"Well-nigh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Leonie was coming, blindfolded by the curse upon her, made his blood run cold and turned his heart to stone at the knowledge of his own impotence, the picture of what might happen to her at the hands of the native crazed with religion and love well-nigh drove him frantic. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... phrase 'in order to' understood."—Bullions's Prin. of E. Gram., p. 110. But, "I read 'in order to' to learn," is not English; though it might be, if either to were any thing else than a preposition: as, "Now set to to learn your lesson." This broad exception, therefore, which embraces well-nigh half the infinitives in the language, though it contains some obvious truth, is both carelessly stated, and badly resolved. The single particle to is quite sufficient, both to govern the infinitive, and to connect it to any antecedent term which can make sense with ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the New Forest were of gentle blood, and their office was well-nigh hereditary. The Birkenholts had held it for many generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to the eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the burial ground of Beaulieu Abbey. John Birkenholt, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that democracy is for the nation a true embodiment of that life, and wears its characteristics upon its sleeve. In it the individual mingles with the mass, and becomes one with mankind, and mankind itself sums the totality of individual good in a well-nigh perfect way. In it there is the slow embodiment of a future nobly conceived and brought into existence on an ideal basis of the best that is, from age to age, in man's power. It includes the universal wisdom, the reach of thought and aspiration, by virtue of which men climb, and here manhood ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... appear—this more than once—to be on the point of rising to challenge us. But these occasions were as skilfully met as they were easily detected; and as the rogues had invariably some stroke in reserve that in a twinkling flung him back into his old state of dazed bewilderment, while it well-nigh killed us with stifled mirth, they only gave ever new point ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Fitzroy's new opportunity, with Rawdon left at Frayne. Then had come Rawdon himself; then the night of mystery; then the day of the storm, and when the skies above were clear again Rawdon was gone, no man knew whither, leaving a trail of suspicion, accusation, and a weeping, well-nigh desperate girl behind. ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... became an obvious obligation on the Dyers to cultivate and not to cut the only nurse on their visiting list. With unblushing, well-nigh naive suddenness, Thirza Dyer, to Annie Millar's bewildered astonishment, proceeded to start and maintain a correspondence with her. Two are required for a bargain-making, and Annie was not altogether disinterested in scribbling ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... traveled, sometimes in deep ravines, sometimes high up among the hills, sometimes coming upon a stream and taking in a supply of water, and sometimes well-nigh mad with thirst. They had cut up two of the empty water-skins and had made rough shoes for their horses, and believed that they had entirely thrown their pursuers off the trail, winding along on what was little more than a goat's track ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... Volsungs in exceeding glorious state, And merry lived King Volsung, abiding the day of his fate; But when the months aforesaid were well-nigh worn away To his sons and his folk of counsel he fell these words to say: "Ye mind you of Signy's wedding and of my plighted troth To go in two months' wearing to the house of Siggeir the Goth: Nor will I hide how Signy then spake a warning word And did me to wit that her husband was a grim and guileful ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... hour of my destruction—the 16th of June, 1722. The smouldering fires which had laboured in my breast for nine months burst into a flame which overwhelmed both Aurelia and me. I committed an unpardonable sin, I endeavoured to repair it with an act of well-nigh incredible temerity. What occurred on that night is, in fact, the origin of these Memoirs and their sole justification. The dawn of that momentous day found her a loving and honoured wife; and its close left her, innocent as she was, under the worst suspicion which ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... brother well-nigh affrighted us more when he presently joined us, for his hair was all unkempt and his looks wild. He was now of an age when men-children deem maids to be weak and unfit for true sport, but nevertheless strive their utmost to be marked and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unwilling it should be, yet did not openly refuse, but put the matter off upon Alypius, alleging that he would not allow him to do it: for in truth had the judge done it, Alypius would have decided otherwise. With this one thing in the way of learning was he well-nigh seduced, that he might have books copied for him at Praetorian prices, but consulting justice, he altered his deliberation for the better; esteeming equity whereby he was hindered more gainful than the power whereby he were allowed. These are slight ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... more than e'er I sang; Thought, ire, and mirth unceasing rang Around me, where I guested; To be where loud life's battles call For me was well-nigh more than all ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... fear. Suddenly the woman he had loved for twenty years had become, to his thinking, a dangerous, threatening witch; she who had lain on his breast, his mistress, the woman who had tended him in illness, the hallowed being he had well-nigh worshipped—offering up his country, his wife, his son, all things at her shrine—now appeared before him as the incarnation of evil to be compelled by ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Walter. 'By the Holy Cross, you must know the country well-nigh as intimately as the ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... a man who might be said to be full of years, infirm, and well-nigh used up under a Virginia task-master. But within the old man's breast a spark was burning for freedom, and he was desirous of reaching free land, on which to lay his body when life's toil ended. So the Committee sympathized with him, aided him and sent him on to Canada. He was owned ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... domestics, and this before people who were perfectly aware of my real circumstances. If it was boys, and they ventured to sneer, I would beat them, or die for it; and many's the time I've been brought home well-nigh killed by one or more of them, on what, when my mother asked me, I would say was 'a family quarrel.' 'Support your name with your blood, Reddy my boy,' would that saint say, with the tears in her eyes; and so would she herself have done with her voice, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she was punctiliously loyal, even in that most staggering test of loyalty, the payment of imposts. Mr. Beauffet told me he was ordered to offer a glass of wine to the person who collected the income tax, and that the poor man was so overcome by a reception so unwontedly generous, that he had well-nigh ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... fairly crushed in by hoofs and stones. The negroes Joe and Sam were set to work digging a grave close to the brook, and the remains were soon after buried in this,—where they still lie, unnamed, and well-nigh forgotten. ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... Kit's store had to be well-nigh expended before the horses, waggon, and all, could find means to encounter the miseries of the transit to Dover. Then, glad as he was to be on his native soil, his spirits sank lower and lower as the waggon creaked on under the hot sun towards London. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the masterly way in which it was acted at the Artists' Theatre in Moscow. The theme is, as usual, the greyness of provincial life, and the night is lit for his little group of characters by a flash of passion so intense that the darkness which succeeds it seems well-nigh intolerable. ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... the drawing-room in the morning, either talking in the half-rhodomontade, half-in-earnest fashion of boys of sixteen, or listening if there was any reading aloud going forward. Clara's readings with Marian and Caroline had well-nigh fallen to the ground now, and Caroline almost always spent the morning in her own room, but Marian now and then caught Clara and managed to get her to do something rational. More often, however, the reading was on Marian's part to Lionel; ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and having spent the night standing to-and-fro between it and Kent Group, in the morning was abreast of the opening between the islands called Murray Pass, when we steered towards it. The weather, for the season, was fine; and the sun, although weak, shone brightly from a clear wintry sky—it well-nigh happened for the last time—upon the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... his muscles developed as he takes his part in the first fundamental elementary duty of a citizen—preparation for the defence of hearth and home.... Lucille! Well ... Thank God she could not see him and know his life. If she had any kindness left for him she would suffer to watch him eating well-nigh uneatable food, grooming a horse, sweeping a stable, polishing trestle-legs with blacklead, scrubbing floors, sleeping on damp straw, carrying coals, doing scullion-work for uneducated roughs, being ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... call his wife the Lady Anna, and in which he would be as good a man as any earl. But let all that be as it might, the girl was to keep her secret till the thing should be settled. Now, in these latter days, it had come to be believed by him, as by nearly everybody else, that the thing was well-nigh settled. The Solicitor-General had thrown up the sponge. So said the bystanders. And now there was beginning to be a rumour that everything was to be set right by a family marriage. The Solicitor-General would not have thrown up the ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... savages would take us forth to die! But these changes took place very gradually, and were mingled sometimes with brighter thoughts; for there were times when we sat in that dark cavern on our ledge of rock and conversed almost pleasantly about the past, until we well-nigh forgot the dreary present. But we seldom ventured ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... this peculiar circumstance: the position of European investigators vis-a-vis Japan differs entirely from that of Japanese vis-a-vis Europe. The Japanese possess every facility for studying and understanding Europe. Europeans are warded off by well-nigh insuperable obstacles from understanding Japan. Europe stands on a hill-top, in the sunlight, glittering afar. Her people court inspection. "Come and see how we live"—such was a typical invitation which the present ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... report of the Afghan muskets. The savage yells rose, high and triumphant. The last of the gallant band, who had for hours defended the embassy, had fallen. Then there was a rush through the gate, as the Afghans swarmed into the courtyard, till the space around the burning house was well-nigh full. ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... upon,—shared with me the meaner drudgery, and had more than half of the spleen which the captain and mate must needs spend upon somebody. Indeed, the poor Dutchman, who, although a harmless creature, was a wretched specimen of humanity, came well-nigh being killed by their cruelty; and I have no doubt but that the injuries inflicted upon him, while on board the Pandora, would have brought him to an earlier grave than Nature designed for him, had it not been his sad fate to meet death ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... with the wonders of America which I have taken from the well-stocked library, and read of great Americans, from Washington to the man who has brought this very light to such perfection, turning over page after page of well-nigh incredible description of the country which has raised the system of "booming" to a high art, till my brain reels with an Arabian Nightish flavour of exaggeration, and turning off the electric current, I am gradually lulled to sleep by the rhythmical vibrations of the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the beginning of a track of desolation. From Hanging Rock to Romney the Confederate column traversed a country where Kelly's troops had been before it. To well-nigh all of the grey rank and file the vision came with strangeness. They were to grow used to such sights, used, used! but now they flamed white with wrath, they exclaimed, they stammered. "What! what! Just look at that thar tannery! They've slit the hides to ribbons!—That ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... was disconcerted and well-nigh overpowered by the unexpected announcement, and her brain seemed unable to bear the crowd of tumultuous and conflicting emotions which presented themselves. Certainly, she had already suspected that Claudet had a secret ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... time in a cruel captivity, forced to accompany their captors through the most difficult countries, at a pace of almost incredible rapidity, till, with their feet and limbs cut and bleeding, they were well-nigh incapable of moving any further. After some time Hennepin was adopted by a chief as his son, and treated with much kindness; when winter came on, however, and a great scarcity of provisions arose, the Indians, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... of seeing and knowing that which is strictly indispensable to our little lives. As for all the rest, which is well-nigh everything, our organs not only debar us from reaching, seeing or feeling it, but even restrain us from suspecting what it is, just as they would prevent us from understanding it, if an intelligence of a different order were to bethink itself of revealing or explaining it to us. It is impossible ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... fled into the city, and round about the city they set guards to keep it, part thereof being defended by walls, and part, for so it seemed, being made safe by the river. But here a great peril had well-nigh over-taken the city; for there was a wooden bridge on the river by which the enemy had crossed but for the courage of a certain Horatius Cocles. The matter fell out ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... "I've owned her well-nigh goin on twenty year. I've put her through the perarries and through the timber, and now look yeer, straanger, you can just bet your life on't she never var-ried arry time, and if you'll just follow her sign you'll knock the centre outer the north star. She never lies, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... historical labors,—for which all his other volumes seemed to him to have been but the preludes and overtures, —might still be accomplished. But such hopes, faint and flickering from his first attack, had well-nigh died away. They were like Prescott's hopes of completing his 'Philip the Second,' or like Macaulay's hopes of finishing his brilliant ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they were called upon to assume the responsibilities, as well as to enjoy the privileges, of emancipation. We will not dwell upon the party dissensions which for a series of years militated against the smooth working of the new Constitution, nor upon the known fact that the Prince well-nigh relinquished the reins of power in consequence of the repeated changes of ministry and the unworthy jealousies of those who, having first selected him as a foreigner, subsequently charged this against him as a disqualification. Nor must we examine too narrowly all the causes of this restlessness ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... forgiveness and remorse. It is time you heard the truth, Abbot. I always envied you at college. I envied every man who had birth or wealth or position. I had some brains, but was poor, burdened with the care of a vagabond brother who was well-nigh a jail-bird, and whose only talent was penmanship. He would have been a forger then if it hadn't been for me. For me he afterwards became one. You know who I mean now—Rix. Mr. Winthrop gave me opportunities, and I worked. I ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... instant. How could she tell the eager listeners that long neglect had made poor Sadie's case well-nigh hopeless? Then she answered slowly, "We are giving her every possible chance now, dearies. The Aid Society found her by accident, and got her into the Children's Ward of the City Hospital. She ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... I became well-nigh appalled as I contrasted the sluggish conversation, the hide-bound officialism, the stereotyped and sleepy methods of the Western Powers with the sleepless energy, the daring initiative, the desperate industry and courage of ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... was brought around so that they came up alongside of the elderly man. He was glad enough to turn from his water-logged craft to the other boat. But he was well-nigh exhausted, and the Rovers had not a little trouble in ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... what you have so graciously called my fiasco is well-nigh forgotten by this time, and wiser policy would ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... islands without having half my guns double-shotted, and the other half loaded with grape; and there is always an officer and half a watch on deck, so that, whatever happens to us, it will not be because I have been caught napping. On both those occasions the captains well-nigh lost ship and ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... the reply, "save in one particular, but there the difference is tremendous. Endowed otherwise like us, you are destitute of the faculty of foresight, without which we should think our other faculties well-nigh valueless." ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... was so thick with falling snow that he was well-nigh stifled. His eyes were blinded as though they were padded with cottonwool. The flakes brushed against his cheeks like live things. At his sixth step from the entrance he had lost his direction. His feet commenced to slide; ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... waste form well-nigh level plains over which streams wind from side to side of a direct course in symmetric bends known as meanders, from the name of a winding river of Asia Minor. The giant Mississippi has developed meanders with a radius of one and one half miles, but a little creek may display on its ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... could easily see he was enchanted with her. As for me, feeling that I had nothing pleasant to say, I pretended to have the toothache as an excuse for not talking. Sick at heart, absent-minded, and feeling the effects of a sleepless night, I was well-nigh mad with love, jealousy, and despair. Mdlle. de la Meure did not speak to me once, did not so much as look at me. She was quite right, but I did not think so then. I thought the dinner would never come to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and Lilas's catastrophe Mrs. Knight was well-nigh delirious. It was not often that she could roll two such delicious morsels under her tongue, and she patently gloried in the opportunity for gossip. She ended a period of chatter ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... beamed with unenvious admiration as he gave Charley a hearty thump on the back that well-nigh drove the breath out of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... to New Jersey, after their great investment that day in Van Styne's place; but they drove on to Baskingridge that day, and stopped at several ancient farm-houses to ferret for old things. At one of the places, they secured some very old glassware, also odd pieces of Staffordshire, and a well-nigh complete ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... best of it. And his poor worn purse gets the worst of it. He has duns by the score. His I.O.U.'s are held by every Jew in the city. He is not content with a little gentlemanlike game of whist or ecarte, but he must needs revive for his especial use and behoof the dangerous and well-nigh forgotten pharaoh. As luck would have it, he had lost as much at this game of brute chance as ever he would at any game of skill. His judgment of horseflesh is no better than his luck at cards. He ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... men and women cannot be any more than estimated. Doubtless it will amount to many millions. A million helpmeets and comforters in a million homes! Mothers, wives, daughters, sisters—all supporting and buoying up the well-nigh broken spirits of the "stronger sex," and, by simple words, encouraging and stimulating to repair their desperate fortunes. Who can calculate the sum total of such an ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... on to the south-east, hoping at last to strike some of the inhabited townships; and the unvarying solidity of forest was well-nigh disheartening him, when he saw, after several miles' walking, the distinctly defined imprint of a man's foot on some clayey soil near a clump of chestnut trees. Yes, there could be no mistake: some person had passed not long since; and though the tracks led away ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... he could turn his attention to the restoration and elevation of the nationality of which he had taken it upon him to assume the direction. He could cast his eyes over the unhappy Egypt—depressed, down-trodden, well-nigh trampled to death—and give his best consideration to the question what was to be done to restore her to her ancient greatness. There she lay before his eyes in a deplorable state of misery and degradation. All the great cities, her glory and her boast ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... stretches out his long neck sniffing the air; the kings strain forward to see, one holding his nose for the stench of death which meets him; and before them are three open coffins, in which lie, in three loathsome stages of corruption, from blue and bloated putrescence to well-nigh fleshless decay, three crowned corpses. This is the triumph of Death; the grim and horrible jest of the Middle Ages: equality in decay; kings, emperors, ladies, knights, beggars, and cripples, this is what we all come to be, stinking corpses; Death, our lord, our only just and lasting sovereign, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... well-nigh miraculous suddenness, the struggle was over and the insect had darted free. He saw her flash away, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... truly republican in form by the enfranchisement of woman, the great reforms which her ballot would accomplish may never be; the demoralization and disintegration now proceeding in the body politic are not likely soon to be arrested. Corruption of the male suffrage is already a well-nigh fatal disease; intemperance has no sufficient foe in the law-making power; a republican form of government can ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Miss ALEXES LEIGHTON is very good, for the character, as drawn by the author, is obtrusive, and is so meant to be. The Mrs. Egerton Bompas of Miss FANNY BROUGH is the woman to the life, and, in my humble judgment, Miss BROUGH's impersonation is well-nigh faultless. Whether, if the part of Egerton Bompas were played as high comedy, this would still improve Miss BROUGH's impersonation of Mrs. Bompas or not, it is difficult to decide; but I am inclined to think ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two. His mother's maiden name was Fiske and his father's name was Green, and until well-nigh manhood, John ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... that I cannot move you," she said. "Men have grown strangely stubborn and impervious. I leave you, then, to your obstinacy; only take heed lest you provoke me at last to wrath, for my patience is well-nigh at an end!" ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... ars artium, a master-art, or, in depreciatory Platonic mood one might say, an artifice, or, cynically, a trick. The great sophist was indeed the Athenian public itself, Athens, as the willing victim of its own gifts, its own flamboyancy, well-nigh worn out now by the mutual friction of its own parts, given over completely to hazardous political experiment with the irresponsibility which is ever the great vice of democracy, ever ready to float away anywhither, to misunderstand, or forget, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... during his life was a pure Stoic and the purest of Stoics, polishing the lenses of astronomical telescopes in order to gain his living, refusing all pensions and all the professorial positions offered to him, and living well-nigh on nothing, had read Descartes and, to conform to the principle of evidence, had begun by renouncing his religion, which was that of the Jews. His general outlook on the world was this: There is only one God. God is ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... relief was yet supplied, that Mr. Muller, with his wife, left Bristol on August 23rd, for the Continent, on his eighth long preaching tour. Thus, at a time when, to the natural eye, his own presence would have seemed well-nigh indispensable, he calmly departed for other spheres of duty, leaving the work at home in the hands of Mr. Wright and his helpers. The tour had been already arranged for, under God's leading, and it was undertaken, with the supporting power of a deep conviction ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Poor de Sigognac, well-nigh discouraged, asked himself despondingly whether it would not have been better for him to have remained in the dilapidated home of his fathers, even at the risk of starving to death there in silence and seclusion, than run the risk ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... heart, and thus cleansing it every moment of all sin; but on Thursday and Friday I laid aside almost everything else, and spent the chief part of the day in reading and prayer, and trying to believe for it. On Thursday afternoon at tea-time I was well-nigh discouraged, and felt my old visitant, irritability, and the Devil told me I should never get it, and so I might as well give it up at once. However, I know him of old as a liar and the father of lies, and pressed on, ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... stood a group of men clad in the French uniform. Judge of their amazement when they saw the balloon rise from the right bank of the river. They had well-nigh taken it for some celestial phenomenon, but their officers, a lieutenant of marines and a naval ensign, having seen mention made of Dr. Ferguson's daring expedition, in the European papers, quickly explained the real state ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Mistress Gwyn. I was a man, and a man who had loved her; it was then twice intolerable that I should disclaim her dominion, that I should be free, nay, that I should serve another with a sedulous care which might well seem devotion; for the offence touching the guinea was forgotten, my mock drowning well-nigh forgiven, and although Barbara had few words for me, they were such that gratitude and friendship shone in them through the veil of embarrassment. Mistress Nell's shrewd eyes were on us, and she watched while she aided. It was in truth her interest, as she conceived, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... It would have been well-nigh impossible for a man to make an offer of marriage with a child of three years old clinging to her mother's skirts and incessantly babbling in her mother's ear; so the child with her nurse was sent into the interior of the plantation, in search of the lovely primroses said ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... are meagre in a surprising degree. Perhaps I ought not to say "surprising," because after the times of the Greek astronomers (who in their way may almost be regarded as professionals), and after the epoch of the famous Ptolemy, Astronomy well-nigh ceased to exist for many centuries in Europe, until, say, the 15th century, barring the labours of the Arabians and their kinsmen the Moors in Spain in the 9th and ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... quite charmed him—but as to the ten thousand marks, they were utterly unworthy of her acceptance, and she should have thrice the amount delivered to her in a silver coffer before the ceremony. With these, and a great many other professions, he released her from his presence, which had become well-nigh insupportable. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... strange and unfitting contrast, the Arena, one of the best-preserved specimens of Roman work, rises seemingly from amongst the houses. Pola is full of Roman remains. All is so green and peaceful, in spite of the countless fortifications which render the harbour well-nigh, if not quite, impregnable, that Nature and War seem ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... bewilderment. The whip bit deep; it drew blood and raised welts the thickness of one's thumb; nevertheless, for the first few moments the victim suffered less in body than in spirit. His brain was so benumbed, so shocked with other excitations, that he was well-nigh insensible to physical pain. That Evangelina, flesh of his flesh, had been sold, that his lifelong faithfulness had brought such reward as this, that Esteban, light of his soul, had turned against him—all this was simply astounding. More his simple mind could not compass for the moment. Gradually, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... cylinders were generally of some valuable, hard stone—jasper, amethyst, cornelian, onyx, agate, etc.,—and were used as signet rings were later and are still. They are found in great numbers, being from their hardness well-nigh indestructible. They were generally bored through, and through the hole was passed either a string to wear them on, or a metal axis, to roll them more easily.[V] There is a large and most valuable collection of seal cylinders at the British Museum. ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... handsome iron gates, and has beautiful gardens in the rear extending in the direction of the River Marne. The existing firm dates from the year 1833, but the family of Mot—conjectured to have originally come from the Low Countries—had already been associated with the champagne wine trade for well-nigh a century previously. If the Mots came from Holland they must have established themselves in the Champagne at a very early date, for the annals of Reims record that in the fifteenth century Jean and Nicolas Mot were chevins of the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... camp made sleep well-nigh impossible—a bad preparation for the only long ride of this excursion. Setting off at dark (4.20 a.m., March 18th), we finished the monotonous Wady Kuwayd, which mouths upon the rolling ground falling coastwards. The track then ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... with eight beautiful horses decked with plumes of feathers and golden harness, and behind rode the prince's servant, the faithful Henry, who had bewailed the misfortune of his dear master so long and bitterly that his heart had well-nigh burst. Then all set out full of joy for the prince's kingdom, where they arrived safely, and lived happily a ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... And when no springing blade appears in all thy barren field; When those whom thou dost seek to win, seem hard, and cold, and dead— Then, weary worker, stay thine heart on what the Lord hath said; And let it give new life to hopes which seem well-nigh destroyed— This promise, that His word, shall not return unto Him void. For, if, indeed it be His truth, thy feeble lips proclaim, Then, He is pledged to shadow forth, the glory of His name. True this at present may be veiled; still trustingly abide, And "cast thy bread," ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... time to learn the business, and made such rapid progress that I astonished even my employer. I knew that I should soon be able to make five or six francs a day; and this prospect was pleasant enough to make me forget the present, well-nigh intolerable as it sometimes was. During the last winter that I spent with my employers, their orders were so numerous and pressing that they worked on Sundays as well as on week days, and it was with ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... at whiles that his house was not in the village, but in a valley some few miles distant across the meadows; that he sat out these bouts of argument and slander for the sheer delight he had in gathering the myriad strands of that strange rope Opinion; that he lived (heart, soul, and hope) well-nigh alone; that he deeply mistrusted this place, and the company we were in, yet not for its mistress's sake, who was at least faithful to her instincts, candid to the candid, made no favourites, and, eventually, compelled order. He told me also that if friends he had, he deemed it wiser not to name ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... for Sir Massingberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm being over the border. An awful silence succeeded this disclosure. Sir Massingberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was well-nigh strangled with passion. At last he caught Sinnamenta's Wrist ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... ceased, though many buildings were still blazing, and while the little boat sped down the Scheldt one could imagine the procession of the Kaiser's troops already goose-stepping their way through the well-nigh deserted streets. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... in a way that made his hearers tremble. The rapidity with which his son ran up to him proved plainly enough the despotic power of the bailiff of Gondreville. Since 1789, but more especially since 1793, Michu had been well-nigh master of the property. The terror he inspired in his wife, his mother-in-law, a servant-lad named Gaucher, and the cook named Marianne, was shared throughout a neighborhood of twenty miles in circumference. It may be well to give, without further delay, the reasons for this fear,—all the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... weeks of life when, by calendar, the summer was already come; it seemed as if the local weather god had incontinently pushed the season forward with august finger to bring it again into accord with more favoured lands to the south. For torrid heat fell suddenly upon them, heat well-nigh as unmeasured as was the winter's cold. The tops of the spruces and cypresses, forgotten by the wind, were utterly still, and above the frowning outline stretched a sky bare of cloud which likewise seemed fixed and ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... honor due to the author of a discovery of such importance. His diligence and pertinacity alone had enabled him to search out from among the multitude of stars thickly strewn over the firmament this unknown and well-nigh invisible planet which, during all the preceding years of the world's history, had eluded human perception. Men had been all unconscious of its existence as it had been slowly completing its circuits ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... Bones of the Foot.—It will be seen at once that in most cases anything in the way of bandaging is well-nigh useless. When the os coronae is fractured, however, a little more may be added to the natural rigidity of the parts by enclosing the region of the pastern and the foot in a plaster-of-Paris bandage. The main treatment, however, ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Without regard to red-deer pies and wine White as the Milky Way. Such secrets, Bame, Were not good for the general; but a few Discreet and righteous palms, your own, my friend, And mine,—what think you?" With a hesitant glance Of well-nigh child-like cunning, screwing his eyes, Bame laughed a little huskily and looked round At that grave ring of anxious faces, all Holding their breath and thrilling his blunt nerves With their stage-practice. "And no risk?" breathed Bame, "No risk at all?" ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... so noble a representative, are supported and encouraged by a righteous public opinion at the North, they may, in time, become the dominant white South, and we may then look for wisdom and justice in the place where, so far as the Negro is concerned, they now seem well-nigh strangers. But even these gentlemen will do well to bear in mind that so long as they discriminate in any way against the Negro's equality of right, so long do they set class against class and open the door to every sort of discrimination, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... the clock and the sun was very fierce on the dusty, unslaked yard of the Wolfsberg, glaring down upon us like the mouth of a wide smelter's oven. Fat Fritz, the porter, in his arm-chair of a cell, had well-nigh dissolved into lard and running out at his own door. The Playmate's window was open, and I caught the waft of a fan to and fro. I judged therefore that my lady knew well that I was working out there in the heat, and was glad of it—being ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... subject has been altogether overgrown. Vast additions, too, have been made to the province of mechanical contrivance: the constructive faculties of the country, stimulated apparently by the demands of commerce and the influence of competition both at home and abroad, have performed in well-nigh a single ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the more I tried to grow pale, the more I grew red in the face, and when I thought of the six broad-shouldered, raw-boned lads in the camp, and how easy they would have made these jumping villains fly like chaff if they only knew the fix I was in, I gave a frown that had well-nigh showed I was shamming. Hows'ever, what with shakin' a little more and givin' one or two most awful groans, I managed to deceive them. Then I said I was hunter to a party of white men that were travellin' from Red River to St. Louis, with all their goods, and wives, and ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... equivocal miracles; and, though it still encountered opposition, it now moved forward in a triumphant career. In some districts it produced such an impression that it threatened the speedy extinction of the established worship. In Bithynia, early in the second century, the temples of the gods were well-nigh deserted, and the sacrificial victims found very few purchasers. [280:1] The pagan priests now took the alarm; the power of the magistrate interposed to prevent the spread of the new doctrine; and spies were found willing to dog ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... path heretofore, no amount of haste could satisfy me now. I doubt if any honest artist lad returning to the place of his birth after three years' absence ever met a grayer welcome. I had left my grandfather unimpaired, and it was well-nigh impossible to figure that harsh and domineering spirit in decay. Abram Pendarves belonged to the ancient hearty, savage race of British sea-captains, now fast waning to extinction. After a youth of wild and black adventure under the rule of just such salt-water despots as he himself ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... knelt before her. Alexander was overjoyed when he saw her draw so near that he could have touched her. But he is not so bold as even to look at her; but rather does he so lose his senses that he is well-nigh speechless. And she, for her part, is so overcome that she has not the use of her eyes; but she casts her glance upon the ground without fastening it upon anything. The Queen marvels greatly at seeing her now pale, now crimson, and she ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... gracious or perfect delight than when a whole people makes merry, and the men sit orderly at feast in the halls and listen to the singer, and the tables by them are laden with bread and flesh, and a wine-bearer drawing the wine serves it round and pours it into the cups. This seems to me well-nigh the fairest thing in the world. But now thy heart was inclined to ask of my grievous troubles, that I may mourn for more exceeding sorrow. What then shall I tell of first, what last, for the gods of heaven have given me woes ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... could. My heart was set at ease till they split into two parties, one with me and the other against me; and we fared forth from that house and such was my case. But as regards Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al-Nahar; they were well-nigh dying for excess of fear, when I went up to them and saluting them, asked, 'What happened to the damsel and the two maids, and where be they gone?', and they answered only, 'We know nothing of them.' Then we walked on and stinted not till we came to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... him in well-nigh every meal he sits down to, from the first days when they lived so plainly, on to the greater times of the end, when he gives a dinner to his friends, which was "a better dinner than they understood or deserved." He delights in all the detail of the table. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... of those half-civilized nabobs who come here every year to astonish the Parisians with their wealth and display, and who, by their idiotic prodigality, have so increased the price of everything that life has become well-nigh an impossibility to such of us as don't care to squander an entire fortune in a couple of years. These folks are the curse of Paris, for, with but few exceptions, they only use their millions to enrich notorious women, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... night is well-nigh past! The moonbeams have no longer so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so strongly with the blackness of the shadows among which they fall. They are paler, now; the shadows look gray, not black. The boisterous wind is hushed. What is the hour? Ah! the watch has at last ceased to tick; for the Judge's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... December was the seventy-fifth day since Phileas Fogg's departure from London, and the Henrietta had not yet been seriously delayed. Half of the voyage was almost accomplished, and the worst localities had been passed. In summer, success would have been well-nigh certain. In winter, they were at the mercy of the bad season. Passepartout said nothing; but he cherished hope in secret, and comforted himself with the reflection that, if the wind failed them, they might still ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... saw her set forth with her waterproof and umbrella, the too-heavy bag of books on her arm; sometimes the wind and rain beating as if to delay her—they, too, cruel. In summer the hot days tried her perhaps still more; she reached home in the afternoon well-nigh fainting, the books were so heavy. Who would not have felt kindly to her? So gentle she was, so dreadfully shy and timid, her eyes so eager, so full of unconscious pathos. 'Hood's little girl,' said the people on the way who saw her pass daily, and, however completely strangers, they ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... with a bundle in her hand, and begged me with tears to give her leave to go. My poor child turned pale as a corpse, and asked in amaze what had come to her? but she merely answered, "Nothing!" and wiped her eyes with her apron. When I recovered my speech, which had well-nigh left me at seeing that this faithful old creature was also about to forsake me, I began to question her why she wished to go; she who had dwelt with me so long, and who would not forsake us even in the great famine, but had faithfully borne up against it, and indeed had humbled me ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the family in a religious esteem that was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,—the House of Claes. The whole ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... boundaries offered little obstacle to anyone who possessed the activity of youth, but the fact that they were guarded on the inside by sentries, fifty yards apart, armed with rifle and revolver, made them a well-nigh insuperable barrier. No walls are so hard to pierce as living walls. I thought of the penetrating power of gold, and the sentries were sounded. They were incorruptible. I seek not to deprive them of the credit, but the truth is ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Personage, George the Third, 'whose pension had given Johnson comfort and independence.' It would have required a much greater antiquarian than Johnson, who could scarcely tell the name of his own grandfather, to have traced the well-nigh twenty generations of connecting links between Bruce and the third of the Guelph ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... alarmingly, but to my intense relief, as well as surprise, I found that Jack had not exaggerated. It was easier to steer on the second speed than on the first. I had merely to tickle the wheel with my finger, to send us gliding, swanlike, this way or that. To be sure, I did well-nigh run over a chicken, but I would be prepared to argue with it till it was black in the face (or resort to litigation, if necessary) that the proper place for its blood would be on its own silly head, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... strange, staying joy in their hearts? How the blind said, as thou named their gifts, and placed them in their hands, that it seemed they could straightway behold them? How even the dumb gave forth pleasant sounds like music from their helpless tongues? and how even the lame well-nigh leaped from their lameness, for the light of thy young face? But when thou comest to thy crown and throne thou needest not got forth alone upon thy birth-night, but send out thy gifts with ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury
... days we stayed in the trenches, narrow, suffocating and damp places, where parados and parapet almost touched and where it was (p. 176) well-nigh impossible for two men to pass. Food was not plentiful here, all the time we lived on bully beef and biscuits; our tea ran short and on the second day we had to drink water at our meals. From our banquette it was almost impossible to see the enemy's position; the growing grass well nigh hid their ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... Dress has become so extravagant and absorbing that in the matter of her clothes alone the girl has her time pretty well taken up. Instead of being able to prepare calmly and restfully for the most vital step in life, she is kept in a ceaseless whirl of mental and physical excitement till she is well-nigh worn out. In any case care should be taken to avoid a rush at the last. Let her have at least a few days of peace and quietness in which to prepare for the great event. How can she realise the solemnity ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... lovely lass o' Inverness The merchant, to secure his treasure The more we live, more brief appear The poplars are fell'd! farewell to the shade The sun is warm, the sky is clear The sun upon the lake is low The twentieth year is well-nigh past The World is too much with us; late and soon The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man There be none of Beauty's daughters There is a flower, the lesser Celandine There is a garden in her face There's not a joy the world can give like that ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... night of February 8th, his speech, occupying four hours and a half in delivery, showing the marks of careful preparation. He drew an illustration from the mighty struggle that had well-nigh rent the republic asunder, and was then within a few weeks of its close. "We are striving," he said, "to settle forever issues hardly less momentous than those that have rent the neighbouring republic and are now exposing it to all the horrors of civil war. Have we not then great cause for ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... said, can read the works of John Ruskin without learning that his sources of pleasure are well-nigh infinite. There is not a flower, nor a cloud, nor a tree, nor a mountain, nor a star; not a bird that fans the air, nor a creature that walks the earth; not a glimpse of sea or sky or meadow-greenery; not a work of worthy art in the domains of painting, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of the Balinese, instead of being oblique, are set straight in the head. The nose, which frequently mars what would otherwise be well-nigh perfect features, is generally small and flat, with too-wide nostrils, though I saw a number of Balinese women with noses which were distinctly aquiline—the result of a strain of European blood, perhaps. The lips are thick, yet well ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... great-hearted frog, took up a clod of mud and flung it full at a mouse that was coming furiously upon him. That mouse's helmet was knocked off and his forehead was plastered with the clod of mud, so that he was well-nigh blinded. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Company, the treasurer of which had levanted with the greater part of the capital. Here, too, was a memorandum of the sums sunk upon the Evening Star and the Providence, whose unfortunate collision had well-nigh proved the death blow of the firm. It was melancholy reading, and perhaps the last page was the most melancholy of all. On it the old man had drawn up in a condensed form an exact account of the present condition of the firm's finances. Here it is exactly word for word as ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were fierce with hunger. These two days past their hunting had been well-nigh fruitless. What scant prey they had slain had for the most part been devoured by the female; for had she not those small blind cubs at home to nourish, who soon must suffer at any lack of hers? The settlements of late had been making great inroads on the world of ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of her relief at having disposed of Jack Holton so quickly and effectively—he had vanished immediately after his interview with William in the bank—that her sleigh-ride and skating-party as originally planned grew into a function that well-nigh obscured Phil's "coming-out." It began with a buffet luncheon at home, followed by the ride countryward in half a dozen bob-sleds and sleighs of all descriptions. It was limited to the young people, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... looked for thee before, Though what should a woman compass, she one alone and no more, When all we shielded Volsungs did nought in Siggeir's land? O yea, I am living indeed, and this labour of mine hand Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is well-nigh done. So draw near, Volsung's daughter, and pile we many a stone Where lie the grey wolf's gleanings of ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... had heard my Teacher name the dames of eld and the cavaliers, pity overcame me, and I was well-nigh bewildered. I began, "Poet, willingly would I speak with those two that go together, and seem to be so light upon the wind." And he to me, "Thou shalt see when they shall be nearer to us, and do thou then pray them by that love which leads them, and they will come." Soon as the wind ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... soon found that all religious privileges of a social nature were at an end. Poor man, money was the god he worshipped; and so entirely did the acquisition of wealth engross his mind that every other emotion was well-nigh extinguished. He seldom, if ever, entered a place of public worship, and did what he could to prevent his wife from doing so. She did at the first venture a feeble remonstrance when he refused on Sundays to drive to the village church, but, as this was her first attempt at ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... have I recalled them to Court, scarcely have I restored them to favour, than they organize new cabals excite the nobles to discontent, and breed discord, alike in the Parliament and among the people. What more can they require at my hands than what I have already bestowed? The national treasury is well-nigh exhausted in meeting their demands. Look back an instant: M. de Conde has, within the last two years, received more than nine hundred thousand crowns—the Comte de Soissons six hundred thousand—and MM. de ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... was hard not to be able to run in and out of each other's houses as they had done when they had first known each other, but there were plenty of opportunities to be together away from home and they made the most of them and were well-nigh inseparable. Mr. Edwards had declared, when announcing the fact in the preceding spring, that Steve was to go to boarding school, that he was sending the boy away to remove him from the questionable association of Tom Hall. But Steve gave little credence to that statement, ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sound it, and to arrive at its meaning, and consequently alters it by adding to it. This addition is so constant, so unavoidable, that the existence of an isolated sensation which should be perceived without the attachment of images, without modification or interpretation, is well-nigh unrealisable in the consciousness of an adult. It ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... This represents the well-nigh universal Greek opinion. Poetry inspires, teaches, makes better men. A further example of this idea is furnished by Timocles. "Our spirit," says one of the characters in the drama, "forgetting its own sorrows in sympathizing with the misfortunes ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... of which we never saw before. American literature is almost ignored, while Germany monopolizes many of the spaces. We noticed the absence of theological works, save those of Thomas Chalmers, whose name and genius he well-nigh worshiped. The carpets are old and worn and faded—not because he cannot afford better, but because he would have his home a perpetual protest against the world's sham. It is a place not calculated to give inspiration to ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... printers sought freer fields, there straightway came a marked change in its use. The first Roman type was cut and the printers grew under the influence of the most splendid period in the history of art, the Italian Renaissance, the revival and further development of the arts which had well-nigh perished through the dark centuries. The purity of line and form, the severe dignity, and the almost too perfect proportion which had been developed by the Greeks over a thousand years before were revived and interpreted with more ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... the long run an injury is a lesson illustrated not only in this case, but in many parallel cases in the course of this history. A far more dreadful wrong was the identifying of the religion of Jesus Christ with a system of war and slavery, well-nigh the most atrocious in recorded history. For such a policy the Spanish nation had just received a peculiar training. It is one of the commonplaces of history to remark that the barbarian invaders of the Roman empire were themselves vanquished by ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... editor in the Union, surrounded by friends and admirers, feared or courted by nearly everybody in public life, and in the full enjoyment of widespread popular confidence in his integrity. In six short months he was well-nigh undone. He had endured a humiliating defeat, which seemed to him to indicate the loss of what was his dearest possession, the affection of the American people; he had lost the weight in public affairs which ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the ground the walls of Jerusalem, and sacked the Temple in their unbridled fury. (28) At length, laden with the spoils of their brethren, satiated with blood, they took hostages, and leaving the king in his well-nigh devastated kingdom, laid down their arms, relying on the weakness rather than the good faith of their foes. (29) A few years after, the men of Judah, with recruited strength, again took the field, but were a second time beaten by the Israelites, and slain to the number of a hundred ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... weight of his support. Does some terror confound? he is at hand to help and defend by expenditure of money and of energy, (5) by appeals to reason or resort to force. His the privilege alike to gladden the prosperous in the hour of success and to sustain their footing who have well-nigh slipped. All that the hands of a man may minister, all that the eyes of each are swift to see, the ears to hear, and the feet to compass, he with his helpful arts will not fall short of. Nay, not seldom that which a man has ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... stands, as it may be necessary to remind you, on a knoll thickly wooded with the ancient trees I have mentioned. These trees—all pines and of a growth unusual and of an aspect well-nigh hoary—extend only to the rear end of the house, where a wide stretch of gently undulating ground opens at once upon the eye, suggesting to all lovers of golf the admirable use to which it is put from ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... mother, unable longer to control her grief, moaned out, "My child will die before I can get to her," this woman was the one who went to her with words of comfort. Ruey's poor perturbed heart envied that calm face. She felt well-nigh distracted, not so much at the fact that she was cold and hungry, but what would Philip think when he returned and found her gone? No one knew where; not even a neighbour had the least intimation of her whereabouts. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... They intermarry with the English but little. All this is caste, although we may not exactly call it so. Then, again, they have a peculiar language, although it is so imperfectly known to the majority of the British gipsies, as to have become well-nigh extinct.[58] These gipsies are of Indian origin, and a wandering tribe of Hindostan, called Sikligurs, reminded Mr. Pickering of the European gipsies more than any other Indians he fell in with. Like these, the Sikligurs are ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... the reality had been all too short. To the end of her life she never ceased to regret Damascus; and even when in her widowed loneliness she returned to England twenty years after the recall, with her life's work well-nigh done, and waiting as she used to say, for the "tinkling of his camel's bell," her eyes would glow and her voice take a deeper note if she spoke of those two years at Damascus. It was easy to see that they were the crowning years of ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... fast in a marvel how it can be that it has not fallen down and has not thrown out cracks. The reason is that this edifice is round both without and within and built in the shape of a hollow well, and bound together with the stones in a manner that it is well-nigh impossible that it should fall; and it is assisted, above all, by the foundations, which have an outwork three braccia wide outside the tower, made, as it is seen, after the sinking of the campanile, in order ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... the rocking horse couplets of Pope, and it is well-nigh unreadable to-day. It is doubtful if twenty-five people in our times have ever read it through. Even where the author essays fine writing, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... tragedy Life and Death of Saint Genoveva (1800). His most splendid literary feat at this period, however, was the translation of Don Quixote (1799-1801), a triumph over just those subtle difficulties which are well-nigh insurmountable, a rendering which went far beyond any mere literalness of text, and reproduced the very tone and aura ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was seeking our mother. What should it be, but ill news? This tide is against us, and if it be not well-nigh full, we may e'en fold our arms for the rest. There, read that. (Throwing her ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... for the more accurate understanding of the Bible is its translation from the past to the present tense. It has been studied as history, as the record of a remote past whose truth it has been well-nigh impossible to verify. It should be studied as a record of the present, the present experience of the individual and the race which is to ultimate in the perfect ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... but civilized Europe is still in a transition state about marriage; not only in practice but in thought. It is idle to speak with contempt of the nations where polygamy is an institution, or seraglios a custom, while practices far more debasing haunt, well-nigh fill, every city and every town, and so far as union of one with one is believed to be the only pure form of marriage, a great majority of societies and individuals are still doubtful whether the earthly bond must be a meeting of souls, or only supposes a contract of convenience and utility. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Galileo was debarred the Sun, Because he fixed it; and, to stop his talking, How Earth could round the solar orbit run, Found his own legs embargoed from mere walking: The man was well-nigh dead, ere men begun To think his skull had not some need of caulking; But now, it seems, he's right—his notion just: No doubt a consolation to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... German shopkeeper descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the beauties of the Marcusplatz; an intelligent aesthete bent on working into clearness his own views of Carpaccio's genius: all these in turn, or all together, must be suffered gladly through well-nigh two long hours. Uncomforted in soul we rise from the expensive banquet; and how often rise ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... charity and benevolence should by no means be confined exclusively within the pale of the order. This crowded world, with its eager millions, maddened with ambition's unquenchable fires, trampling under foot and well-nigh smothering each other in the great rush of competitive strife, is full of poor unfortunates, daily appealing for generous ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... gone on into the inner room. In itself the thought that, after what she had said that morning on the island, after she had forced on him, stripping it of the uttermost rag of disguise, the realization of how his position appeared to her, he should have come, under orders, to bring her back, was well-nigh unendurable. But to have met him, to have seen the man she loved plunging still deeper into shame, would have been pain beyond bearing. Better a thousand times than that this panic flight into the iron wilderness ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... afterwards, as come it must, for the time is ripe. And though she turned from me, this I should have done, had it not been for yonder prince Aziel, whom she met in a strange fashion, and straightway learned to love. Now the thing is more difficult. Nay, while the prince Aziel can take her to wife it is well-nigh impossible, since no threats of war or ruin can turn a woman's heart from him she seeks—to him she flies. ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... more feasts was Arthur Pendennis, senior, to have in this world. Not many more great men was he to flatter, nor schemes to wink at, nor earthly pleasures to enjoy. His long days were well-nigh ended: on his last couch, which Laura tended so affectionately, with his last breath almost, he faltered out to me. "I had other views for you, my boy, and once hoped to see you in a higher position in life; but I begin to think now, Arthur, that I was wrong; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... then: "If ever a man was sorry for the rotten way he's acted, it's surely me right now. . . . Got d——d good cause to be p'raps. . . . I handed it to you about the sponge . . . egad! I well-nigh came chucking it up myself—later. My colonial oath! but you're the cleverest, gamest, hardest-hitting young proposition I've ever ruffled it out with! . . . Where'd you pick it up? ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... do," continued Tom. "But let me proceed on my journey. My bones were well-nigh dislocated before we got to D—-. The roads for the last twelve miles were nothing but a succession of mud-holes, covered with the most ingenious invention ever thought of for racking the limbs, called corduroy bridges; not breeches, mind you,—for I thought, whilst ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... bad enough that, every two or three years, armies should march across the border, one way or the other; but surely we might live peaceably, between times. Did not I nearly lose you at Otterburn, and had you laid up on my hands, for well-nigh six months?" ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... good and bad to feel that the good preponderate. When our eyes are dazzled with things too bright we turn them away, and ease them by looking at flowers or grass, while we keep the eyes of our mind strained on disagreeable things, and force them to dwell on bitter ideas, well-nigh tearing them away by force from the consideration of pleasanter things. And yet one might apply here, not unaptly, what was said to the man ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... to Seward. For the moment he seemed well-nigh friendless. The letter to his wife after he reached Washington was a threnody. He was firmly convinced that he was a much injured man, and his attitude was that of the martyr supported by the serenity of the saint. But to the world he bore himself with the courage and the dignity that ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... miserable and well-nigh hopeless. It began to appear to him that the second battle was lost and that he would have to go to work. In doing this he would satisfy everybody—the grocer, his sister, Ruth, and even Maria, to whom ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Rochford was well-nigh exhausted; but owing to his courage and presence of mind, the child appeared very little the worse for its plunge. What would have been his fate, however, had the monster of a shark we saw been near at hand at the moment he ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... sir! My daughter has well-nigh pined to death, because you have stayed away so long; she talks and sings about ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe |
