"Speciality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the rooms. It was some satisfaction to see Ethelberta's house, although the single feature in which it differed from the other houses in the Crescent was that no lamp shone from the fanlight over the entrance—a speciality which, if he cared for omens, was hardly encouraging. Fearing to linger near lest he might be detected, Christopher stole a glimpse at the door and at the steps, imagined what a trifle of the depression worn in each step her feet had tended to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... gaiter department. Very tasteful, too, in the matter of caps and ties. May be flattered by an inquiry as to where he got his gaiters, and if they are an idea of his own. Sometimes bursts out into a belt covered with silver clasps. Fancy waistcoats a speciality. His smoking-suit, in the evening, is a dream of gorgeous rainbows. Is sometimes a very fair shot. Generally wears gloves, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... German Netherland Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism Maritime heretics Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft Worn nor caused to be worn the ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... to be Jonathan's speciality,—science. But I never give my word half heartedly, my boy, and I'll back you to my last dollar. Be prepared for disappointments,—but if you accomplish something, I'll be glad. And if you fail, George,—any failure for a man's convictions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... enjoined in Exodus xxiii. 5, was not unworthy of admiration—indeed he was my own disciple, and desired thus to commemorate the circumstances of my first meeting with the Baal Shem,—yet he who made it his speciality never to tell the smallest falsehood was led into greater sin. For when his fame was so bruited that it reached even the Government officers, they, suspecting the Jews of the town of smuggling, said they would withdraw the charge if the Saint ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... unbaptised. Last of all, their confirmation is a notable derogation unto the holy sacrament of baptism, not alone in that it presumeth the sealing of that which was sealed sufficiently by it; but also in that, both by asseveration of words, and by speciality of the minister that giveth it, it ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... "that I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... can still fill that little body with so strong a soul, and make him sing as Milton's new-created birds sang to Milton's Eve in Milton's Paradise. Sweet he is, and various, rich, and strong, beyond all English warblers, save the nightingale: but his speciality is his force, his rush, his overflow, not so much of love as of happiness. The spirit carries him away. He riots up and down the gamut till he cannot stop himself; his notes tumble over each other; he chuckles, laughs, shrieks with delight, throws back ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... would have been abominably dull. There was no mention even of balls and assemblies until he came back again. Some men have a peculiar talent, a special faculty, for arranging such things, and it was "our friend" Kecskerey's speciality. The whole world of fashion called Kecskerey "our friend," so it is only proper that we should give ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... their present descendants; even the shape of the loaves has in most cases continued unchanged to the present day. And one curious coincidence is certainly worth mentioning, in that a peculiar method of preparing figs with caraway seeds, which was long supposed to be a local speciality of a remote town in Central Italy, has now been recognized as a common method of dressing this fruit for the table at Pompeii, for large quantities of figs so treated have been unearthed in shops and kitchens. Such ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... tell you, how many doctors; taken no end of medicine and spent I don't know how much money; but the more we did so, not the least little bit of relief did I see. Lucky enough, we eventually came across a bald-pated bonze, whose speciality was the cure of nameless illnesses. We therefore sent for him to see me, and he said that I had brought this along with me from the womb as a sort of inflammatory virus, that luckily I had a constitution strong and hale so ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that even Minna declared that she was more anxious to see these improved than to get me to marry her. But she was also driven to think of herself, and that promptly, for trouble arose with regard to her own position in the Magdeburg theatre. There she had met with a rival in her own speciality, and as this woman's husband became chief stage manager, and consequently had supreme power, she grew to be a source of great danger. Seeing, therefore, that at this very moment Minna received advantageous ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... which are sold in London streets for a pot of ferns or a china butter-dish. In another part popular pictures are spread out, oleographs showing the Garden of Eden, or the terror of the Flood, or the Last Judgment, and such like; in another is a wilderness of home-made bamboo furniture, a speciality of Batum. And for all no ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... speciality of many healers with special knowledge of the curative properties of various plants, and who gather the plant, make an incantation over it, boil it in water, and then with that water wash the wound. There are also men who ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... probability, analogy, and common sense. They must disbelieve all rational explanations of thoroughly proved experiences (only) which appear supernatural, derived from the average experience and study of the visible world. They must disbelieve the speciality of the Master and the Disciples, and that it is a monstrosity to test the wonders of show-folk by the same touchstone. Lastly, they must disbelieve that one of the best accredited chapters in the history of mankind is the chapter that records the astonishing ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... are arranged on the plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,—so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice versa. The more particular speciality of one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,—that of the other to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counter-full of books with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... these:—(1) He denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds that any grouping of the sciences in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their genesis and their interdependence; no true filiation exists; no science develops itself in isolation; no one is independent, either logically or historically. M. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... properly in the first scrum of a big match—and rushed the ball down the field. Norris fell on it. Another hastily-formed scrum, and the Nomads' front rank was off again. Ten yards nearer the School line there was another halt. Grainger, the Beckford full-back, whose speciality was the stopping of rushes, had curled himself neatly round the ball. Then the School forwards awoke to a sense of their responsibilities. It was time they did, for Beckford was now penned up well within ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... miles from Islamabad up the Lidar Valley, and is somewhat over 7000 feet above the sea. Pampur, (Padma-pur, city of Vishnu, or Padmun-pur, "the place of beauty"), principally noted now for its Pampur roti or bread, a speciality of the place. Pandrettan, or Pandrenthan, Puranadhisthana, "the old capital." Was built in the time of Partha by his Prime Minister, Meru. Parana Chauni, Patan. "The City" or "Ferry," the ancient Sankarapura, Sankaravarma having built two temples there at the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... but does not do away with the consideration of the best modes of studying whatever books are suitable for the end. One man has to read in Chemistry, another in Law, another in Divinity, and so on. For each and all of these, there is a profitable and an unprofitable mode of working, and the speciality of the matter ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... The man who can best feel the difference between rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the branches of an oak and a willow than anyone else would; and, therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent—the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is graceful, and vastness of what is vast; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the mind of the painter himself is easily enough ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... theoretically equals in the social scale of the office. Foxall would say 'sir' to the meanest articled clerk that ever failed five times in his intermediate, but he would have expired on the rack before saying 'sir' to Henry. The favour accorded to Henry in high quarters, the speciality of his position, gave rise to a certain jealousy of him—a jealousy, however, which his natural simplicity and good-temper prevented from ever becoming formidable. Foxall, indeed, rather liked Henry, and would do favours for him ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... accustomed to clothe himself entirely from his master's wardrobe. The dandy absently drew forth the Telegraph, and the first thing that caught his eye was this: "A beautiful private hotel of the highest class. Luxuriously furnished. Visitor's comfort studied. Finest position in London. Cuisine a speciality. Quiet. Suitable for persons of superior rank. Bathroom. Electric light. Separate tables. No irritating extras. Single rooms from 2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. 250 Queen's Gate." And below this he saw another ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... obdurate. She was certainly a chic and engaging little person, apparently well educated and refined, but she was as sly as her notorious employer, whom she served so faithfully. She was, she had already told Hugh, the daughter of a man who had made jewel thefts his speciality and after many convictions was now serving ten years at the convict prison at Toulon. She had been bred in the Montmartre, and trained and educated to a criminal life. Il Passero had found her, and, after several times successfully "indicating" where coups could ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... that this is the age of the specialist. Everybody, if they wish to leave the world a better and happier place for their stay in it, should endeavour to adopt some speciality and make it their own. Chapple's speciality was being late for breakfast. He was late not once or twice, but every day. Sometimes he would scramble in about the time of the second cup of coffee, buttoning his waistcoat as he sidled to his place. Generally he would arrive just ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... brightness of her eyes,—in the corners of which it would always seem that a diamond of a tear was lurking whenever any matter of excitement was afoot. Her light-brown hair was soft and smooth and pretty. As hair it was very well, but it had no speciality. Her mouth was somewhat large, but full of ever-varying expression. Her forehead was low and broad, with prominent temples, on which it was her habit to clasp tightly her little outstretched fingers as she sat listening to you. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... had snatched a few hours in the West, and was just returning home. It being then well past twelve, we sauntered a little way with him, and called at a coffee-stall for a cup of the leathery tea which is the speciality of the London coffee-stall. Most stalls have their "regulars," especially those that are so fortunate as to pitch near a Works of any kind. The stall we visited was on the outskirts of Soho, and near a large colour-printing house which was then working day and night. I wonder, by the way, why printers ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... corner. It was quite a special invitation, because it came in the form of a card,—which was unusual between the two families. But the dinner was too, in some degree, a special dinner,—as Emily was enabled to explain to her father, the whole speciality having been fully detailed to herself by her aunt. Mr. Roby, whose belongings were not generally aristocratic, had one great connexion with whom, after many years of quarrelling, he had lately come into amity. This was his half-brother, considerably older ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... purposes and does; even the pious individual wishes to be saved and happy. This pole of the antithesis, existing for itself, is—in contrast with the Absolute Universal Being—a special separate existence, taking cognizance of speciality only and willing that alone. In short, it plays its part in the region of mere phenomena. This is the sphere of particular purposes, in effecting which individuals exert themselves on behalf of their individuality—give ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... fact of being able to manipulate the ball smartly, though it is of supreme importance in cricket, would never gain him admission into the eleven of his house, let alone that of the school. For that, as he well knew, he must cultivate a speciality, and he decided upon bowling. Wicket-keeping could only be practised in a regular game, and no side would agree to let him fill the post—it was not likely. Batting everyone wanted to practise, and it would be ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... answered Kennedy. "It seems that this Hungarian's speciality is playing the waltzes and folk-songs of his own country, which is certainly not anything great; but his successes are not obtained with the violin, but among the women. The ladies in London fight for him. His game is to pass himself ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... abnormal sexual relationships. The boy would rather have been a girl, the girl a boy. In such a case, the choice of a future profession will also be affected by mental peculiarities closely associated with the sexual life. The homosexual ladies' tailor, the music-hall artiste who makes a speciality of feminine impersonations, the ladies' hairdresser, and others in like occupations, will often tell us that the choice of their trade or profession was made while they were still children. In this connexion, I may also refer to the sexual life of Catholic priests. It is certain that some ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... snakes. His remark on the compression of the tail shows that his informants were aware of this speciality in those that ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... owner of the broomstick was washing her hair at Number 100 Beautiful Way, Mitten Island. She was washing it behind the counter of her shop. She was the manageress of the only shop on Mitten Island. It was a general shop, but made a speciality of such goods as Happiness and Magic. Unfortunately Happiness is rather difficult to get in war-time. Sometimes there was quite a queue outside the shop when it opened, and sometimes there was a card outside, ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... machinery of pardon. The Church is the only thing that ever attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its speciality—or, if you like, its oddity—was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Chemin de Fer du Midi. Subsequently he was entrusted with various missions abroad, and in 1869 the Institute of France crowned a little work of his on the employment of women and children in English factories. Mining engineering was his speciality, but he was extremely versatile and resourceful, and immediately attracted the notice of Gambetta. Let it be said to the latter's credit that in that hour of crisis he cast all prejudices aside. He cared nothing for the antecedents of any man who was willing to cooperate in the defence ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... lawyer who made a speciality of ecclesiastical cases, and had acquired a fortune by serving the Jesuits. He had retired with a comfortable sum, and led an existence slightly mysterious; received everywhere, saluted very low, even a little feared, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... however, melt into a harmonious murmur when compared to the one great speciality of the village,—stone-cutting in the open streets. Whenever one of the picturesque old houses is crumbling into utter decay, a pile of stone is dumped before it, and the easy-going masons of Amboise prepare to patch up its walls. No particular method is observed, the work progresses ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... to you about, reserve your final judgement, because it is pretty certain that you won't be long in this trade until you find out I have not exaggerated one single incident, and that there are gentlemen cruising in these waters who claim a law unto themselves, and who make a speciality of brigandage and murder. I understand from Curly that many of them are educated and well-bred, and that it is the love of adventure that causes that section of them to take to the life. They are adepts at playing the double role of society person and murderous ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... world would have persuaded Julien to go to the neighboring chateau in the old family carriage, which the baron had given up to him, until the arms of the De Lamares had been quartered on it with those of the Leperthius des Vauds. Now there was only one man in the whole province who made a speciality of coats-of-arms, a painter from Bolbec, named Bataille, who was naturally in great request among all the Normandy aristocracy; so Julien had to wait for some time before he ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... the mediums, or whether it was, originally, a 'test condition,' to prevent the medium from cheating (as in modern experiments), we cannot discover. It does not appear to be in use among the Maoris, whose speciality is 'trance utterance'. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... urge upon all those who have followed us thus far to adopt this branch of botany as their speciality. Hitherto it has been very much neglected, and a wide field is open for investigation and research. The life-history of the majority of species has still to be read, and the prospects of new discoveries for the industrious and persevering student are great. All who ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... University which is now extending its care to Art as well as Science, it would seem that the finer industries, such as design applied to furniture, decoration of all kinds, carving, painted glass, bookbinding, ought in time to do particularly well. If you wish to prosper, cultivate your speciality; the rule holds good for cities as ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... man master. He took to big-game hunting, which was what God intended him for, for he could track a tsessebe in thick bush, and was far the finest shot I have seen in my life. He took parties to the Pungwe flats, and Barotseland, and up to Tanganyika. Then he made a speciality of the Ngami region, where I once hunted with him, and he was with me when I went prospecting ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... provincial interpretation of the phrase, but not the antique English one. The word towel was indifferently applied, perhaps, for a cloth for use at the table or in the lavatory. Yet there was also the manuturgium, or hand-cloth, a speciality rendered imperative by ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... such—may have accepted and adopted his theory that "vengeance" must count in verse as a word of three syllables: I can hardly believe that the fancy would sound sweet in any second man's ear: but this speciality is not more characteristic than other and more important qualities of style—the peculiar abruptness, the peculiar inflation, the peculiar crudity—which denote this comedy as apparently if not evidently Marstonian. On ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... According to the account which she had received, it was twelve months at least since he had died in one of the Grecian islands. The full weeds of a mourning widow would ill have befitted her condition of mind, or her immediate purpose. But yet there was a speciality of blackness in her garments which told him that she had dressed herself with a purpose as of mourning. "Mother," he said to her in the train, "you are in mourning,—as for a friend?" Then when she paused he asked again, "May I not be told for whom ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... merest boy. At eighty or ninety, according to the photographs, he would be a stalwart fellow with thick bark on his trunk, and fir-cones or acorns (or whatever was his speciality) hanging all over him. Just at present he was barely ten. I had only eighty years to wait ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... say, 'Come at once. Urgent. Noel.' That'll fetch him," said Noel with a twinkle. "He's making a speciality of me just now. He ought to be here ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... had taught that individuals alone have a real existence, and that the "essence" of things is not to be sought in the elements of unity and generality, or in the idea, as Plato taught, but in the elements of diversity and speciality. And furthermore, in opposition to Plato, he had taught his disciples to attach themselves to sensation, as the source of all knowledge. As the direct consequence of this teaching, we find his immediate successors, Dicearchus and Straton, deliberately setting aside ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... nobility in 1523, and finally of the peasants in 1526, that any material change took place; and then the centralization, such as it was, was in favour of the princes, rather than of the Imperial power, which, after Charles V's time, grew weaker and weaker. The speciality about the history of Germany is, that it has not known till our own day centralization on a national or racial ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... head or your stomach aches or you are worried and can't sleep, take a glassful of this: all your worries will at once disappear. Take good care of it and don't on any account give a drop away, it's a speciality; my grandfather got it from the monks at Radecznica, it's ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Williams was the talented coloured gentleman who had been extracted from small-time vaudeville by Mr. Abrahams to do a nightly speciality at the Flower Garden. He was, in fact, a trap-drummer: and it was his amiable practice, after he had done a few minutes trap-drumming, to rise from his seat and make a circular tour of the tables on the edge of the dancing-floor, whimsically pretending to clip the locks of the male patrons with ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... their pointed ends, seek out for themselves glowing nooks in the depths of the red coals, when they mulled your ale, or heated for you those delectable drinks, Purl, Flip, and Dog's Nose. The first of these humming compounds was a speciality of the Porters, which, through an inscription on its door-posts, gently appealed to your feelings as, 'The Early Purl House'. For, it would seem that Purl must always be taken early; though whether for any more distinctly stomachic reason than that, as the early bird catches the worm, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... administration. Its functions in peace are intellectual and educational, and in war it becomes the channel of executive power. Bourcet described the head of such a department as "the soul of an army." The British navy is without such a department. The army has borrowed the name, but has not maintained the speciality of function which is essential. In armies other than the British, the Chief of the General Staff is occupied solely with tactics and strategy, with the work of intellectual research by which Nelson and Napoleon prepared their ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... was what they call an astronomer. His speciality was the stars, nothing less; an' he knew 'em by name an' could tell you how far off they are an' what they weigh an' how many moons they had an'—oh, he knew 'em the same as I know the home herd, an' he didn't only know what ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... of Jehan Poyet is said to have assisted in the "Hours," thus while Bourdichon painted the miniatures, Poyet put in the flowers and fruit, etc.; but this share of work is by some believed to belong to a smaller Book of Hours executed for the Queen. Flowers and fruit are said to have been Poyet's speciality, and it is quite possible that he may have had the painting of the borders of the "Grandes Heures," while Bourdichon did the rest. The writer of the MS. was another native of Tours, named Jehan Riveron. During the reign of Francis I. the school of Tours ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... Logos exactly such as he would have derived from the diligent study of the fourth Gospel. But may he not have derived all this from Philo? No; because, if so, he would have referred Trypho, a Jew, to Philo, his brother Jew, which he never does. The speciality of St. John's teaching is not that he, like Plato or Philo, elaborates a Logos doctrine, but that once for all, with the authority of God, he identifies the Logos with the Divine Nature of our Lord. No other Evangelist or sacred ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... brave colleagues," continued Barbicane, "I asked myself if, whilst still remaining in our speciality, we could not undertake some grand experiment worthy of the nineteenth century, and if the progress of ballistics would not allow us to execute it with success. I have therefore sought, worked, calculated, and the conviction has resulted from my studies that we must succeed in an enterprise ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... when the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is caution;—advise velocity, when the first condition of success is deliberation;—and plead for generalization, when all the foundations of power must be laid in knowledge of speciality. ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... daughter was Aglae. Mademoiselle Aglae took charge - I may say, possession - of me. She was tall, gaunt, and bony, with a sharp aquiline nose, pomegranate cheek- bones, and large saffron teeth ever much in evidence. Her speciality, as I soon discovered, was sentiment. Like her sisters, she had had her 'affaires' in the plural. A Greek prince, so far as I could make out, was the last of her adorers. But I sometimes got into scrapes by mixing up the Greek prince with a Polish count, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... gets himself misunderstood; although, as a rule, he is not even worth misunderstanding. Gladstone was a demagogue: Disraeli a mystagogue. But ours is specially the time when a man can advertise his wares not as a universality, but as what the tradesmen call "a speciality." We all know this, for instance, about modern art. Michelangelo and Whistler were both fine artists; but one is obviously public, the other obviously private, or, rather, not obvious at all. Michelangelo's frescoes are doubtless finer than the popular ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... The speciality of Monsieur Ridoux's candidate was broken legs, girls in complaints of childhood, and fluxes of the womb. That was what he healed, but he must not be asked for anything else; besides fluxes of the womb, sprains, and girls in complaints of childhood, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... sufficient, and every one ought to add social work to his ordinary occupation. In fact, the monotony of any special occupation, and even the exclusive work of a scientific speciality, ends by giving the cerebral energy itself an exclusive character. The moral sentiments become atrophied. Exclusiveness in a speciality, practiced without any complement, easily leads to exclusiveness in love (not in the sexual appetite!). We often see two egoists, or several ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Sport we sympathize with that section of the Press which makes it a speciality. However, there are outlets; and one of our Sporting contemporaries has burst forth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... a hero because he is a man, because he overleaps the level of his life, and is greater than his race, being one of them? If he were of the heroic race, what virtue in being heroic? it is the assertion of his trivial life that makes his speciality evident,—the shadow that throws out the bas-relief. We chatter endlessly about the immense good of Washington's example: I believe its good would be more than doubled, could we be made, nationally, to see him as a human being, living on 'human nature's daily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... have done for individuals, they also wanted to do for nations. Humanity was to be divided into national workshops, having each its speciality. Russia, we were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn; England to spin cotton; Belgium to weave cloth; while Switzerland was to train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate city was to establish a specialty. Lyons was to weave silk, Auvergne ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Yorkshire, the cheeses from Wiltshire, and the pearmain apples from Kent. Exeter was famous for metal and corn; Worcester and London for wheat; Winchester for wine—there were vineyards in England then; Hertford for cattle, and Salisbury for game; York for wood; while the speciality of Oxford ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... making clear to others all in which he was interested, and at such times how handsome he looked! He was a thorough man of the world, able to converse in several languages at the cosmopolitan dinners which were a speciality of the Ravns. He was the owner of one of the few extensive estates in Norway, and had the control, it was said, ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... fact, though I fear she would not wish me to say so, I really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... that I have before this admired the mixture of cheerful cynicism and dry humour that is the speciality of Mr. MAX RITTENBERG. He has shown it again in Every Man His Price (METHUEN), but hardly, I think, to quite the same effect as formerly. My feeling about the book was that it started with a first-class idea for a plot of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... to translate more or less verbally, so as to run the risk of being unintelligible to a reader unacquainted with the original, to generalize what is special, and to borrow something of the imitator's licence, introducing a modern speciality in place of an ancient. Here, as I have found on other occasions of the kind, to be allowed a choice of evils is itself a matter for self- congratulation. To be shut up entirely to one or other of these ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Morrison, greatly incensed at having the Scriptures, her own speciality, quoted at her. "I'd like to know what bitterness yours has known, unless it's the bitterness of a bad conscience. Now I've come here to-day"—she raised her voice to a note of warning—"to give you a chance. To make you think, by pointing out the path you are treading. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... was a similar anticipation of the mediaeval Catholic Church. The Druids were not a special family, like the Levites, or in any way born into the priesthood. They were an order composed of persons selected, when young, out of the higher ranks of the community, either for speciality of intellect, or from disposition, or by the will of their parents, or from a desire to avoid military service, from which the Druids were exempt. There were no tribal distinctions among them. Their head- quarters were ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Shakspere. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while in art, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign either ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... But none abstained from opening the floodgates of their wrath on the authors of the latest menu. The authors' apologists, for—tell it not in Gath!—they had apologists still, argued that there were restaurants in Paris where cooked horse was a speciality. But special pleading so palpable only aggravated the prevailing resentment to the dish. There were a great many customs in Paris equally foreign to our, shall I say, Imperial ways; together with a plethora of scientific chefs who could metamorphose anything—rats as well as ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... life in America commends itself to the time-saving habits of a busy race; but the love of speciality in France modifies this advantage: in our inns a stated price covers all demands except for wine; here each separate necessity is a specific charge—the sheet of writing paper, the cake of soap, and the candle figure among the innumerable items of the bill. Thus an infinite subdivision makes all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for number three the question "And how do you like that name?" which he propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a speciality on that particular birthday, and not ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... people who have made a speciality of them. For one who has preferred to amass general knowledge rather than to specialize it is considered enough to know that they stick ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... only three[145] Vedas were accepted. But the Epics and the Puranas know of the fourfold Veda and place the Atharva Veda on a level with the other three. It was the manual of two ancient priestly families, the Atharvans and Angirasas, whose speciality was charms and prophylactics rather than the performance of the regular sacrifices. The hymns and magic songs which it contains were probably collected subsequently to the composition of the Brahmanas, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... with spoons, others with rakes, others again with pincers? Therefore, with such equipment as it possesses, the insect would be capable of abandoning cotton for leaves, leaves for resin, resin for mortar, if some predisposition of talent did not make it keep to its speciality. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Sparrow-hawk akcipitro. Sparse maldensa. Spasm spasmo. Spatter sxprucigi (sur). Spawn fisxsemo. Speak paroli. Speak through the nose nazparoli. Speaker parolanto. Spear lanco. Special speciala. Specialise specialigi. Specialist specialisto. Speciality specialo—eco. Specie monero. Species speco. Specimen modelo. Specious versxajna. Speck makuleto. Spectacle (a sight) vidajxo. Spectacles okulvitroj. Spectator rigardanto. Spectre fantomo. Spectrum spektro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... by four in the afternoon, and was able to do better than most men with his garden. Amongst other things, he raised flowers for sale. He was wont to send to a well-known nursery in Norfolk for his seeds—china-asters and stocks were his speciality—and he reared his plants under a little glass "light" which he had made for himself out of a few old window-sashes. His pains with these flowers were unsparing. Neighbours laughed at him (so his wife assured me, with some pride) because he went to the plants down on his hands and knees, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... which are so decidedly baptized in catalogues, the public would be surprised to learn how few comparatively can be historically traced to their authors. The majority are named upon the authority of local judges, whose acquaintance with art may be limited to one speciality, or who rely upon such opinions as can be gathered from the best available sources. Hence the frequent changes in the nomenclatures. We cannot, therefore, accept such documents as infallible, except in those cases where internal evidence and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... adventure called also for youth and energy. But there, perhaps, there was less scope for the distinctive line—and already they had Garvin. Quite a number of Benham's friends pointed out to him the value of working out some special aspect of our national political interests. A very useful speciality was the Balkans. Mr. Pope, the well-known publicist, whose very sound and considerable reputation was based on the East Purblow Labour Experiment, met Benham at lunch and proposed to go with him in a spirit of instructive association to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... my sole companion at the breakfast table, and she eyed me with a peculiar look as I hungrily put away a lot of devilled kidneys, as well as two raw eggs beat up and mixed in my coffee, to which she slyly added a little fine old Cognac, a speciality of my father as a pick-me-up ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... and Kampf, the man you saw her with, always work together. They indeed suggested this present little affair, for they knew that Italian women bring lots of jewellery here, in order to show it off. Besides, hotels are their speciality. So there seemed to Bindo no reason why we should not have a little of the best of it. The diamond necklace of the Signora Jacobi is well known to be one of the finest in all Italy; therefore, on several occasions, I lent her Rosalie for hair-dressing, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... veins; and, as if my position had not been perilous enough in reality, my overwrought imagination must needs add to it a thousand extravagant fantasies. Patience had the reputation of being a wolf-rearer. This, as you know, is a cabalistic speciality accredited in all countries. I kept on fancying, therefore, that I saw this devilish little gray-beard, escorted by his ravening pack, and himself in the form of a demi-wolf, pursing me through the woods. Several times when rabbits got up at my feet I almost fell backwards from the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... And yet it describes the whole man— not always willingly—with marvelous truth and completeness. It is no small matter that Benvenuto, whose most important works have perished half finished, and who, as an artist, is perfect only in his little decorative speciality, but in other respects, if judged by the works of him which remain, is surpassed by so many of his greater contemporaries—that Benvenuto as a man will interest mankind to the end of time. It does not spoil the impression when the reader often detects ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the fibre known as Manila hemp is a speciality of the Colony, and the prospect of over-production, almost annihilating profits to producers—as in the sugar colonies—is at present remote, although the competition with other fibre is severe. The chief fibre-producing ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... of the plays of Ford, Dekker, Tourneur, Marston, and Middleton; names very dear to the lover of our old Drama, but I venture to think names somewhat inappropriate in a list of books for a reader who does not make the drama a speciality. Lamb's Selections would be ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... method to the next of colour laid by colour. Thus used there is something incomplete about it. One finds oneself longing for more colours than one's shuttles or blocks allow one. There is a need felt for the speciality of the next method, where the dividing line is used, and it gradually gets drawn into that method. Which, indeed, is the last I have to speak to you of, and in which ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... constitution's weak, but he'll pull round. Money saved him. On the 'Aurelia' I got hold of all the facts of the case by wireless, and took a grip of the situation. I sized up the doctors here as a couple of well-meaning fools. I wired to Chicago for a man who's made a speciality of opsonic treatment for pneumonia. His own invention—something the other doctors sneer at. I had him packed from Chicago to Golden Beach by special train, with full authority to boss the case.... Yes, it's money that saved my boy. Money, Dean, holds the power of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... his reputation as an adviser in cases of mental disease; and as, happily, mental diseases are less common than bodily ailments, Dr. Rylance had not the continuous work of a Gull or a Jenner. His speciality paid him remarkably well. His cases hung long on hand, and when he had a patient of wealth and standing Dr. Rylance knew how to keep him. His treatment was soothing and palliative, as befitted an enlightened age. In an age of scepticism no one could expect Dr. Rylance to work miraculous cures. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... in most different things; some in eating and drinking, some in the heaping up of money, some in gambling, some in political power, some in the gratification of affection, some in reputation of one sort or another. But each one seeks his own speciality because he thinks that he shall be happy, that it will be well with him, when he has attained that. All men, then, do all things for happiness, though not all place their happiness in the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... tell it was classical, because the banjo players were leaning back and chewing gum; and in New York restaurants only death or a classical speciality ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... which case the activity and the noise would become deafening. Given groups might be trading in different things; but the large majority of them would abandon what they were doing in order to take advantage of a speciality. The eagerness of certain young brokers or clerks to discover all that was going on, and to take advantage of any given rise or fall, made for quick physical action, darting to and fro, the excited elevation of explanatory fingers. Distorted faces were shoved over shoulders or under arms. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... some of their number who are as richly comical as Mr. Vincent Crummies himself. They are like the dyer's hand, subdued to what they work in. I was thrown a great deal into the society of one elderly young gentleman whose speciality had for years been that sort of high-flying rattling comedy of which Charles Mathews was the chief exponent in my youth. He had the most suasive, genial, and gentlemanly comedy manner conceivable, and was never for a minute away from the footlights. At breakfast, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... Heidsieck's takes place, in accordance with the good old rule, in the cellars underground, where we noticed large stocks of wine three and five years old, the former in the first stage of sur-pointe, and the latter awaiting shipment. It is a speciality of the house to ship only matured wine, which is necessarily of a higher character than the ordinary youthful growths, for a few years have a wonderful influence in developing the finer qualities of champagne. At the time of our visit, in the spring of 1877, when the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... said Uncle Solomon, rather as if he was treating a schoolboy. 'What's their speciality 'ere, now? Well, you can give me,' he added to the waiter, with the manner of a man conferring a particular favour, 'you can give me a chump chop, underdone, and a sausage. And bring this young gentleman ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... there are many who will bear the same testimony,—that I never went to Mr. Parker to talk over a subject which I had just made a speciality, without finding that on that particular matter he happened to know, without any special investigation, more than I did. This extended beyond books, sometimes stretching into things where his questioner's opportunities of knowledge had seemed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... links have not been lost, criticism succeeds in disentangling the relationships by persistent and ingenious applications of the method of repeated comparisons. Modern scholars (Krusch, for example, who has made a speciality of Merovingian hagiography) have recently constructed, by the use of this method, precise genealogies of the utmost solidity.[87] The results of the critical investigation of authorship, as applied to the filiation of documents, are of ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... physically, we should be understood as alluding to those general, uniform, absolute, consistent, and beautiful laws, which control and render harmonious, as a great whole, the entire action, affinities, and destinies of the universe; and when we say nature in the speciality, we would be understood to speak of the nature of a rock, of a tree, of air, fire, water, and land. Again, in alluding to a moral nature in the abstract, we mean sin, and its weaknesses, its attractions, its deformities-in a word, its totality; while, on the other hand, when we use the term, in ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "I believe they make a speciality of digging up these dead folks. Glad they weren't Kerry ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... aspirations will not do the work; grand speeches will not solve the problems. The poet is a "phrasemaker"; true; but show us the man in these days who is more than a phrasemaker! Where is he who has positive ideas beyond the small circle of his speciality? In rejecting the guidance of the Poet to whom shall we apply? To the Priest? He mumbles the litany of an ancient time which falls on unbelieving ears. To the Lawyer? He is a metaphysician with precedents for data. To the Litterateur? ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... could more easily coexist. Here lay the explanation of the fact that upon the same oak hundreds of different insects might be found. Other things being equal, the same applies to society. He who finds some unadopted speciality possesses a means of his own for getting a living. It is by this division of their manifold tasks that men contrive not to crush each other. Here we obviously have a Darwinian law serving as intermediary in the explanation of that progress of division of labour which itself explains so ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... to know about that night in the Magic Cave. Everyone who heard of it was shocked, everyone except Max, and he made a speciality of never being shocked at anything. Why, it was even possible—here a new thought leaped up and struck her an unexpected blow—was it not more than possible that it was this self-same event that had given rise to the insult that had led to the duel? ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... all, babies are not a German speciality," said Irais, "and I don't quite see why you should bring them into a book of German travels. Elizabeth's babies have each got the fashionable number of arms and legs, and are exactly the ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... earned by the newcomer to the town; and these opinions he retained until the time when a certain speciality of his, a certain scheme of his (the reader will learn presently what it was), plunged the majority of the townsfolk into a sea ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... But there is not much to say in defence of such an association. The elephants have, as a matter of fact, not got hoofs, and they have five toes on each foot. The five toes of the front foot have each a nail, whilst usually only four toes of the hind foot have nails. A speciality of the elephant is the great circular pad of thick skin overlying fat and fibrous tissue, which forms the sole of the foot and bears the animal's enormous weight. This buffer-like development of the foot existed in ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... too severely didactic, too purely logical, too strongly distinct, or too acutely exact. But it does not follow, etymologically, that a man is right because he is particular. He may be very good or very bad, and yet be only such because he is particularly so. Singularity, eccentricity, speciality, isolation, oddity, and hundreds of other things which might be mentioned, all involve particularity. But we do not intend, to "grammar-out" the question, nor to disengage and waste our gas in definitions. The particular ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... surface, we find that in manner and customs, as well as dress and outward appearance, the peasant and agricultural population, generally, differ no little from their remote country-people, the Bretons. In this famous cheese-making country, the "Fromage de Brie" being the speciality of these rich dairy farms, there is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and little that can be called poetic. The people are wealthy, laborious, and progressive. The farmers' wives, however hard they may work at home, wear the smartest of Parisian bonnets and gowns ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... thus (drew a long inhalation)—is well. Warts (a labourer held up a horny hand, the middle joint of the little finger disfigured with such excrescences)? Nothing easier! You take this bottle—warts are my speciality—you rub the wart with this. Thank you, fifty centimes. Come here next Sunday. If the wart be not gone—I do not say it will not leave a scar, but the scar will disappear in a month—here is a knife, stick it into ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... fixed with some irony on his painting. Dabble at it indeed. Gerald had shown her some of his sketches and they had hardly seemed to Althea to merit more than that description. Her own tastes had grown up securely framed by books and lectures. Her speciality was early Italian art. She liked pictures of Madonnas surrounded by exquisite accessories—all of which she accurately remembered. She didn't at all care for Japanese prints, and Gerald's sketches looked to her rather like Japanese prints. She really didn't imagine that he intended her to take them ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... taxidermy profess to give descriptions of the attitudes of animals, I cannot do so for the simple reason that I consider the acquirement a speciality and purely a matter of experience. Nature must be closely studied; failing this, reference must be made to illustrated works on natural history. All of Gould's works are grand guides to attitudes of specimens ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... to it at once. When great weltering populations, like that of Lancashire, are thrown suddenly into such a helpless state as now, it is almost impossible to lay hold at once of every nice distinction of circumstances that gives a speciality of suffering to the different households of the poor. But I believe, as this time of trouble goes on, the relief committees are giving a more careful and delicate consideration to the respective ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... we went ashore again in the whale-boat, which Tom had engaged to wait on us during our stay, and made the best of our way to a warehouse to look at some ponchos, which are the speciality of this part of South America. Everybody wears one, from the beggar to the highest official. The best kind of ponchos are very expensive, being made from a particular part of the finest hair of the vicuna, hand-woven by women, in the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... she's a regular beauty, or that she goes in for any speciality by way of features or eyelashes, or hair, or a figure, or anything really sensational of that sort, as I do in one or two directions. But there's a rose and pearl and gold-brown adorableness about her; you like her all the better for some little puritanical quaintnesses; ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... seemed capable of every sort of expression within a few changing moments, and a poise of head and carriage of body which only perfect health and the most scientific physical training can produce. In a word, she was one of those miraculous developments of femininity which Nature seems to have made a speciality for the particular benefit of the younger branch of the Anglo-Saxon race. As for her dress—well, the shortest and best way to describe that is to say ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... made himself very agreeable at dinner, talking upon all sorts of subjects, and never letting drop a single word to remind Adela that she was in the presence of a medical man. Nor did he seem to take any notice of her more than was required by ordinary politeness; but behavior without speciality of any sort, he drew his judgments from her general manner, and such glances as fell naturally to his share, of those that must pass between all the persons making up a small dinner-company. This enabled him to see her as ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... lieutenant was, like the captain, fond of inventing and designing things, but his speciality took the form of logs for determining the speed of craft through the water; and in the course of his experiments he had provided each of the frigate's boats with an ingenious spring arrangement which, ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... life in modern Wessex. It is well known, of course, that although I often write agricultural novels, I invariably call a spade a spade, and not an agricultural implement. Thus I am led to speak in plain language of women, their misdoings, and their undoings. Unstrained dialect is a speciality. If you want to know the extent of Wessex, consult histories of the Heptarchy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... inconvenience of long hair when our own regimental tonsorial artist is waiting to bob it for you free of charge? Luxurious saloon; deft workmanship; no tips. His speciality—memento locks. Twelve such souvenirs guaranteed from one crop. Bald soldiers supplied to taste from surplus clippings. A delicate, lasting and inexpensive compliment to lady friends on leaving a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... only companion of a very miserable mother. And all that mother's misery had apparently come from the fact of her having a husband. Those first years of the child's life had been very sad; very monotonous, very depressing. Perhaps the effect of them did but confirm the speciality of an idiosyncrasy, which would have been much the same without them. But, at all events, when the child was brought to the house of her great-aunt, it seemed as if her mind and character had been too long and too ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the daughter of the drunken organist who desecrated my father's tomb, though that concerns you not:—her own speciality, as you see, is that she is ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... silver and gold, and fitting it with a silken leash to hang about his shoulder. The hounds have been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Mesmer, or Saint Hubert in the Ardennes, or some other holy intercessor who has made a speciality of the health of hunting-dogs. In the grey dawn the game was turned and the branch broken by our best piqueur. A rare day's hunting lies before us. Wind a jolly flourish, sound the bien-aller with all your lungs. Jacques must stand by, hat in hand, while the quarry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an expert pessimist. Vice, accidents, and terrible ends are his speciality. All virtue is to him an exception, and by him is immediately forgotten. In sudden deaths you cannot catch him out. If you were tossed from the horns of a bull into the jaws of a crocodile, and died of pneumonia contracted during the ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... the boys, the Moro people do not make a speciality of education. The young men are taught from the Koran by priests, who also teach the art of making characters in Arabic. Their music is for the most part religious, inharmonious, and unmelodious. The coluctang, their most important instrument, resembles our guitar. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... character, type, quality, crasis[obs3], diathesis[obs3]. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. endowment, capacity; capability &c. (power) 157. moods, declensions, features, aspects; peculiarities &c. (speciality) 79; idiosyncrasy, oddity; idiocrasy &c. (tendency) 176[obs3]; diagnostics. V. be in the blood, run in the blood; be born so; be intrinsic &c. adj. Adj. derived from within, subjective; intrinsic, intrinsical[obs3]; fundamental, normal; implanted, inherent, essential, natural; innate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... they were seated, and the head-waiter had ceased to hover, "is a great meeting. I was complaining with some acerbity to Comrade Jackson, before you introduced your very interesting performing-animal speciality, that things in New York were too quiet, too decorous. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... case of contagious diseases, &c., &c. The trade in coffin "furniture" seems to have originated about 1760, when one ingenious "Mole" pushed it forward; and among the list of patents taken out in 1796 by a local worthy there is one for "a patent coffin," though its particular speciality could not have met with much approval, as although some thousands of bodies have been removed from our various sepultures nothing curious or rarer than rotten boards and old lead ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... imagine The Nights being read to any profit by men of the West without commentary. My annotations avoid only one subject, parallels of European folklore and fabliaux which, however interesting, would overswell the bulk of a book whose speciality is anthropology. The accidents of my life, it may be said without undue presumption, my long dealings with Arabs and other Mahommedans, and my familiarity not only with their idiom but with their turn of thought, and with that racial individuality which baffles description, have given ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of the very few painters whom Degas has advised, with Forain and M. Ernest Rouart. (This latter, a painter himself, a son of the painter and wealthy collector Henri Rouart, has married Mme. Manet's daughter who is also an artist.) Miss Cassatt has made a speciality of studying children, and she is, perhaps, the artist of this period who has understood and expressed them with the greatest originality. She is a pastellist of note, and some of her pastels are as good as Manet's and Degas's, so far as broad execution and brilliancy and delicacy of tones are concerned. ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... philosophy—the axioms of a universal philosophy—with all the force of their universality, must be brought to bear upon it, through all its developments. The universal historical laws, in that modification of them which the speciality of the human kind creates, must be impartially set forth here. The law of DUTY, as the NATURAL LAW of human society; the law of humanity, as the law, nay, THE FORM, of the HUMAN kind, stamped on it with the Creator's stamp, that order from the universal law of kinds that gives ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... literary criticism more life than in France. It engages the attention of the best minds. No writer, whatever be his speciality, thinks it derogatory to give long and elaborate notices in the daily press of new books or new editions of old books. Thus, Sainte-Beuve in the "Moniteur," De Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, Philarete Chasles, Prevost-Paradol in the "Journal des Debats," not to mention the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... for yourself? Or have you been stone deaf in this office for two years? It stands to reason that a man who's responsible for all the largest new eyesores in London would impress any corporation. Clever chap, Corver! Instead of wasting his time in travel and study, he made a speciality of learning how to talk to committees. And he was always full of ideas like the piebald pony, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the reader to become acquainted with the doctrines and customs of the principal religions of the world, without having to consult numerous volumes. He has not come to the task without some preparation, for it is more than twenty-five years since he first made of this study a speciality. In this volume it is attempted to give the latest results of modern investigations, so far as any definite and trustworthy facts have been attained. But the writer is well aware of the difficulty of being always accurate in a task which involves such interminable ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... generally a bunch of dew-sprinkled roses, with the dew-drops very highly finished, or else a wayside shrine, and a peasant woman, with her back turned, kneeling before it. She did backs very well, but she was a little weak in faces. Flowers, however, were her speciality, and though her touch was a little old-fashioned and finical, she painted them with remarkable skill. Her pictures were chiefly bought by the English. Rowland had made her acquaintance early in the ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... aged dame became conscious of the great honor thus to be conferred upon her, she at once set to work in the culinary department with a dexterity and skill of art which is incredible to those who are ignorant of the great speciality of negresses. There was sudden havoc among the poultry, and fruit and vegetables found their way from the corn field in abundant variety to the large chimney place. Meanwhile the captain shouldered his piece and brought, from an adjacent thicket, two large fox squirrels to add to the variety ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... angry man in my life it was Leland Stanford. He fairly raved. He jumped at his old speciality, Gov. Low's head; he tore it loose from his body and knocked him down with it. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... which was rich in books of romance, and what was then termed 'the black art'; but Webster was the author of a rare volume on witchcraft, so that his books were his literary tools—just as, a century later, John Rennie, the distinguished civil engineer, made a speciality of mathematical books, of which he had a collection nearly complete in all languages. Dr. Benjamin Moseley's library, which was sold by Stewart in March, 1814, was composed for the most part of books on astrology, magic, and facetiae. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... by which the appearance of Jesus was prepared and rendered possible; but they explain only the possibility, not the reality of the appearance. But this with its historically not deducible power is the decisive thing. If some one has recently said that "the historical speciality of the person of Jesus" is not the main thing in Christianity, he has thereby betrayed that he does not know how a religion that is worthy of the name is founded, propagated, and maintained. For the latest attempt to ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... has given us, and which the isolated man cannot satisfy unaided, Nature has granted to the race a power refused to the individual. This gives rise to the principle of the DIVISION OF LABOR,—a principle founded on the SPECIALITY ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Marjorie Pope, and for a year or two after his marriage, was engaged in research work. His speciality was molecular physics and he was a particularly brilliant investigator. That research, with all the possibilities that it held of some immense discovery of the laws that govern the constitution of inorganic and progressively, perhaps, of organic, matter, was sufficient ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... treaty-making!) and lovely faded tapestries said to be "genuinely" of the time when no one mentioned a piece of tapestry save as an "arras." But the shop I haunted was a cake-shop. It was called "Au Coeur d'Arras," because the famous speciality of Arras was a heart-shaped cake; but I wasn't lured there so much by the charm of les coeurs as by that of the person ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... tropical forests, and the mountain-sides are covered with trees of the temperate zone—the stately deodar cedars, spruce fir, maples, walnut, sycamore, and birch; while in the valley itself grow poplars, willows, mulberries, and most beautiful of all, and a speciality of Kashmir, the magnificent chenar tree—akin to the plane tree of Europe, but larger, fuller, and ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... neatly-packed jars of the raspberry jam for which the town is famous are brought to the doors of the railway carriage. Further on at Commercy, you are enticed to regale upon unrivalled cakes called "Madeleines de Commercy," and not a town, I believe, of this favoured district is without its speciality in the shape ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... which so many consider the schoolmaster's speciality, is a larger business than they think. The Family exists to do it, the Church exists to do it. It is the real business of the State. The great Universe itself, with all its vastness, its powers and its mysteries, was created ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... influence appears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (our first MASTER, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each, and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, this conscientious and didactic power which is the speciality of its progressive existence. And just as the new-born and natural art of Athens collects and reanimates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition, purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of Florence collects and animates ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... mechanical engineering which Mr. Maudslay introduced. Before his time no system had been followed in proportioning the number of threads of screws to their diameter. Every bolt and nut was thus a speciality in itself, and neither possessed nor admitted of any community with its neighbours. To such an extent had this practice been carried that all bolts and their corresponding nuts had to be specially marked as belonging to each other. Any intermixture that occurred ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... a mass of inconsistency!—when you were saying only to-day that you saw no just cause or impediment why women should not do anything for which they have a special fitness. Now I feel politics will be my speciality, and I would not canvass for any one unless I quite understood ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... prison, like all prisons, was a scandal and an affront of waste motion. They put me in the jute-mill. The criminality of wastefulness irritated me. Why should it not? Elimination of waste motion was my speciality. Before the invention of steam or steam-driven looms three thousand years before, I had rotted in prison in old Babylon; and, trust me, I speak the truth when I say that in that ancient day we prisoners wove more efficiently on hand-looms than did the prisoners in the steam-powered loom-rooms ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... shall have to set our wits together in another direction. I tell you, Jennie, I know I have influence enough to have you made a member of the special police. Shall I introduce you as from America, and say that you have made a speciality of solving mysteries? An appointment to the special police would allow you to have unrestricted entrance to the secret portion of the Treasury building. You would see the rooms damaged by the explosion, and you would learn what the police have discovered. With that knowledge to begin with, we might ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... of the 'middles,' which he considered to be the speciality of himself and his friend Sandars. The middle, originally an article upon some not strictly political topic, had grown in their hands into a kind of lay sermon. For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... will commonly be found that both these conditions are present where a modern firm of manufacturers or merchants succeeds in maintaining during a long period of time a prosperous or paying business. The firm, though in close competition over part of the field of industry, will have a speciality of a certain class of wares, at any rate in certain markets, and it will be fortified by a more or less firmly fixed rate of prices extending over the whole class of commodities. Both of these forces ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... more exact to say that she listened, as she was not a great talker herself. She had a horror of a certain kind of conversation, of that futile, paradoxical and spasmodic kind which is the speciality of "brilliant talkers." Sparkling conversation of this sort disconcerted her and made her feel ill at ease. She did not like the topic to be the literary profession either. This exasperated Gautier, who would not admit of there ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... on, a round Roman pillar near the entrance of the church worn smooth by the bodies of females who press themselves between it and the wall, in order to become mothers. The notion caused him some amusement—he evidently thought this practice a speciality ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... newspapers make a speciality of the fabrication of sensational rumours. I could not ask any better vengeance for our beloved country than to have their stories placed before the most loyal of Sovereigns, the most far-seeing of diplomats, of ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... free-thinking literature of the highest class. The number of buyers was, of course, exceedingly limited, both by the thoughtful character of the works published, and by the unpopularity of the opinions expressed in them. The marvel is that such a speciality in publishing could be made to support itself at all. As a matter of fact, some of the wealthier free-thinkers published their works, or those of others, at their own expense, and some helped to maintain the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al |
