"Uninspired" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentleman, not willing to displeasure a man so esteemed as Mr. Richardson, here made an apology for his jesting, and said that, as to the Cambridge version, it was indeed faithful; and that it was no blame to uninspired men, that they did fall short of the beauties and richness of the Lord's Psalmist. It being now near noon, we crossed over the river, to where was a sweet spring of water, very clear and bright, running out upon the green bank. Now, as we stood thirsty, having no cup ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... which has produced the "staff writer," and has brought down upon the editor the protests of his more discriminating readers against "standardized fiction" and against sundry uninspired articles produced to measure by faithful hacks. The editor defends his course in printing this sort of material upon the ground that a magazine made up wholly of unsolicited material would be a horrid melange, far more distressing to the consumer ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... own interest, repose, reputation, and life. As a Christian orator, his deep piety, disinterested zeal, and vivid imagination, gave unexampled energy to his look, utterance, and action. Bold, fervent, pungent, and popular in his eloquence, no other uninspired man ever preached to so large assemblies, or enforced the simple truths of the gospel by motives so persuasive and awful, and with an influence so powerful on the hearts of his hearers. He died of asthma, September 30, 1770, suddenly exchanging his life of unparalleled ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... madness (he says) is conveyed to the soul from the body through certain bad temperaments or mixtures, or through the prevalence of some noxious spirit, and is harsh, difficult to cure, and baneful. Another kind of madness is not uninspired or from within, but an afflatus from without, a deviation from sober reason, originated and set in motion by some higher power, the ordinary characteristic of which is called enthusiasm. For, as one full of breath is called [Greek: empnoos], ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... indeed, must he be if he does not discern that, in neglecting to cherish the Protestant faith, or in too easily yielding to any encroachments on it, he is foregoing the use of a state engine more powerful than all the laws which the uninspired legislators of the earth have ever promulgated, in promoting the happiness, the peace, prosperity, and the order, the industry, and the wealth, of a people; in forming every quality valuable or desirable in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... face. Presently she recovered herself. She—what did she suffer, compared with her who wrote this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and torturing knowledge! She looked up at the picture on the wall, at the still, proud, emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired personality, behind which no one had seen, which had agonised alone till the last. With what tender yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives of her husband and her son! How had the neglected mother told the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... laid before me a temptation that swept me off my feet. In his sensible, uninspired way he showed me his books, and explained that his profits and his business were increasing rapidly. He had thought of taking in a partner with some cash. He would rather have me than any one he knew. When I left his place that afternoon ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... will, But to each hungry soul thy love would fill— Descending out of heaven, we wist not how— Comes by thy grace the holy vision now; While we whose hearts should with the message thrill Cry "Common and unholy!" to thee still, And, uninspired, in ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... in the Lectures have lost whatever novelty they may have possessed. All its predictions have been submitted to the formidable test of time. They appear to have stood it, so far, about as well as most uninspired prophecies; indeed, some of them require much less accommodation than certain grave commentators employ in their readings ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... among poets of the first order; Gellert, a truly simple poet, Rabener, and Lessing himself, if I am warranted to introduce his name in this category—this highly-cultivated scholar of criticism and vigilant examiner of his own genius—all these suffer in different degrees from the platitudes and uninspired movements of the natures they chose as the theme of their satire. With regard to more recent authors of this class, I avoid naming any of them, as I can make no ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Handicrafts, Use of Home Appliances, Beautician School, Charm School. He and Yetsko sampled the products of the Cooking School, intended for the cafeteria, and found them edible if uninspired. ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... and angular church spires, uninspired statuary, and weary, smoke-darkened trees shed their garments of commonplaceness and shimmered like the mosques and turrets ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... description. How is it that you can make your little German town fascinating, when I can only make this vast, stupefying India sound dull? It wouldn't sound dull if I were telling you about it by word of mouth. I could make you see it then; but what can a poor uninspired one do with a pen, some ink, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... hackney-coach pass: and darting out into the road when Walter went upstairs to take leave of the lodgers, on a feint of smelling fire in a neighbouring chimney. These artifices Captain Cuttle deemed inscrutable by any uninspired observer. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the great majority that denies because they are—dead!" he cried. "Smothered! Undivining! Living in that uninspired fragment which they deem the whole! Ah, my friend,"—and he came abruptly nearer—"the pathos, the comedy, the pert self-sufficiency of their dull pride, the crass stupidity and littleness of their denials, in the eyes of those like ourselves who have actually ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... ought to have been free from persecution it was George Whitefield, bringing great masses of the people into the kingdom of God, wearing himself out for Christ's sake: and yet the learned Dr. Johnson called him a mountebank. Robert Hall preached about the glories of heaven as no uninspired man ever preached about them, and it was said when he preached about heaven his face shone like an angel's, and yet good Christian John Foster writes of Robert Hall, saying: "Robert Hall is a mere actor, and when he talks about heaven ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... become a race of independent beings, claiming as a debt the reward of our good works; a sort of contracting party with the Almighty, contributing nought to his glory, but anxious to maintain our own independence, and our own rights." The lips of uninspired man never spake more truth in one sentence. Let the aspiring moralist consider it in its nature and consequences. If he obtain humility by the meditation, he will feel the blessedness ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... that it was impossible to find, in many hundreds of pages dictated by the Holy Spirit, fifty or sixty chapters more edifying than any thing which could be extracted from the works of the most respectable uninspired moralist or historian. The leaders of the majority therefore determined to shun a debate in which they must have been reduced to a disagreeable dilemma. Their plan was, not to reject the recommendations of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Still uninspired by any definite design, I tried the gate and found that it was unlocked. Like some wandering soul, as it has since seemed to me, I descended. There was a lamp over the archway, but the glass was broken, and the rain apparently had extinguished the light; ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Indeed there do not exist a sufficient number of finished and absolutely authentic oil pictures from his own hand to afford illustrations for this short chronological sketch of his life's work. The few that do remain, however, are of so exquisite a quality—or were until they were "comforted" by the uninspired restorer—that we can unreservedly accept the enthusiastic records of tradition in respect of all his works. To rightly understand the essential characteristics of Leonardo's achievements it is necessary to regard him as a scientist quite as much as an artist, as a philosopher no less than ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... chloroformed, drugged, stoned; palsy-stricken. indifferent, lukewarm; careless, mindless, regardless; inattentive &c. 458; neglectful &c. 460; disregarding. unconcerned, nonchalant, pococurante[obs3], insouciant, sans souci[Fr]; unambitious &c. 866. unaffected, unruffled, unimpressed, uninspired, unexcited, unmoved, unstirred, untouched, unshocked[obs3], unstruck[obs3]; unblushing &c. (shameless) 885; unanimated; vegetative. callous, thick-skinned, hard-nosed, pachydermatous, impervious; hardened; inured, casehardened; steeled against, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cyclus, which had been forming in the Church at Jerusalem, assumed a determinate character in the Greek tongue" ("Introduction to the New Testament," by S. Davidson, LL.D., p. 405. Ed. 1848). Thus we find learned Christians obliged to admit an uninspired collection as the basis of the inspired Gospel, and laying down a theory which is entirely incompatible with the idea that the Synoptic Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Our Gospels ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... been classified as, 1st, sacred knowledge and religion; 2d, philosophy; 3d, social rules and caste organization; 4th, criminal and civil laws; 5th, systems of penance; 6th, eschatology, or the doctrine of future rewards. No uninspired or non-Vedic production has equal authority in India. We can only judge of its date by its relative place among other books. It applies Vedic names to the gods, though it mentions Brahma and Vishnu, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... informing principles embodied in the England of his own day." This flowed, we may suppose, from Burke. In a passage in the seventh Book of the Prelude, he describes, in lines a little prosaic but quite true, how he sat, saw, and heard, not unthankful nor uninspired, the great orator ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... and tender memories of her. No, colleges are far from perfect, tragically far from it, but any institution that commands loyalty and love as colleges do cannot be wholly imperfect. There is a virtue in a college that uninspired administrative officers, stupid professors, and alumni with false ideals cannot kill. At times I tremble for Sanford College; there are times when I swear at it, but I ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... craft that was the serious pleasure of kings. But there is now no personal element to give it the vital touch. There is no Gabrielle d'Estrees, nor Henri IV; no Medici, no Louis XIV, no Pompadour. All is impersonal, uninspired. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... suspicious materials of ecclesiastical history seldom enable us to dispel the dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church. The great law of impartiality too often obliges us to reveal the imperfections of the uninspired teachers and believers of the gospel; and, to a careless observer, their faults may seem to cast a shade on the faith which they professed. But the scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the Infidel, should cease as soon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... gentleman who cannot do short division. I remember once at school having to do a piece of Latin prose about the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was a moving story as told in our prose book, and I had spent an interesting hour turning into fairly correct and wholly uninspired Latin—the sort of Latin I suppose which a small uneducated Roman child (who had heard the news) would have written to a school-boy friend. The size of the Black Hole was given as "twenty foot square." I had no idea how to render this idiomatically, ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... site of the Tahoro, or Tagoror, temple and senate-house of the ancients. The principal interest of these wild people is the mysterious foreknowledge of their fate that seems to have come to them by a manner of intuition, of uninspired prophecy. [Footnote: So in Candelaria of Tenerife the Virgin appeared in effigy to the shepherds of Chimisay in 1392, a century before the Norman Conquest, and dwelt fifty-four years amongst the Gentiles of Chinguaro. At least so say DD. Juan Nunez de la ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... our church has well determined, proves "the infection of our nature, and has in it the nature of sin." Convinced that positive evil may not be committed to procure problematical good, and that no uninspired person should presume to think himself God's champion, unless placed in that station which visibly arms him with his authority, Evellin had often lamented this rash letter, as one of his secret faults. He now severely felt it also, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... divine will. If we contradict the record we call in question the veracity of the spirit which controlled the writer, whether the statement relates to God, man or demons. But this statement does not apply to mistranslations, for it is one thing to contradict an uninspired translator, and another altogether to contradict the statement of one controlled by the spirit of God. We fearlessly assert that the Bible is just the book that common-sense and reason demands that it should be in order to contain a ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... perhaps fully as much as it merits, were the only pieces of general poetry which he produced between the accession of James and the Revolution. It was, however, about this time, that the poet became acquainted with the simple and beautiful hymns of the Catholic ritual, the only pieces of uninspired sacred poetry which are worthy of the purpose to which they are dedicated. It is impossible to hear the "Dies Irae;" or the "Stabat Mater dolorosa," without feeling, that the stately simplicity of the language, differing almost as widely from classical poetry ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... remarkable, and that even pace which they maintain in all their dramatic compositions, is a proof that they are not capable of sublime conceptions; that they never rise to any degree of elevation, and are in truth uninspired by the muses:—Judgment they may have to plan and conduct their designs; but few French poets have ever found the way of writing to the heart. Have they attained the sublime height of Shakespear, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... Testament is displayed to singular advantage when contrasted with those uninspired productions of nearly the same date which emanated from the companions of the apostles. The only genuine document of this nature which has come down to us, and which appeared in the first century,[186:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... by Thomas Hughes, though twenty-five years later, may be placed next to Gorboduc in our discussion of the rise of tragedy. It will serve as an illustration of the kind of tragedy that was being evolved from Senecan models by plodding uninspired Englishmen before Marlowe flung his flaming torch amongst them. To understand the story a slight introduction is necessary. Igerna, the wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, was loved by King Uther, who foully slew her husband ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the labors of scholarship and are generally ill-advised to scorn or reject them, however uninspired and uninspiring they may seem. Moreover when authors do enter into dispute with "laborious men of low genius" they frequently meet with more than their match. Miss Elstob's bold and aggressive defense of Northern antiquities was remembered and cited by a later ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... the personage who was receiving me with this solemn welcome. I had always, however, understood that Lady Hester Stanhope wore the male attire, and I began to utter in English the common civilities that seemed to be proper on the commencement of a visit by an uninspired mortal to a renowned prophetess; but the figure which I addressed only bowed so much the more, prostrating itself almost to the ground, but speaking to me never a word. I feebly strived not to be outdone in gestures of respect; but presently my bowing opponent saw the error ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... out of this?" the Judge demanded, coming upon Neil late one afternoon, poring over the uninspired pages of Mr. Thayer by the fading light. "What ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Customs, costumes, beliefs, institutions, underwent changes. Of course, then, art did not remain stationary. On the contrary, it had marked vicissitudes, now displaying great freshness and vigor, now uninspired and monotonous, now seemingly dead, and now reviving to new activity. In Babylonia we deal with perhaps even remoter periods of time, but the artistic remains at present known from that quarter are comparatively scanty. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Arnold, Morris, Swinburne. The great "makers" have passed away, and there remain to us but certain highly dexterous word-artificers and melodists, a varied chorus of dainty, musical, scholarly, but mostly uninspired, writers of verse. We have passed the crest of the poetical wave, and are sunk into its trough. It is not unnatural, therefore, that we should, at this particular juncture, feel some misgivings. Finding no immediate successor worthy to fill the place of those great ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... trips into the wild. He was blood brother to my father, and cousin to my heroic uncles. He represented the finest phases of pioneering. "Matt Kelley," "Rob Raymond" and "Jack Munroe," I knew and loved, and their presence in this labor war redeemed it from the sordid, uninspired struggle which such contests usually turn out to be. In my design these three ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... from our mother and yourself, I had no welcome. But, apart from this immediate circle, and apart from the deep, comfortable glow experienced at the first sight of the "old country," I found England and the English dull, conventional, and uninspired. There was no poignancy. The habits and the outlook stood precisely where I had left them. The English had not moved. They played golf as of yore, they went to the races at the appointed time and in the appointed garb, they ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... Ancient Heroes has perhaps been more influential than any other uninspired book in invigorating genius and in enkindling a passion for great achievements. Napoleon was a careful student and a great admirer of Plutarch. His spirit was entranced with the grandeur of the Greek and Roman heroes, and they ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... and civilization will perpetuate their fame. They cannot die. What more immortal than the artistic delineations of man and of nature which the poets and historians wrought out with so much labor and genius? When did men, uninspired by Christianity, utter sentiments more tender, or thoughts more profound, or aspirations more lofty? They are our perpetual study and marvel—prodigies of genius, such as appear only at great intervals. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... perfection in any single man of mortal birth is not to be expected. But there are names in the history of Science which recall so imposing a combination of these several gifts, that, comparing the men who bore them with the civilization of their time, we can hardly conceive that uninspired intellect should come nearer the imaginary standard. Such a man was Aristotle. The slender and close-shaven fop, with the showy mantle on his ungraceful person and the costly rings on his fingers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... with both. "A hint to the wise is sufficient." This hint may not be in accord with the advice of Paul, but Paul never saw a twentieth century "Merry Widow" hat. Then too, Paul was already inspired and didn't need the inspiration of human countenances. I am speaking for the uninspired, to whom an audience of ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... already become chronologically historical; so out all trooped into the starry midnight, falling the street with gay laughter, to be barked at by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed by the dull inhabitants of an uninspired world. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... but I do not care whether a poem is written in conventional metre or in free verse, so long as it is unmistakably poetry. And no garments yet invented or the lack of them can conceal true poetry. Perhaps the Traditionalist might reply that uninspired verse gracefully written is better than uninspired verse abominably written. So it is; but why bother about either? He might once more insist that inspired poetry gracefully written is better than inspired poetry ungracefully written. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... insane itch for scribbling about things so infinitely above his capacity as the fine arts. Avoid this sordid dreamer, and follow, in letters as in science, the Baconian method! Then you will find that all uninspired narratives are more or less inexact, and that one, and one only, Fiction proper, has the honesty to antidote its errors by professing inexactitude. You will find that the Historian, Biographer, Novelist, and Chronicler are all ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... deliberate, and you will discuss, and that is fine. But my friends the people cannot wait. They need help now. And there's a mood among us. People are worried. There has been talk of decline. Someone even said our workers are lazy and uninspired. And I thought, "Really? Go tell Neil Armstrong standing on the moon. Tell the American farmer who feeds his country and the world. Tell the men and women of Desert Storm." Moods come and go, but greatness ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... as much to the age as to the writer. In description he is too copious and detailed: his poems abound with long speeches: his parade of varied learning, his partiality for abstruse mythology, are just the natural defects of a lettered but uninspired epoch.' ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the need themselves, is the best proof of how deeply they misunderstand the gravity of their plight. Look at these Theosophists, Spiritualists, and members of the Inner Light,—mere cliques, mere handfuls of uninspired and uninspiring cranks. They'll never spread a uniform and unifying culture. They cannot therefore make language once more a common currency ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... challenged, I believe, by the adherents of the Baconian faith. The tasks which the greatest of our poets set himself when near the age of thirty, and to which he presumably brought all the powers of which he was then conscious, were the uninspired and pitilessly prolix poems of VENUS AND ADONIS and THE RAPE OF LUCRECE, the first consisting of some 1,200 lines and the second of more than 1,800; one a calculated picture of female concupiscence and the other a still ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... at Moses' song on Red Sea shore— When Pharaoh and his mighty host were drowned— In which the Tribes most gratefully adore Their great Deliverer, who on Egypt frowned. No mortal uninspired could e'er have found Such fitting language for that great event, Those strains sublime, with glorious grandeur crowned, Came forth from heaven, and back were thither sent As worship to the Lord, from hearts, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Nymphenburg Palace where the mad king used to play. We visited the State Theatre, where Wagnerian opera still holds the patient ear, and there we heard, not Wagner, but Shakespeare's "Lear," done in a jog-trot, uninspired, later-Victorian style. One felt as if the theatre had slept for thirty years and then, awakening, had resumed in the same style as before. It is often said reproachfully in Germany that Queen Victoria would never ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... philosophy of pregnant reason could also have adopted the principle for its own. But logicians and mathematicians naturally neglect the psychology of their own processes and, accustomed as they are to an irresponsible and constructive use of the intellect, regard as a confused and uninspired intruder the critic who, by a retrospective and naturalistic method, tries to give them a little knowledge ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... anything but a tour de force; but a comprehension of its purpose will at least save it from being judged by standards not applicable to it. It is not naively and unintentionally incongruous. To the modern reader it is dull because he has at hand far better compendia; it is uninspired no doubt: the theme did not lend itself to enthusiastic treatment; the obscurity and awkwardness of expression and the imitative phraseology betray a young unformed style. To analyze the art, however, would ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... writer, in preparation of materials for this work, has encountered so much that is false recorded in history as sober verity, that he has at times been disposed almost to universal scepticism in regard to uninspired narration. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... perhaps; or the dull and uninspired, but courageous persistence of the scientific: everything seemingly found out is doomed to be subverted—by more powerful microscopes and telescopes; by more refined, precise, searching means and ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... men upon whose decision hung such momentous issues, the Council which met that evening at Westminster seemed alike unambitious in tone and uninspired in appearance. Some short time was spent in one of the anterooms, where Julian was introduced to many of the delegates. The disclosure of his identity, although it aroused immense interest, was scarcely an unmixed ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... freely, like tendrils, and his limbs like smooth plant-stems. He was so healthy and well-made, why did he make one ashamed, why did one feel repelled? Why should Gerald even dislike it, why did it seem to him to detract from his own dignity. Was that all a human being amounted to? So uninspired! thought Gerald. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... timidly of the mysteries of superior beings), by the celebrated Mrs. Hannah Moore! We shall probably give great offence by such indiscretion; but still we must be excused for treating it as a book merely human,—an uninspired production,—the result of mortality left to itself, and depending on its own limited resources. In taking up the subject in this point of view, we solemnly disclaim the slightest intention of indulging in any indecorous levity, or of wounding ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... For several days now our columns have been ringing with the world-wide acclamation of this stupendous discovery, beside the potentialities of which the wildest efforts of imaginative literature are reduced to pallid and uninspired commonplaces. Even so cautious a scientist as Sir Potiphar Shucks has declared that the idea of Saturn being inhabited is one that 'should not lightly be set aside,' and has announced his conviction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... in the St. Alban's work of the next generation is characteristic of the decay of colour and detail which makes the chroniclers of the age of Edward I. inferior to those of his father's reign. The years after 1259 were briefly chronicled by uninspired continuators of Matthew Paris, and the reputation of St. Alban's as a school of history led to the frequent transference of their annals to other religious houses, where they were written up by local pens. This led to the dissemination of the series of jejune compilations which in the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... that he had his feet very firmly on a rather uninspired earth. He was getting on in the woolen business, which happened to be the vocation his father had handed down to him. He belonged to an amusing club, and he still felt himself irrevocably widowed by the early death of the girl in the photograph ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... is uninspired work at best," he said once to me, when I had been his confidential assistant for some years. "It leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead nowhere. It is playing with the wrong end of a rather dangerous toy. Far better, it would be, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the swelling pride which led to the discussion of the letters with Hygeia. It snatched her forcibly from my life at a time when sustaining hope was most needed. The hypnotizing poets were to blame. As I read the letters, I got the notion that I was responsible for the inspired as well as the uninspired portions, and so became topheavy and foolhardy in handling a kind of fire I did not understand. Many another has been burned ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... to serve as the raw material of philosophy, but to furnish instruction and inspiration in the truth of things; and unless it can work home to the business and bosoms of plain practical men, it might as well be struck from the roll of legitimate interests. Now, in the circle of uninspired forces, Shakespeare's art may be justly regarded as our broadest and noblest "discipline of humanity." And his characterization, not his dramatic composition, is his point of contact with us as a practical teacher. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... them. The debris of the foreign empire was, as usual in such cases, put together again, and customary law and order restored by the conservative reactionaries who succeeded him. Henceforth Egyptian civilization runs an uninspired and undeveloping course till the days of the Saites and the Ptolemies. This point in the history of Egypt, therefore, forms a convenient stopping-place at which to pause, while we turn once more to Western Asia, and ascertain to what extent recent excavations ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... discussion begins. The central and vital principle of all these clubs is that a poem by Robert Browning is a sort of prize enigma, of which the solution is to be reached rather by wild and daring guessing than by any commonplace process of reasoning. Although to an ordinary and uninspired intellect it may appear perfectly obvious that a lyric means simply and clearly what it says, the true Browningite is better informed. He is deeply aware that if the poet seems to say one thing, this is proof indisputable that another is intended. To ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... make, if the reader will allow, a supposition analogous to some which the author of "Supernatural Religion" has made in pages 360 and following of his first volume. We will suppose that all the ecclesiastical literature, inspired and uninspired, previous to the Council of Nice, had been blotted out utterly, and the Four Gospels alone preserved. And we will suppose some critic taking upon himself to argue that the Gospel of St. John was written after the Nicene Creed. On ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... St. Paul's for the Queen's Jubilee. Went with Edy and Henry. Not at all adequate to the occasion was the ceremony. The Te Deum rather good, the sermon sensible, but the whole uninspired, unimpassioned and dull. The Prince and Princess ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... intimate confidence, the mutual encouragement and self-sacrifice, never a note of despair, but always the exultation of the Great Fight, and the promise of a great victory. This is a finer company than a mere casual alliance; yet it makes the uninspired pause, wondering and questioning. These men are earnest men of different creeds; still they are as intimately bound to one another as if they knelt at the one altar. In the narrow view the creeds should be at one another's throats; here they are marching shoulder ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... They originated that critical and rather hostile scrutiny of Semitic ideas and values in present civilization, which plays no small part in the dilettante naturalism of the moment. Thus the nature and place of man, under the influence of these "uninspired" literatures and cultures, became more and more important as both his person and his position in the cosmos ceased to be interpreted either in those terms of the moral transcendence of deity, or of the helplessness and insignificance of his creatures, which inform ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the way explore With magic rites and heathen lore Obstructed and depress'd; Till Wisdom give the sacred Nine, Untaught, not uninspired, to shine, By Reason's ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... mortal enemy of all the Christian holds dear, and to take no rest until this infidel and atheistic foe has been utterly destroyed."* Dr. Woodrow maintained that the science of theology, as a science, is equally human and uninspired with the science of geology. He cited illustrations from the long warfare of science and theology to show that the church would make a great mistake if it attempted to shut off the human intellect from the search of truth as reverent investigators in the realms of geology and biology might find ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... from all public duties and cares. On the 3d of March of this year he ceased to be President by voluntarily retiring from the post after writing that farewell address which a British historian[D] has pronounced unequalled by any composition of uninspired wisdom. He is now a private citizen returned to his country estate at Mount Vernon on the banks of the Potomac. Mr. Lear is in Georgetown. In this letter to him of the 25th of March '97, he speaks of plans for repairing ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... presented his views of Man, Nature, and Society. Of this plan he completed two detached parts, namely the fragmentary 'Recluse' and 'The Excursion,' which latter contains some fine passages, but for the most part is uninspired. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... was apparently hazy on the subject of his friend's further reminiscences, and he left her at the door with ill-concealed alacrity. She knew that the conversation had not been uninspired, and his otherwise futile questions had served a useful purpose ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... therefore no one can define God's will who is not of the ministry. Had the possibility of direct revelation been admitted this reasoning must have fallen; for then, obviously, the word of an inspired peasant would have outweighed the sermon of an uninspired divine; it follows, necessarily, that ecclesiastics so situated would have been jealous of lay preaching, and absolutely intolerant of ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... represented as the last of the series of Buddhas[1], promulgated a religious system in India which has exercised a wider influence over the Eastern world than the doctrines of any other uninspired teacher in any age or country.[2] He was born B.C. 624 at Kapila-Vastu (a city which has no place in the geography of the Hindus, but which appears to have been on the borders of Nepaul); he attained his superior Buddha-hood B.C. 588, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Claremont, however, thought otherwise, and ran his form accordingly. In repetition this was especially noticeable. Kennedy, a small boy with glasses, who was always word-perfect, would nervously mumble through Henry V's speech (they always learnt Shakespeare) in an accurate but totally uninspired way. Mansell would stand at the back of the form and blunder out blank verse, much of which was his own, and little of which was Shakespeare, but which ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... bed, read a new play. He read three or four pages and then in irritation threw the play on to the floor, put out the candle, and drew the bedclothes over him; a little later, after thinking over it, he took the play up again and began to read it; then, getting angry with the uninspired tedious work, he again threw it on the floor and put out the candle. A little later he once more took up the play and read it, then he produced it and it ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... of letters who are the glory of latter-day England. Then there was Lewis, further towards Kensington, where his cousins the Solomons and the Hartsteins lived, a brilliant representative of his race, able, industrious and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little in revolt against the racial tradition of feminine servitude and inclined to the suffragette point of view, and Bunting Harblow, an old blue, and with an erratic disposition well under the control ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and Poetry is insoluble but on the admission of a revelation or communication of some sort, unconceived by the human mind, unexecuted by the human hand. If invention and creation be the grand characteristics of the Poet, Moses, if uninspired, was a greater Poet than Homer, or Milton, or Shakspeare, on the hypothesis that he invented the drama which he wrote. The first chapter of Genesis is the greatest and most splendid Poem ever conceived by human imagination, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... first sower of the seeds of female enfranchisement expected to reap for her harvest. People who are frightened by a name are apt to suppose that women who defend their rights would have the world filled with uninspired Joans of Arc, and unrefined Portias. Those who judge Mary Wollstonecraft by her conduct, without inquiring into her motives or reading her book, might conclude that what she desired was the destruction of ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... years B. C. the Scripture history closes, and for the remaining particulars of the Jewish history recourse must be had to uninspired writers, particularly to the books of the Maccabees and ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... and never more frequently than to-day. Men whose names are in the mouth of everybody have lived and died in the enjoyment not merely of the esteem, but of the reverent admiration of their age, whose lives were wholly uninspired by religious motives. I need only mention Charles Darwin, and when we remember that not even sectarianism ventured to dispute his right to rest within the hallowed precincts of an abbey-cathedral, ecclesiastics ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... then, a universal inspiration, on which the special inspiration of the Old and New Testament rests. There are inspired men and uninspired men. There are inspired writings and uninspired writings. There is a general inspiration, out of which the particular inspiration of Bible writers grew. Universal inspiration is a genus, of which this is a species. We cannot understand the inspiration of the writers of the Bible till we understand ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... one how ill we have been used; and that too when we are not kept silent by a consciousness that we should lose credit by divulging the circumstance? And lastly, can we not only be content to return our enemies good for evil, (for this return, as has been remarked by one of the greatest of uninspired authorities,[95] may be prompted by pride and repaid by self-complacency) but, when they are successful or unsuccessful without our having contributed to their good or ill fortune, can we not only ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... within his constitutional rights, but such an exercise of the royal prerogative was, to say the least, worthy of George III. in his most uninspired mood. Althorp regarded the King's action as the 'greatest piece of folly ever committed,' and Lord John, in reply to the friendly note which contained this emphatic verdict, summoned his philosophy to his aid in the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... them, no better and no worse? No—perish the thought! never again will he mingle with those rude and vulgar natures, having no thoughts or feelings above their creature comforts: content to live like animals, uninspired by the divine afflatus, untouched by the poetic fire. Full of determined energy never to yield the high position he has acquired, he rushes forth into the open air and takes his winding way through the green meadows and leafy wilds. Here, sitting on the stump of an old tree, he spies ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... over five, dancing along the streets singing their national anthem. It must have been taught them in secret. In the midst of a band were often an American soldier or two, in full swing, thoroughly enjoying themselves. The enthusiasm was all of it natural and uninspired by alcohol, for the Germans had taken with them everything to drink that they had ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... his literary work, it requires no doubt a certain amount of good will to read it. It is voluminous, even in the original part not very original, and constantly marred by that loquacity which, especially in times of great inspiration, comes upon the uninspired or not very strongly inspired. The point about Sylvester, as about so many others of his time, is that, unlike the minor poets of our day and of some others, he has constant flashes—constant hardly separable, but quite perceivable, scraps, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... light on the manners and customs of the times to which it refers. He also translated Sallust's Bellum Jugurthinum, and the Mirrour of Good Manners, from the Italian of Mancini, and wrote five Eclogues. His style is stiff and his verse uninspired. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... to a small ironical smile as he reflected on the difference between "a little yachting" and the sinister fascination of that ugly, uninspired painting.... ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... high disdain, Exploding upstart theory, insists Upon the allegiance to which men are born. .... Could a youth, and one In ancient story versed, whose breast hath heaved Under the weight of classic eloquence, Sit, see, and hear, unthankful, uninspired?"[329] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... extremely nice of you to want to be trained in—in enunciation by a stage-director. Perhaps I could help you. I'm a thoroughly sound and uninspired schoolma'am by instinct; ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... pretty, but is it Sophocles?—or Swinburne? Still, grace there is, and distinction, in all that Prof. Murray writes—qualities that are not accentuated by the mouthings of the protagonist, Mr. Martin Harvey, the uninspired drone of the chorus, or the intermittent shrieking and bawling of the crowd. In the translation of the Professor the simple profundities of the poet become delicate verse, which in the mouth of the histrion ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... are so like pictures of other growths. I felt that this scene was a worthy one for the kind but never familiar man who walked and reflected there. We enjoyed a constant outdoor life. But in those uninspired hours when there was no father in sight, and my mother was resting in seclusion, I played at grocer's shop on the sands with a little girl called Hannah, whom I then despised for her name, her homely neat clothes, her sweetness and silence, and in retrospect learned to love. As we pounded ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... much the result of desperation as philosophy. He felt himself an outcast as well from home as from love, and it mattered to him very little, in the morbid excitement of his present mind, whether he fell by the hand of his rival, or lived to pine out a wearisome existence, lonely and uninspired, a gloomy exile in the bitter world. He waited, it may be said, with some impatience for the fire of his antagonist. Once he saw the pistol of Stevens uplifted. He had one in each hand. His own hung beside him. He waited for the shot of the enemy as a signal ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... with the blood which was so profusely shed in the heat of action, they traversed the field after the battle, and massacred those miserable wretches who lay maimed and expiring: nay, some officers acted a part in this cruel scene of assassination, the triumph of low illiberal minds, uninspired by sentiment, untinctured by humanity. The vanquished adventurer rode off the field, accompanied by the duke of Perth, lord Elcho, and a few horsemen; he crossed the water at Nairn, and retired to the house of a gentleman in Strutharrick, where ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... he had not his wife's and daughters' gifts; his lies were always of the cowardly and uninspired kind that seldom serve any purpose. Julia did not believe him, and set to work cross questioning him so that soon she knew what she wanted. It seemed that her surmise was correct; he had met some one at the "Dog and Pheasant"; a veterinary surgeon who had come there to doctor a horse. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... or of following the sophistical arguments of the blind leading the blind. Much reliance is placed upon the history of the "early fathers," so called, who succeeded the Apostles, to settle the question. We ought to remember that these were uninspired men, and we do not know even so much about their characters, as we do of the uninspired fathers of the last century, whose teaching led us all into Babylon. If the true history of the advent doctrine from 1842 to the autumn of ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... Paradiso is truly his "medieval miracle of song," the supreme achievement of his genius. Here the poetry of the sublime reaches its highest point—the summit on which Dante is a lonely and unchallenged figure. "No uninspired hand," says Cardinal Manning, "has ever written thoughts so high in words, so resplendent, as the last stanza of the Divina Commedia." It was said of St. Thomas: "Post Summam Thomae nihil restat nisi lumen gloriae." It may be said of Dante: ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... But, up to that November day in 1825 when he first met a praying band of disciples, he had never to his recollection read one chapter in the Book of books; and for the first four years of his new life he gave to the works of uninspired men practical preference over ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... who? Or is it Solomon?—King Solomon—Thou remembrest to have read of such a king, dost thou not? SOL-O-MON, I learned, in my infant state [my mother was a good woman] to answer, when asked, Who was the wisest man?—But my indulgent questioner never asked me how he came by the uninspired part of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson |
