"Theme" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general exhortation to that practical wisdom which walks in the path of righteousness. The principles laid down here are true in regard to drunkenness and abstinence, but they are intended to receive a wider application, and to that wider application we must first look. The theme is the old, familiar one of the two paths, and the aim is to recommend the better way by setting forth the contrasted effects of walking in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... often denote it by some mark only, as those other titles Andria Eunuchus, or these, Sylla, Cicero, Torquatus. I love a poetic march, by leaps and skips, 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble; and a little demoniacal. There are places in Plutarch where he forgets his theme, where the proposition of his argument is only found incidentally, and stuffed throughout with foreign matter. Do but observe his meanders in the Demon of Socrates. How beautiful are his variations and digressions; and then most of all, when ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... one seizes on such a theme he is sure to be carried to extremities with it. It was one of Price's favourite theories, that the time when interest was highest was the best time for borrowing money, because the borrowed sinking-fund would then bring the highest interest. One is astonished in times like these, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... Mr. Lindsay's arm was around her shoulders, and she was left in quiet to listen. The conversation was very lively, and on a subject very interesting to her; for America had been always a darling theme; Scottish struggles for freedom were fresh in her mind; her attention had long ago been called to Switzerland and its history by Alice and Mrs. Vawse, and French history had formed a good part of her last winter's reading. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... according to the laws of etiquette to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books, and in the interest of her favorite theme she found even the "grand square" an impertinent interruption, while her own deficiences became almost as great as her partner's; yet, when the music ended with a flourish, and her last curtsy was successfully achieved, she longed to begin all over again, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... that impossible in such very dissimilar actresses as we must have been. The quantity of effect produced, of course I cannot judge of; but it seems to me, from what I have seen and known of her off the stage, that the quality must have been essentially different. This theme, however, should not be begun in the corner of a letter already ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... talked for a while. Garstin had said most. He had been more agreeable than usual, and had explained to Arabian, rather as one explains to a child, that a worker in an art is sometimes baffled for a time, a writer by his theme, a musician by his floating and perhaps half-nebulous conception, a painter by his subject. Then he must wait, cursing perhaps, damning his own impotence, dreading its continuance. But there is nothing else to be done. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... compositions of this kind is essentially of the same nature as that which is derived from pursuits which are commonly regarded as purely intellectual. I mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the same as in most of my problems in morphology—that you have the theme in one of the old masters' works followed out in all its endless variations, always appearing and always reminding you of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... pleasures[306]. His son, Rahula, is mentioned several times in the Pitakas but his wife only once and then not by name but as "the princess who was the mother of Rahula[307]." His separation from her becomes in the later legend the theme of an affecting tale but the scanty allusions to his family found in the Pitakas are devoid of sentimental touches. A remarkable passage is preserved in the Anguttara Nikaya[308] describing his ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... in which the characters of scholars and beauties is delineated their allusions are again repeatedly of Wen Chuen, their theme in every page of Tzu Chien; a thousand volumes present no diversity; and a thousand characters are but a counterpart of each other. What is more, these works, throughout all their pages, cannot help bordering on extreme licence. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Peloponnesian cities which the Dorians invaded and possessed, Homer makes as broad an allusion to the conquests of the Heraclidae, not only as would be consistent with the pride of an Ionic Greek in attesting the triumphs of the national Dorian foe, but as the nature of a theme cast in a distant period, and remarkably removed, in its general conduct, from the historical detail of subsequent events, would warrant to the poet [165]. And here I may observe, that if the date thus assigned to Homer be correct, the very subject of the Iliad might have been suggested ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great theme, however, was Christ, and I think that most men in that little market town, and a great many of those who used to come to the fair, both heard and understood the great gospel ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... town of Ternate, they were conducted to a large cabin, built of palmetto leaves and bamboo, and requested not to leave it until their arrival had been announced to the king. The peculiar courtesy and good breeding of these islanders was the constant theme of remark of Philip and Krantz; their religion, as well as their dress, appeared to be a compound of the Mahometan ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Henry mean by his resolve "to preach Christ crucified in a crucified style"? More perhaps than he thought or knew. "He shall testify of me," is Jesus' saying concerning the promised Paraclete. The Comforter bears witness to the Crucified. No other theme in the pulpit can be sure of commanding his co-operation. {144} Philosophy, poetry, art, literature, sociology, ethics, and history are attractive subjects to many minds, and they who handle such themes in the pulpit may set them forth ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... poet, was suddenly transferred from his plough in Ayrshire to the polished circles of Edinburg, his ease of manner, and nice observance of the rules of good-breeding, excited much surprise, and became the theme of frequent conversation. The same thing has been remarked of Tecumseh: whether seated at the tables of generals McArthur and Worthington, as he was during the council at Chillicothe in 1807, or brought in contact with British officers of the highest rank, ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... Glenorchy. The poem, or lay, is descriptive, less of the forest, or its mountain fastnesses, than of the habits of the creatures that tenant the locality—the dun-deer, and the roe. So minutely enthusiastic is the hunter's treatment of his theme, that the attempt to win any favour for his performance from the Saxon reader, is attended with no small risk,—although it is possible that a little practice with the rifle in any similar wilderness may propitiate even the holiday sportsman somewhat in favour of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... time also he began to translate the simpler odes of Horace. One of these (viii. Bk. II.) long afterwards suggested to him the theme of his "Instans Tyrannus." It has been put on record that his sister remembers him, as a very little boy, walking round and round the dining-room table, and spanning out the scansion of his verses with his hand on the smooth mahogany. He was scarce ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... especially formed, "he felt the need of more intimate affection." Thus, after many years of lonely wandering, another period of Longfellow's life opened with his marriage in 1843. Had he himself been writing of another, he might have divided his story into cantos, each one with a separate theme. One of aspiration, one of endeavor, one with the despair of young sorrow, and one of triumphant love. Advancing thus through the gamut of human experience he might have closed the scene with the immortal ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... soft'ning accents move, Soft as the strain of constant Emma's love: Or let his fancy choose some jovial theme. As when he told Hans Carvel's jealous dream; Prior th' admiring reader entertains, With Chaucer's humour, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... frolics of the sun-bird is revealed. Time cannot lag with such gay, saucy creatures, so while they wait half a dozen or more congregate in a circle and with uplifted heads directed towards a common centre sing their song in unison. Whether the theme of the song is of protest against the tardiness of the tree, or of thanks in anticipation, or of exultation in race, or of rivalry, matters not; but one is inclined to the last theory, for none but males take part in it. The sun glints on their burnished breasts, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... there, to which I have already referred. The next process was to arrange the many separate pages and seeming fragments into heaps, by subjects; and finally to examine these carefully and, with a view to 'connections,' to place them together. In not a few cases where the theme was attractive and the prospect promising, utter failure to complete the article or sketch was the result, the opening or ending passages, or a page in the middle, having ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... sentimental purr, and Margaret was fairly boiling with rage at him; but she would not let her temper give way, especially when she was talking on the sacred theme of the Christ. She felt as if she must scream or jump out over the wheel and run away from this obnoxious man, but she knew she would do neither. She knew she would sit calmly through the expedition and somehow control that conversation. There was one relief, anyway. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... thus occasioned to my observations made me destroy my journal, and I have now to write to you only about London—only about London! What an expression for this human universe, as my brother calls it, as if my weak feminine pen were equal to the stupendous theme! ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... nevertheless an indubitable fact that the custom is widely prevalent, and that Hong Kong is a market for the buying and selling of women which the Government is powerless to touch. Exeter Hall in possession of these facts would indeed have a theme for pious lucubrations." ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a writer on landscape-gardening who has been supposed to have well treated his theme: ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a narrative of railway life at home, not of Imperial matters abroad, and it is therefore clearly my duty not to wander too far from my theme; nevertheless my readers will perhaps forgive me if in my next chapter I give some account of the Commission and its doings. The fact that I was placed on the Commission chiefly because I was a railway man is, after all, some ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... The theme of the Treatise on the Sensations, 1754, is: Memory, comparison, judgment, abstraction, and reflection (in a word, cognition) are nothing but different forms of attention; similarly the emotions, the appetites, and the will, nothing but modifications of desire; while both alike take their ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... against all mankind, the victor in the election, Senator Harding, of Ohio, knew better. The election returns were hardly announced before he began to ask the advice of his countrymen on the pressing theme that would not be downed: "What part shall America—first among the nations of the earth in wealth and power—assume at the council ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... which announced forthcoming publications. Amongst them was a notice of a satirical journal, very low priced, and already advanced to its third or fourth number. My heart palpitated a little on seeing myself announced as the principal theme for the malice of the current number. The reader must not suppose that I was left in any doubt as to the quality of the notice with which I had been honoured; and that, by possibility, I was solacing my vanity with some anticipation of honeyed compliments. That, I can assure him, was made altogether ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... cases I could have recited showing the ill recompense that so often overtakes the virtuous action; but, as I explained to Bute, it would have saddened me to dwell upon the theme. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... be pointed out—and yet almost without a place in our literature. Other rivers, historically lesser rivers, have had their stories told again and again, their beauties lauded, and their praises sung. But this great pioneer waterway, fit theme for an ode, is to-day our ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... lost, in his sense of conscious dignity, the keen northern prudence which recommended a good understanding with the butler. Our mendicant envoy drank ale, and talked over old stories with his comrade, until, no other topic of conversation occurring, he resolved to take up the theme of his embassy, which had for some time ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... great natural powers of pleasing, his warm social temperament, and his capability of forming ardent attachments for friends, many of them women, he should never have formed an attachment of the heart. Even in his youthful and poetical days, the subject of love, so frequently the theme of boyish song, is never alluded to; while his school friendships are often recalled to mind and, indeed, made the special subject of his verse. It seems odd to find him, when at Shrewsbury—a handsome fellow, with a ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... really could not tell. I'm not sufficiently in his confidence. . . . Honour thy father and thy mother," he proceeded, reverting to his former theme. "What think you, Heard, of this old injunction? Is it not altogether obsolete? Was it not written for quite other conditions? Honour thy father and mother. Why? The State educates children, feeds them, investigates and cures their complaints, washes and weighs them, reports on their ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Monckton, who returned in about a fortnight to the Grove, observed the encreasing influence of Albany with the most serious concern. The bounties of Cecilia, extensive, magnificent, unlimited, were the theme of every tongue, and though sometimes censured and sometimes admired, they were wondered at universally. He suffered her for a while to go on without remonstrance, hoping her enthusiasm would abate, as its novelty wore out: but finding that ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... same theme in metre and rhyme will be a much more difficult matter. The great thing will be to avoid getting mud at the end of a line, for the reasons already given. We had better have long ten-syllable lines, and we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... Nottingham, hearing continually of this pother, fell a-chattering between themselves, and ere a week was out Monceux's reward of a hundred golden pieces for the head of Robin Hood was the one theme of conversation in ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... from Househill (a seat in the vicinity) to Cruikston Castle, the country is rich, and the scenery delightful. The castle itself might be the subject of volumes, as it has been the theme of many a poet, and the subject of many a painter's pencil. Its name is known all over the world, or may be so, from the circumstance of its once having been the residence of Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Lord Darnly; and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... demi-god. The opening orchestra of shot and shell braces up the mind of the soldier and attunes it up to receive new sensitiveness. The bullets play strange dirges on the strings of life before they break them, and each dirge has its theme, some song of spiritual things. His gaze is towards the sky line and he sees strange things, a whole battery of lights each of which is in its way a revelation. The battle chorus crying to the night of long silence becomes a prayer, and the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... during this lecture to find my theme in changes which are now going forward in English, but I cannot finish it without drawing one illustration from its remoter periods, and bidding you to note a force not now waning and failing from it, but extinct long ago. I cannot well pass it by; being as it is by far ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... inanity of sublunary things has afforded a theme to philosophers, moralists, and divines, from the earliest records of antiquity; "Vanity of vanities!" says the preacher, "all is vanity!" Nor is there any one, I suppose, who has passed the meridian of life, who has not at some moments ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... paternally delighted with his virtues, you will always be an excellent gentleman, but a somewhat questionable biographer. Indeed, we can only be sorry and surprised that Principal Shairp should have chosen a theme so uncongenial. When we find a man writing on Burns, who likes neither "Holy Willie," nor the "Beggars," nor the "Ordination," nothing is adequate to the situation but the old cry of Geronte: "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?" And every merit we find in the book, which is sober ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... placid, gently beaming little philosopher, with a large beard and an oval brow, and though he wrote several things besides "Festus," they never detached themselves in the public mind from the general theme of that production. Bailey himself seemed finally to have recognized this, and he spent his later years (he lived to a great age) in issuing continually fresh editions of his book, with expansions and later thoughts, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... cut it out and let me finish this theme. Every time I've started to write you've broken in and driven every blooming idea out of my head. Now quit it. You better pitch into your own work for to-morrow. Dig out all the Cicero you can, and later I'll help you with ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... had loved. It was probable also that light would come to him from the talk of the rest of the company: the Colonel's queer habit, both as it affected his own situation and as it affected his wife, would be a familiar theme in any house in which he was in the habit of staying. Lyon had not observed in the circles in which he visited any marked abstention from comment on the singularities of their members. It interfered with his progress that the Colonel hunted all day, while he plied his brushes ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... shark and dog-fish wait Under an Atlantic Isle, For the negro ship, whose freight Is the theme of their debate, Wrinkling their red ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... problem for our inquiry, but the fact is indisputable. Whereas there is scarcely a single modern poet who has not lingered with undisguised feelings of happiness over the gentle memories of his childhood, not one of the ancient poets has systematically touched upon the theme at all. From Lydgate down to Tennyson, it would be easy to quote from our English poets a continuous line of lyric songs on the subject of boyish years. How to the young child the fir-trees seemed to touch the sky, how his heart leaped ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... sing my lay, With humble Kelvin for my theme; My song shall be of life to-day, And not ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... down from heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast, or soaring to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep immensity of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by the emotions of the ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... satisfaction on the other, was not the struggle which Byron experienced in himself or desired to depict in his mysterious hierarch of the powers of nature. "It was the Staubach and the Jungfrau, and something else," not the influence of Faust on a receptive listener, which called up a new theme, and struck out a fresh well-spring of the imagination. The motif of Manfred is remorse—eternal suffering for inexpiable crime. The sufferer is for ever buoyed up with the hope that there is relief somewhere in nature, beyond nature, above nature, and experience replies with an everlasting ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... mixed motives urge them to oppose the executive. They are embodying the purposes of others if they aid; they are advancing their own opinions if they defeat: they are first if they vanquish; they are auxiliaries if they support. The weakness of the American executive used to be the great theme of all critics before the Confederate rebellion. Congress and committees of Congress of course impeded the executive when there was no coercive public sentiment to check and ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Occidental methods, I now find it difficult to write with absolute accuracy upon things in general. But I have found this to be the case in all my travels. What is, or seems to be, accurate to-day of any given thing in a given place is wrong tomorrow under seemingly the same conditions; and although no theme could be more tempting, and no subject offer wider scope for ingenious hypothesis and profound generalization, one has to forego much temptation to "color" if he would be accurate of anything he writes of the Chinese. Eminent ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... about twenty years of age,—in the full splendor of loveliness, and endowed with charms which presented to the gaze of those around a very incarnation of the ideal beauty which forms the theme of raptured poets. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... powerful story of a woman's desperate struggle to save her reputation and her happiness. How she tries to sink the memory of a foolish entanglement with another woman's husband in her own marriage with the man she really loved and how she paid the subsequent bitter price of her folly forms a dramatic theme of deep human interest. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated with scenes from ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... he showed that his democratic proclivities were something more than a mood. He showed that he took himself seriously, and he compelled the public to take him seriously. The tendency which had only flashed forth here and there in the "novelettes" now revealed its whole countenance. The author's theme was the life of the prosperous bourgeoisie in the western coast-towns; he drew their types with a hand that gave evidence of intimate knowledge. He had himself sprung from one of these rich ship-owning, ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel, does he content himself with stating 'that some apologetic writers' are 'satisfied by the analogies which could scarcely fail to exist between two works dealing with a similar (!) theme,' [15:3] without mentioning for the benefit of the reader some of these analogies, as for instance, that our Lord is styled the Word of God in these two writings, and these alone, of the New Testament? He recurs more than once to the doctrine of the Logos, as exhibited ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... for a moment to drop the graver thread of our theme to relate an anecdote in illustration of our present point. It happened a few years ago that we had as a household guest for two or three weeks an English gentleman, well-informed, courteous, and excellent, who had been for several years the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... little, the talk about this theme died out, and things settled down, not without some of the reaction Mr. Dillwyn had predicted; but they settled down, and all was as before in Shampuashuh. Mr. Dillwyn did not come again to make a visit, or Mrs. Marx's aroused vigilance would have found some ground for suspicion. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... the Scythians. He says—"The Irish have from the Scythians mantles and long glibs, which is a thick curled bush of hair, hanging down over their eyes, and monstrously disguising theme." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... and impassioned speaker, and he, too, made his impression. The principal point of his theme, that the French alone fraternized with the Indians, was good and all were familiar with the fact. He returned to it continually, and when he sat down the applause was louder than it had been for either Willet or the priest. It was evident that he ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... and struck a few chords while she thought. Then she began to work with all her soul at the theme in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony which is like the sound of the opening of the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... meaning of his material, and after going on brilliantly up to the point where Dermot plunges into the magic well, he becomes incoherent, and the rest of the tale is merely a string of episodes having no particular connexion with each other or with the central theme. The latter I have here endeavoured to restore to view. The Gilla Dacar is given from another Gaelic version by Dr P.W. Joyce in his ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the city herself than in the deities who guarded her. Rome was the one name that roused enthusiasm; from first to last she was the true Supreme Deity, and her material aggrandisement was the never-exhausted theme of literary, as it had been the consistent goal of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... insurrection, which, as they stated, was already far advanced toward maturity. Presently a man named Martin, Gabriel's brother, proposed religious services, caused the company to be duly seated, and began an impassioned exposition of Scripture, bearing upon the perilous theme. The Israelites were glowingly portrayed as a type of successful resistance to tyranny; and it was argued, that now, as then, God would stretch forth His arm to save, and would strengthen a hundred to overthrow a thousand. Thus passed, the witness stated, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... to the consummation of all things. And just as Christ in His Ascension was taken from them whilst His hands were lifted up in the act of blessing, so it is fitting that the revelation of which He is the centre and the theme should part from us as He did, shedding with its final words the dew of benediction ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the girl had departed, the trapper and Herbert sat by their campfire discussing the question which their guest had propounded. Their conversation was grave and deliberate, as became the theme; and they united in the opinion that if the deed had been done in anger elicited by a provocation, the man should give himself the favor which the law even would ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... tender moment, sang a sweet hymn to a "Name Unknown," and many an ardent youth in and since his time, has borrowed inspiration from the dulcet numbers of the familiar bard, and allowed his imagination to run riot in "castle-building" upon this simple theme. Had we the poet's gift, our enthusiasm might, doubtless, prompt us to extol in more lofty strain the praises of the "great unknown"—the donor of the handsome instalment of one thousand pounds towards the organization of an expedition to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... said, that "good health is physical religion;" and it is a saying worthy to be printed in golden letters. But good health being physical religion, it fully shares that indifference with which the human race regards things confessedly the most important. The neglect of the soul is the trite theme of all religious teachers; and, next to their souls, there is nothing that people neglect so much as their bodies. Every person ought to be perfectly healthy, just as everybody ought to be perfectly religious; but, in point of fact, the greater part of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... founded England's maritime glory? Will a Dibdin ever arise to sing a Devastation or a Glatton? Can a Devastation or a Glatton ever inspire poetic thoughts and images? One would say that the singer must be endowed in no ordinary degree with the sacred fire whom such a theme as a modern ironclad turret-ship should move to lyric utterance. It has been said that all the romance of the road died out with the old coaching days; and certainly a locomotive engine, with its long black train of practical-looking cars, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... is interesting, for it fits in (so far as its main theme is concerned) with the authentic account given above of Jane's romance in the west, although the setting is completely different. It is quite possible that the fiction originated in an incorrect account—mis-heard or mis-repeated—of the ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... squatting system which checks the spread of families. If pastoralisation were not one thing, and colonisation another, the occupation of tending sheep should be as fit and proper for women as for men. The pastoral life, so favourable to love and the enjoyment of nature, has ever been a favourite theme of the poet. Here it appears to be the antidote of all poetry and propriety, only because man's better half is wanting. Under this unfavourable aspect the white man first comes before the aboriginal ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... did not wish to appear vanquished, was at a loss how to change the conversation to such a theme as would afford him a suitable opportunity to take his leave in a dignified manner. But good Magde, who had now entirely recovered her usual equanimity, soon assisted him—by means of that instinct which ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... that which they hoped. In this fine strain of eloquent commonplace the falling minister had already begun to moralize upon the vanity of human wishes. When he was established at his charming retreat in Burgundy, he had full leisure to pursue the theme. He remained in retirement till his beard grew to his waist, having vowed, according to report, that he would not shave till recalled to the Netherlands. If the report were true, said some of the gentlemen in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this world. Every soul that has received the blessed experience John here describes will be able to appreciate the unbounded rapture the beloved apostle felt in the contemplation of this wonderful theme of redemption that caused him to ascribe to God, its author, "glory and ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... a whirl of variegated ecstasies. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' he remarked to the street. What he meant was that, after more than a month's excogitation, he had absolutely failed to get any single shred of a theme for the successor to Love in Babylon—that successor out of which a mere couple of thousand pounds was to be made; ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... Clodion whose popularity rivalled that of his master Pajou, and whose prodigious output of marble and terra-cotta sculpture failed to keep pace with the demands of his clients. 777 is Pajou's, The Forsaken Psyche. By the seductive and sentimental Canova are 523 and 524, variants of a favourite theme, Love and Psyche.[202] With some sense of relief we enter the more invigorating atmosphere of Room VI., named after the sturdy Francois Rude (1784-1855), who flung off the yoke of the Roman classicists, and from whose simple, austere atelier issued works instinct ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... it, but he took great interest in all the news the "boys" brought back from their annual deer hunts "up North." They were all enthusiastic over West Superior and Duluth, and their wonderful development was the never-ending theme of discussion in ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... figurative du theme de la deuxieme conjugaison du verbe actif, XXXI. —Prononciation de l'i, meme quand il n'est pas ecrit dans le mot, 7. —Distinction de i voyelle et de i consonne, 10, 31. —Difference de prononciation ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... of a young musician, ambitious to seize his opportunity. After stating its theme largely, simply, in sixteen strong chords, it broke into variations in which the audience for a few moments might read nothing but cacophonous noise, until a gateway opened in the old wall, and through it a band of white-robed Druids came streaming towards the stone altar which stood—the ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Through every Period of my Life Thy Goodness I'll pursue; And after Death in distant Worlds The Glorious Theme renew. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for his story, and promised to profit by the moral, when discovered. Meanwhile, MacShaughnassy said that he knew a story dealing with the same theme, namely, the too close attachment of a woman to a strange man, which really had a moral, which moral was: don't have anything ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... This theme, that of what was going on at Monksmead, and that of what to do when Dam was recaptured, formed the bulk of her conversation with her ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... supremely unimportant, of whom there happen to be quite a number in the world. With the symbolism of The Master-Builder no fault can be found. It is a legitimate and effective means of expressing a sense of reality. The theme is never lost. The artist who sacrifices his human relations, but dare not give all, dare not give his vanity or his life to the ideal, moves steadily to his inevitable doom. Whether he move in the form of Halvard Solness, the cowardly ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... little eccentricities, into which we need not now enter. We apologize to him for publishing the following extract, which is, however, not our own, but comes (of course) from an American source: 'Bernard Quaritch's antiquated hat is a favourite theme with London and other bookmen. A committee of the Grolier Club once made a marvellous collection of newspaper clippings about it, and a member of the Societe des Bibliophiles Contemporains wrote a tragedy which was a parody of ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... cultivation of man. Nevertheless, the origin of the plant must have been analogous to that of other plants. Wheat-growers must necessarily have been people who stayed long in one place. Wandering tribes could not till and sow the fields. The origin of wheat furnished a legendary theme for many races, and mythology contained tales of wheat-gods favoring chosen peoples. Ancient China raised wheat twenty-seven centuries before Christ; grains of wheat had been found in prehistoric ruins; the dwellers along the Nile were not blind to the fertility of the valley. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... reforms advocated by him, with one exception, unachieved; critical mourners over Milton's political writings; the mourners comforted; Milton's classification of his prose tracts; the occasional nature of these tracts; allusions in the early prose works to the story of Samson, and to the theme of Paradise Lost; Milton's personal and public motives; his persuasive vein; his political idealism; Johnson's account of his political opinions; the citizen of an antique city; Milton's attitude towards mediaeval romance, and towards the mediaeval Church; his worship of liberty; ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... never been more uncertainty and disagreement about the production, composition, and source of any opera than about the opera of "Martha." Among the reasonable guesses as to its source is one that Flotow found the theme for the story in a French ballet named "Lady Henriette, ou la Foire de Richmond," also, "Lady Harriette, ou la Servante de Greenwich." Among the German titles we find "Martha, oder der Markt zu Richmond," and "Martha, oder der Maegdemarkt zu Richmond." ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... comprising nearly half the ship's company, were lost. It was one the most terrible of the many similar disasters recorded in the history of steamboating on the Mississippi; and to this day the burning of the Lytle is a favorite theme of conversation among ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... class, from town, and eight minutes' walk from the station) was a grotesque, little red-faced abode, situated among a tangle of villas and roads. It stood detached in a garden, with—O! theme of pride—a full-sized tennis court. There were also several flower beds, and six unhappy gooseberry bushes, but the feature was the lawn; here also were seats and a small striped awning. The grounds of "Monte ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... wondered why the Captain had touched on such a theme, and said that he couldn't exactly say what he might or might not ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... among the officers, which led them after a certain time to simply quit, without being particularly whipped, but because they had fought enough. Their authorities of the present day grow enthusiastic over their theme when telling of these victories, and speak with pride of the large sum of money they forced us to pay in the end. With us, now twenty years after the close of the most stupendous war ever known, we have writers —who profess devotion to the nation—engaged in trying to prove that the Union ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY, who was hotly rebuked for his lack of imagination by Captain ELLIOT. The fact that two young Coalitionists should have advocated such revolutionary ideas inspired another of Sir EDWARD CARSON'S gloomy variations on the theme that any form of Home Rule must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... community applauds their combination with music. But when a subject is in itself solemn, let it be solemnly treated. Opinions may be divided as to whether the story of the Prodigal Son can with propriety be represented in the form of serious opera or spectacle, but that it is an improper theme for burlesque there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. Our dramatic authors have too long been in the habit of trying to raise a laugh about every thing, and we have too long been inundated with a species ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... which the old woman looked like a withered stalk standing amid a riotous growth of gaily-hued flowers. But she threw the grain deftly amid the wilderness of beaks, and her quavering voice carried as far as the two people who were watching her. She was still harping on the theme of death coming to ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... parliamentary battle between Webster and Hayne, the broad nationalism of the former stands out in splendid contrast with the narrow provincialism of the latter. Hayne's theme was small and sectional—it wanted bulk; hence, he continually intrudes himself in his subject: the subject is half, and Hayne and Webster the other and more important half. Webster, on the contrary, is completely absorbed in the magnitude of his subject; he forgets the very existence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... vigorous in a sense as they are, are too sentimental. Stalky & Co., as I said in my last letter, in spite of its amazing cleverness of insight, is not typical. Gilkes' books are excellent studies of the subject, but lack unity of theme; Tim is an interesting book, but reflects a rather abnormal point of view; A Day of My Life at Eton is too definitely humorous in conception, though it ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... On this theme, Sir Wilfrid—who was a man of singularly strong private opinions, of all kinds and on all subjects—spoke for a whole day; from the rising almost to the going down of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mr. LOWELL'S capabilities for a more extended theme that the second part of this poem is superior to the first. It is not merely that the interest of the story increases, but the verse is more compressed, the expressions are more graphic, and the flow of the stanza is finer and more natural. The opening lines ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Burns' conversational gifts, Mr. Carlyle wrote: "They were the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts, from the gracefullest allusions of courtesy to the highest fire of passionate speech, loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... sat upon a thorn At evening chime. Its sweet refrain fell like the rain Of summer-time. Of summer-time when roses bloomed, And bright above A rainbow spanned my fairy-land Of hope and love! Of hope and love! O linnet, cease Thy mocking theme! I ne'er picked up the golden cup In all my dream! In all my dream I missed the prize Should have been mine; And dreams won't die! though fain would I, And ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... expression. Puritan poetry was somber, but it was almost devoid of sentiment. Poe loved sad beauty and meditated on the sad things in life. Many of his poems lament the loss of some fair one. "To Helen," "Annabel Lee" "Lenore," and "To One In Paradise" have the theme, while in "The Raven" the poet is seeking solace for the loss of Lenore. "Eulalie—A Song" rises, on the other hand to intense happiness. With Poe the sound by which his idea was expressed was as important as the thought itself. He knew how to make ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... sexual inversion, not only in the minds of inverts themselves, but in the popular mind. To wear a red necktie on the street is to invite remarks from newsboys and others—remarks that have the practices of inverts for their theme. A friend told me once that when a group of street-boys caught sight of the red necktie he was wearing they sucked their fingers in imitation of fellatio. Male prostitutes who walk the streets of Philadelphia and New York almost invariably wear red neckties. It is the badge of all ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... on an entirely different theme. "Miss Morrison ain't what you'd call a real pretty girl, not like Mary Barner or ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... the time irregular?" continued Hawkins, blushing under Wingate's eye, and yet clinging despairingly to his theme, like a shipwrecked mariner to ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... wall-placards and sarcastic verses full of bitter and telling popular satire against the new monarchy. When a comedian ventured on a republican allusion, he was saluted with the loudest applause. The praise of Cato formed the fashionable theme of oppositional pamphleteers, and their writings found a public all the more grateful because even literature was no longer free. Caesar indeed combated the republicans even now on their own field; he himself and his abler confidants replied ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... his clime— Now his name belongs to Freedom, to the very end of Time: And the last words that he uttered will forgotten be by few: "I have bravely fought them, mother—I have bravely fought for you!" Let his memory be green in the hearts who love the South, And his noble deeds the theme that shall ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Russian author, who suffered a nervous breakdown, found—after trying many other aids to health without success—that a retired life for several months in the mountains in which simple deep-breathing exercises practised systematically every day formed the central theme, effected a permanent cure. Deep breathing is a great resource for people who are shut in most of the day. If they will seize the chance, whenever it offers, to step out-of-doors and take a dozen deep breaths, they can partly compensate for ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... information far more upon the writings by men than upon those by women. Yet, here and there, in the diaries and letters of wives and mothers we catch glimpses of what the institution meant to women—glimpses of that deep, abiding love and faith that have made the home a favorite theme of song and story. In the correspondence between husband and wife we have conclusive evidence that woman was held in high respect, her advice often asked, and her influence marked. The letters of Governor Winthrop to his ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... contemplation We sweetly then pursue The theme of God's salvation, And find it ever new. Set free from present sorrow, We cheerfully can say, Let the unknown to-morrow Bring ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... distributed widely and profusely throughout Europe," and that my chapter on Aladdin is proof sufficient that they have not done so. The reviewer goes on to say that I cite "numerous variants, but, save one from Rome, variants of the theme, not of the version; some again, such as the Mecklenburg and Danish forms, are more primitive in tone; and all lack those effective and picturesque details which are the charm of the Arabian story, and which a borrower only interested in the story as a story might just be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... his works? He was talking of St. Arnaud, their first commander. "Cunning dog," said he, "he went and died." Death was easier than life. But nobody ever said he was a coward or effeminate because he said this. Why, if Mr. Fields would permit an excursus in twelve numbers here, on this theme, we would defer Sybaris to the 1st of April, 1868, while we illustrated the Sybarite's manly epigram, which these stupid Spartans could only gape at, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Our favourite theme was Margaret, whom he outspokenly worshipped. He rhapsodized over her in great stretches, calling me to testify with him to her divineness, and rating me soundly if, in the bitterness of my heart, I was a little laggard in my devotions. And, at irregular intervals, like Selah ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that this little text may lead a few to pursue further this most fascinating theme and that the pursuit may bring much of pleasure ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... for the theme of my song? Or must my poor pipe on the willow be hung? No more to commend that good nature and sense, Which always cou'd please, but ne'er once gave offence. What honour directed he firmly pursu'd, Yet would not his judgment on others intrude; Still ready ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... presenting such information, with variations to suit the nature of the topics handled, is to begin with historical excerpts, chronologically arranged. These are usually followed by sometimes lengthy essays dealing with the subject as a theme, taken from the writings of qualified authors, and like all the other entries, also chronologically arranged. Then come elegant extracts in prose and verse, in all of which the subject may be simply mentioned and not treated as in the essays. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... garden could not divert me from the main theme, and when we were seated again on the front porch I returned to ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... will speak! The time has come for it. Besides, I'm quite ready to discuss this new theme; ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... books to be kept only a fortnight, and that, according to the librarian, it was out "literally all the time." Moreover, it would not be difficult to cite various poems that have been more or less modeled upon Lanier's; it is sufficient, perhaps, to point out that the marsh, a theme almost unknown to poetry before Lanier immortalized it, is not infrequently the subject of poetic treatment now, as in the works of Charles G. D. Roberts,*6* Clinton Scollard,*7* and Maurice Thompson.*8* It is noteworthy, too, that many of the younger poets of the day, both in Canada and ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... various scientific assertions, which are proposed as facts without being such, but these parts do not immediately pertain to our theme. Suffice it to say that, after reading Haeckel's "Weltraetsel," one would be led to think that there is no question of a "deathbed of Darwinism," but that on the contrary Darwinism, as remodeled by Haeckel, is more in the ascendant to-day than ever. Let us judge ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... My own theme is Courage, as you should use it in the great fight that seems to me to be coming between youth and their betters; by youth, meaning, of course, you, and by your betters us. I want you to take up this position: That youth have for too long left exclusively ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... certainly, the author's capital. Here are then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common! Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never made upon such a theme. Who, cries the author— ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... myself, on October 21st left England in the same boat as General Baden-Powell's brother, the most frequent theme of conversation was the then unknown fate of Mafeking. Its relief was the news most eagerly enquired for at St Vincent's, and we were all hugely disappointed when on reaching the Cape we learned that the interesting event had not yet come off. Some toilsome and adventurous months brought us to ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... of Jane did, in certain directions, romantically hold. Fortified by thought of the Miss Minetts' agitated interest in all which might befall her, she indulged in imaginary conversations with that great proconsul, her employer—the theme of which, purged of lyrical redundancies, reduced itself to the somewhat crude announcement that "your daughter, yes, may, alas, not impossibly be taken from you; ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... shall not hurry myself; I intend that the execution shall be equal to my ideal—and that ideal entirely worthy of the theme. I want to lay my 'Modern Macaria,' as the first offering of Southern art, upon my country's altar, as a nucleus around which nobler and grander pictures, from the hands of my countrymen and ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... him, base in every sense the word can be used. Then agin he had painful and prolonged spells of wantin' to be genteel and fashionable, then anon political ambition had rousted up his rusty old faculties and for months and months Coney Island had been his theme, and wuz now, and so on through a long roll of characters he had desired to play in ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... and when the news of Waterloo arrived, the editor's comment upon the great epoch-making victory was expressed in a dozen lines. One sighs at the thought of the miles of "long primer" that would be expended if we had the opportunity of commenting upon such a theme to-day. Yet the twelve-line article in the Leeds Mercury of June, 1815, really said everything that was to the point on the subject with ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... and more than common gracefulness were instantly the theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne received particular spirit from his exterior attractions. Marianne herself had seen less of his person than the rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting her up, had robbed ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to corpulency, there was about him no trace of bodily sickness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous repose. His benignity of manner placed his auditors entirely at their ease; and inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet low tone in which he began to discourse on some high theme. At first his tones were conversational: he seemed to dally with the shallows of the subject and with fantastic images which bordered it: but gradually the thought grew deeper, and the voice deepened with the thought; the stream gathering strength, seemed to bear along ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... enthusiasts, who ascribed to him verses that he had not written; he kept no copies of his compositions, seldom troubled to write them himself, and was content for the most part to dictate them to others. He has no great intellectual force, no philosophic doctrine, is limited in theme as in outlook, is curiously uncertain in his touch, often marring a fine poem with a slovenly rhyme or with a misplaced accent; and, on the only occasion when he was induced to revise a set of proofs, his alterations were nearly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... frequently the theme of conversation between Luigi and Teresa. The young girl trembled very much at hearing the stories; but Vampa reassured her with a smile, tapping the butt of his good fowling-piece, which threw its ball so well; and if that did not restore ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that I had no theme save the wreck of our house, if they read this. But I take it all out in here. I believe I must be made of wood, or some other tough material, not to feel it more. I sometimes ask myself if it is because I did not ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... on the program. An important feature of this, as of several preceding conferences, was the reports of what women had been able to accomplish in the many States where they were now enfranchised. Organization and political action in order to carry State amendments formed the principal theme of discussion. Mrs. John R. Leighty of Kansas was elected president with Mrs. Ueland and Mrs. Grace Julian Clarke of Indianapolis on her committee to arrange for the next conference. The shadow of war rested over the meeting, yet in all the speeches ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... such as might his soul proclaim; One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame: His mountain shoulders half his breast o'erspread, Thin hairs bestrew'd his long misshapen head. Spleen to mankind his envious heart possess'd, And much he hated all, but most the best: Ulysses or Achilles still his theme; But royal scandal his delight supreme, Long had he lived the scorn of every Greek, Vex'd when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak. Sharp was his voice; which in the shrillest tone, Thus with injurious taunts ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... sojourn had been among these primitive people, it furnished us with many pleasant reminiscences. Their genial hospitality and simple good-nature, together with their utter ignorance of the outer world, formed the theme of various amusing anecdotes during the remainder of the passage. Favored by a southerly wind and a stock of good coal, we made the southeastern point of Iceland in a little ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... impropriety of Miss Reynolds's appearing to stab herself in the hand with a pin, is far too obvious, and too glaringly unladylike, to be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation to discuss this uncongenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries having assured us that it was but one of those 'airy nothings' pointed at by the Poet (whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an hour), we would now discard the subject, and concentrate ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... letters to me that she had writ whilst she wuz away South on this visit to her friend. One young man's name run through 'em like the theme to a great melody, and then all to once stopped, and though Maggie and I hadn't passed a word on the subject I mistrusted more than Maggie mistrusted I did about the cause of ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... that it might often have borne comparison with the homilies of John Chrysostom in the Palaea of Antioch. Any incident in the inner life of the college, any occurrence directly concerning himself or one of the pupils furnished the theme for a brief and lively soliloquy. The reading of the reports on Friday was still more dramatic and personal, and we all anticipated that day with a mixture of hope and apprehension. The observations with which he interlarded the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of his inspiration to Carlyle's tremendous prose epic. But the genius that depicted a moving and tragic story upon the red background of the Terror was Dickens's own, and the "Tale of Two Cities" was final proof that its author could handle a great theme in a manner that was worthy of its greatness. The work was one of the novelist's later writings—it was published in 1859—and is in many respects distinct from all his others. It stands by itself among Dickens's masterpieces, in sombre ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a mountain-pass, in which a valiant band of mountaineers overwhelmed and destroyed the flower of the French army, has been exalted by poetic legend into one of the most stupendous and romantic of events. Ponderous epic poems have made Roland their theme, numbers of ballads and romances tell of his exploits, and the far-off echoes of his ivory horn still sound through the centuries. One account tells that he blew his horn so loud and long that the veins of his neck ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... They were on the eve of their summer flight to the ranch, where she would have other things to think about than young men. That was his half-expressed theme when ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... instructed and wise. But he had devoted his attention to the question of the coming Presidential election, and was not unwilling to exchange with all whom he might the ideas to which he had arrived. He then began to show the fallacy of some of the arguments against General Taylor, making his chief theme the fashionable statement of all those who oppose him (the old Locofocos as well as the new), that he has no principles, and that the Whig party have abandoned their principles by adopting him as their candidate. He maintained that General Taylor occupied a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... enabling her to create a great native industry, sufficient to supply all her own wants, was the aim of his policy and the constant object of his untiring efforts. Those who have had the good fortune to know him personally must have often heard him discourse eloquently on this theme, supporting his views by quotations from the economists of his own school, and by illustrations drawn from the history of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of sequence impairs the picture's unity. In the second, though the objects are contiguous there is no subjective union, and in David's composition the formality of the decorative structure is inapplicable to the theme. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... is evident that this must have been a collection of lyrics celebrating some of the great events of Hebrew history. The title seems to mean "The Book of the Just." The exploits of the worthies of Israel probably furnished its principal theme. ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... their conversation with most provoking indifference, lavishing a vast deal more kindness and attention upon a noble wolf-hound that crouched close to her feet, his big clear eye bent ever upon his mistress's face with a degree of intelligence that would have formed a theme for a painter. It was a noble creature, and no wonder the lady evinced so much regard for the hound, who ever and anon ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... thin. To be sure, no doctor will tell you to do the same things any other doctor prescribes, but it all simmers down to the same thing: Cut out the starchy foods and sweets, and take exercise. Also: Don't drink alcohol. The variations that can be played on this simple theme by a skillful doctor are endless. When a real specialist in fat reduction gets hold of you—a real, earnest reducer—he can contrive a diet that would make a living skeleton thin—and likewise put him in his little grave. I have had diets handed to me that ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... imputations, a browner glow; and it was all in the right key that, a few years later, he should, after "showing some talent for sculpture," have gone the hapless way of most of the Albany youth, have become a theme for sad vague headshakes (kind and very pitying in his case) and died prematurely and pointlessly, or in other words, by my conception, picturesquely. The headshakes were heavier and the sighs sharper for another slim shade, one of the younger and I believe quite the most hapless ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... this book. Notwithstanding the length of time which his task occupied, and his constant interruptions, it has turned out a work of one mould and casting, and shows from the first page to the last how completely the translator was absorbed in his theme, and yet how closely his life and thoughts were interwoven with those of his fellow countrymen, for whom he wrote and whose language he spoke. In 1534 the whole of his German Bible was at length in print, and the next year a new edition was called for. Of the ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... present personality, of which the battle-ground is a bereaved human heart and the prize its complete possession; between earthly duty and spiritual desire also; was one that had long attracted him. Finding at length a few months of leisure, he treated the difficult theme, not indeed as he would have wished to do, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... to be on his pet theme, and he continued his talk as he and Reynolds again resumed their journey. Several times the latter endeavored to find out something about the old man's past history, but all in vain. The prospector gave him not the slightest information concerning himself, but discoursed ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody |
