"Sober" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stilted "Hercles' vein" and with that licentiousness of allusion and imagery which could not fail to debauch both the taste and the morals of the youthful reader. The mind, familiarized with these monstrous, over-colored pictures, lost all relish for the chaste and sober productions of art. The love of the gigantic and the marvelous indisposed the reader for the simple delineations of truth in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... sorts of goodies, in the kitchen cupboard, and new clothes for all of us in the closets up stairs. Then I'd kindle a fire, and light the lamps, and lock the door, and go back to the dreary old garret once more—poor mother would be sitting there, sad and sober, as she always is now, and I would say to her, 'Come, mother, before you light the candle, Jennie and I want you to go with us, and look at the lovely Christmas gifts in the shop windows.' Then she'd say, sorrowfully, 'I don't want to see them, dear; I can't buy any of them for you, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... walked thoughtfully away, wondering what this could mean. He had never known Oliver to do any such thing before. Oliver, he thought, would not tell a falsehood on any account. He was not inclined to say any thing of that kind by way of jest. He was a very sober and sedate, as well as honest boy. Besides, he could not think what should have put Rollo into Oliver's head. He did not recollect that he had said any thing of Rollo for a long time. In fact, he had seldom told Oliver any thing about him; and what could have induced ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... of laughter followed the proposal, which indeed had rather escaped from poor Robin's swelling heart, than been the dictates of his sober judgment. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... story," he said, "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 ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... painters call our harmony! A common grayness silvers everything,— All in a twilight, you and I alike —You, at the point of your first pride in me (That's gone, you know)—but I, at every point; My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40 There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top; That length of convent-wall across the way Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... discern the time of the presence of the great King. Furthermore he says to them: "Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober."—1 Thes. 5:5,6. ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... was a great deal of imbecility about the closing scenes of the Ashburnham tragedy. Neither of those two women knew what they wanted. It was only Edward who took a perfectly clear line, and he was drunk most of the time. But, drunk or sober, he stuck to what was demanded by convention and by the traditions of his house. Nancy Rufford had to be exported to India, and Nancy Rufford hadn't to hear a word of love from him. She was exported to India and she never heard a word ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... mountains, and some from the wild bands of the prairie. They were of every hue—white, black, red, and gray, or mottled and clouded with a strange variety of colors. They all had a wild and startled look, very different from the staid and sober aspect of a well-bred city steed. Those most noted for swiftness and spirit were decorated with eagle-feathers dangling from their manes and tails. Fifty or sixty Dakotas were present, wrapped from head to foot in their heavy robes of whitened hide. There were ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... grave disapprobation of historians. I am resolved to give the New Zealander a chance of knowing a little more than this about one of them at least; and, by the fortunate entrance into life of the Correspondent, I am able to do it. I omit sober mathematical answers, of which there were several. The following letter ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... more cheerfully, "no more sober thoughts. Let us try and be happy, and like children once more. Here is a basket I have packed, and you are to put it in the carriage. We are ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... but a sober fact. A Frenchwoman must be in the mode. Anybody else would have told you to copy yourself. Fashions are a sealed book to me, but I do claim a certain taste in colour effect, and ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... may say, with more truth than anybody, 'Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.' The weather was charming, the course crowded, the King received decently. His household is now so ill managed that his grooms were drunk every day, and one man (who was sober) was killed going home from the races. Goodwin told me nobody exercised any authority, and the consequence was that the household ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... a mental curtain over the scene. She lacked the courage to gaze upon her handiwork, although she was not without a hopeful instinct that, when she criticised it in sober daylight, she would even approve of what she had done. Her determination did not, however, carry her further than the middle of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... thy selfe do behaue, 576 In vsage sober, thy countinaunce graue. whyle you be there, taulke of no matter, 580 Nor one with an other whisper ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... over the pavements, and sentinels paced the sidewalks, and mounted dragoons dashed to and fro on military errands. I tried to imagine how very disagreeable the presence of a Southern army would be in a sober town of Massachusetts; and the thought considerably lessened my wonder at the cold and shy regards that are cast upon our troops, the gloom, the sullen demeanor, the declared or scarcely hidden sympathy with rebellion, which are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as far as he could from the carriage, hoping to attract attention; but the man did not once glance toward him. His face looked very sober, as ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... o'clock before the Bacchanal laugh began to ring out at intervals—so easily distinguished from the sober laugh, in that it carries in its closing tones the queer ring ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... khans. The recommendations of our Russian friends, the glamour of history which had bewitched us, the hope of the Western for something Oriental,—all these elements had combined to raise our expectations in a way against which our sober senses and previous experience should have warned us. It seemed to us merely a flourishing and animated Russian provincial town, whose Kremlin was eclipsed by that of Moscow, and whose university had instructed, but not graduated, Count Tolstoy, the novelist. The bazaar under arcades, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... which of the six should be the king remained to be determined. The plan which they adopted, and the circumstances connected with the execution of it, constitute, certainly, one of the most extraordinary of all the strange transactions recorded in ancient times. It is gravely related by Herodotus as sober truth. How far it is to be considered as by any possibility credible, the reader must judge, after knowing what the ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... chamberlains he had seven learned counsellors whom he consulted on all the affairs of State. The day after the feast, when all were sober once more, they held a cabinet council to discuss a proper punishment for the rebellious queen. Memucan, Secretary of State, advised that she be divorced for her disobedience and ordered "to come no more before the king," for unless she was severely punished, he said, all the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... give up making beasts of themselves. Wouldn't they think with me it was insulting him to let a drunkard have a hand in doing a thing to his memory? So I would manage their collection on condition they agreed that whoever took more than his decent pint a day—or whatever else sober men among them chose to fix it at—should have his money returned on the spot. Poor fellows, they cheered and said I was in the right, but whether they will keep ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I count for much, Madge," answered David honestly, "but I am more grateful to you than you can know for putting me on that list. Some day——" The young man hesitated, then his sober face relaxed and a brilliant smile lighted it. "It's pretty early for a fellow like me to be talking about some day, ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... sat very quietly gazing into the fire, her little face wearing a very sober, thoughtful look. But she was startled out of her reverie by the sound ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... very young reviewer on the Herald staff, with no dreams of becoming Her Majesty's Solicitor-General just then! And the "House of Elmore" actually paid its publishers' expenses, and left a balance, and brought me in a little cheque, and thus my writing life began in sober earnest. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in forming and was lacking in the means of definite expression. For many years after the war there was widespread fear that the installation of a Democratic president would result in the wholesale debauch of the offices, and sober northerners believed, or thought they believed, that "rebels" would again be in power if a Democrat were elected. Under such conditions and because the offices were already filled with Republicans, the Republican North was willing to leave things ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... much above the wages earned by the great body of the people; and, if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and license, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fond heart with reveries profound; He felt the infinitude of thoughts that pass And guide and govern that enormous mass. The cares that agitate, the creeds that blind, The woes that waste the many-master'd kind, The distance great that still remains to trace, Ere sober sense can harmonize the race, Held him suspense, imprest with reverence meek, And choked his utterance as he wish'd to speak: When Hesper thus: The paths they here pursue, Wide as they seem unfolding to thy view, Show but a point in ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... interference. It was already far into the night, and being fairly intoxicated, they took it into their minds to return and attend morning prayers in the college chapel. In order to prevent this catastrophe, Wasson arranged a bowling match for a fictitious sum of money with the most sober man he could find, and in that way delayed the party until the dangerous hour had passed. It was supposed to have been some of the same set who the following autumn set fire to and consumed the college wood-pile—a severe loss, and a dangerous precedent. No trace of the incendiaries ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Mothers, and I put a series of articles on eugenics, upon the fall in the birth-rate, and similar topics in the BLUE WEEKLY, leading up to a tentative and generalised advocacy of the public endowment of the nation's children. I was more and more struck by the acceptance won by a sober and restrained presentation of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... say this with any reference to Mr. — who is a sober and careful writer. But both as a matter of principle and one of policy, I strongly demur to a great deal of what appears as "free thought" literature, and I object to be in any way connected with it. Heterodox ribaldry ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... arm, and they returned to the boats, and Henri, who was ahead, walked in silence beside the young girl. At last they got back to Bezons. Monsieur Dufour, who was now sober, was waiting for them very impatiently, while the young man with the yellow hair was having a mouthful of something to eat before leaving the inn. The carriage was waiting in the yard, and the grandmother, who had already got in, was very ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in the course of my first visit to the villa, some further particulars respecting her brother Tom, the potato-thrower of Covent Garden Market. Mr. Thomas Blake, it seemed, was the proprietor and skipper of a barge. A pleasant enough fellow when sober, but too much given to what Kit described as "his drop." He had apparently left home under something of a cloud, though whether this had anything to do with "father's trousers" I never knew. Kit said she had not seen him for some years, though each had known the other's address. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... most enormously, and whom he was bringing before the Court of Chancery. His common acquaintance complained that he was too grave for them, and that he was deficient in wit and point. They said he was "all sober sadness," and that he had romantic views of life, and did not know the human character. I had not sufficient conversation with him to judge of this. He was intimate with d'Invernois, who spoke highly of him. He had certainly none of our Irish vivacity, and fulness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... no significant expression betrayed that he was aware of her observations; and even when he gave her the letter to put into the post-bag he looked quite innocent and unconcerned. On the other hand, she did not like to think that he had been sending such a character of her to Eleanor in sober sadness; it was impossible to find out whether he had sent the letter; she could not venture to beg him to keep it back, she could only trust to his ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back imperiously with his hand. "It is sober sense; but I want no doctors. I have studied medicine and I know all about it. No doctors can help me. My last hour has come! For a year past I have only lived by a miracle. Now listen to me as you have never ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the Court (my Lords) I heare the King, my Father, is sore sicke. Our Newes shall goe before vs, to his Maiestie, Which (Cousin) you shall beare, to comfort him: And wee with sober speede will follow you ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... in sober earnest and in as unprejudiced a spirit as it is possible for any sincerely patriotic—using the word in its true and not in its debased meaning—Irishman to feel when he is thoroughly acquainted with all the niceties of the national history ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... surely, there is nothing more wanted to make Christian people wake up from their old jog-trot habits, and cast themselves with new earnestness, new daring and enterprise, into forms of service which conscience and sober wisdom may approve. Of course, I do not forget that any such new methods must each approve themselves at the tribunal of the Christian consciousness. It is no part of my business here to descend into details ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which sounds or looks almost like the work of the great artist, and only the technique of the moving pictures, which so clearly tries to reproduce the theater performance, stands so utterly far behind the art of the actor. Is not an esthetic judgment of rejection demanded by good taste and sober criticism? We may tolerate the photoplay because, by the inexpensive technical method which allows an unlimited multiplication of the performances, it brings at least a shadow of the theater to the masses who cannot ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... continued she, "was a farmer here in the neighbourhood, and a sober industrious man he was; but nobody can help misfortunes: what with bad crops, and bad debts, which are worse, his affairs went to wreck, and both he and his wife died of broken hearts. And a sweet couple they were, sir; there was not a properer man to look on in the county than John Edwards, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... eyes with the prejudices and arrogance of his caste. It is men of his type—and not Marat or Robespierre—who made the revolution, who goaded the people of France into becoming something worse than man-devouring beasts. And, mind you, twenty years of exile did not sober them, nor did contact with democratic thought in England and America teach them the most elementary lessons of commonsense. If the Emperor had not come back to-day, we should be once more working up for revolution—more terrible this time, more bloody and vengeful, ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and sober, "Because, my young friend, you are especially fortunate. A kindly Providence has placed you in the care of one of the wisest, most respected, er—finest examples of young manhood this institution affords. I certainly do ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... be 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, let's ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country; but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret; their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects; and they learn new habits, which cannot be gratified ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at all, but the sober truth. A few months ago the chevalier came to Paris, bringing me a letter of introduction from a German whom I used to know years ago. This letter requested me to look after the bearer and help him in his investigations. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... him to overrate the progress that I made and the aptitude I showed; it may even be that what he said was no more than the good-natured flattery of one who loved me and would have me take pleasure in myself. And yet when I look back at the lad I was, I incline to think that he spoke no more than sober truth. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... said, though I should like to repeat that I put it much higher than do most of Maupassant's admirers. The volumes of travel-sketches do not appear to me particularly successful, despite the almost unsurpassed faculty of their writer for sober yet vivid description. They have the air of being written to order, and they do not seem, as a rule, to arrive at artistic completeness either objectively or subjectively. Of the criticism, which concerns us more nearly, by far the most remarkable piece is the famous Preface to Pierre ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... trouble; even Menes had hinted a suspicion of the truth in a bantering way. What would prevent the beauty from seeing it also and preempting to herself the honors of his disheartenment? But he was in no mood for a coquettish tilt with her. His sober face was not more serious than his tone when he ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... though not directly by an officer, that the English dragoon neglected his horse in the field, selling the provender for liquor, and that, as a consequence, the corps became inefficient; whereas the French dragoon, being usually a sober man, was less exposed to this temptation. This may, or may not, be true; but drunkenness is now quite common in the French army, though I think much less so in the cavalry than in the foot. The former are generally selected with some care, and the common regiments ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... many, our principles too dynamic, our purposes too worthy and the issues at stake too immense for us to entertain doubt or fear. But our responsibilities require that we approach this year's business with a sober humility. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Great Britain has more than once been visited by pestilence. De Foe has left us an inimitable romance, which he calls "The History of the Plague in London in 1665." How much or how little of sober fact there may be in those thrilling incidents, worked up so marvellously by the great novelist, it is impossible to say. That there is at least as much of fiction as of fact in the book none can doubt. The author was a child when the ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... arrival in the Upper Province, had spent their last shilling, and who, by persevering industry, are now worth hundreds of pounds. No person need starve in Canada, where there is plenty of work and good wages for every man who is willing to labour, and who keeps himself sober. The working man with a family of grown children, when fairly established on his farm, is fully on a par, as regards his prospects, with the gentleman, the owner of a similar farm, and possessing an income of 100 pounds per annum. The reason is obvious. The gentleman and his family have been ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... shall wake and see for ourselves the bright and terrible world which we have so often forgotten, and so often been tempted to think was itself a dream. Brethren, see to it that that awaking be for you the beholding of what you have loved, the finding, in the sober certainty of waking bliss, of all the objects which have been your visions of delight in the sleep ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of humankind, and causing them to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues; but above all by radically vitiating the standard of morals, making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom, indeed, it lavishes all the phrases of adulation, but whom, in sober truth, it depicts as eminently hateful. I have a hundred times heard him say that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind had gone on adding trait after ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... one of us should remain sober," answered the Deputy quietly, for in spite of a certain sympathy with the feelings by which Charlot was actuated, he was in dead antipathy to this baiting ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... are you satisfied, Mr. House Detective, or do you want to go up and examine my luggage? Having convinced you that I am a registered guest, how would you like to have me walk a chalk line and convince you that I am sober?" ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... half-drowned young monkeys could look. The butterflies flitted before them and danced up and down in the sunny air, displaying their gorgeous wings; the yellowhammer flew out from amongst the nettles, and betrayed the place where his sober-hued little mate was sitting upon her grassy nest; a stoat ran across the road with a bird in his mouth, and disappeared in the bank unchased; the corncrake sang his harsh song in the park, seemingly close beneath the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... occasion is the difference between the manners of a Protestant and Catholic community so strongly marked as on the Sabbath. In the former, a sober seriousness stamps the deportment of the people, even when they are not engaged in devotional exercises; in the latter, worldly pleasures and religious forms are pursued, as it were, at the same time, or follow each other in incongruous succession. We would ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... soft Concord stream—Musketaquit, or "grass-ground river"—moving through miles of meadow, fringed with willows and button bushes, with a current so languid, said Hawthorne, that the eye cannot detect which way it flows. Sometimes we sailed as far as Fair Haven Bay, whose "dark and sober billows," "when the wind blows freshly on a raw March day," Thoreau thought as fine as anything on Lake Huron or the northwest coast. Nor were we, I hope, altogether unperceiving of that other river which Emerson detected flowing ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... on the last, the Hotel Louis Quinze. The chief characteristics of Monsieur Garon's house were its brass door-knobs, and the verdant vines that climbed its sides; of the Little Chemist's shop, the perfect whiteness of the building, the rolls of sober wall- paper, and the bottles of coloured water in the shop windows; of Medallion's, the stoop that surrounded three sides of the building, and the notices of sales tacked up, pasted up, on the front; of the Hotel Louis Quinze, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... little dance at a public benefit for the widows of three heroic firemen, when she was only nine. Her lovely mop had been crimped out of all natural wave; her youthful digestion menaced by candy and chewing gum; her naturally rather sober and pensive disposition completely altered, or at least eclipsed. Julia could chatter of the stage, could give a pert answer to whoever accosted her, could tell a dressmaker exactly how she wanted a gown made, at twelve. While ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... The poor youth is become altogether too preternaturally dignified, too confounded sober, solemn and sedate for this ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... their faces very set and sober, were ranged in chairs round Carson's severely Philistine study. Tulke was not popular among them, and a few who had had experience of Stalky and Company doubted that he might, perhaps, have made an ass of himself. But the dignity of the Sixth was to be upheld. So ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and smothered a laugh and said that was one way of putting it. I clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder and said, "Forget it, sir. I promise to be godly, sober and industrious—but is there any law against enjoying what ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... sir, I'm sure. Let me take your grip and hat. Step right into the reception room and wait, if you please, sir. Perhaps,' he says, and there was a twinkle in his port eye, though the rest of his face was sober as the front door of a church, 'perhaps,' says he, 'you might wish to speak with my wife a moment. I'll take the liberty of sendin' her ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... enthusiasm; the soldiers flushed with the pride of their great victories of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The authorities at Richmond shared the excitement, and the commissary-general, with unwonted humor, or in sober earnest, indorsed, it is said, upon a requisition for supplies: "If General Lee wishes rations, let him ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... of natural science in the sixteenth century brought the possibility of a concrete evolution theory nearer, and in the early seventeenth century we find evidences of a new spirit—in the embryology of Harvey and the classifications of Ray. Besides sober naturalists there were speculative dreamers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who had at least got beyond static formulae, but, as Professor Osborn points out (op. cit. page 87.), "it is a very striking fact, that the basis of our modern methods of studying the Evolution ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... different strength, and very few men can fully realise the strength of a passion which they have never themselves experienced. To repeat an illustration I have already used, how difficult is it for a constitutionally sober man to form in his own mind an adequate conception of the force of the temptation of drink to a dipsomaniac, or for a passionless man to conceive rightly the temptations of a profoundly sensual nature! I have spoken in a former chapter of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... him as with Mr. Addison; and rather listen to his talk than hear Nicolini. Was ever man so gracefully drunk as my Lord Castlewood? I would give anything to carry my wine (though, indeed, Dick bore his very kindly, and plenty of it, too) like this incomparable young man. When he is sober he is delightful; and when tipsy, perfectly irresistible." And referring to his favourite, Shakespeare (who was quite out of fashion until Steele brought him back into the mode), Dick compared Lord Castlewood to Prince Hal, and was pleased to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... determination, the splendid achievements, and the generous forbearance of the Emperor of Russia and his brave army, during the last war, can be duly recorded; but when they shall have passed into history, we think we shall but anticipate the sober judgment of posterity by saying, that the foreign annals of no other nation, ancient or modern, will present, in an equal period of time, a ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... another American named Ford, who, on arriving, had not been quite sober, and now, after a few glasses of beer, was exceedingly tipsy. "That's so. As I've always said, it's a disgrace to the township, a disgrace, sir. Ought to be put down. Why don't ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... arrived in company. These were the Vaigher and Mermaid, containing all the rest of Fred's guests. He was in his father's place at the Vaigher's helm, presiding, as his father would have done, over the safety of the elder and more sober portion of the party. His sister Isobel had the management of the little Mermaid, and her companions were Gerta Bruce and Amy Congreve, who had, of course, accompanied Garth Halsen and his father, the Yarl of Burra Isle. Any of us who made the acquaintance of the Yarl, ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... 