and straight on, as one who knew himself, and made others know him. I am sure a party of roundheads, in their sober coats, high hats, and heavy boots, would have walked up Highgate Hill to visit Master Andrew Marvel, with a different air from the young men of our own time,—or of their own time, I should say,—for my time is past, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... pantry-door to reconnoitre, and finding the sober quiet already described reigning, he opened a drawer, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the woods; and we believe the spiritual influence was felt that day by not a few of the number who listened to the exposition of the Word, which was delivered from the lips of the preacher with a truth and pathos characteristic of a sincere and devout mind. The same orderly and sober manner marked the dispersion of the people, as did their gathering; and if no spiritual good arose from it (though we sincerely trust and believe there did), in a moral point of view the people reaped a reward; and by the same means, indirectly, the ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... hour of leave-taking arrived. Culling a flower from the little garden, taking a final turn through those three little rooms, patting Giallo on the head, who, sober through sympathy, looked as though he wondered what it all meant, we turned to Landor, who entered the front room dragging an immense album after him. It was the same that he had bought years before of Barker, the English artist, for fifty guineas, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... been quartering the sea, within sight of the raft; but these monsters, strange to say, were so shy, that not one of them would approach near enough to allow them an opportunity of capturing it! Every attempt to take them had proved unsuccessful. Such of the crew as kept sober had been trying for days. Some were even at that moment engaged with hook and line, angling for the ferocious fish,—their hooks floating far out in the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Peter and John, were the ringleaders in this execution, and the pair of them hardly ever saw a sober day from one month to another; and at the execution of Dan, Peter was so drunk that he came nigh sharing the same fate. It was not a year after the roasting of Dan that the two brothers were thrashing wheat in the barn, ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... from night till startled morn Peeps blushing on the revel's laughing crew, The song is heard, the rosy garland worn; Devices quaint, and frolics ever new, Tread on each other's kibes. A long adieu He bids to sober joy that here sojourns: Nought interrupts the riot, though in lieu Of true devotion monkish incense burns, And love and prayer unite, or rule the ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... us; take mine armor, give me thine, That all who notice us may understand Our patrimonial[17] amity and love. 285 So they, and each alighting, hand in hand Stood lock'd, faith promising and firm accord. Then Jove of sober judgment so bereft Infatuate Glaucus that with Tydeus' son He barter'd gold for brass, an hundred beeves 290 In value, for the value small of nine. But Hector at the Scaean gate and beech[18] Meantime arrived, to whose ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... akin to his own soul; the solitude and the stillness braced him to deny himself manfully what was not manfully his to have. In the act of relinquishing Natalie, he felt, what he would not have supposed possible, a great, added tenderness for her. Before he went in, his sober cheerfulness had returned; but in the morning he ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... TRAIN at Leavenworth, the day before the election: "A great empire, and little minds go ill together," said Lord Bacon. "The sober second thought of the people," said Van Buren, "is never wrong, and always efficient." To-morrow it will be shown by voting for our mother and our sister. (Loud applause.) Never before were so many rats fleeing from a sinking ship. (Laughter.) A few staunch men will receive ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... home in a very sober mood. Why had they all cared so much about her? They had nice attractive qualities, but why could they not look at her just as she looked at them! She did not know very much about men and that with them pursuit often merged into ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... one of the tables, the four players being apparently the only strictly sober people in the room. A woman was laughing raucously as Kerry entered, and many coarse-voiced conversations were in progress; but as he pulled the rough curtain walls aside and walked into the room, a hush, highly complimentary ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Repentance. In these syllables there is almost no hint of the idea which fell from the evangelistic pen, while the word has been soaked in emotional and sentimental associations it was never intended to be mixed with. The Metanoia; which painted a sober, reflective turning of the mind, had been so overcharged with the dramatic that sober, reflective people could hardly use the expression any more. Repentance had come to have so strong a gloss ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... a royal flush and happened to pick out the necessary ace? I did once, when I was up at Oxford, and, by Jove, this letter gave me just the same thrill. I didn't hesitate. I just sailed in. I was cold sober, but I didn't worry about that. Something told me I couldn't lose. It was like having to hole out a three-inch putt. And—well, there you are, don't you know." Reggie became thoughtful. "Dash it all! I'd like to know who the fellow was who sent me those letters. I'd like to send him a wedding-present ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... father had gone forth from it; and yet it was not she who made the greatest demonstration of mourning. Mrs. Colwyn passed from one hysterical fit into another, and Nora sobbed herself ill; but Janetta went about her duties with a calm and settled gravity, a sober tearlessness, which caused her stepmother to dub her cold and heartless half a dozen times a day. As a matter of fact the girl felt as if her heart were breaking, but there was no one but herself to bear any of the commonplace little burdens of daily life which are so hard to carry in the time ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of Plymouth is not specially interesting to anyone who cares over-much for sober fact; but looking at it in the generous spirit of the ancient chroniclers, and not stickling over probabilities, the story of the first great event in Plymouth is almost as fine as the traditions of Totnes itself. Giants, we all know, flourished in Cornwall, and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... heard but the tick-tack of mallets in the ship-building yards, the puffing of the steam-tug, the rattle of hawsers among the vessels out in the harbour, and the melodious "Woo-hoo!" of a crew at capstan or windlass. Troy in carnival and Troy sober are as opposite, you must know, as the poles. Fun is all very well, but business is business, and Troy is a trading port with a character to keep up: for who has not heard the bye-word— "Working like ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... alliance they never doubted. And, although it brought the virtues of their own superior republican sobriety into greater contrast, they felt a scandal at having been tricked into attending this gilded funeral of dissipated rank. Peter Atherly found himself unpopular in his own town. The sober who drank from his free "Waterworks," and the giddy ones who imbibed at his "Gin Mill," equally criticised him. He could not understand it; his peculiar predilections had been accepted before, when they were mere presumptions; why should ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... offered: and no one in the day is ashamed to frequent the bazaars where it is sold. When I was in London, that city of three million people, there were taverns for its special use. It is a great stimulant. The sober take it to invigorate the stomach. The scrofulous hated it because they thought it stirred up the bile on an empty stomach—but experience proving the contrary enjoy it ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... them. Ay, indeed, there they were; but quantum mutati ab illis! how strangely changed from the noisy, rollicking set I had known them in the railway-car and on board the steamer, ere yet the demon of sea-sickness had claimed them for his own! How ghastly sober they looked now, to be sure! And how sternly and silently bent upon devoting themselves to the swilling of the Chinese shrub infusion and to the gorging of indigestible muffins. It was quite clear to me that it would have been worse than folly to venture upon addressing them while thus absorbed ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... assigned him in the system of obscurantismus supposed to be adopted by the united sovereigns of Europe,—whoever considers all this, cannot but be struck with the small portion of discernment and discrimination which is manifested in the world. A sober and keen-sighted observer might have seen even in the beginning, glorious as it was, that not all is gold that glitters. All that was done, was accompanied with a noise and boasting which strangely imposed upon foreigners. Universities, on the plan ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... onustus refer simply to her slow and sidelong walk? The explanation appeals to me, without satisfying me fully. Except in the case of a sudden alarm, every Spider maintains a sober gait and a wary pace. When all is said, the scientific term is composed of a misconception and a worthless epithet. How difficult it is to name animals rationally! Let us be indulgent to the nomenclator: the dictionary is becoming ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... at himself for the citizen sobriety of these views, on the part of a nobleman whose airy pleasure it had been to flout your sober citizens, with their toad-at-the-hop notions, their walled conceptions, their drab propriety; and felt a petted familiar within him dub all pulpitizing, poetizing drivellers with one of those detested titles, invented by the English as a corrective of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to be light, and I'm afraid somebody'll see you, and stop you! But oh, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... more than troublesome. Ever on the outlook, when sober, after the foibles of others, he laid himself open to endless ridicule when in drink, which, to tell the truth, was a rare occurrence. He was in the midst of a prophetic denunciation of the vices of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... healthy people. I trust that I practise both. But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... after that on which the worthy priest appears in our pages, it occurred that Crackenfudge met the redoubtable Fenton in his usual maudlin state, that is to say, one in which he could be termed neither drunk nor sober. We have said that Fenton's mind was changeful and unstable; sometimes evincing extraordinary quietness and civility, and sometimes full of rant and swagger, to which we may add, a good deal of adroitness and tact. In his most degraded state he was always known to claim a certain amount ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Judge, mayor, and many a guild in long array, To high-church pacing on the great saint's day: And many a verse which to myself I sang, That woke the tear, yet stole away the pang Of hopes, which in lamenting I renew'd: 45 And last, a matron now, of sober mien, Yet radiant still and with no earthly sheen, Whom as a faery child my childhood woo'd Even in my dawn of thought—Philosophy; Though then unconscious of herself, pardie, 50 She bore no other name than Poesy; And, like a gift from heaven, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fail, when a boy first put on tan shoes and a high collar. He is bound to get in love before night. Take off those shoes, and you can go out in the world and look everybody in the face and never get in love. It is the same as being vaccinated," and the old man looked sober and serious, and the boy went to work to change his shoes, with a bright hope for the future lighting ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... fine eyes in sober ecstasy to the sky. "It sounds very tempting," she remarked, in the sweetest tones of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... scores, eh, Sandy?" he agreed.... "You get sober and be here tomorrow morning at nine ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... anything," said Jokisch, all at once quite sober. Oh, what a fool he had been, suddenly flashed through his mind. If he now said something about her, wouldn't they all believe that he had burnt his fingers? So far nobody knew that he had tried to kiss her in the dark stone passage ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... arrival at New York, Collins, the playmate of his childhood, was one of the first to meet him. In his earlier days he had been sober, industrious, and was highly esteemed for his mental powers and attainments. But he had become intemperate and a gambler, and was every day intoxicated. Reduced almost to beggary, Franklin felt compelled to furnish him with money to ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... store—a place where food was sold. The man to whom it belonged—I knew him well—a quiet, sober, but stupid and obstinate fellow, was defending it. The windows and doors had been broken in, but he, inside, hiding behind a counter, was discharging his pistol at a number of men on the sidewalk who were breaking in. In the entrance were several bodies—of men, I decided, ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... her the money. He left behind him two sons and two daughters. He left in writing very little but his annual prognostications. He began first to write about the year 1630; he wrote Bellum Hibernicale, in the time of the long parliament, a very sober and judicious book: the epistle thereunto I gave him. He wrote lately a small treatise of Easter-Day, a very learned thing, wherein he shewed much learning and reading. To say no more of him, he lived an honest man, his fame not ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... stumbled downstairs, leaving Horace relieved to some extent. Rapkin would be sober enough after his head had been under the tap for a few minutes, and in any case there would be the hired waiter ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... cried, plunging in wild excitement into the midst of the hostile sworders. "For the Admiral!" Perhaps my comrades thought me mad, and in sober truth they would not have been far wrong; but they were generous souls, and with a yell of defiance they cut their way ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... nonsense, Kennedy—what I like about you, if I may say so, is that you have authority without pretensions. People will do as you wish, just to please you; now I have always to be cracking the whip. These fellows here are very worthy men, but they are not men of the world! They are honest and sober—indeed one can hardly get one of them to join one in a glass of port—but they are limited, very limited. Now if only you could have kept clear of matrimony—no disrespect to Madam—what a comfortable time we might have had ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... come here, which will cost five guineas. We will make proof of his execution. He shall also make, under the eye of the architect, all the drawings for the building, which he is to execute himself: and if we find him sober and capable, he shall be forwarded to you. I expect that in the article of the drawings, and the cheapness of passage from France, you will save the expense of his coming here. But as to this workman, I shall do nothing unless I receive your commands. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... hard cash both human bodies and divine offices, and with less conscience than a man in Paris would sell cloth or any other merchandise. Seeing this and much more that it would not be proper to set down here, it seemed to Abraham, himself a chaste, sober, and upright man, that he had seen enough. So he resolved to return to Paris, and carried out the resolution with his usual promptitude. Jean de Civigny held a great fete in honour of his return, although ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... worship, or oppression—but, no more. What say'st thou of this Italy? John Milton Loves well to speak romantic lore of Rome— A poet, though a great and burning light. I would have knowledge of it to confound him; A sober joke, a piece of harmless mirth. What think'st thou then of Rome ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... to point to its monastic origin, "The reader begins, 'Pray, Father, a blessing' (jube, domne benedicere); the blessing, 'The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen.' 'Noctem quietam....' Then follows a short lesson, which the Father Abbot gave to his monks. 'Brethren, be sober and watch; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about, seeking whom he may devour, whom resist ye, strong in faith. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy on us.' And the monks answer ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... his employer was alone, coolly opened the door without ceremony, shut it softly behind him, and then closed the wooden shutter of the grating. Don Jose surveyed him with mild surprise and dignified composure. The man appeared perfectly sober,—it was a peculiarity of his dissipated habits that, when not actually raving with drink, he was singularly ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Hans—the oldest—steady, sober Hans, at work in the well-stocked garden; while the diminutive but sprightly imp Jan, the youngest, is looking on, and occasionally helping his brother. Hendrik—the dashing Hendrik, with bright face and light curling ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... serious a matter for joking," said the Squire. "Now, my fine fellow, be cautious, be sober, be vigilant, and above all things ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... of the Essequibo made the soul overflow with joy, and caused you to rove in fancy through fairyland; till, on turning an angle of the river, you were recalled to more sober reflections on seeing the once grand and towering mora now dead and ragged in its topmost branches, while its aged trunk, undermined by the rushing torrent, hung as though in sorrow over the river, which ere long would receive it and sweep it away ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... old to join another club, and so was left stranded. He bore it very philosophically; indeed, I think it was only on Whitmonday that he felt it at all, as it seemed strange and unnatural to go to bed quite sober on that day, as he did on all other ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... and one in a field opposite. The stones were standing upright, and were, owing to their immense size, easily found. We had inspected the two, and were just jumping over the gate to cross the narrow lane to see the other in the next field, when we startled a man who was returning, not quite sober, from the fair at Boroughbridge. As we had our sticks in our hands, he evidently thought we were robbers and meant mischief, for he begged us not to molest him, saying he had only threepence in his pocket, to which we were welcome. We were highly amused, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... and the old men made lamentation for the dead, and bewailed themselves for the trouble that had befallen the land of Persia. But after a while she returned, walking on her feet and in sober array, for she would put away all pride and pomp, knowing that the Gods were wroth with the land and its rulers. And she brought with her such things as men are wont to offer to the dead—milk and honey, ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... knows that if this be intended as sober history things have changed somewhat. For these are the very things that do not and should not happen in the conquest of his promised land. Under Christian guidance he must learn the ethical value of an orderly world, the morality that inheres in cause and effect, the divine ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... experience. Before Charles Dilke set out to cross a land still debatable, where travel still was what travel had been for the pioneers, he wrote home two letters. Both are dated August 26th, 1866, from Leavenworth in Kansas, now a sober town of twenty thousand inhabitants, then carrying recent memories of the days "when the Southern 'Border Ruffians' were in the habit of parading its streets, bearing the scalps of Abolitionists stuck on poles," and even after the war basing its repute for health on the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... I dragged from the mud, and have soaped down body and soul, you surely do not dream that you can stand in Lucien's way?—As for you, my boy," he went on after a pause, looking at Lucien, "you are no longer poet enough to allow yourself another Coralie. This is sober prose. What can be done with Esther's lover? Nothing. Can Esther become ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... "was to prevent Doctor Jackson from being annoyed by visitors eager to see his find. As a matter of sober fact Doctor Jackson captured the Colombian ape alive and is now about to turn it over to the zoo. Understand ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... him in the face. From the beginning he asked for protection. From the beginning he was promised complete protection; but scarcely a word of complaint is heard. The townsfolk are calm and orderly, the Press dignified and sober. The men capable of bearing arms have responded nobly. Boys of sixteen march with men of fifty to war—to no light, easy war. The Imperial Light Infantry is eagerly filled. The Imperial Light Horse ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... more and more to construe every impulse of his own mind into a divine suggestion, and I believe honestly experiences difficulty in discriminating between them. Still, I do not deny that it would be of advantage for him more and more to come in contact with sober and enlightened minds. I shall take pleasure, at some fitting moment, to accompany you to his humble dwelling; the rather as I would show you also his wife and children, all of whom ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... an impishness in Gilbert, especially in his youth, that encouraged the idea of his enmity to science. Where he saw a long white beard he felt like tweaking it: an enquiring nose simply asked to be pulled. It was only in (comparatively) sober age that he bothered in The Everlasting Man to explain "I am not at issue in this book with sincere and genuine scholars, but with a vast and vague public opinion which has been prematurely spread from certain imperfect investigations."* ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... suitable attendance, respect, and obedience: others who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass that a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in Bedlam; if either by any sudden very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented together so powerfully, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... been giving Lambert and Webb away to tell him that I was acting the part of rescuer, so I stood looking at him, while Ward drove the other two men out of the quadrangle. As he did not say anything I expressed a hope that he was not hurt, but it was more from a wish to prove myself sober than from any anxiety as to his condition that I made the remark. I thought he understood this, for he neither answered nor wished me good-night when he went back to his staircase. I was afraid he had been considerably jolted and was not quite himself. I turned round after watching him out of ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... first place so that the individual can be "one of the boys" or because it is the thing to do. Those who do not drink, at least as a social lubricant, according to this code, are "squares." Because of this, self-hypnosis must be directed toward reorienting one's sense of values. Sober reflection should convince anyone that the truly intelligent person does not ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... that try to pierce into the future; and, strange to say, I believe that those hopes have been stronger not in the heyday of the epoch which has given them birth, but rather in its decadence and times of corruption: in sober truth it may well be that these hopes are but a reflection in those that live happily and comfortably of the vain longings of those others who suffer with little power of expressing their sufferings ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... give the toping world surprise, Produc'd one sober son, and here he lies. Tho' nurs'd among full hogsheads, he defy'd The charm of wine, and every vice beside. O reader, if to justice thou'rt inclined, Keep honest Preston daily in thy mind. He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots, Had sundry ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... gone into an adjacent yard for water for the Italian, when Grayson answered, with a very sober face, "You know as well as I do, Benny, and ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... same number of staggerers as ushal, and I again arsks, who has the hordacity to buy 'em? I wunder what Mrs. ROBERT woud say if I took one home to my sober dwelling! But, jest as I was a coming away, I seed one of the most howdacions of the lot, and it was named "The Judgment of Paris"! I had often heard as the French was werry free and bold in all these sort of things, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... changed. Great clouds had massed on the mountains, and the wind was whipping down the valley, ruffling the surface of the lake. The air grew cold, and Glen shivered. Then it was that they first realised the change that had taken place, and they both laughed. But Glen's face grew instantly sober. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... remarked, thrusting his hand into his pocket. "Here's a five-pound note on account. I daresay you can manage to keep sober to-night, at any rate. That's ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sententious in his anxiety, as if he were perfectly sober, whilst the mare bowled along and the rain beat on him. He watched the rain before the gig-lamps, the faint gleaming of the shadowy horse's body, the passing of the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... same sort may be said concerning Phillips Brooks. He inherited on his father's side the sober rationalism and the humane and secular interest of the earlier Unitarianism, on his mother's side the intensity of evangelical pietism with the Calvinistic form of thought. The conflict of these opposing tendencies in New England was at that time so great that Brooks's parents ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... make still falser. To suppose the southern coast of Cuba to be the southern coast of Toscanelli's Mangi required no illusion of an "ardent imagination." It was simply a plain common-sense conclusion reached by sober reasoning from such data as were then accessible (i. e. the Toscanelli map, amended by information such as was understood to be given by the natives); it was more probable than any other theory of the situation likely to be devised from those data; and it seems fanciful to us to-day ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... The owner, lessee or agent of a mine worked by a shaft or slope, shall put in charge of an engine used for lowering into or hoisting out of such mine persons employed therein, only experienced, competent and sober engineers. (Sec. 916, 928; Penalty, ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... probable cause, believed in, is a justification notwithstanding malice; /2/ that, on the other, "it is not enough to show [142] that the case appeared sufficient to this particular party, but it must be sufficient to induce a sober, sensible and discreet person to act upon it, or it must fail as a justification for the proceeding upon general grounds." /1/ On the one side, malice alone will not make a man liable for instituting a groundless prosecution; on the other, his ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... has been said, was very skilful in the management of his craft; and Gershom, now perforce a sober and useful man, was not much behind him in this particular. The former had foreseen this very difficulty, and made all his arrangements to counteract it. No sooner, therefore, did he find the canoes ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Love would smile, and ruffle up, The hair above my brow; And we would laugh at all that seems So very sober, now. And monkey-folk, and scarlet birds, Would peer from every tree, And try to understand the words My True Love ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... mariner of Elba, and luckily, being a sober, and usually a discreet man, he was the oracle of the island in most things that related to the sea. As each citizen, wine-dealer, grocer, innkeeper, or worker in iron, came up on the height, he incontinently ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... till five this morning, scuffling and vociferating in the street. The constables discreetly stayed in bed, displaying the true Dogberry spirit, which leads them to take up Hottentots, drunk or sober, to show their zeal, but carefully to avoid meddling with stalwart boers, from six to six and a half feet high and strong in proportion. The jabbering of Dutch brings to mind Demosthenes trying to outroar a stormy sea with his ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... experience of seventy-two years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike was only a-b-c to me. And to hear them argue—oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn't been so pitiful. Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I was used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they wouldn't have it. They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave me the cold shoulder. Two weeks was a-plenty for me. ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... the times. But in truth they should be considered as the presentation of a certain phase of life which nations in their onward course sooner or later assume. To the individual, how well we know that a sober moderation of action, an appropriate gravity of demeanor, belonging to the mature period of life, change from the wanton willfulness of youth, which may be ushered in, or its beginnings marked by many accidental incidents; ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... her husband strode into the breakfast-room and took his usual place, sober enough, but scarcely regretful of the over-night development, did any word of reproach or allusion pass the wife's white lips. A stranger would have thought her careless and cold. Abner Dimock knew that she was heartbroken; but what was that to him? Women live for years without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... have long envied here in the North. It is no kindness to an invalid brother, half recovered from delirium, to leave him a knife to cut his throat with, should he be so disposed. We should rather appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober, and do real kindness, trusting to the future ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... work of a lawgiver, he began with it at the very source, taking into consideration their conception and birth, by regulating the marriages. For he did not (as Aristotle says) desist from his attempt to bring the women under sober rules. They had, indeed, assumed great liberty and power on account of the frequent expeditions of their husbands, during which they were left sole mistresses at home, and so gained an undue deference and improper titles; but notwithstanding this he took ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... sober attire. Indeed of the two, the nightjar, with its soft and delicately pencilled plumage and the conspicuous white spots, is perhaps the handsomer, though, as it is seen only in the gloaming, its quiet beauty is but little ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... golden light which transfused the whole scene; the crisp freshness of the afternoon air? She wanted to sing, to dance, to do everything that was joyous and free. But now she had work to do. She visited all her favorite trees,—the purple ash, the vivid, passionate maples, the oaks in their sober richness of murrey and crimson. On each and all she levied contributions, cutting armful after armful, and carried them to the house, piling them in splendid heaps on the shed-floor. Then, after carefully laying aside a few specially perfect branches, ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... his head to laugh at the dolorous tone of her confession, and then grew suddenly sober, staring into the fire, as if her remarks had started a very serious train of thoughts. The snow-muffled silence was so deep that again the ticking of the distant clock sounded ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... myrtle garden to his studio, but the brush was powerless in his hand. Last night's adventure was uppermost in his thoughts, as well it might be. It was in his sober moments when judgment reigned, and love lay calmly on his soul, that he became fully aware of what he had done. He leant against a pillar, and reflected upon his position. He had entered into the fight, he had broken the ranks. He was ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... he to his master, "Dapple is braying in grief at our leaving him, and Rocinante is trying to escape and plunge in after us. O dear friends, peace be with you, and may this madness that is taking us away from you, turned into sober sense, bring us back to you." And with this he fell weeping so bitterly, that Don Quixote said to him, sharply and angrily, "What art thou afraid of, cowardly creature? What art thou weeping at, heart of butter-paste? Who pursues or molests thee, thou soul of a tame mouse? What ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in horror among religious people. In decent families which did not profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two or three years before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. This feeling, on the part of the grave and reflecting, increased the evil from which it had ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... sensuality. But, and this is the immediate point of my argument, the captain, Othello, is not presented to us as a sensualist to whom such a suspicion would be, of course, the nearest thought. On the contrary, Othello is depicted as sober [Footnote: Shakespeare makes Lodovico speak of Othello's "solid virtue"—"the nature whom passion could not shake." Even Iago finds Othello's anger ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... a purified nation but of a regenerated and a reorganized society. Shall we throw all this into the future, into the futile prophecy of those who talk because they cannot achieve, or shall we commingle their ardor, their overmastering desire for social justice, with that more sober effort to modify existing conditions? Are we once more forced to appeal to the educators? Is it so difficult to utilize this ardor because educators have failed to apprehend the spiritual ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... would have thought Jack's plight much the worse, but the doctor looked more sober over Jill's hurt back than the boy's compound fractures; and the poor little girl had a very bad quarter of an hour while he was trying to discover the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... But on sober reflection I come to the conclusion that I should have taken a more hopeful view if I had not been so high up; if, for example, I had been sitting with the driver where I could have seen what happened at ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... well-built man, with long brown beard and slouch hat. He had wide brown eyes, with a sombre gaze in them. In fact, his whole countenance was sober and a ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... final improvement and popular use may be attributed to the first reformers, who enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation. Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... were the Sensual and Voluptuous, who abus'd their Plenty, spent their Fortunes and shortned their Lives by their Debauches; so never did they taste the Delicaces, and true Satisfaction of a sober Repast, and the infinite Conveniences of what a well-stor'd Garden affords; so elegantly describ'd by the [119]Naturalist, as costing neither Fuel nor Fire to boil, Pains or time to gather and prepare, Res expedita & parata semper: All was so near at hand, readily ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... them, and who like to see their galleries look new and fine (and are persuaded also that a celebrated chef-d'oeuvre ought always to catch the eye at a quarter of a mile off), believe the professors who tell them their sober pictures are quite faded, and good for nothing, and should all be brought bright again; and, accordingly, give the sober pictures to the professors, to be put right by rules of art. Then, the professors repaint the old pictures in all the principal places, leaving perhaps only a bit ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Christmas a new bright bead to string on their memory, whereas to spend the time with us would be to string on a dark shrivelled berry. They ought to have a group of young creatures to be joyful with. Our own children always spend their Christmas with Gertrude's family; and we have usually taken our sober merry-making with friends out of town. Illness among these will break our custom this year; and thus mein Mann, feeling that our Christmas was free, considered how very much he liked being with you, omitting the other side of the question—namely, our ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... the public-house, and the spirits he had drunk at his friend's expense, had somewhat confused the brains of the miller's man by the time that the Cheap Jack rose to go. George was, as a rule, sober beyond the wont of the rustics of the district, chiefly from parsimony. When he could drink at another man's expense, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... While yet the summer leaves were green, She to the mountain-top would go, 125 And there was often seen. What could she seek?—or wish to hide? Her state to any eye was plain; [13] She was with child, and she was mad; Yet often was she [14] sober sad 130 From her exceeding pain. O guilty Father—would that death Had saved him from ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... no reason to say this, for their lively and charming gayety was innocence itself; besides, there were two of them, what could they expect from me? they went everywhere about the neighborhood to seek for wine, but none could be procured, so pure and sober are the peasants in those parts. As they were expressing their concern, I begged them not to give themselves any uneasiness on my account, for while with them I had no occasion for wine to intoxicate me. This was the only gallantry I ventured ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... not immediate with his answer, Peter Lumley, one of the group, a lazy ne'er-do-weel, who had known better days, but never better manners, and was seldom quite drunk, and seldomer still quite sober, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... before in proof of courage. She did not like the trees, but the neighbourhood of Halkett's Farm had an attraction for her. Down there, in the hollow, old Halkett was drinking himself to death, after a life which had been sober in no respect. Mrs. Samson, the charwoman, now exerting herself at Pinderwell House, and the wife of one of Halkett's hands, had many tales of the old man's wickedness and many nodded hints that the son was taking after him. The Halketts were all alike, she said. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... stars. His close-fitting waistcoat of milk white satin had golden buttons and a curve which was not the only sign he bore of rich wine and good capon. The queen was a beautiful, dark-haired lady of some forty years, with a noble and gracious countenance. She was clad in no vesture of gold, but in sober black velvet. Her curls fell upon the loose ruff of lace around her neck. There were no jewels on or about her bare, white bosom. Her smile and gentle voice, when she gave me her bon-voyage and best wishes for the cause so dear to us, are jewels ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... sexual appetite in alcoholic narcosis is its bestiality. The higher irradiations of love are completely paralyzed and sensuality becomes unrestrained, even in men who, when sober, are full of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... once said that a war which is necessary is also just. Viewed from this sober, practical, political standpoint, which leaves out of account all moral considerations, has this war been necessary? Is it not, indeed, directly mad? [Cheers.] Nobody threatened Italy; neither Austria-Hungary nor Germany. Whether the Triple Entente was content with blandishments alone history ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... also of some strange adventures Had gone before him, and his wars and loves; And as romantic heads are pretty painters, And, above all, an Englishwoman's roves[kq] Into the excursive, breaking the indentures Of sober reason, wheresoe'er it moves, He found himself extremely in the fashion, Which serves our thinking people for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... out Havelock's saints," said the commander-in-chief. "They are always sober, and can be depended upon, and Havelock himself is always ready." And, surely enough, "Havelock's saints" were among the enemy in double quick time, and soon gave them as much steel and lead as ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... any size or pretensions, we find by the town cross or near the inn a motley collection of things on wheels, with drivers sometimes as sober as Father Mathew, sometimes not. Yesterday we had a mare which the driver confessed he bought without 'overcircumspectin' it,' and although you couldn't, as he said, 'extinguish her at first sight from a grand throtter, she hadn't rightly the speed ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gratified and contented with yourself and all the world, after you have shaken hands with or spoken to her. "Magnetic," some people call it. She is every one's sister, and you feel an instinctive affection for her, of that sober and yet warm kind which may be termed loyalty. She is queen in the Kaipara; and all of us think it the greatest pleasure in life ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... property of la belle Gabrielle> Henry had, after her arrival in the capital, presented to his wife. Here the Court festivals were renewed; and had the heart and mind of Marie been at ease, her life must have seemed rather like a brilliant dream than a sober reality. Such, however, was far from being the case; for already the seeds of domestic discord which had been sown before her marriage were beginning to germinate. Madame de Verneuil was absent from the Court, and it was evident to every individual of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... side of the vale where we were: large stumps of trees which had been cut down were yet remaining undecayed, and there were some single trees left alive, as if by their battered black boughs to tell us of the storms that visit the valley which looked now so sober and peaceful. When we arrived at the huts, one of them proved to be the inn, a thatched house without a sign-board. We were kindly received, had a fire lighted in the parlour, and were in such good humour that we seemed to have a thousand ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... below the wind veered round almost ahead. The night, I observed, was very dark; and as there was no moon in the sky, while a thick mist came rolling across the water, had I not supposed that the skipper was tolerably sober I should have remained on deck; but, feeling very sleepy, I went below, though thinking it prudent not to take off my clothes. I lay down in the berth just as I was. I could hear the skipper talking to the man ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... with strife, Scarred with passion, and wracked by the pangs of remorse. "Death's swift leaden messenger missed in its course By the breadth of a hair," said the surgeon. "The ball Lies in there by the shoulder. His chances are small For a new start on earth. While a sober man might Hope to conquer grim Death in this hand-to-hand fight, Here old Alcohol stands as Death's second, fierce, cruel, And stronger than Life's one aid, skill, in the duel. You tell me the wife of this man is your friend? He was shot by a ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and his hatreds. Thus the insolent Britisher became the Turk's-head or Guy Fawkes, so to speak, of the American boy, the butt of his bellicose humours; and a habit of mind contracted in boyhood is not always to be eradicated by the sober reflection of manhood, even in minds capable of sober reflection. The Civil War, be it noted, did not depose the insolent Britisher from his bad eminence in the schoolboy imagination. The Confederates were, after all, Americans, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... The machine that waited outside for him under the porte-cochere was sober black. It was the most expensive machine in the county, yet he did not care to flaunt its price or horse-power in a red flare across the landscape, which also was mostly his, from the sand dunes and the everlasting beat of the Pacific breakers, across the fat bottomlands and upland ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... came howling and the sea rolling and the solid rain sweeping against the sober old sides of our supply-ship—on this night, the finest kind to be sitting in a warm cabin, we sat and, while the smoke rolled high, aired our views of the real things in the world; and the most real thing in the world just then being a submarine, ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... energy in Charley's voice to indicate that he was getting sober. Bill Wrenn soused him under once more, so thoroughly that his own cuffs were reduced to a state of flabbiness. He dragged Charley out, helped him dry himself, ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... poor fellow continued to scream for help until his voice was stifled by his groans; they forced him into their carriage and drove off, before any effectual assistance could be offered." He was a sober and industrious man, and much respected. His wife was left heartbroken, with one ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society |
