"Apt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compost is intended for. For rye we apply 20 to 25 loads per acre of a compost made with 4,500 fish, (one load) and with this manuring, no matter how poor the soil, the rye will be as large as a man can cradle. Much of ours we have to reap. For oats we use less fish, as this crop is apt to lodge. For corn, one part fish to ten or twelve muck is about right, while for grass or any top-dressing, the proportion of fish ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... hearing him preach a doctrine to which I did not adhere, nor for any sectarian reason. Indeed, I regret not having heard him preach and speak oftener; it would have interested me, and it would have been kinder and more brotherly; but one is apt not to do the things which one thinks one can always do, and the fact that I did not hear him was due to a mixture of shyness and laziness, which I now ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Majorian, like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the disgraceful expedient of substituting Barbarian auxiliaries in the place of his unwarlike subjects: and his superior abilities could only be displayed in the vigor and dexterity with which he wielded a dangerous instrument, so apt to recoil on the hand that used it. Besides the confederates, who were already engaged in the service of the empire, the fame of his liberality and valor attracted the nations of the Danube, the Borysthenes, and perhaps of the Tanais. Many thousands of the bravest subjects of Attila, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... become transparent if they are cemented in Canada balsam, and rubbed down very thin, in the ordinary way of making thin sections of non-transparent bodies. But as the thin slices, made in this way, are very apt to crack and break into fragments, it is better to employ marine glue as the cementing material. By the use of this substance, slices of considerable size and of extreme thinness and ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... matter as a jest would have offended the Iron King; to have taken it seriously would most justly and unpardonably have offended Corona Rothsay. Truly, Rose found that "Jordan am a hard road to trabbel!" And here at least was an apt application of ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... opinion, that there is not a more general and greater mistake, or of worse consequences through the commerce of mankind, than the wrong judgments they are apt to entertain of their own talents. I knew a stuttering alderman in London, a great frequenter of coffeehouses, who, when a fresh newspaper was brought in, constantly seized it first, and read it aloud to his brother ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... represented thirty men besides himself, in a voting population of 12,000—was not sensible to such considerations. By a miserable chicane, it had got into a position to do mischief, and it proceeded to do it, with as much alacrity and headlong zeal as rogues are apt to exhibit when the prize is great and the opportunity short. An election for the Legislature, held subsequently to that for the Convention, showing a public opinion decidedly adverse to it, the sole study of its members thenceforth seemed to be, how they could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... render it once to a person from whom we have received one. This is my own experience. But the wise man must guard against nothing more carefully than to exceed moderation in his charity. How easily, when Caius sees Cnejus lavish gold where silver or copper would serve, he thinks of Martial's apt words: 'Who gives great gifts, expects great gifts again.'—[Martial, Epigram 5, 59, 3.]—Do not misunderstand me. What could yonder poor thing bestow that would please even a groom? But the eyes of suspicion scan even the past. I have often ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... want somebody in there for a moment, for the poor dear's so heavy I can't turn him all alone. Aren't you strong enough to lend a hand? To be sure, at your time of life, one an't apt to be worth much in the arms. At all events, an't you coming in to see him? You're his own mother; and, I swan, you haven't been near him this ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... a bad thing to get punished will largely depend upon the punishment, but when you deserve to be punished, and some one else is at hand to receive it in your stead, then punishment is apt to become a farce. Just consider this: I deserve the whipping, but you are hired to take it for me. Perhaps you think this is a joke, but I am really in earnest. I am alluding to a practice which was actually once in vogue—though never to a great extent—in this ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... "It isn't apt to be the Codfish," returned Billie. "But whoever it is, I think we'd better be careful. We'll go up to it softly and look about a bit. Please don't any one speak until we're sure it's ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... a wholly charming lot," replied the girl. "Oh, that word 'lot' simply escaped me. Yet it does seem rather apt. Don't you think, Mr. Holmes, that the wearing of identical uniforms gives the young men rather ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... journals are apt to give local matters of interest precedence over affairs at a distance, and so it was that (though Angela usually glanced through a newspaper every day or two during her travels) she had never come upon Paolo di Sereno's name except in that old copy of the Illustrated ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... for the present,' weighting his voice on those last three words, as much as to say, 'Pretty soon you will be handcuffed.' 'Then,' said my master, 'I shall also insist on the presence of two persons, simply to use their eyes without any fear or favor. One is my gardener, a very honest man, but apt to be late in the morning. The other is a faithful servant, who has been with us for several years. Their names are Jacob Rigg and Betsy Bowen. You may also bring two witnesses, if you choose. And the miller's men, of course, will come. But order ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Sunday newspaper conceivable in which we should all rejoice—all, that is, who do not hold that a Sunday newspaper is always and per se wrong. But some cause has, in many instances, brought it about that the Sunday paper is below, and not above, the standard of its weekday brethren. I mean it is apt to be more gossipy, more personal, more sensational, more frivolous; less serious and thoughtful and suggestive. Taking for granted the fact of special leisure on the part of its readers, it is apt to appeal to the lower and not to the higher part of them, which the Sunday leisure ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... curious or strange than a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slight hesitation in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which passes away with the first word. When sharply spoken to, she was apt to lose her head at once; but her heart was of the kindest. She had never been heard to express a dislike for a single human being, and she was tender to every living creature. She was devoted to Mrs. Smith, ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... is filled with interesting facts about birds and animals and trees, and who is busy playing games with her companions or in making useful and beautiful things and in rendering active service to her home and community, is apt to have a healthy mind without thinking much about it. And she has a little rule for the blue times, which is "to smile and ...
— Educational Work of the Girl Scouts • Louise Stevens Bryant
... very man—not one of nature's clods— With human failings, whether saint or sinner: Endowed perhaps with genius from the gods But apt to take his temper from ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... was full, he took hold of the handles, and lifted away upon it. He found it very heavy. He made another desperate effort, and succeeded in raising it from the ground a little; but unluckily, as wheelbarrows are very apt to do when the load is too heavy for the workman, it tipped down to one side, and, though Rollo exerted all his strength to save ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... count for much in such a case," she urged. "And our little Molly is too apt to jump at conclusions. We cannot be too careful how we accuse others of sins which ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... first is a good one. It shows me exactly what I want to say. The mental strain is, of course, immense, and that forces you to go straight to your point; for the mind is not strong enough to indulge in flirtations, in excursions at a tangent, as the pen is apt to do." ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot, Tasting the air this spicy night which turns The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine! Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now! 340 It's natural a poor monk out of bounds Should have his apt word to excuse himself: And hearken how I plot to make amends. I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece ... There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see 345 Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns! They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint God in the midst, Madonna and her ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the hydraulic mass from its rim much as a person in shock draws body fluids in from the outer limbs to the central body cavities. The analogy was apt, for until danger passed, the lab was knocked out, only its automatic functions proceeding as normal, while its consciousness hovered in interiorized, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the novel of terror; but the spirit and intention of the book are entirely different. Though Lytton expressly declares that his Zanoni is not an allegory, he confesses that it has symbolical meanings. Zanoni is apt to assume the superior pose of a lecturer elucidating an abstruse subject to an unenlightened audience. The impression of artifice that the book makes upon us is probably due to the fact that Lytton first ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... rather than continue them." With a happy combination of shrewdness and moderation he laid the blame upon the intrinsic nature of a proprietary government. "For though it is not unlikely that in these as well as in other disputes there are faults on both sides, every glowing coal being apt to inflame its opposite; yet I see no reason to suppose that all proprietary rulers are worse men than other rulers, nor that all people in proprietary governments are worse people than those in other governments. I suspect, therefore, that the cause is radical, interwoven in the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... localities, and never devoted himself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends." Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, "he was the most un-Scotsmanlike of Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough national verdicts are apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne, has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like manner, the obtrusive ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... was the least worthy of the three. He was brilliant, "the king of culture," apt scholar in Renaissance art and immorality; brave, also, and chivalrous, so long as the chivalry involved no self-denial, for he was also thoroughly selfish, and his personal aims and ideas were mean. His reign was to be a reaction ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... expect Patty's Place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings at Karnak, but I never did like big places to live in. And I'll be glad enough to be home again. When you start traveling late in life you're apt to do too much of it because you know you haven't much time left, and it's a thing that grows on you. I'm afraid Maria ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enclosed between two mighty ranges of grey mountains, which the fog represented. As we gazed around us and beheld these strange phenomena, our eyes met, and we read in each others countenance that embarrassment which the bravest and most light-hearted are apt to feel, when hemmed in by perils of which they cannot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... A seller not actually engaged in the business of selling for a livelihood, and who has not purchased or produced with the intention of selling, is apt to consider instead of this the market price, towards the determination of which those actually engaged in trade have cooeperated. Somewhat inaccurately, the amount of the cost of production is called by Adam Smith and Ricardo, "natural price," by J. B. Say, prix naturel, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... it would be too much trouble fur you to sort of drap a hint in the ear of the young man or his lawyer that the said indictment is apt to be revived, and that the said Dwyer is liable to be tuck into custody by you and lodged in the county jail sometime during the ensuin' forty-eight hours—without he should see his way clear durin' the meantime to get clean out of this city, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... plan will spring full fledged from the head of Jove, and this great and beneficial change in the lot of mankind will at once become an accomplished fact. There will be no need for keeping in touch with human nature, no call for patience and all that laborious upbuilding stone by stone which is so apt to discourage mankind and imperil the fruition of great reforms. No, sir; you—you must be this League, and we will all work to the end that tomorrow at latest there may be perfected this crowning ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would blame me; but if we came on Bottles, he was inclined to be very easy in conversation, and, in spite of my warnings, would let slip words that would shock the old priest. But when a day begins too auspiciously, its luck is apt to change before the sun sets, as ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... clothing in a less tropical clime, was condemned bitterly by the white censors as causing nudity. A man or woman whose legs and body were covered with marvellous arabesques and gaudy pictures of palms and fish was not apt to hide them ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself. I knew ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to eat, I settled that he was some obscure man of letters or of medicine, perhaps a cholera doctor. In a short time the conversation turned upon early and late education, and Lord Holland said he had always remarked that self-educated men were peculiarly conceited and arrogant, and apt to look down upon the generality of mankind, from their being ignorant of how much other people knew; not having been at public schools, they are uninformed of the course of general education. My neighbour observed that he thought ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... no doubt are aware, the Maori fashion of salutation is to rub noses together. As long as they are pretty noses there cannot be much objection; but some of the Maori girls are themselves so pretty that mere rubbing is apt to degenerate and one's nose is liable to slip out of place. Maggie, the Maori guide, a very pretty woman and now at Shepherd's Bush, can tell all about it and ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... thirty I became a Censor at the Court. Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents; Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child. The support of my family, the service of my country— For these tasks my nature is not apt. I reckon the time that I first left my home; From then till now,—fifteen Springs! My lonely boat has thrice sailed to Ch'u; Four times through Ch'in my lean horse has passed. I have walked in the morning with hunger in my face; I have lain at night with a soul that could not rest. ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... which occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to earn for her the apt description, "peaches and cream." She was a beauty in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other reason, she was a beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which she was moulded. Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she somehow had the knack of dress, and ...
— The Game • Jack London
... comely enough, but she was aged and worn, as sailors' wives are apt to be, by many sorrows. Many a sad day had she had already; for although John Hawkins, port-admiral of Plymouth, and patriarch of British shipbuilders, was a faithful husband enough, and as ready to forgive as he was to quarrel, yet he was obstinate and ruthless, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... has to work out the expenses of his capture, and the reward paid for the same. In the list of offences and punishments for the month of December, we see some very curious items; and, not knowing anything of the peculiar circumstances of each case, they are apt to strike one as being somewhat arbitrary. For instance, 'for refusing to work,' a man had 'bread and water for three days;' a second, 'for insubordinate conduct'—much the same thing, we should suppose, as 'refusing to work'—had the very severe punishment of 'bread and water, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... Apt in all ways of speech, he quickly learned to soften and subdue his howl till it was mellow and golden. Even could he manage it to die away almost to a whisper, and to rise and fall, accelerate and retard, in obedience to her own voice and ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... felt by Sainte-Croix for his fellow-prisoner did not last long, and the clever master found his pupil apt. Sainte-Croix, a strange mixture of qualities good and evil, had reached the supreme crisis of his life, when the powers of darkness or of light were to prevail. Maybe, if he had met some angelic soul at this point, he would have been led to God; he encountered ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and their ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... English captain were a new man on the station, and unacquainted with the existence of the shoal, as was most likely—well, then he was apt to lose his ship and all on board of her, if he chased too far and too hard. The problem resolved itself into this: if the Mellish could maintain her distance from the pursuer until it was necessary to come ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... nothing but their fees), he who knew on whom the king intended that the grant should fall, took all upon him, so that those who were disappointed laid the blame chiefly if not wholly upon him. He was apt to talk very imperiously and unmercifully, so that his manner of dealing with people was as provoking as the hard things themselves were; but upon the whole matter he was a true Englishman and a sincere protestant, and what has passed at court since his disgrace ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... no' height of fortune from which a man may not fall; and it is usually the proud, the ostentatious, and the contemptuous who do fall, since they create envy, and are apt to make social mistakes. Galileo continued to exasperate his enemies by his arrogance and sarcasms. "They refused to be dragged at his chariot-wheels." "The Aristotelian professors," says Brewster, "the temporizing Jesuits, the political churchmen, and that timid but respectable body who ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... no little skill to have maintained himself as a plausible impostor up to the time when Margaret of Burgundy received him—even though he met no one in whose interest it was to pose him with inconvenient questions. So apt a pupil would then have had little difficulty in assimilating the instructions of Margaret; and, after a couple of years' training with her, in at least supporting his role with plausibility. That Perkin himself told this story is not very conclusive, since the confession was produced under circumstances ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Hoss proved a reasonably apt pupil. At the end of an apprenticeship covering a fortnight he matriculated into a regular driver, with a badge and a cap to prove it and a place on the night shift. Red Hoss felt impressive, and bore ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... they are the easiest prey imaginable. Undoubtedly a man like Zaluski, with his easy nonchalance, his knowledge of the world, his genuine good-nature, and the background of sterling qualities which came upon you as a surprise because he loved to make himself seem a mere idler, was apt to eclipse an ordinary mortal like James Blackthorne. The curate perceived this and did not like to be eclipsed—as a matter of fact, nobody does. It seemed to him a little unfair that he, who had hitherto been made much of, should be called to play second fiddle ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... to Peter's self-righteous demand is twofold. First, he owns and reiterates the truth that all labourers in his kingdom will be rewarded; and next corrects the abuse of that principle into which a self-pleasing human heart is apt to fall. In the discourse recorded at the close of the nineteenth chapter, he teaches the cheering truth that the Lord will richly reward the services of his people, and in the subsequent parable gives to them and us a solemn admonition against the error into which Peter had ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... be apt to refuse such an offer as that, Mr. Pettigrew, but are you sure you prefer me ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... Indeed, there was a reciprocity implied and expressed; and I think your actions and carriages ought to be suitable. But I see it will be necessary for me now a little to magnify my office, which I have not been apt to do. I have been of this mind, I have been always of this mind, since I first entered upon my office. If God will not bear it up, let it sink!—but if a duty be incumbent upon me, to bear my testimony to it, (which in modesty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... libertinage of thought; whereas the other woman, the governess of Flora de Barral, was, as you may have noticed, severely practical—terribly practical. No! Hers was not a rare temperament, except in its fierce resentment of repression; a feeling which like genius or lunacy is apt to drive people into sudden irrelevancy. Hers was feminine irrelevancy. A male genius, a male ruffian, or even a male lunatic, would not have behaved exactly as she did behave. There is a softness in masculine nature, even the most brutal, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... in getting accurate information with regard to payments. The heads of typing schools and colleges are apt to give too rosy a picture, and the individual clerk has usually a somewhat narrow experience and is inclined to be pessimistic. A man whom I interviewed (in place of the manager, who was engaged), at ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... himself as little as they ever thought of him. But M. Bergson evidently regards Plato or Kant as persons who did or did not prepare the way for some Bergsonian insight. The theory of evolution, taken enthusiastically, is apt to exercise an evil influence on the moral estimation of things. First the evolutionist asserts that later things grow out of earlier, which is true of things in their causes and basis, but not in their values; as modern Greece proceeds out of ancient ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... incapable of seeing more than one side of any question involving the interests of himself and his church. When his cause was a just one, who so fond as he of appealing to the majesty of the law. When he wished to pervert the law to his own purposes, who so apt at enjoining a disregard therefor.[7] There is abundant reason for believing that he was the original instigator of the Gourlay prosecutions. They were at all events carried on by his satellites, and fostered by his fullest concurrence and approval. Their object was to drive Mr. Gourlay out of ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... meats have been discussed, the feast winds up by the celebrated maple omelet. Whatever Soyer or Brillat Savarin might say, it is a pleasant dish, though too rich to be partaken of copiously, and according to every hygienic principle, very apt to be difficult of digestion. It consists of eggs pretty well boiled and broken into maple syrup, slightly diluted and piping hot. After a meal of this kind, exercise is indispensable, and it is the custom to get up a series of dances until the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... confident enough to confess that, with five little children in the house, there wasn't a great necessity for laying up against a rainy day, and with stockings at a dollar and a half a pair, one was apt to get the nine stitches, or a pretty comfortable multiple of them, every Wednesday when the wash came in; and how these different kinds of lives, coming together with a friendly friction, found themselves not so uncongenial, or so incomprehensible to each other, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Miss Gussie held the reins of household government, and no doubt worthily. Those firm, capable white hands of hers looked as though they might be equal to a good many emergencies. She talked little, leaving the conversation to Aunt Lucy and myself, though she occasionally dropped in an apt word. Toward the end of the meal, however, she caught hold of an unfortunate opinion I had incautiously advanced and tore it into tatters. The result was a spirited argument, in which Miss Gussie held her own with such ability that I was utterly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that such would be its effect, at which time, I believe you held a different view. Nevertheless, I opine that you exaggerate the degree of the popular agitation. It would be natural, that being a comparatively recent resident, you should be less apt to judge the temper of the Stockbridge people, than ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... aroused. It is a sad fact that many people have been argued into long nervous illnesses by would-be kind friends whose only intention was to argue them out of illness. Even the kindest and most disinterested friends are apt to lose patience when they argue, and that, to the tired brain which they are trying to relieve, is a greater irritant than they realize. The radical cure for nervous fears is to drop resistance to painful ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... and then, with great confusion and concern, asked if Mr. Pickle suspected the rabbit's identity. The young gentleman, assuming a mysterious air, pretended ignorance of the matter, observing that he was apt to suspect all dishes of that kind, since he had been informed of the tricks which were commonly played at inns in France, Italy, and Spain; and recounted three passage in Gil Blas, which we have hinted it above, saying, he did not pretend to be a connoisseur in animals, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... it has happened, but it really seems that, while his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as dreams—even his golden dreams—are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to me, but took the subject-matter from the crown-grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the book will be apt to read it through, not as much for its real value as for its quaint style and sometimes ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... for we were permitted almost unrestrained freedom of action within the limits of the building to which we had been assigned. So great were the number of slaves who waited upon the inhabitants of Phutra that none of us was apt to be overburdened with work, nor were our masters ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... travel unarmed through trailmen country! We're apt to meet hostile bands of the creatures—and they're nasty with ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... never permitted to come and go without being well improved by the joke-loving Thomas. If a customer sent for a pint of brandy on that day, he would be very apt to get four gills of vinegar; or, if for a pound of sugar, half a pound of New Orleans mixed with an equal weight of silver sand. That was a smart child who could come into his store on the occasion, ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... many threads in a skein, there are apt to be knots. Rastignac trembled for Delphine's money. He stipulated that Delphine must be independent and her estate separated from her husband's, swearing to himself that he would repay her by trebling her fortune. As, however, Rastignac said nothing of himself, Nucingen ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... Their family vault is in Dunfermline Abbey, where his great ancestor lies under the Abbey bell. It has been noted how Secretary Stanton selected General Grant as the one man in the party who could not possibly be the commander. One would be very apt to make a similar mistake about the Earl. When the Scottish Universities were to be reformed the Earl was second on the committee. When the Conservative Government formed its Committee upon the Boer War, the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... people; excursionists pour in by thousands, German bands and organs seem to spring up under one's feet at every step. The sun blazes in the windows of the houses on the Marine Parade all day, and the fine, dry, chalky dust from the Downs is apt to be irritating to delicate throats; but for all that, Brighton in August is delightful, at least to children. Then they may pass an almost amphibious existence without danger of catching cold. Foremost in every mischief, bravest in every danger, most fortunate in every escapade, was Bertie. ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... sort of parade by which most of us deem it necessary to grace our important doings. We have house-warmings, christenings, and gala days; we keep, if not our own birthdays, those of our children; we are apt to fuss ourselves if called upon to change our residences and have, almost all of us, our little state occasions. Mr. Harding had no state occasions. When he left his old house, he went forth from it with the same quiet composure as though he were merely taking his daily walk; now that he re-entered ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... back again through the City by Guildhall, observing the ruines thereabouts, till I did truly lose myself, and so home to dinner. I do truly find that I have overwrought my eyes, so that now they are become weak and apt to be tired, and all excess of light makes them sore, so that now to the candlelight I am forced to sit by, adding, the snow upon the ground all day, my eyes are very bad, and will be worse if not helped, so my Lord Bruncker do advise as a certain cure to use greene spectacles, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Dorry, you mustn't be hungry till the bower is ready!" cried the little girls, alarmed, for Dorry was apt to be disconsolate if he was kept waiting for his meals. So they made haste to build the bower. It did not take long, being composed of boughs hung over skipping-ropes, which were tied to the very poplar-tree where the fairy lived who had recommended ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... custodian, with Bentley, of Hal Willett's unconscious confidences—compelled to see a young girl's rapturous love lavished upon a man so saturated with the incense of feminine idolatry as to be more than apt to underrate the priceless boon of ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the people? were they uncommon too? Part of one's impression is apt to come from the human side ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Indian lands are strongly tempted to infringe at will upon the reserved rights and the property of Indians, and thus are apt to become so arbitrary in their dealings and domineering in their conduct toward them that the Indians become disquieted, often threatening outbreaks and periling the lives of frontier ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... perpetual recurrence of the striking antithesis which happened at Brussels before Waterloo, when the roll of the distant cannon at Quatre Bras mingled with the music of the duchess's ball. The coldest reserve is apt to melt rapidly, and the most skillful coquetry is brought to bay, when opposed to pleading urged possibly for the last time. Those were days of rebuke and blasphemy to "the gentlemen of England who sat at home at ease;" and even the Foreign Office "irresistibles" ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... gravely agreed Brice. "But safer sleeping quarters when one gets there. Up North, one can take a chance, and sleep in the open, almost anywhere except on a yellow-jacket's nest. Down here, I've heard, rattlesnakes are apt to stray in upon one's slumbers. Out in the country, at least. There aren't any rattlesnakes in the Royal Palm's gardens. Besides, there's music, and there's the fragrance of night jasmine. Altogether, it's worth the difference of ten ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Uncle Dick; "since you are so apt at learning, you may as well go on and pick up our words, for I quite despair ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... Miss Underwood's proposition will save us an immense amount of boredom which is the usual concomitant of engagements and honeymoons. That sort of thing, you know," he added, his lip curling just perceptibly, "is apt to get a little monotonous ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... to a sense of what was due to his guests, as regarded the family of a man who was known to have spoken disparagingly of them all. Moreover, if the truth must be owned, Mary was not altogether free from the prejudices of her caste; and, proud of her father's noble extraction, was apt to pout her pretty lip on mention of "the people at Lexley Park;" for the General, who had no secrets from his girls, had foolishly permitted them to see certain letters addressed to him by the eccentric Sir Laurence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... all a certain similarity in those characteristics and habits of thought that pertain to the material things of life. We are all imitative, and therefore we tend to imitate each other; but the inferior is more apt to imitate the superior than vice versa. Particularly are we prone to imitate those actions and qualities by which others have attained material success. So it is to be expected, it is already a fact, that the methods whereby a few great nations attained ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Beaconsfield group with some frequency. It was easy enough to run down from London or over from Welwyn (home of G.B.S.) or from Oxford or Cambridge. It was most conveniently central. Gilbert's brethren of the pen were especially apt to appear at all seasons and always found friendly welcome. For he continued to call himself neither poet nor philosopher but journalist. Father O'Connor had tried to persuade him, as he neatly puts it, to "begin to print on handmade paper with gilt edges." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Caske, "people will be apt to think that everybody who has a little bit of money ought to do as he does. But, if that were the case, where should I be, for instance?" and Mr. Caske swelled ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... apt in mechanical pursuits and fertile in invention. We cover a vast extent of territory rich in agricultural products and in nearly all the raw materials necessary for successful manufacture. We have a system of productive establishments more than sufficient ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... time, its age, the mode of nutrition [v.03 p.0163] and the influence of external factors on its growth. Even when used in conjunction with purely morphological characters, these physiological properties are too variable to aid us in the discrimination of species and genera, and are apt to break down at critical periods. Among the more characteristic of these schemes adopted at various times may be mentioned those of Miquel (1891), Eisenberg (1891), and Lehmann and Neumann (1897). Although much progress has been made in determining the value and constancy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... turned to the child whom I mentioned at the beginning of the story, and who was gazing at him, as children are apt to gaze at strangers, with his rosy mouth ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... not taken much to do with the horses of late years; he knew that they were thoroughly well cared for under Heppner's superintendence, and the deputy sergeant-major was rather apt to resent any interference with his department. But he would have failed in his duty if he had not, in spite of this, kept himself informed of all that concerned the horses; if, in fact, he had not been individually acquainted with each one ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Kuni-chi is the only drawback to this otherwise apt solution. We generally shall find Polo's Oriental words much more accurately expressed than this would imply—as in the next chapter. I have hazarded a suggestion of (Or. Turkish) Chong-lt-chi, "Keeper of the Big Dogs," which Professor Vambery ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... playing with his kite in the garden. Somehow or other it would never mount properly, unless his father was there to help him. It was apt to fly up a little way, and then to fall into a bush or fence, and there to perch like a big bird, until Walter and his friends rescued it with difficulty. But on a windy day when his father took him into the open fields, away the kite would sail, until Walter grew anxious lest it should disappear ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... hill-country take care of itself, as all the rest of us always do. But some allowance must naturally be made for his peculiar temperament and for his particular state of health. Consumptive people are apt to take a somewhat hectic view of life in every way; they lack the common-sense ballast that makes most of us able to value the lives of a few hundred poor distant savages at their proper infinitesimal figure. At any rate, Ernest Le Breton, as a matter of fact, rightly or wrongly, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... any trouble," she replied. "Just sport—you looked so funny sitting up there in your pajamas; and, besides, a material fact such as that hold-up is apt to be more convincing to the police, to say nothing of the Constant-Scrappes, than any mere story we ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Bush is the more apt when we consider the rapid growth of the work. At first so very small as to seem almost insignificant, and conducted in one small rented house, accommodating thirty orphans, then enlarged until other rented premises became necessary; ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Interests are made the most of; so soon as your Patriotic "Union of Reich's Princes" is ready! In March, 1744, the Reich side of the Affair was likewise getting well forward ("we keep it mostly secret from the poor Kaiser, who is apt to blab"):—and on May 22d, 1744, Friedrich, with the Kaiser and Two other well-affected Parties (only two as yet, but we hope for more, and invite all and sundry), sign solemnly their "UNION OF FRANKFURT;" famous little Fourfold outcome of so much diplomatizing. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a romance writer. I mean no more than that I partly owe to you my existence during great part of the time which I have employed in composing it: another matter which it may be necessary to remind you of; since there are certain actions of which you are apt to be extremely forgetful; but of these I hope I shall always have a ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... were full of good sense; but as opposition is only apt to increase love in the hearts of men, and especially of kings who hate being contradicted, this king begged, the very next day, for the hand of the Princess Mutinosa. It was granted ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... towards the weak sisterhood of evident brides, and both our friends felt a lurking fondness for Niagara at the last moment. I do not know how much of their content was due to the fact that they had suffered no sort of wrong there, from those who are apt to prey upon travellers. In the hotel a placard warned them to have nothing to do with the miscreant hackmen on the streets, but always to order their carriage at the office; on the street the hackmen whispered to them not to trust the exorbitant ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... A broad river swept rapidly by, and along the banks wild carabao rolled and splashed, making queer diminutive sounds, not in keeping with their ungainly size. Piang was careful to keep out of sight, as they are apt to be dangerous when their ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... since become famous), I do not know. In the case of the Schroeder girl, however, it was the smallpox. Now what is smallpox? Everybody has seen persons who have been afflicted with smallpox, and has considered the expression, "the devil has threshed peas on his or her face," more or less apt. At least the expression has become proverbial. In this case, however, the proverbial phrase, if applied, would have been mere glossing over, for the Schroeder girl had, not pits the size of peas, but scars half as broad as your hand, a spectacle, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and I didn't see why I should deprive myself of this pleasure in order to seem not to mind Mrs. Peck. I mounted accordingly and saw a few figures sitting or moving about in the darkness. The ocean looked black and small, as it is apt to do at night, and the long mass of the ship, with its vague dim wings, seemed to take up a great part of it. There were more stars than one saw on land and the heavens struck one more than ever as larger than the ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... jealousy did not concentrate itself on her husband and Miss Brent: Amherst had never shown any inclination for the society of other women, and if the possibility had been suggested to her, she would probably have said that Justine was not "in his style"—so unconscious is a pretty woman apt to be of the versatility of masculine tastes. But Amherst saw that she felt herself excluded from amusements in which she had no desire to join, and of which she consequently failed to see the purpose; and he gave ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... apt to think that what has worked well here will work well in Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from us are unreasonable; and that their proposals for change must be mistaken. We do not make allowance for the soreness of feeling ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... geological record; for, I repeat, it is absolutely necessary, from the nature of things, that that record should be of the most fragmentary and imperfect character. Unfortunately this circumstance has been constantly forgotten. Men of science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated on being turned into a new field of inquiry, to go off at a hand-gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, losing sight of the real limitation of their inquiries, and to forget the ...
— The Past Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... In trouble with her chimneys because they smoked; in trouble with her maids who did not obey her; and worst of all in trouble with herself; for she had good sense and good principle, but she had let her temper go too long undisciplined, and it was apt to break forth sometimes against those she loved, and would cause her ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... see me electioneering, I goes fixed for the purpose. I've got a suit of deer-leather clothes, with two big pockets. So I puts a bottle of whiskey in one, and a twist of tobacco in t'other, and starts out. Then, if I meets a friend, why, I pulls out my bottle and gives him a drink. He'll be mighty apt, before he drinks, to throw away his tobacco. So when he's done, I pulls my twist out of t'other pocket and gives him a chaw. I never likes to leave a man worse off than when I found him. If I had given ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... the long journey by night from Regent Street to Wandsworth High Street alone with Maudie; and, though Miss Dymond practically effaced herself, it wasn't—with a girl of Maudie's temperament—the same thing at all. For Maudie in company was apt to be a little stiff and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... life. Against melancholy he recommended constant occupation of mind, a great deal of exercise, moderation in eating and drinking, and especially to shun drinking at night. He said melancholy people were apt to fly to intemperance for relief, but that it sunk them much deeper in misery[1316]. He observed, that labouring men who work hard, and live sparingly, are seldom or never ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... with so much art Is but a barb'rous skill; 'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart, Too apt before to kill. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... "Franz was very apt to grunt when his wife summoned him in this manner, and, at any rate, never would go as she requested; but little Franz, the son, who was very like his mother, and had got exactly her turn-up nose and sharp eyes, would scamper forward ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty |
