"Verbal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... home to tell me that one or both my parents were dead; "it is no use to conceal the fact from you; but here is the Admiralty List, just come to my hands, and your name, in spite of all you tell me of promises, verbal and written, is NOT ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... though separated by never-closing spaces, were held together by an eternal potentiality. There was a sympathy in the mass of city-folk, unspoken and even unobserved by many, but mighty—it was much more wonderful than the simple, verbal friendship between Jake Zeigler and Mat Carrol, neighbors at Bill's Corners. The power that held the atoms of the great mass together was the very same that gave each atom its individuality. Evan ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... Cauchon prepared the proces verbal. I will simplify that by calling it the Bill of Particulars. It was a detailed list of the charges against her, and formed the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of suspicions and public rumors—those were the words used. It was merely charged that she was suspected of having ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in the matter. To suppose that Jean Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolf sounded like the word for light, and thus gave rise to the story of a light-deity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet as far as such verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtless helped ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... very short, and, I hope, a very simple and intelligible account of the powers and operations of the human mind. By this plain statement of facts, it will not be difficult to decide many celebrated, though frivolous, and merely verbal controversies, which have long amused the leisure of the schools, and which owe both their fame and their existence to the ambiguous obscurity of scholastic language. It will, for example, only require an appeal to every man's ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself, at the time—that is, his by his friends, and mine by mine. It would be an unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his, and the changes I have made in mine, you perceive, are verbal only, and very few in number. I wish the reprint to be precisely as the copies I send, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... other's language. I saw the same thing at Cape Prince of Wales, the western extremity of the New World, whither a number of Eskimo from the Wankarem river, Siberia, had come to trade. Doubtless there is a community of origin in the Eskimo tongue, and these verbal divergencies may be owing to the want of written records to give fixity to the language, since languages resemble living organisms by being in a state of continual change. Be that as it may, we know that this people has imported a number of words from coming in contact with another ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... confronted with the original difficulty—the difficulty that for some conceptions there is no verbal figure. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... "Young Deer," one of their best herb doctors, was engaged to collect the various plants used in medicine and describe their uses. While thus employed he wrote in a book furnished him for the purpose a number of formulas used by him in his practice, giving at the same time a verbal explanation of the theory and ceremonies. Among these was one for protection in battle, which had been used by himself and a number of other Cherokees in the late war. Another doctor named Takwati[']h[)i] or "Catawba Killer," was afterward employed on the same ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... admit of the most varied verbal expositions, and of not one of them can it be correctly said that it is exhaustive, the right one, and contains the whole significance of the music. This significance is contained most definitely in the music itself. It is not music that is ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... laughing and enjoying the verbal engagement that had sprung up like a squall in the tropics, "don't you begin ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Johnson's style has pleased many from the very fault of being perpetually translateable; he creates an impression of cleverness by never saying any thing in a common way. The best specimen of this manner is in Junius, because his antithesis is less merely verbal than Johnson's. Gibbon's manner is the worst of all; it has every fault of which this peculiar style is capable. Tacitus is an example of it in Latin; in coming from Cicero you ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the financier's weapon. Then he deprived Fred of his rifle amid a surprisingly brilliant outburst of verbal pyrotechnics. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... five pages (96-100) are enough to enable him to declare, without supporting his declaration by any positive argument which is not merely a different verbal expression of the same idea, that the Darwinian law of the struggle for existence has not undergone and can not undergo any transformation except that which will change the violent struggle into competition (the struggle of skill and intelligence) and that this law ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... often the solution of an apparent difficulty is found in studying the exact words used. The accuracy, precision and inerrancy of the exact words used is amazing. To the superficial student, the doctrine of verbal inspiration may appear questionable or even absurd; any regenerated and Spirit-taught man, who ponders the words of the Scripture day after day and year after year, will become convinced that the wisdom of God is in the very words, ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... the Household troops; this was at the period of the death of the Duke of York and the Duke of Wellington's becoming Commander-in-Chief. The Duke of Cumberland told the Duke of Wellington that he had received the King's verbal commands to that effect, and from that time he alone kept the Gold Stick, and the Blues were withdrawn from the authority of the Commander-in-Chief. The Duke of Wellington made no opposition; but last year, during the uproar on the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... fresh letter had been written, the marquise would attend to nothing but her confession, and begged the doctor to take the pen for her. "I have done so many wrong thing's," she said, "that if I only gave you a verbal confession, I should never be sure I ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Cuttle even went so far as to revolve in his own bosom, while he sat looking at Walter and listening with a tear on his shirt-collar to what he related, whether it might not be at once genteel and politic to give Mr Dombey a verbal invitation, whenever they should meet, to come and cut his mutton in Brig Place on some day of his own naming, and enter on the question of his young friend's prospects over a social glass. But the uncertain temper of Mrs MacStinger, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... puckered up his mouth and there was a strained look on his face which indicated that the shot had gone home. But his verbal ammunition ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... not matter in the least," one of the men said, "it is all one whether he was shot by a bullet of the Versaillais, or hung, or killed by a blow of an Englishman's fist. Monsieur le Commissaire, will you draw up a proces-verbal ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... particulars of the offence are noted by the police; and he is thereupon informed that he will be called upon to give an account of himself later. A week or two may pass before the offender receives verbal or printed notice requiring his presence before the Court of the Cantonal Judge, which answers somewhat to the English Police Court. This delay in the administration of justice is regarded as a great defect even in Holland, and one which is more and more being recognized. The ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... from America which is causing me considerable perturbation. If your engagements will allow, I should be grateful if you will take tea with me this afternoon, and give me the benefit of your wise counsel. Pray send a verbal ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Latin edi for I have eaten; in others he thinks of himself subconsciously as possessing the results of his action, as our I have eaten; and in others, as among the Irish peasantry, he separates himself and his action entirely, as I am after eating. In some grammars, as in Maya, the verbal concept starts with the past; in others, as our own, we live in the present; in the Welsh, the future is the chief tense. The mere choice of shall or will as the first person future auxiliary denotes ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... to a commonplace ordinary woman!" Here a sly brain-devil whispered that Miss Vancourt might possibly be neither commonplace nor ordinary,—but he put the suggestion aside with a 'Get thee behind me, Satan' inflexibility. "The fact is, I had better not write to her at all. I'll send Bainton with a verbal message; he is sure to give a quaint and pleasant turn to it,—he knew her father, and I didn't;—it will be much better ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... tale in plain words, as a special correspondent who knows how to make a verbal precis should tell it. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... confirmation of my verbal assurance, I have the honor to give in writing a declaration, which, in view of the treaties in force, is quite superfluous, that the Confederation of the North and its allies (Germany) will respect the neutrality of ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... was as much embarrassed by the requisition for an answer in writing as to the two regiments that were not ordered off as he was astonished at the order that had been given; and on getting a note from General Mackay, he gave the verbal answer, that he would write to General Gage. Meantime, while Bernard was hesitating, the Patriots were acting, and immediately applied themselves to counteract the influence which they knew was making to retain the two regiments. One hundred and forty-two of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... thereto, by and with the consent of the Senate held commissions from the Executive as major-generals in the Volunteer Army. General Schenck tendered the resignation of his said commission and took his seat in the House of Representatives at the assembling thereof upon the distinct verbal understanding with the Secretary of War and the Executive that he might at any time during the session, at his own pleasure, withdraw said resignation and return to the field. General Blair was, by temporary assignment of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of isolation. Then, too, many short stories are merely accounts of strange adventures, wonderful discoveries or inventions, and queer occurrences of all sorts—themes which amuse us from their mere oddity; or they are verbal photographs of life, which are interesting from their views of psychological and sociological problems; and none of them requires love as the chief motive. Ingenuity and originality, the principal constituents of such tales, are the story teller's great ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... uneatableness more protective to them than it would otherwise be. When you have read my book I shall be glad of any hints for corrections if it comes to another edition. I was horrified myself by coming accidentally on several verbal inelegancies after all my trouble in correcting, and I have no doubt there are many more important errors.—Believe me, dear ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Amur and on the Kurile, Sakhalin and Yezo islands, the Kamchadal and Koryak of Kamchatka, and the Chukches and Yukaghir of extreme northeastern Siberia. As far back as 1850, the eminent philologist Robert Latham noted a marked linguistic agreement, both in structure and verbal affinity, between our Northwest Coast tribes and the peoples of the islands and peninsulas fringing northeastern Asia. "Koriak is notably American," he said.[763] The recent Jesup Expedition to the Northwest Coast of America and the nearby coast ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... to request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but what I found him. He was several times interrupted by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... the continent, in all law and police practices nothing is verbal, but any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the labor, as well as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is enormous. In a police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among many other scribes of various ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... merciless microscope of history. His biography has been written and rewritten. His letters have been drawn out from every lurking place, and have been given to the world in masses and in detachments. His battles have been fought over and over again, and his state papers have undergone an almost verbal examination. Yet, despite his vast fame and all the labors of the antiquarian and biographer, Washington is still not understood,—as a man he is unfamiliar to the posterity that reverences his memory. He has been misrepresented ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... this, fortunately for himself, Phil. declines. You are to understand that he will not undertake the defence of Protestantism in its doctrines, but only in its principles. That won't do; that antithesis is as hollow as a drum; and, if the objection were verbal only, I would not make it. But the contradistinction fails to convey the real meaning. It is not that he has falsely expressed his meaning, but that he has falsely developed that meaning to his own consciousness. Not the word only is wrong; but the wrong word is put forward ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... confident manner, a gallant bearing. Never having done his military service, since legally he did not exist—it was the cruelest mystery in our journalist's life—Fandor had played his corporal's role by intuition, combined with a trained power of observation, Vinson's manual, and Vinson's verbal instructions. Vinson, for his own sake most of all, had utilised every minute, and had put the eager Fandor through several turns ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... his good wishes for Rienzo, it may seem surprisingly creditable to the Pontiff's liberality that he should have even professed any interest in the poet's fortune; but in a letter to his friend Socrates, Petrarch gives us to understand that he thought the Pope's professions were merely verbal. He says: "To hold out treasures to a man who demands a small sum is but a polite mode of refusal." In fact, the Pope offered him some bishopric, knowing that he wanted only some benefice that ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... these orderly sets of occurrences may occur not once or twice only but thousands and thousands of times, and this may all happen by chance? A very distant acquaintance with the mathematics of probability will show that this is a wholly untenable theory. We are generally answered by some purely verbal explanation, like the personification ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... of the bird's arrival in the spring, the nesting time, or the season when for some other reason the species is particularly conspicuous. In taking the stories out of their original setting a few slight verbal alterations have been necessary here and there, but these have been made either by Mr. Burroughs himself or ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Robert's funeral, I hear," he said, in a moment, as gruff and short as though she were to blame for the fact, and he was come to deliver a verbal chastisement. ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... and we had not yet been able to think of any plan of crossing these inhospitable wastes before the winter's snows should make them passable on reindeer-sledges. It is difficult for one who has had no experience of northern life to get from a mere verbal description a clear idea of a Siberian moss steppe, or to appreciate fully the nature and extent of the obstacles which it presents to summer travel. It is by no means easy to cross, even in winter, when it is frozen and covered with snow; but in summer ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the night of her arrival in the country. He had changed, and though she assured herself that she despised him more than ever, she found a grim amusement in the recollection of his manner immediately following the rescue, and in a review of the verbal battle, in which she had ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... employed in order to bar from the fields men who would gladly enter them. "Slugging" is a frequent part of the strategy used when strikes are pending, and this elastic term covers a wide range of deterrent arguments. Whatever goes beyond a verbal demand or insult to the man or his family and involves any use of physical force is included in the meaning of the term, and the action ranges from small injuries to the clubbings which maim and kill. Moreover, social ostracism is ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... His poem on Verbal Criticism, 1733, was written to pay court to Pope, on a subject which he either did not understand, or willingly misrepresented; and is little more than an improvement, or rather expansion, of a fragment which Pope printed in a Miscellany long before he engrafted it into a regular poem. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... misfortune of the door; and, on the whole, performed her cue with such dexterity and discretion that our politician was actually overreached, and, having finished his epistle, committed it to her care, with many verbal expressions of eternal love and fidelity ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... we thought, might not be unproductive of future advantages. Thus far we had been journeying through Russian territory without a passport. We had no authorization except the telegram to "come on," received from General Kuropatkine at Askabad, and the verbal permission of Count Rosterzsoff at Samarkand to proceed to Tashkend. Furthermore, the passport for which we had just applied to Baron Wrevsky, the Governor-General of Turkestan, would be available only as far as the border of Siberia, where we should have to apply to the various governors-general ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... some time afterwards, an amiable French gentleman had neatly engraved on the head-stone of his wife, who had long been an invalid. Even the king and queen did not escape Hamlet in his distempered moments. Passing his mother in a corridor or on a staircase of the palace, he would suddenly plant a verbal dagger in her heart; and frequently, in full court, he would deal the king such a cutting reply as caused him to blanch, and gnaw his lip. If the spectacle of Gertrude and Claudius was hateful to Hamlet, ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... as well as the secular standard of worth! This experience, repeated frequently and nearly word for word, had begun to weary me. Consequently I led the fat merchant a verbal chase, and baffled him until he capitulated with, "Excuse me. Take no offense, I beg, sudarynya. I only asked so by chance." Then I told him with ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... patience with you—with either of you. You've spoiled my morning, and I'll not stay here another minute." She reached for her trinkets on the table and rattled them viciously. "It's too bad. With the best intentions in the world I bring two of my friends together and they fall instantly into verbal fisticuffs. Hermia, you deserve no better fate than to be locked in here with this bear of a man until you ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... distaste, and he only reluctantly reprinted it in his "Poems," 1870. He then wholly omitted the four stanzas 7, 8, 12, 13, beginning: "Silence was speaking," "I said, full knowledge," "She stood a moment," "Almost unwittingly"; and he made some other verbal alterations.{2} It will be observed that this poem was written long before the Praeraphaelite movement began. None the less it shows in an eminent degree one of the influences which guided that movement: the intimate intertexture of a spiritual sense with ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... that such is the evident fact, and that he, Lucchesi, is not equal to it, but must have large reinforcement of Horse to his right wing. "Tush!" answer Prince Karl and Daun; and return only argument, verbal consolation, to distressed Lucchesi. Lucchesi sends a second message, more passionately pressing, to the like effect; also with the like return. Upon which he sends a third message, quite passionate: "If Cavalry do not come, I will not be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... agent at L'Orient, and Gruel's by the agent at Nantes. I shall always be ready to assist the agents of L'Orient and Nantes in any way in my power; but were the details to be left to me, they would languish necessarily, on account of my distance from the place, and perhaps suffer too, for want of verbal consultations with the lawyers entrusted with them. You are now with Congress, and can take their orders on the subject. I shall, therefore, do nothing in these matters, in reliance that you ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... PHI's Latin authors disk from the tyrannical, yet in some ways paradoxically happy scholarly drudgery— would have been able to devote that same bulk of time to analyzing and interpreting Virgilian verbal usage. ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... morning he sent her a note saying he was better; he would be round for tea; and received a verbal answer. Miss Sahib sent her salaam. She would be ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... this packet from Lafitte, Mr. Blanque immediately laid its contents before the governor, who convened the committee of defence lately formed of which he was president; and Mr. Rancher the bearer of Lafitte's packet, was sent back with a verbal answer to desire Lafitte to take no steps until it should be determined what was expedient to be done; the message also contained an assurance that, in the meantime no steps should be taken against him for his past offences against the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... always something that has to be picked up personally, usually an interview with some VIP traveling through. This time, though, the big story coming in on the Peenemuende was a local item. Paradox? Dad says there is no such thing. He says a paradox is either a verbal contradiction, and you get rid of it by restating it correctly, or it's a structural contradiction, and you just call it an impossibility and let it go at that. In this case, what was coming in was a real live author, who was going to write a travel book ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... was currently reported to hold an interest in it. After a time the ownership was transferred to a single cotton speculator, but the trading went on without hinderance. This speculator told me the guerrilla leader had sent him a verbal promise that the post should not be disturbed or menaced so long as the store remained there. Similar scenes were enacted at nearly all the posts established for the "protection" of leased plantations. Trading stores were in full operation, and the amount ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... been shown some of my verses, and to meet him was one of my cherished dreams. Only half a dozen people were present, and from a well-known portrait of him by Millais I recognized his form at once. This was Ruskin. He had sent me, through Lord Houghton or somebody, a verbal message of poetic appreciation already. I was now meeting him in the flesh. The first thing in him which struck me was the irresistible fascination of his manner. It was a manner absolutely and almost plaintively ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... was no secret; and whenever the necessity should arise that a burst of indiscreet anger should be sufficient to injure a cause, or damage a situation, 'the lord' could be calculated on with a perfect security. McGloin understood this thoroughly; nor was it matter of surprise to him that a verbal reply of 'There is no answer' was returned to his note; while the old servant, instead of stopping the ass-cart as usual for the weekly supply of groceries at McGloin's, repaired to a small shop over the way, where colonial products were rudely jostled out ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... be at no pains to find a meaning for everything Mr. Browning has written. But when all is said and done—when these few freaks of a crowded brain are thrown overboard to the sharks of verbal criticism who feed on such things—Mr. Browning and his great poetical achievement remain behind to be dealt with and accounted for. We do not get rid of the Laureate ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... use in verifying so slight a verbal reference to Panormitan, one of whose huge folios, Venet. 1473, I have examined in vain, perhaps the object might be attained by the assistance of such a book as Thomassin's Vetus et Nova Ecclesiae Disciplina, in the chapter ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... not receiving an answer from Capt. Preston at the time we proposed, we sent him a message desiring to be informed whether we might expect his answer to which he replied by a Verbal Message as ours was that he had nothing further to add to what he had said to us the day before, as you'l please to observe by ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... lands of a certain Western railroad: "They comprise a section of country whose possibilities are simply infinitesimal, and whose developments will be revealed in glorious realization through the horoscope of the near future." This verbal architect builded wiser than he knew, for what more fitting word could the imagination suggest wherewith to crown the possibilities of alkali wastes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... low and inferior country because it was south of Quebec. You went north towards heaven and south towards hell, in their view; but when they went so far as to patronize or slander Carmen, she drove her verbal stilettos home without a button; so that on one occasion there would have been a law-suit for libel if the Old Cure had not intervened. To Jean Jacques' credit, be it said, he took his wife's part on this occasion, though in his heart he knew ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... friendly, sometimes voluble, and she ever dealt with us in a lady-like manner. Again we noted that many a society woman would give much for her well modulated voice and powers of verbal expression. Without any suggestion of melodrama she would rise to strong passages in giving vent to her feelings of indignation and ambition. At this time we were still wondering where she could have obtained her education; it was not until ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... edition, with its sequel, Christian Morals, and resemblant passages from Cowper's Task. By Mr Peace, Bristol. The text of this inestimable author is here cleared of its many errors, and the volume contains a useful verbal index. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... always either too few or too many; words which are for ever emancipating themselves from our control and becoming masters instead of slaves, so that our ideas, which ought to be formed by independent cerebration, are half derived from mere verbal symbols, which become a kind of intellectual pepsine that weakens the strongest systems. So when we speak of a man being "proud," that miserable expression is apt to engross and dominate us, conjuring up an image which excludes ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... comprehensively predicted, and a practical enforcement of it would have liberated every slave in the State; yet mitigated slavery long continued to exist among us, in derogation of it. Rules of interpretation demand a strictly verbal construction of nothing but a penal statute; and a constitution is to be construed still more liberally than even a remedial one, because a convention legislating for masses, can do little more than mark an outline of fundamental principles, leaving the interior gyrations and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of inconsistency in Christianly scientific methods of dealing with sin and disease is met by some- thing practical, - namely, the proof of the 355:6 utility of these methods; and proofs are better than mere verbal arguments or prayers which evince no spiritual power ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... for many years the two people refused to associate freely. A wall separates the cities; the gates through it are closed at night, and only opened when sufficient reason is given. If the party who desires to pass the gate can give no verbal excuse he has only to drop some money in the hands of the gate-keeper, and the pecuniary apology is considered entirely satisfactory. Time has softened the asperities of Tartar and Chinese association, so that the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... watch'd the pay-table on Saturday night, and collected what I stood engag'd for them, having to pay sometimes near thirty shillings a week on their accounts. This, and my being esteem'd a pretty good riggite, that is, a jocular verbal satirist, supported my consequence in the society. My constant attendance (I never making a St. Monday)[45] recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at composing occasioned my being put upon all work of dispatch, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... troops, instead of sending us reinforcements of men, munitions, provisions, they leave us without boats, they leave Belle-Isle without arrivals, without help; it is that instead of establishing with us a correspondence, whether by signals, or written or verbal communications, all relations with the shore are intercepted. Tell me, Aramis, answer me, or rather, before answering me, will you allow me to tell you what I have thought? Will you hear what my idea is, the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... upon its own merits. The first edition has been sold without any special effort on the part of the publishers. As they did not risk the cost of stereotyping, the work has been left open for revision and enlargement. No change in the matter of the first edition has been made, except a few verbal alterations and the addition of some qualifying phrases. Two short paragraphs only have been omitted, so as to leave the public documents and abolitionists, only, to testify as to the moral condition of the free ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... among that number, have transgressed the limits of the programme ratified for Primary Schools by the authorities, in imparting to your pupils facts from history and geography unnecessary to the people; and therefore, in confirmation of certain verbal instructions I have already made to you in person, I beg you in the future to maintain strictly the established programmes; and I warn you that if you fail to comply you will be discharged ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Ministre de la Guerre, 24 Avril, 1757; Relation de l'Ambassade des Cinq Nations a Montreal, jointe a la lettre precedente. Proces-verbal de differentes Entrevues entre M. de Vaudreuil et les Deputes des Nations sauvages du 13 au 30 Dec. 1756. Malartic, Journal. Montcalm a Madame de ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... censure passed by the Commons on the administration of James was next considered, and was approved without one dissentient voice. Some verbal objections were made to the proposition that James had abdicated the government. It was urged that he might more correctly be said to have deserted it. This amendment was adopted, it should seem, with scarcely any debate, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very sorry I have not seen the Aid de Camp who had a verbal message from General Greene. Inclosed I send to your Excellency the letter I have received on the occasion. Perhaps, did he mean to propose an expedition towards Cape-fear or Georgetown, which might be made with the light squadron ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... noncommittal as a sphinx and gave her no speck of satisfaction, only telling her to do what the nurse said. Bitter letters she sent home, but somehow they all were answered by Dr. Franklin, who wrote her little notes in reply which made her angry—then ashamed. Verbal outbreaks there were, and physical ones, too, a few times, which the nurse calmly and humiliatingly credited to her exercise-account and brought her more to eat, saying that scrapping was as healthful as work in making ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... probably very little additional evidence to be obtained, on one side or the other; it is all in, and Logan's speech can be unhesitatingly pronounced authentic. Doubtless there have been verbal alterations in it; there is not extant a report of any famous speech which does not probably differ in some way from the words as they were actually spoken. There is also a good deal of confusion as to whether the council took place in the Indian town, or in Dunmore's camp; whether Logan was sought ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... semi-rigidity of the body as if it were already half dead, and it took the form of sixteen "Shewings" or "Visions." These, she says, reached her in three ways, "by bodily sight, by word formed in mine understanding" (verbal messages which took form in her mind), "and by spiritual sight." But of this last, she adds, "I may never fully tell it."[64] It is impossible here to do justice to this little book, for it is one of the most important documents in the history of mysticism. There is no mention in it of any preliminary ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... "A verbal one," Mr. Coulson assented, "delivered to me in the presence of one other person, whose name you will ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... him among his friends—"Yours very sincerely, H. Bullinger." This literary effort he carefully dispatched by a Guinea-pig to its destination, and awaited a reply with the utmost impatience. The reply was laconic, but highly satisfactory. It was a verbal one, given by Oliver himself in class that afternoon, who volunteered the information to the delighted Bullinger that it ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... admitted that in certain cases the capitalist "pays out capital in wages." One would think that the "paying out" of capital is hardly possible without at least a "temporary" diminution of the capital from which payment is made. But "Progress and Poverty" changes all that by a little verbal legerdemain:— ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... verbal answer to the hail; only after a moment or two he got slowly to his feet and began ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... nothing, and sure enough, having dealt for a brief passage of time with the incident of a certain enforced departure from a certain as yet unnamed common carrier, he presently retraced his verbal footsteps ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... or "desperate courage," as it is defined by Sir Walter Scott. The word in its present accepted substantival form is a misconstruction of the verbal substantive dorryng or durring, daring, and do or don, the present infinitive of "do," the phrase dorryng do thus meaning "daring to do." It is used by Chaucer in Troylus, and by Lydgate in the Chronicles ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Bollygolla camp the messenger-boy returned without a scalp, and with a verbal message to the effect that the King could neither ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... of any critical remarks that may be made, it is only due to state that the addition to the English translation of a few facsimiles of original documents and the few verbal improvements are by no means due to a desire to differentiate between the publications in the two languages, but are merely the improvements which, as every author knows, suggests themselves and are rendered possible by the ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... are botanically named Selinon, and by some verbal accident, through the middle letter "n" in this word being changed into "r," making it Seliron, or, in the Italian, Celeri, our Celery (which is a Parsley) obtained its title. It is a cultivated variety of the common Smallage (Small ache) or wild Celery (Apium graveolens), ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... to be entirely verbal. Our Combat Club No. 1, the first to be established—is open to anybody and everybody. All are at liberty to enter into the discussions. We who believe in the Law of Love and Service shall have our say every evening that ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... literature, and to such I may return presently; but scientific criticism of literature must always be a contradiction in terms. You may to some considerable extent ascertain the general laws of language, of metre, of music, as applied to verbal rhythm and cadence; you may classify the subjects which appeal to the general, and further classify their particular manners of appeal; you may arrange the most ingenious "product-of-the-circumstances" theories about race, climate, religion. But always sooner or later, and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... also called on me yesterday, saying that he had conversed with the Comte de Rigny, who assured him that the note was not intended as a notice to depart, and that he would be glad to see me on the subject. I answered that I could have no verbal explanations on the subject, to which he replied that he had suggested the writing a note on the subject, but that the minister had declined any written communication. Rothschild added that he had made an appointment with the Comte de ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... distinguished for liberality in lending the rarest of their books to those who knew how to use them with effect. But, in the cases I now contemplate, the whole funds for supporting the proper offices attached to a library, such as librarians, sub-librarians, &c., which of themselves (and without the express verbal evidence of the founder's will) presume a public in the daily use of the books, else they are superfluous, have been applied to the creation of lazy sinecures, in behalf of persons expressly charged with the care of shutting out the public. Therefore, it is true, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... remain in her room for the rest of the day. The commissioners who had brought her to the prison gave orders that she should receive no indulgence, but be treated with the utmost rigor. The instructions, however, being merely verbal, were but little regarded. She was furnished with comfortable refreshment instead of the repulsive prison fare, and, after breakfast, was permitted to write a letter to the National Assembly upon her illegal arrest. Thus ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Made she no verbal question?] I do not see the impropriety of verbal question; such pleonasms are common. So we say, my ears have heard, my eyes have beheld. Besides, where is the word quest [Warburton's ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... be sure to get clear of all controversies PURELY VERBAL—the springing up of which weeds in almost all the sciences has been a main hindrance to the growth of true and sound knowledge. SECONDLY, this seems to be a sure way to extricate myself out of that fine and subtle net of ABSTRACT ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... We should guess, however, that he had not written a great deal in his own character—that his natural style was neither very lofty nor very grave—and that he rather indulges a partiality for puns and verbal pleasantries. We marvel why he has shut out Campbell and Rogers from his theatre of living poets, and confidently expect to have our curiosity, in this and in all other particulars, very speedily gratified, when the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... fishhooks!" This was Kerry Brand's voice. It was supposed to be St. Simon's turn to give the verbal instructions, but Brand allowed himself an occasional remark when ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... ear is sixteen vibrations a second. The instrument is equally capable of service and entertainment. It can be used as a stenograph, or shorthand-writer. A business man, for instance, can dictate his letters or instructions into it, and they can be copied out by his secretary. Callers can leave a verbal message in the phonograph instead of a note. An editor or journalist can dictate articles, which may be written out or composed by the printer, word by word, as they are spoken by the reproducer ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... message had been verbal, boy. It's so difficult to read ladies' hands; they're so abominably angular, and—where are my specs? I've a mind to have 'em screw-nailed to my nose. Ah! here ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... does not share the fortunes of her verbal body. The grand ideas, the master-imaginations and moving faiths of men, run in the blood of the race; and a given degree of pure human heat infallibly brings them out. Not more surely does the rose appear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Pere Beret, Alice, and Jean the hunchback. To compare it with a photograph of the same spot now would give a perfect impression of the historic atmosphere, color and conditions which cannot be set in words. But we must not belittle the power of verbal description. What if a thoroughly trained newspaper reporter had been given the freedom of old Vincennes on the Wabash during the first week of June, 1778, and we now had his printed story! What a supplement to the photographer's pictures! Well, we have neither photographs ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Judge-Advocate, and Bligh replied with a final demand that they should obey or refuse in writing. Then he wrote to Major Johnston, who commanded the regiment, and who lived some distance from Sydney, to come into town at once, as he wanted to see him over the "peculiar circumstances." Johnston sent a verbal message to the effect that he was too ill to come, or even to write. This ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... Lyad who had given Mantelish his call to bemused duty via a transmitted verbal cue on her arrival in Manon, and instructed him to get lost from his League guards for a few hours in Manon's swamps. There she had met and conferred with him and pumped him of all he could tell her. As the final outrage, she had instructed him ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... obscurity, you honour him for his elevation of mind, and your respect may even induce you to assent to what he says as to an intelligible proposition. Your thought may in consequence be dominated ever after by a verbal dogma, around which all your sympathies and antipathies will quickly gather, and the less you have penetrated the original sense of your creed, the more absolutely will you believe it. You will ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... lot close to the Sawdust Pile, had seen Donald McKaye, in the light cast through the open door of Caleb Brent's cottage, take Nan Brent in his arms and kiss her, since he had heard Nan Brent's voice apply to the young laird of Port Agnew a term so endearing as to constitute a verbal caress, his practical and unromantic soul had been in ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... quantities of raw fruits and vegetables. But by the time we got back home three days later, John had relapsed. The pain was rapidly getting much worse; the sores were growing again and a few small new ones appeared. Dr. Isabelle again took away his food and gave him another verbal spanking a little more severe than the one he'd had a few weeks earlier and put him to bed again without ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... tone of her letters he had judged her to be an elderly woman of profound scholarship who had spent the greater part of her life in study, and his astonishment at the sight of the small, dainty creature who received him in the library of the Palazzo d'Oro was beyond all verbal expression,—in fact, he took some minutes to recover from the magnetic "shock" of her blue eyes and ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... sometimes they would help us a little, and often not; some hints we had from the French, but not very many; besides we had considerable helps from other Persons far above our selves, for whose Care and Pains we shall ever acknowledge our Gratitude. A meer Verbal Translation is not to be expected, that wou'd sound so horribly, and be more obscure than the Original; but we have been faithful Observers of his Sence, and even of his Words too, not slipping any of consequence ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... oft-repeated lesson of humanity is enforced! Every word is chosen with unerring judgment, and no needless dilution of language weakens the force of the conceptions and pictures. Bryant is one of the few poets who will bear the test of the well-nigh obsolete art of verbal criticism: observe the expressions, "silent fame," "forgotten arts," "wisdom disappeared": how exactly these epithets satisfy the ear and the mind! how impossible to change any one of them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... verbal force (see Sec. 295, 6) and sinks to the level of a conjunction with the force of although. It takes the Subjunctive, Present ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... more terse and sententious, besides involving a much higher moral signification, that it may well be an original itself; but in that case, the verbal coincidence is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... consequence of the verbal observations made by you to my aides, Messrs. Chesnut and Lee, in relation to the condition of your supplies, and that you would in a few days be starved out if our guns did not batter you to pieces—or ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... of a great author. We never read any juvenile poems that so distinctly foretokened the character of all that the poet has since done; in particular, the very earliest and loosest of these little pieces indicate that unintermitting thoughtfulness, and that fine ear for verbal harmony in which we must venture to think that not one of our modern ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... brethren and companions' sake," had spoke repeatedly in my presence of the harm done by social drinking, and what influence women could exert for or against the custom. So I declined wine upon general principles when it was offered by the courtly host. No verbal comment was made upon my singular conduct, but the pert fifteen-year-old son of the house took occasion to drink my health with a dumb grimace, and beckoned the butler audaciously to fill up his glass, and a distinguished clergyman, whose parishioner the host ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... between merely saying something that is true and really saying something that gives a glimpse of the august and all-controlling Truth may be suggested by a verbal illustration. Suppose that, upon an evening which at sunset has been threatened with a storm, I observe the sky at midnight to be cloudless, and say, "The stars are shining still." Assuredly I shall be telling ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... the author, begging to be included in his list of subscribers for a dozen copies, and suggesting at the same time a verbal alteration in one of the stanzas of this ballad. Mr. Train acknowledged his letter with gratitude, and the little book reached him just as he was about to embark in the lighthouse yacht. He took it with him on his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... least equally bound to refuse any interpretation which seems to us unlike him, unworthy of him. He himself says, "Why do ye not of your own selves judge what is right?" In thus refusing, it may happen that, from ignorance or misunderstanding, we refuse the verbal form of its true interpretation, but we cannot thus refuse the spirit and the truth of it, for those we could not have seen without being in the condition to recognize them as the mind of Christ. Some misapprehension, I say, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... tried to frighten some Sisters of Mercy into leaving the town by painting them a luridly-coloured verbal picture of the perils of the present situation," said the Colonel. His keen hazel eyes twinkled, though his mouth was grave. "I ought to have remembered that you can't scare a religious, be he or she Roman Catholic, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, by pointing to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship, on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted,[42] in all that general and miscellaneous knowledge which is alone useful in the world, he was making rapid and even wonderful progress. With a mind too inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... reply was not given. Lord Clarendon was too apprehensive of the mischief which might possibly arise from a protracted discussion, leading, perhaps, to an angry controversy; and under the influence of this feeling contented himself, when the despatch was presented, with giving the ambassador a verbal answer, that "no consideration on earth would induce Parliament to pass a measure for the extradition of foreign political refugees; that our asylum could not be infringed, and that we adhered to certain ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... native tribes; and that they should guarantee equal treatment for all the white inhabitants of the country as respects taxation. As the whole war has risen out of Kruger's persistent refusal to keep his promises, both verbal and in writing, that he would observe this condition, I append the clause giving ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... property of a circle, which always returns to the point where it began, but it is no less true that around every circle another can be drawn.... Emerson followed his own counsel; he always keeps a reserve of power. His theory of Circles reappears without the least verbal indebtedness to himself in the splendid ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for entire quiet. Everyone was anxious. Hester was wretched, and Mrs Grey extremely restless and uneasy. She made several attempts to see him; but in no instance did she succeed. She wrote him a private note, and received only a friendly verbal answer, such as ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... given in full by Penhallow. It is also printed from the original draft by Mr. Frederic Kidder, in his Abenaki Indians: their Treaties of 1713 and 1717. The two impressions are substantially the same, but with verbal variations. The version of Kidder is the more complete, in giving not only the Indian totemic marks, but also the autographs in facsimile of all the English officials. Rale gives a dramatic account of the treaty, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... diction and tone of thought. Many other examples might be cited. Mr. Brinton, who has made a detailed and competent study of Browning's verse, gives his final opinion in these words: "In the volumes of Browning I maintain that we find so many instances of profound insight into verbal harmonies, such singular strength of poetic grouping, and such a marvelous grasp of the rhythmic properties of the English language that we must assign to him a rank second to no English poet of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... audible, and to secure by the elevations and pauses greater facility of understanding the poetry. For the choral songs are, and ever must have been, the most difficult part of the tragedy; there occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, the newest expressions, the boldest images, the most recondite allusions. Is it credible that the poets would, one and all, have been thus prodigal of the stores of art and genius, if they had known that in the representation the whole must have been lost to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... unconsciously imbibed the spirit of Drayton is afforded by a comparison of the noble speech of Fame in "The tragicall legend of Robert Duke of Normandie" (Bullen, pp. 25, 27) with Shelley's still finer "Hymn of Apollo." There is hardly any instance of direct verbal resemblance; but the metre, the strain of sentiment, the oratorical pose, the mental and moral attitude of the two poems are so much alike as to justify the assertion that the younger owes its form and much of its spirit ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... night—such being the private orders, as I afterwards learned, of Black Hoof—who had, it seems, from some cause unknown to myself, formed the design of saving my life; and had sent by the Indian in question, a verbal request to Logan, to use all ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... first time that I had ever failed to take the precaution of closing it tightly. I knew the necessity of being particular about this, because shaving was always a trying ordeal for me, and I could seldom carry it through to a finish without verbal helps. Now this time I was unprotected, but did not suspect it. I had no extraordinary trouble with my razor on this occasion, and was able to worry through with mere mutterings and growlings of an improper sort, but with nothing noisy or emphatic about them—no snapping ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... here at the time,—a monstrous folly, and a monstrous outrage upon the rights of man,—and of Slavery. The proof came without a word of alteration or amendment. Of course I had nothing to do but correct any verbal errors. But, lo! when the article appeared, not only had changes been made, passages struck out, and various emendations worked in, but I was made to say the very reverse of what I did say, and to utter opinions which I never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... verbal reply, only pressed both hands across his stomach, and looked forlornly at the skipper and crew of the Tramp, ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... No verbal description can give a correct idea of the elaborate workmanship of the numberless idols. One, described by Mr Stevens as the most beautiful in Copan, he considers equal to the finest Egyptian sculpture; ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... admirers of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. These are quotations which display a quite exceptional power of surprising people. The anticlimaxes of the first two passages, the bold dip into the future at the expense of the past in the third are more than instances of mere verbal felicity. They indicate a writer capable of the humour which feeds upon daily life, and is therefore thoroughly democratic and healthy. For there are two sorts of humour; that which feeds upon its possessor, Oscar Wilde is the supreme example of this type of humorist, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... She immediately added some verbal ones on the subject of foreign messes, and having mounted one of her pet hobbies, was in full gallop when Emil was seen strolling about on the roof of the old house, that being his favourite promenade; for there he could fancy himself walking the deck, with only blue sky ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... They evidently mean something more, and were designed to make the prohibition more comprehensive. * * * The word 'agreement,' does not necessarily import and direct any express stipulation; nor is it necessary that it should be in writing. If there is a verbal understanding, to which both parties have assented, and upon which both are acting, it is an 'agreement.' And the use of all of these terms, 'treaty,' 'agreement,' 'compact,' show that it was the intention of the framers of the Constitution to use ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... there was now no way to determine. Indeed, upon this one point, she maintained an air of such inflexible stupidity, that if she were really fibbing, her dead-wall countenance superseded the necessity for verbal deceit. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... down here, and when I come to material that necessitates verbal accuracy, I should prefer to read my notes aloud rather than give an indefinite summary. In the first place, however, I must give you some idea of the form that gradually materialised; of the form, that is, as I originally ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... while they demeaned themselves peaceably, he positively refused to give that explicit and solemn pledge of security, which they required. This, for a short time, suspended their removal; but the causes of their discontent in Holland continuing, they, at length, determined to trust to the verbal declarations of the King, and negotiated with the Virginia company for a tract of land within the limits ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... In a style not to me clear or intelligible, Irving and Coleridge both declaimed. The advocatus diaboli for the evening was Mr. Taylor, who, in a way very creditable to his manners as a gentleman, but with little more than verbal cleverness, and an ordinary logic, and the confidence of a young man who has no suspicion of his own deficiencies, affirmed that those evidences which the Christian thinks he finds in his internal convictions, the Mahometan also thinks he has; and he affirmed that Mahomet had ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... these essential portions of the duties of a leader, many of the calamities of the Expedition might have been averted, and little or no room would have been left for doubt in judging the conduct of those subordinates who pleaded unsatisfactory and contradictory verbal orders and statements." ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... impersonal, yet it remained every whit as irritating, for all that. Perhaps a bit more so, since Fred Starratt found it hard to put a finger on its precise quality. He had another taste of it later when the inevitable strike gossip intruded itself. It was Helen who opened up, repeating her verbal passage ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... announced, and the dining-room became the field of a hot verbal warfare. The members of the society were all present excepting Mrs. Harris, who had been greatly upset by her own performance. Bart Brierly, the painter, was there to defend the mystery of life against our scientific friend Miller, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... belief that her sufferings were unnoticed by the affectionate spectacles forever turned her way,—and yet—Mrs. Lathrop being Mrs. Lathrop—it was only after several days of rocking and cogitation that the verbal die came to ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... whatever might have been the subject of the speech delivered, we never saw an instance, when any individual present shewed signs of his being displeased, or that indicated the least inclination to dispute the declared will of a person who had a right to command. Nay, such is the force of these verbal laws, as I may call them, that I have seen one of their chiefs express his being astonished, at a person's having acted contrary to such orders, though it appeared, that the poor man could not possibly have been informed in time to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... latter never swerved, and from him the younger Milton derived not only the independence of thought which was to lead him into moral and social heresy, and the fidelity to principle which was to make him the Abdiel of the Commonwealth, but no mean share of his poetical faculty also. His mastery of verbal harmony was but a new phase of his father's mastery of music, which he himself recognizes as the complement ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett |
