"At best" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more temperate climates at such a season. It was fiercely bright against the melting snows, with a steely chill that entirely lacked the gracious promise of budding trees and tender shooting grass. At best it spoke of the final passing of the wastes of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... forbid such practices as necromancy, or a "pretended" communication with the dead?—Because it would be only a pretense at best; for such communication is impossible. The dead are unconscious in their graves, and have no power to communicate with the living. Let this truth be once established, and it is the death-blow to the claims of Spiritualism, in the cases ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... was not all plain sailing. The air is an unstable medium at best, and quite without warning, at an acute angle, he entered an aerial tide which he recognized as the gulf stream of wind that poured through the drafty-mouthed Golden Gate. His right wing caught it first—a sudden, sharp puff that lifted and tilted the monoplane and threatened to capsize ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... field literally walks in darkness, and his success will be in proportion to the facility with which his mental vision can pierce the veil. His manoeuvres, to a greater or less degree, must always be based on probabilities, for his most recent reports almost invariably relate to events which, at best, are several hours old; and, meanwhile, what has the enemy been doing? This it is the most essential part of his business to discover, and it is a matter of hard thinking and sound judgment. From the indications furnished by his reports, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the latter, demanded, or rather extorted, douceurs from the exhausted and almost ruined German petitioners; who in the end were rewarded for all their meanness and for all their expenses with promises at best; as the new plan of supplementary indemnities was, on the very day proposed for its final arrangement, postponed by the desire of the Emperor of the French, until further orders. This provoking delay could no more be ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... not wish you to see it in that light," he said with a smile. "At best it is but an arrangement for our mutual advantage, and I, on my part, thank you and mademoiselle most heartily for falling in ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... government sent soldiers after them, resulting in about eight hundred soldiers being killed, when they dispersed into small bands, one of which was paying Las Palomas a social call that morning. Along the Rio Grande it is only a short step at best from revolution to robbery, and ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... was occurring to harden northern hostility to slavery into resolute hatred, a fire which might smoulder long but could not die out. The fugitive slave law for the rendition of runaways found in free States operated cruelly at best, and was continually abused to kidnap free blacks. The owner or his attorney or agent could seize a slave anywhere on the soil of freedom, bring him before the magistrate of the county, city, or town corporate in which the arrest was made, and prove his ownership by testimony or by affidavit; ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... although they are perpetually thrown out of coffee-houses and come to nothing. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He is but a copier at best, and will never arrive to practise by the life; for bar him the imitation of something he has read, and he has no image in his thoughts. Observation and fancy, the matter and form of just wit, are above his philosophy. He appears so over-concerned in all men's wits as if they were ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... American union, wheat yields a return of only from four to five times the amount sown; in France, 5-6 times (Lavoisier): in Chili, 12 times; in northern Mexico, 17 times; in Peru, 18 and 20 times; in southern Mexico, 25 and even 35 times; in Germany, maize seed yields at best one hundred fold, while in the torrid zone there is a return of from three hundred to four ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... had persevered in the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, because the judgment of Ibrahim was in favour of its being carried out. This, to Roxalana, was gall and wormwood; well she knew that, as long as the Grand Vizier lived, her sovereignty was at best but a divided one. There was a point at which her blandishments stopped short; this was when she found that her opinion did not coincide with that of the minister. She was, as we have seen in the instance of her son, not a woman to stick at ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... war, and while our troops and even more our money and material resources may have decisive weight toward victory, yet it is France, England, Italy, Russia against whom the enemy has spent his strength. Our Allies have brought the war already to its turning point, and we can at best only add completeness to their achievement. Furthermore, while we aid France and her Allies, we are defending ourselves also. We went to war because Germany was killing our citizens, was plotting ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... To which of these classes he belonged is uncertain— most probably to the latter; and in those days of frequent confiscations, when property was constantly changing hands, the profits of his calling, at best a poor one, may have been unusually large. With the fruits of his industry he had purchased a small farm near Venusia, upon the banks of the Aufidus, the modern Ofanto, on the confines of Lucania and Apulia, Here, on the 8th of December, B.C. 65, the poet was born; and this picturesque ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... most noble cannot be denied. Things are only of value as the principle in which they originate is noble, grand, and elevated. Actions committed by a divine principle are divine actions; whereas the actions of the creature, however good they may appear, are human actions or at best they are virtuous actions, if they are done with ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... fool," said Eileen, tugging at the pearls viciously. "They are nothing but a little bit of a string that looks as if I were trying to do something and couldn't, at best. What I've got to do is to think more of myself. I've got to plan some way to prevent Linda from being too popular until I really get my mind made up as to what I ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... ordinarily 120 degrees Fahr. in my tent. Still, I am sure it was by no means so oppressive as at Korti in March 1885. The Atbara and the Nile helped to temper the fiery glow that radiated from the desert rocks and sands. At best, the heat is a sore trial, but to be borne with more patience than the "devils" and sand storms that bother by night as well as by day. Snow-drifts are mild visitations of Providence compared with a dust storm or whirlwind. These latter would smother you, if you would let them, quicker and ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the Judge. "I like your term. They are where the law comes from, you see. For they chose the delegates who made the Constitution that provided for the courts. There's your machinery. These are the hands into which ordinary citizens have put the law. So you see, at best, when they lynch they only take back what they once gave. Now we'll take your two cases that you say are the same in principle. I think that they are not. For in the South they take a negro from jail where he was waiting to be duly hung. The South has ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... tiresome papers once written, he had two or three hours of leisure, which he employed in reading and taking notes from the volumes borrowed by him every morning at a reading-room on the Rue Rorer-Collard; for he had already learned that one leaves college almost ignorant, having, at best, only learned how to study. He left the office at nightfall and reached his room through the Boulevard des Invalides, and Montparnasse, which at this time was still planted with venerable elms; sometimes the lamplighter would be ahead of him, making the large gas-jets shoot out under the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which are expected from us after a study of the ancients: formerly, for example, the ability to write and speak. But what is expected now! Thinking and deduction . but these things are not learnt from the ancients, but at best through the ancients, by means of science. Moreover, all historical deduction is very limited and unsafe, ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... them. Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of France; and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in an isolation, you would think, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other meaning, it appeared manifestly, by the issue, that the public was a loser by every individual among them; and that a kingdom can no more be the richer by such an importation, than a man can be fatter by a wen, which is unsightly and troublesome, at best, and intercepts that nourishment, which would otherwise diffuse itself through the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... trying for us. We could not tell which was the more deserving of sympathy. Both seemed to have drawn a pretty poor hand in what was a hard enough game at best. And there were others. ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hard work at best; and dogs, as well as their master, were always glad when the long journeys were ended and a welcome rest for a little while could be taken, to heal up the wounds and frost bites, and gather strength ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... differentiate than truly to characterise. The proportions of the sitter must be sacrificed to the proportions of the portrait; the lights are heightened, the shadows overcharged; the chosen expression, continually forced, may degenerate at length into a grimace; and we have at best something of a caricature, at worst a calumny. Hence, if they be readable at all and hang together by their own ends, the peculiar convincing force of these brief representations. They take so little a while to read, and yet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... continued to talk of how words like "Nature," and "God," and "Liberty" are on every lip, yet none is able to define their meaning. Liberty he instanced as a word around which poems have been written, "yet no poet could tell what he was writing about; at best we can only say of liberty that we must surrender something to gain something; in other words, liberty is a compromise, for no one can be free to obey every impulse the moment one enters into ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... hard driving, his harness would fit another, and there was no scrutiny bestowed on vouchers when the work was done; and I must pay the tribute to the company to say that everything that money would buy was sent to make the engineers comfortable. It was bad enough at best, and the Chief Engineer (J.C. James) rightly considered that any expense bestowed on the engineering part of the work ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... fraud. To have the ten-thousandth part of a voice in selecting among the varying policies of sundry ambitious gentlemen, all of whom have been foisted on me by committees, and of whom the successful one—whose professed views may be quite antithetical to mine and can at best only roughly represent them—will have, when he is not absent or manoeuvred into silence, the six-hundred-and-seventieth part of a voice in accepting or rejecting the ideas of half a dozen very ambitious ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... consider that all reason comes from God; our grounds must at best be imperfect; but if they appear to be sufficient after prayer, diligent search, obedience, waiting, and, in short, doing our part, they are His voice calling us on. He it is, in that case, who makes them ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... digressing from the path indicated by the professional body, though in such a way as to benefit still by the protection of the law, and to be not openly susceptible to admonition from the engineering societies' committees. Engineers of this stamp at best are but tricksters. Actually, they should be debarred from practice, just as the legal fraternity takes effective action against members of the bar who go outside the pale, though nothing is ever done to engineers. Engineering ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... thousands I am sold and bought, Who neither get nor lose a groat; For none, alas! by me can gain, But those who give me greatest pain. Shall man presume to be my master, Who's but my caterer and taster? Yet, though I always have my will, I'm but a mere depender still: An humble hanger-on at best; Of whom all people make a jest. In me detractors seek to find Two vices of a different kind; I'm too profuse, some censurers cry, And all I get, I let it fly; While others give me many a curse, Because too close I hold my purse. But ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... foremost, decide on the sort of life you wish to lead. Then pick your location to fit it. If you are not chained to a city desk five days a week but at best make only one or two weekly trips there, a railroad journey of two or three hours is endurable especially when a highly attractive place lies at the end. For such a person, the radius in which to look for likely places is much extended and the farther out, the more advantageous the prices. But for ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... At best a rat is no pleasant bedroom companion, and besides, Uncle Tobe had been seriously annoyed. He kicked out with one of his bare feet, taking the rat squarely in its side as it scurried for its hole ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... have been poisoned. So then of course we remembered the sting on her throat. He examined it, looked rather grave, and warned Father Beckett that Madame sa femme would not be able to travel that day. She had a high temperature, and at best must have a day or two of repose, with no food save a ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... know what to write to you: the accounts from Scotland vary perpetually, and at best are never very certain. I was just going to tell you that the rebels are in England; but my uncle [old Horace] is this moment come in, and says, that an express came last night with an account of their being at Edinburgh to the number of five thousand. This sounds great, to have walked ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... print petticoat or one of canvas, as the case may be, to hide her nakedness; and in life, it is a disastrous virtue that we have united to commend and avoid. Nor is the decision an unwise one; for man is a gregarious animal, knowing that friendship is, at best, but a feeble passion and therefore to be treated with the care due an invalid. It is impossible to be quite candid in conversation with a man; and with a woman it is absolutely necessary that ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... fascination; whereas what you in fact do discover in Lamb is a not unpleasant flatness, enlivened by a vague humour and an occasional pathos. You ought, according to theory, to be enthusiastic; but you are apathetic, or, at best, half-hearted. There is a gulf. ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... an end of by the French Revolution, which made an end of so much else. About the last trace of its influence is to be found in Burns' sentimental correspondence with Mrs. M'Lehose, in which the lady is addressed as Clarinda, and the poet signs himself Sylvander. It was at best a mere beautiful gauze screen drawn between the poet and nature; and passion put his foot through it at once. After Chaucer's youth was over, he discarded somewhat scornfully these abstractions and shows of things. The "Flower and the Leaf" is a beautiful-tinted dream; the "Canterbury Tales" ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... companions very serious and melancholy, and soon imbibes their sombre spirit, assuming their slow solemn gait. The mother-camel never licks or shows any particular fondness for its young beyond opening her legs for the foal to suck. At best, the camel, as an animal, is a most ungainly and unlovely creature. What surprises me most are the bites of the male-camel. He bites his neighbour, without passion or any apparent provocation, and simply because he has nothing else to do en route, or nothing ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... she is covered with dirt; her bones have grown large; her step is ungainly; she speaks in husky tones; she swears, drinks and fights. Meanwhile the corn ripens. After gigantic efforts she succeeds in harvesting it. At best it would have repaid the seed but three times, but gathered and threshed with insufficient skill or barbarous tools, it scarcely more than doubles the perilous investment. Then this poor creature casts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... very conventions designed to safeguard unconsciousness; made wise by the unwisdom of a civilisation which required ignorance of innocence, she had as yet lost none of her sweetness and confidence in herself and in a world which she considered a friendly one at best and, at worst, more silly ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... which promised to be of such essential service to the whole country. To do this with effect, he saw that it was necessary to take it entirely into his own hands. He could lend money to the manager to enable him to go on, but that would be at best hazardous, and could never do it in the complete manner in which he wished to establish it. In this period of consideration, Mr. Fitzmaurice was advised by his friends never to engage in so complex a business as a manufacture, in which he must of necessity become a merchant, also engage ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... Existence of a God, do rarely venture to produce any Hypothesis of their own to be fairly examin'd and compar'd with that which they reject: But that their opposition to a Deity, consists only in Objections which may as well be retorted upon themselves, and which at best prove nothing but the shortness of Humane Understanding) to me, I say, it appears from hence probable that the greatest part of Atheistick Reasoners, do rather desire, and seek to be Atheists, than that in ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... she thought of going there, but it was at least ten miles off the Lazette trail, and even though at the Double R she might get a cowboy to make the ride to Lazette, she would be losing much valuable time. She drew a deep breath over the contemplation of the long ride—at best it would take her four hours—but she did not hesitate long and with a last glance at Doubler she was out of the door and walking to the corral, where she unhitched her pony, mounted, and sent the animal over the level toward the crossing at ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... well. Now, my men, keep in shelter of yonder bluff; for under cover of it only can we approach the den unperceived. We are now within three miles of the place." The men received the intelligence with enthusiasm, and put their horses at best speed. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... her cold eyes fixed on him through her cheap, steel spectacles. She was taller and gaunter and more angular than ever. Creighton chuckled inwardly. If Miss Copley was October, then this was January, or at best late December! ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of results is uninspired work at best," he said once to me, when I had been his confidential assistant for some years. "It leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead nowhere. It is playing with the wrong end of a rather dangerous ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Randall;—no one who combines the finest natural powers with the most elegant and finished acquired ones. The late Professor Stewart (who has left the learned ring) is acknowledged to be clever in philosophy, but he is a left-handed metaphysical fighter at best, and cannot be relied upon at closing with his subject. Lord Byron is a powerful poet, with a mind weighing fourteen stone; but he is too sombre and bitter, and is apt to lose his temper. Randall has no defect, or ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... cried Pembroke with some asperity. "Lay wagers more fit at best, and let us have no more of this thumb-biting. Gad! the first we know, we'll be up for fighting among ourselves, and we all know how the new court ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... seals, close-fasten'd, are; And what the spirit of the times men call, Is merely their own spirit after all, Wherein, distorted oft, the times are glass'd. Then truly, 'tis a sight to grieve the soul! At the first glance we fly it in dismay; A very lumber-room, a rubbish-hole; At best a sort of mock-heroic play, With saws pragmatical, and maxims sage, To suit the puppets and ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... not know harms him not at all, neither does it harm the world; but that which, through a shallow, foolish, self-conceit, he professes to know, when he has at best only a half knowledge, or, in a self destructive vanity, deceives himself into thinking that he knows, betrays him always to the injury of both himself and others. An honest Ignorance is a golden vessel, empty, ready to be filled with wealth but a pretentious ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... him, and she gladly went. He stormed and carried with ease the fortress which, at best, I could hope only slowly to undermine. She loved him as women love a conqueror; she might have yielded me, at most, the grace of a condescending queen. I kept silence: to whom could I speak? I had felt great ambitions,—to become honored and famous,—to preach the gospel ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... time in finding other employment. It was late in the season to look for railway contracts, and continued dry weather had made grading, at best, a somewhat difficult business. Influx of ready money and of those who follow it had created considerable activity in a neighboring centre which for twenty years had been the principal cow-town of the foothill country. In defiance of all tradition, and, most of all, in defiance of the predictions ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... burst in front of Chief Lekoko as he was engaged in repelling the Boer attack, but no fragments of it touched him. One piece of shell, however, struck a rock and a splinter of the rock grazed his temple. At best only a few rounds of ammunition could be handed out to those of the Barolongs who used their own rifles, and it is doubtful if so little ammunition was ever more economically used, and used to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... since; that it has rods of common merchant iron that were bought by some person, not specially acquainted with the business, from an unknown firm,—we had better pull it down before it falls. If, from such records, we find an iron bridge built twenty-five years ago by an unknown company, with iron, at best, of a doubtful quality, and having a factor of three or four for the rolling-stock and speeds of twenty years ago, instead of a factor of six for the rolling-stock and speeds of to-day, we had better remove that bridge before ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... though far less operative on the minds of those who maintain them, except indeed, in so far as a conceited indolence is concerned, of which, it is often difficult to say, whether they are the parent or the offspring. But at best, your transcendental philosophers are very like those general admirers of the fair sex, who are ready enough to pay compliments which cost them just as little as they signify, but who are too fond of themselves, to squander away ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... thanking those who have sent, along with their answers to the Tenth Knot, regrets that there are no more Knots to come, or petitions that I should recall my resolution to bring them to an end. I am most grateful for their kind words; but I think it wisest to end what, at best, was but a lame attempt. "The stretched metre of an antique song" is beyond my compass; and my puppets were neither distinctly in my life (like those I now address), nor yet (like Alice and the Mock Turtle) distinctly out of it. Yet let me at least fancy, as I lay down the pen, that ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... with the progress of the instructed minority. It follows slowly and warily, and sometimes begins by resisting and denouncing what in the end it thoroughly adopts. Hence a direct controversy with Rome holds out the prospect of great evils, and at best a barren and unprofitable victory. The victory that is fruitful springs from that gradual change in the knowledge, the ideas, and the convictions of the Catholic body, which, in due time, overcomes the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... which in time found entrance to his mind, that it would be at least as profitable to devote our energies to the acquisition of true nobility of soul, pure and high thought and refined taste, as to the study of those conventionalisms which are but their outer garment, and can at best only conceal for a short time ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... affection and love for home. In their stead the wretched harlot has filled him with unholy lust. His brain and heart refuse to yield him the love of the son and brother. His hand can not write as aforetime, or at best, his expressions become a hypocritical pretence. Fallen into the degradation of the fornicator, he has changed a mother's love and sister's affection for the cursed fellowship of the woman "whose house is the way to hell." ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... whole community out of the mire of money-getting propensities, where every thing like public spirit was in danger of being swallowed up and lost? I protest against this wholesale abuse of what has been,—at best, a gross exaggeration. The whole truth in this matter is told in a few words. By constitution, by habit, by circumstances, our people are intensely active; and this activity, for want of other objects, has been turned into the channels of material prosperity. If, therefore, you merely affirm ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker
... orthodox Greece, a petty territory surrounded by a fringe of little-known regions, such as Macedonia, Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Italy; not to say distant Marseilles, and the Pillars of Hercules-all places at best very little visited except by navigators, and even then only by a few specially enterprising navigators or desperate adventurers; though later on Greek influence and Greek colonies soon began to replace the Phoenician, and to exhibit ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... little about a man from his printed works! They are the gleanings of his thoughts and investigations, the pick of his mind and heart; and they are at best but an impersonal and partial record of the writer. Even autobiography has something unsatisfactory about it; one feels the narrator is on guard always, as it were, and, aware of an audience cold and of strangers, keeps this back and trims up that to make himself ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... hopelessly old-fashioned, without giving it the charm of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but fifty years ago,—there are too many talkative old people who know all about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware. A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them—the delicate and durable patina which is ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... certainty of the health of the individual than of that of his family. Of the 80 cases, 53—or about two-thirds—may be said to enjoy good, and sometimes even very good, health, though occasionally there is some slight qualification to be made. In 22 cases the health is delicate, or at best only fair; in these cases there is sometimes a tendency to consumption, and often marked neurasthenia and a more or less unbalanced temperament. Four cases are morbid to a considerable degree; the remaining case has had insane delusions which required treatment in an ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dank with mist, And heavy with the scent of steaming leaves, And rose-buds mouldering on the dripping porch; On twilight, without rise or set of sun, Till beetles drone along the hollow lane And round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats Hawk the pale moths of winter? Welcome then, At best, the flying gleam, the flying shower, The rain-pools glittering on the long white roads, And shadows sweeping on from down to down Before the salt Atlantic gale! Yet come In whatsoever garb, or gay or sad, Come fair, come ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... made a choice at my leisure and no one objected. Under the double restraint of an unusually strong prince, backed by Chinese officials, the priests of Tachienlu are less truculent than farther west, but at best Lamaism rests with a heavy hand upon the Tibetans; it is greedy and repulsive in aspect and brutalizing in its effects; wholly unlike the gentle, even though ignorant and superstitious, Buddhism ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... you won't be able to sleep, or at best only fitfully, if I don't. Here's what happened, in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Walt Whitman, as it is open to us surely to think even of Wordsworth, so harshly conditioned by his spareness and bareness and bleakness—all this in reference to the voices that have most proved their command of the ear of time, and with the various examples added of those claiming, or at best enjoying, but the slighter attention; and their office thus mainly affects us as that of showing in how jostled, how frequently arrested and all but defeated a hand, the torch could still be carried. It is not of course for ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... your finger on the pulse of the dilemma! What was to be done when there was no sun? The sundial at best was none too correct. In different latitudes, too, different markings were needed. Moreover, a sundial, to be of practical value, had to be kept steady. What was to happen on shipboard? ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... the first time since Porphyry wrote his letter to Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, and said, "Lord, help Thou my unbelief." To robust, not sensitive minds, very much in unity with themselves, the attitude seems contemptible, or at best decently futile. Yet I cannot think it below the dignity of mankind, conscious that it is not omniscient. The poet does fail in logic (In Memoriam, cxx.) when he ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... one of the larger Roman libraries in ancient times we cannot do better than turn to that of the Vatican at the present day. It was fitted up as we see it now—with presses, busts, and antique vases, by Pope Sixtus V., in 1588. It is therefore, at best, only a modern antique; but arranged so skilfully that an ancient Roman, if he could come to life again, might imagine himself in ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... claimed to have bought up the interests of the reversioners. He intimated that it was possible that Winburn had done this while acting as the agent of Colonel Desmit, but this was probably not susceptible of proof, on account of the death of Desmit. He only stated it as a conjecture at best. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... of men's souls; their unbelief in great duties, great common causes, great self-sacrifices—in a word, their unbelief in God, and themselves, and mankind—all that had to be reformed; and till that was done all outward reform would but have left them, at best, in brute ease and peace, to that soulless degradation, which (as in the Byzantine empire of old, and seeming in the Chinese empire of to-day) hides the reality of barbarism under a varnish of civilisation. Men had to be awakened; to be taught to think for themselves, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... vessels reached the harbor of Tripoli, but a bad storm drove them off shore. What a time they had for six days! The Intrepid was a poor {163} affair at best, and there was no shelter from the fury and the cold of the storm. The sailors slept on the hard deck, nibbled what little ship bread was not water-soaked,— for they had lost all their bacon,—and caught rain water to drink. ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... society of La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears there; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... to the author very often," he writes, "that a volume presenting the peculiar features, favorite resorts, and distinguishing characteristics of the leading cities of America, would prove of interest to thousands who could, at best, see them only in imagination; and to others who, having visited them, would like to compare notes with one who has made their peculiarities a ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... at best a very dangerous game, seldom worth the risk, and it involves, even for its occasional success, a very just estimate of your opponents. Remember that you cannot bluff even a ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... get along well in your courtship you will invariably make a happy couple if you should unite your destinies in marriage. Learn not to give nor take offence. You must remember that all humanity is imperfect at best. We all have our faults, and must keep them in subordination. Those who truly love each other will have but few difficulties in their courtship ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... capabilities of the plane were as yet undreamed, and the prime mover that should make the plane available for flight was deep in the womb of time. Da Vinci's work was forgotten—flight was an impossibility, or at best such a useless show as Besnier ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Treatment.—At best the treatment of varicose veins is only palliative, as it is obviously impossible to restore to the vessels their normal structure. The patient must avoid wearing anything, such as a garter, which constricts the limb, and any obvious cause of direct pressure on the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... almost every modern scholar who has discussed the matters at issue has assumed that the fashionable doctrine of the independent development of human beliefs and practices was a safe basis upon which to construct his theories. At best it is an unproven and reckless speculation. I am convinced it is utterly false. Holding such views I have attempted to read the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the world would have it under foot. But in that nobility men need training,—scientific training. The instinctive, unartistic human growth, or the empirical unscientific arts of culture, give but a vulgar counterfeit of it, or at best a poor, sickly, distorted, convulsive, unsatisfactory type of it, for 'being gentle, wounded,'—(and it is gentility and nobility and the true aristocracy that we speak of here,)—'craves a NOBLE CUNNING;' so the old military chieftain ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... can see, wife, although it is very faint," he told her. "But then think of the many years that have elapsed. The scratches must have been very lightly done at best. Hugh, your eyes are younger than mine; and, besides, I'm afraid there are tears dimming my sight. Look, and ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... there is no comfort to the healthy natural man in being told that the good he does will not be interred with his bones, since he does not wish to think, and in fact refuses to think, that his bones will ever be interred. Joy in the "choir invisible" is to him a mere poetic fancy, or at best a rarefied transcendentalism, which fails to sustain him. If altruism, or the religion of humanity, is a living vigorous plant, and as some believe flourishes more with the progress of the centuries, it must, like other "soul-growths," have a deeper, tougher ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Have all gentler means been tried? Perchance the Emp'ror knows not of our wrongs, It may not be his will we suffer thus: Were it not well to make one last attempt, And lay our grievances before the throne, Ere we unsheath the sword? Force is at best A fearful thing e'en in a righteous cause; God only helps, when man can help ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... indeed, impossible for any man, however obscure, or however eminent, to live longer in the country, without taking sides. Yet the choice was at best a hard and unhappy one. On the one side was the Castle, hardly concealing its intention of goading on the people, in order to rob them of their Parliament; on the other was the injured multitude, bound together by a secret system which proved in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... were not condemned but imperatively demanded by public opinion, lauded as virtues under all sorts of high-sounding names, and, so far as deeds and not empty phrases were in question, their antithesis, the genuine philanthropy, passed at best as pitiable folly, or more generally as a crime worthy of death. He who uttered the words quoted above, and to Whom prayers were offered in the churches, would have been repeatedly crucified, burnt, broken ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... said, "Incidentally, I do not think much of it. To my mind a good play must have a tremendous uplift in thought and purpose. 'The Easiest Way' has none of this. There is not a character in the play really worth while, with the exception of the old agent. The rest, at best, are not a particular adornment to society, and the strength of the play lies in its true portrayal of the sordid type of life which it expressed. As it is more or less purely photographic, I do not think it should be given the credit of an inspiration—it is rather devilishly ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... not surrendering her right to that. What was a year out of her life if afterward she would be in comfortable circumstances, free to love where she willed? She wasn't cheating herself or Cutty: she was cheating convention, a flimsy thing at best. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Erse we spoke for a little while, and it was a hopeless talk at best. Only we agreed that we would stand by one another through whatever might come, and that the first chance of escape was to be taken, be it what ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... anxiety. A bed of wolf skins being prepared for him, Okotook was soon placed upon it, and such remedies applied as Mr. Edwards judged necessary for his complaint, which was inflammation of the lungs to a degree that, if left to itself, or even to Ewerat, would soon have proved fatal, or, at best, have ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... to realize and remember what her Bible first taught her, and what moralists of all creeds, climes and ages, had reiterated—that human life was at best but "vanity and vexation of spirit," that "man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward"; yet as she stood on the line, narrow and thin as Al-Sirat, that divides girlhood and womanhood, all seemed to her fresh, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the backless spring seat with both hands, smiled back at him. It was only a storm, and at best could only soak their clothes and hair; but to Luther more than ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Refuse to consider anything for half an hour. Having learned to sit still, or lie still, and think of nothing with a moderate degree of success, and with most people the success can only be moderate at best, the next step is to think quietly of taking long, gentle, easy breaths for half an hour. A long breath and then a rest, two long breaths and then a rest. One can quiet and soothe oneself inside quite wonderfully with the study ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... the Law sets before its votaries, there are some—the moral commandments, properly so called—which do in point of fact, and in defiance of the philosophical assumption of legalism, appeal to the better nature of Man. But these are at best an insignificant minority; and their relative importance will necessarily diminish with the development into its natural consequences of the root idea of legalism. For legalism, just so far as it is strong, sincere, and self-confident, will try to cover the whole of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... and similar speculations is that the difference between man and the animals is forgotten in them. The human being is regarded with the eye of a dog- or bird-fancier, or at best of a slave-owner; the higher or human qualities are left out. The breeder of animals aims chiefly at size or speed or strength; in a few cases at courage or temper; most often the fitness of the animal for food is the great desideratum. But mankind are not ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and sentiment, that if we had attempted to caricature them, nobody would have recognised the likeness; and if we had endeavoured to give a servile copy of their manner, it would only have amounted, at best, to a tame and unamusing portrait, which it was not our object to present. Although fully aware that their names would, in the theatrical phrase, have conferred great strength upon our bill, we were reluctantly compelled to forego them, and to confine ourselves to ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... in England. It is not a very picturesque or interesting occasion, at best. To the traditional Englishman's mind it means simply a quiet evening at home, attended by the papers, and serious conversations in which the head of the house deals out political and domestic wisdom until ten ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... of war are horrid enough at best, surrounded by all the ameliorations of civilisation and Christianity. I am very sorry for the injuries done the family at Hickory Hill, and particularly that our dear old Uncle Williams, in his eightieth year, should be subjected to such treatment. But we cannot help it, and must ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... sponging-house, and it was there imparted to him that he had better send for two things—first of all for money, which was by far the more desirable of the two; and secondly, for bail, which even if forthcoming was represented as being at best ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Percival it was at best a purgatory where he seemed to be doomed to wait through eternity. Not that he meant to speak to Bobby Boynton when she arrived or make the slightest sign of forgiveness. That she should have allowed Andy Black to keep her out ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... August, fearing the worst; but Stella rallied, and in the spring of 1727 he returned to London. In August, however, there came alarming news, when Swift was himself suffering from giddiness and deafness. To Dr. Sheridan he wrote that the last act of life was always a tragedy at best: "it is a bitter aggravation to have one's best friend go before one." Life was indifferent to him; if he recovered from his disorder it would only be to feel the loss of "that person for whose sake only life was worth preserving. I brought both those friends ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... limitations: Edward himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by favorites, nor led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing could be more essential to his interests than to keep on good terms with his people: yet, on the whole, it appears that the government at best was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims, or bounded by any certain undisputed rights, which in practice were regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another, the commons by a third, the clergy by a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... is really based upon a misunderstanding. Take the art of music. Bach writes a composition for the violin: that composition exists, in the abstract, the moment it is written down upon paper, but, even to those trained musicians who are able to read it at sight, it exists in a state at best but half alive; to all the rest of the world it is silent. Ysaye plays it on his violin, and the thing begins to breathe, has found a voice perhaps more exquisite than the sound which Bach heard in his brain when he wrote down the notes. Take the instrument out ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... but half-way shifts at best. The true good-morning comes afield, and next to that is the thrill that greets the throwing your whole room wide to it. To let it trickle in at a casement is to wash in a dish. The true way is to take the sunshine with the shock of a plunge into the sea, and feel ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... not do, but there was not one that he did with a willing heart. His dreams were all of escape from this grinding, harsh farm. It seemed to him that it was as ruthless as his father; that everything it demanded of him was, at best, just a little beyond his strength. If there was a lever to be pulled on the disk, very likely it was rusted and refused to give unless he yanked until he was short of breath and his heart beat fast; four horses were so unruly and hard to keep in place; the gates ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... for example, could reach out at best no more than a day's journey in any direction, and then only imperfectly. Transmission of thought by radio instead of symbols or words, had been introduced but a few years before I entered the Service. It must be remembered that I am an old, old man, writing of things that ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... entitled. The stalwart Brahmans of the Deccan allege, it seems, that in this Kali Yuga, or Age of Darkness, there can be no Kshatriyas, since there is no room or a warrior caste in the orthodox sense under an alien rule, and that therefore the Hindus who are neither Brahmans nor pariahs can at best be Shudras—a "clean" caste, but not even entitled to wear the "sacred thread" reserved ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... suggested, the ground was perfectly dry. There were no slippery sticks to tread on, nor any moss-covered stones, treacherous with their soggy coats. So they could give more attention to the obstacles above ground. But at best it ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... He's hard enough to handle, at best. With this added—Yet I cannot but make the effort. I'll phone ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... itself to—which, indeed, insists upon—conventions of the most glaring unreality more than the pastoral, and none in which the decorations, unless managed with extraordinary genius, have such a tendency to be tawdry at best, draggled and withered at worst. Nevertheless, the fact remains that at almost all times, both in ancient literature and since the revival of letters, as well as in some probably more spontaneous forms during the Middle ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... property, other than movable property, and even this is at best confined to the clothes and ornaments which she wears. On the death of a married woman all her effects go to her husband, or, if he be dead, they go to her children or descendants, male and female, equally, If she has no children or descendants, they go to her husband's father, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... at the same time—difficult to be sure quite so soon—perhaps harmless, might of course be merely severe suppressed jaundice." When the pains began—he hated the idea of operations, and knew that any operation on the liver only at best staved off the dread, inevitable end for a year or a few months—When the pains began, he had grown utterly tired of life; so he compounded a subtle poison—he was a great chemist and had—only ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... breaking from her, but, putting on a more tender air, Rozella cried, 'And can you then, my dear Hebe, determine to give me up for such a trifling consideration?' Then raising her voice again, in a haughty manner, she said, 'I ought to despise and laugh at you for your folly, or at best pity your ignorance, rather than offer a sincere friendship to one ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... if it had been made of silver tissue, Faith laid it off on the rack. Laid it off to find the next stagc in the shape of morning wrappers, also made up. "They fit so loosely at best—" Miss Linden explained,—"and Endecott ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... that now we have bare life; at best for the bulk of men the Saurian lizard's broad back soaking and roasting in primeval slime; or say, in the so-called teachers of men, as much of life as pricks the frog in March to stir and yawn, and up on a flaccid leap that rolls him over some three inches nearer to the ditchwater ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