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 ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dark. A mounted soldier, whom I took to be an officer, rode up to my side and seized hold of the coat. He said, "I want that overcoat." I replied, "You can't have it." "I must have it." "You shan't have it." He tugged and I tugged, and as I was on foot and sober I nearly dragged him from his horse before he let go. During the tussle I repeatedly shouted, "Captain of the Guard—Help! Help!" The provost captain instantly came riding to the spot. "What's the matter?" he asked. "That rascal has tried ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... blazing with light. Morgan laughed with satisfaction as they were carried along the street; but he grew sober suddenly as his eyes fell ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... you, if you ever attach any meaning or make any application to yourselves of all those commands and counsels of which the Scriptures are full,—to be up and doing, to watch and pray, to watch and be sober, to fight the good fight of faith, to hold the fort, to rise early, and even by night, and to endure unto death, and never for one moment to be found off your guard. Do you attach any real meaning to these examples of the psalmists, to these ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... as in women. [Sidenote: Deut. 22. Titus. 2.] Bat if honesty, modesty, and sobernes, be required in apparaile, & adorning of mens selues, as we see that it is commended and commaunded in Deuteronomie, & seing that S. Paule also in his epistle to Titus, willeth that there should be among us a sober and holy countenaunce, singularly and specially in women, which ordinarily be very curious in their garmentes, it is certayne and sure, that there is some poyson or venym hidden under the grasse. [Sidenote: I. Pet. 3.] And because it is so, S. Peter in his first canonicall ...
— A Treatise Of Daunses • Anonymous
... lay great stress on the infancy of the art; and because these poets lived two thousand years before us, they conclude that we must have made great progress since. In this way poor Aeschylus especially is got rid of. But in sober truth, if this was the infancy of dramatic art, it was the infancy of a Hercules, who ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Why then should we continue to demand woman's love and woman's help while we recklessly promise as lover and candidate what we never fulfil as husband and office-holder? In our secret heart our better self is shamed and dishonored, and appeals from Philip drunk to Philip sober, but has not yet the moral strength and courage to prosecute the appeal. But the east is rosy, and the sunlight cannot long be delayed. Woman must not and will not be disheartened by a thousand denials or a million of broken pledges. With the assurance of faith she prays, with ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... cyclometers and other paradoxers either call it very poor, or commend it as sheer buffoonery. Be it one or the other, I observe that all the effective ridicule is, in this subject, on the side of establishment. This is partly due to the difficulty of quizzing plain and sober demonstration; but so much, if not more, to the ignorance of the paradoxers. For that which cannot be ridiculed, can be turned into ridicule by those who know how. But by the time a person is deep enough in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... minds set on fire by this ideal have not all received an equal share of calm from the creative genius—that great and patient temper which is required to impress the ideal on the dumb marble, or to spread it over a page of cold, sober letters, and then entrust it to the faithful hands of time. This divine instinct, and creative force, much too ardent to follow this peaceful walk, often throws itself immediately on the present, on active life, and strives to ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... romantic fascination about this woman's life as brilliant as fiction, but more strange and remarkable in that it is all sober truth—nay, to her much of it was even sad reality. Her career was a glorious one, but lonely as the position of her pictured palm-tree, and oftentimes only upheld by her own consciousness of the right; she has felt the trials of minds isolated by greatness. Singularly ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... had swelled up on some kind of benzine and had hired a hack and taken two women out riding, and when we rounded them up each one had his feet out of the window of the hack, and they were enjoying themselves immensely. The Welchman was the only one that was sober, but the boys said there was not enough liquor in the South to get him drunk. When I got them all mounted they looked as though they had been to a banquet. We started for camp, but I did not want to take them in until ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... General is sufficiently serious at the very best. But the danger of having such a Governor General up the country, eight or nine hundred miles from any person who has a right to remonstrate with him, is fearful indeed. Interests so vast, that the most sober language in which they can be described sounds hyperbolical, are entrusted to a single man; to a man who, whatever his parts may be, and they are doubtless considerable, has shown an indiscretion and temerity almost ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were very much afraid, not having gotten over their fright. They got around behind her and the washtub, as though she could protect them. The Indians asked for bread and milk; mother gave them all she had. They got upon the floor, took hold of hands and formed a ring. The sober one sat in the middle; the others seemed to hear to what he said as much as though he had been an officer. He would not drink a drop of the whisky, but kept perfectly sober. They seemed to have a very joyful time, they danced and sang their wild songs of the forest. ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... remind the reader that an immense number of persons, both infidels and Protestants, especially in sober-minded England and Scotland, treat every professed Catholic miracle as a portion of the vast gigantic system of deliberate fraud and villany which they conceive to be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope to the humblest priest who says Mass and hears confessions in an ugly little chapel ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... invitation? It means that I enjoy your company, which is more than one man in ten thousand can say of his wife. The ordinary man, when he wants to dissipate, asks—well, not his wife. And I, in plain sober truth, would rather have Nancy ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... was always apparent in his conversation a certain feeling on his part that he hardly thought it worth his while to be in earnest. It was almost as though he were playing with a child. She knew well enough that he was in truth a sober thoughtful man, who in some matters and on some occasions could endure an agony of earnestness. And yet to her he was always gently playful. Could she have seen his brow once clouded she might have learnt ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... she said, "can't you ever take a hill-ride, or build a snow-man, or—" but Irene looked so sober that Lou's sympathies awoke. "Never mind," she added, "you'll come up to your grandpa's again in the summer; then you'll wear do-up clothes, and we'll have lots ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... to say. It is easy to capture a meeting of honest-hearted veterans by such lamentable prestidigitation as was exhibited on Fast Day, and to pass any resolutions desired, by appealing to their enthusiasm. I prefer to be judged by the sober after-thought of men who are neither partisans, nor ready to warp facts or make partial statements to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... known happiness so perfect as that which I felt as we walked home together—home—yes; that old farm-house must be my home as well as hers henceforward; for any habitation which she loved must be a kind of home for me. Sober reflection tells me how reckless and imprudent my whole conduct has been in this business; but when did ever love and prudence go hand-in-hand? We were children, Charlotte and I, on that blessed afternoon; and we ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... I must see the doctor and have a triangular council over this thing, Hayne. Three heads are better than none; and if, as he suspects, old Clancy really knows anything when he's drunk that he cannot tell when he's sober, I shall depart from Mrs. Waldron's principles and join the doctor in his pet scheme of getting him drunk again. 'In vino veritas,' you know. And we ought to be about it, too, for it won't be long before his discharge comes, and, once away, we ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... and on, however, and yet Larry didn't appear. I began to feel uneasy, and at last proposed turning back to ascertain if any accident had happened to him. He would surely not have remained behind of his own free will. He had appeared perfectly sober when he brought me my horse to mount; besides which, I had never known Larry drunk in his life,—which was saying a great deal in his favour, considering the example he had had set him by ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... injunction left an indelible mark on the mind of the Early Church. "Yourselves know perfectly," St. Paul writes in the first of his apostolic letters, "that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night ... so then let us not sleep, as do the rest, but let us watch and be sober." As St. Augustine says, "The last day is hidden that every day maybe regarded." But what, exactly, is the meaning of the command to "watch"? It cannot be that we are to be always "on the watch." That would simply end in the feverish excitement and unrest which ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... Baillie, and to do this effectively required a certain chic, a gaiety, which Kate did not seem able to summon up; and this was the weak place in her rendering of the part. 'You're all right for a minute, and then you sober down into a Germaine,' Dick would say, at the end of a long and critical conversation. The business she learned to 'parrot.' Dick taught her the gestures and the intonations of voice to be used, and when she had mastered these Dick said he would ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... who sat upon the other end of the same sofa, was very plain in her appearance, and was plainly dressed. Her countenance, too, had a sober and thoughtful expression which was almost stern, and made Jane feel quite disposed to be afraid of her. The beautiful ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... moment, when commonplace has its strongest hold upon me, and I feel actually interested in the ordinary pursuits of my fellow-beings, of a sudden, a great curtain seems to fall around, and enclose me on every side; and, instead of the staid and sober visages of the throng, vague and shadowy faces gleam around me, and magnificent eyes, bright and dreamy, glance and flash before me like the figures on a phantasmagoria. In such moments, there comes ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... scrapes and prevented more deaths than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single step in the army, as is well known. In '14 he killed a celebrated French fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he does, a great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family people, he is loved by them both and has as welcome a place made for him at a roaring bachelor's supper at the "Cafe Anglais," as at a staid dowager's dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honore. Such pleasant old boys are very profitable acquaintances, let me tell you; ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aside. The brain will not work; the organs of the body will not perform their functions; the blood will not run. The drunkard must drink till he dies. All that may be a good ground for divorce, the outside world will say; but the plea should be put in by the sober wife, not by the intemperate husband. But what if the husband takes himself off without any divorce, and takes with him also his wife's property, her earnings, that on which he has lived and his children? ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... who loves a laugh," says Fun, "should either buy, beg, borrow, or—we had almost said steal—this book; for in sober earnest we aver that it is not given to ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... it she marvelled at a hundred differences between it and her native Midlands. It was wilder—infinitely wilder—than Warwickshire, and at the same time less unkempt; far more savage in outline, yet in detail sober almost to tidiness. It seemed to acknowledge the hand of some great unknown gardener; and this gardener was, of course, the sea-breeze now filling her lungs and bracing her strength. The shaven, landward-bending thorns and hollies, the close-trimmed hedgerow, the clean-swept highroad, alike proclaimed ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to relate that which chanced to a knight and a dame, even as it has been rehearsed before you in this tale; only he named not the persons to whom this lot was appointed. The Count, who was wise and sober of counsel, inquired what the knight had done with the lady. Thibault made answer that the knight had brought the lady back by the way she went, with the same joy and worship as he led her forth, save only ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... in his huge solidity. His shoulders were rounded with the heavy pack of knotted sinews they carried. His legs were bowed from much riding. It was his boast that he could bend a silver dollar double in the palm of his hand. Men had seen him twist the tail rod of a wagon into a knot. Sober, he was a sulky, domineering brute with the instincts of a bully. In liquor, the least difference of opinion became for him ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... of the morals of my tedious discussion—'Let the little rogues who would not be put to the question, as I may call it, choose accordingly. Let them prefer to their favour good honest sober fellows, who have not been used to play dog's tricks: who will be willing to take them as they offer; and, who being tolerable themselves, are not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... treated with all consideration and shown that the Mormons do not teach one thing and practice another. The Indians should be taught to be "friendly with the government of the United States or Mexico and to live at peace with one another, to be chaste, sober and honest and subject to ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Gershom was so very uninviting an object, and had so many palpable marks, that he had fairly earned the nickname which, as it afterward appeared, the western adventurers had given HIM, as well as his ABODE, wherever the last might be, that no one of decently sober habits could readily fancy anything belonging to him. At any rate, the bee-hunter now led the way into his cabin, whither he was followed without unnecessary ceremony, by ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... their children, and so great has been the influence of his work for the amelioration of childhood that he is certainly to be counted with the philanthropic on this ground. The first chapter has no equal in literature in its splendidly sober praise of natural knowledge. The wide knowledge which Spencer's writings display of physical science, and his constant endeavor to illustrate and support his system by connecting its position with scientific facts and laws have given ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... down the table, Sir Bertram Lyngern and Master Hugh Calverley were discussing less serious subjects in a more sober and becoming manner. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... he cried, hoarsely. "Don't do it, I tell you! Don't—do it!'" There was no longer any thickness to his tongue; he spoke as one quite sober. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... was uninjured. It was squab and glossy, and, by giving the whole feature an air of being on the point of expanding to its original shape, produced a snubbed expression which relieved the otherwise formidable aspect of the man, and recommended him as probably a modest and affable fellow when sober and unprovoked. He seemed about fifty years of age, and was clad in a straw hat and a ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... laid his right hand on his heart, Bent down his head, and cast his eyes full low, And reverence made with courtly grace and art, For all that humble lore to him was know; His sober lips then did he softly part, Whence of pure rhetoric, whole streams outflow, And thus he said, while on the Christian lords Down fell the mildew ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... to be frightened. He would never dare to annoy her—never, in his sober senses. When they were alone together he had lost his head, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in financial and commercial circles. The hopes of neither the more sober, nor of the wild and fanatic reformers of humanity could be realized, and they got into such a war of hate and abuse that they ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith |
