"Draw the line" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unsophistication. In order to play tunes indifferently well on the piano she undergoes the weary training of many years; but she is called upon to display the somewhat more important accomplishment of bringing children into the world without an hour's educational preparation. The difficulty is, where to draw the line between this dewy, but often disastrous, ignorance and Carlotta's knowledge. I find it a most delicate and embarrassing problem. In fact, the problems connected with this young woman seem endless. Yet they do not disturb ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... said. "'For those who draw the line at demonic possession, I suggest trying telepathic projection. Apparently, it is possible to project one's own thoughts directly into the mind of another—even to the point of taking control of the other's ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... or a good juicy chew Will yield you more comfort than harm they will do, And murder the microbes that float in the air, And make magical dreams in the old arm-chair, If you will remember, and never forget, To just draw the line ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... the club—thought only of St. George—old Murdock, voicing their opinions when he said: "Temple laid himself out, so I hear, on that dinner, and some of us know what that means. And a dinner like that, remember, counts with St. George. In the future it will be just as well to draw the line at poets as well ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a child must draw the line somewhere; and presently the Prince said "Good-morning" (so nicely that I thought he must have had a cracker or two in his pocket), asking if he might sit ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "I am a Mugwump to the extent of voting as I choose, and irrespective of party, but I draw the line at Grover Cleveland ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... not stand upon it. Many things have been said and done by our orthodox friends that I have felt to be extremely harmful to our cause; but I should no more consent to a resolution denouncing them than I shall consent to this. Who is to draw the line? Who can tell now whether Mrs. Stanton's commentaries may not prove a great help to woman's emancipation from old superstitions that have barred her way? Lucretia Mott at first thought Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause of all woman's ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... where to draw the line. At Medora, for instance, the Marquis de Mores, a French settler, assumed the attitude of a feudal proprietor. Having been the first to squat in that region he regarded those who came later as interlopers, and he ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... point in his life we may draw the line between the period of education for the work he had before him and that work itself. What Mr. Chase was, at this time, in all the essential traits of his moral and intellectual character—in his views of life, its value, its just objects and aims, ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... when on the Green River, where to draw the line when counting a rapid; this was less difficult when on the Colorado. While the descent was about the same as in some of the rapids above, the increased volume of water made them look and act decidedly different. We drew the line, when counting a rapid, at a ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... rate by resident, workmen, though some of the patterns clearly betray oriental influence. Other objects must have been, others may have been, actually imported from Egypt or the East. It is impossible to draw the line with certainty between native and imported. Thus the admirable silver head of a cow from one of the shaft-graves (Fig. 36) has been claimed as an Egyptian or a Phenician production, but the evidence adduced is not decisive. Similarly with the fragment of a silver vase shown in Fig. 37. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... hope for is to point out the most common and prolific sources of infection, and thus enable civilized man to avoid some of his most common troubles. It becomes a question, therefore, where we will best draw the line in the employment of safeguards. Shall we drink none except sterilized milk, and no water unless boiled? or shall we put these occasional sources of danger in the same category with bicycle and railroad accidents, dangers which can be avoided by not using the ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... You have deigned to weigh the feasibility Of treating me as Austria has done!... But I forgive you. You are a worthy man; You feel real friendship for me. You are brave. Yet I was wrong to make a king of you. If I had been content to draw the line At vice-king, as with young Eugene, no more, As he has laboured you'd have laboured, too! But as full monarch, you have foraged rather For your own pot ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Dicky," says Miss Kavanagh, her wrath boiling over. "I won't be called names. I won't be called a fleshpot. You'll draw the line there if you please." ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... St. Michael's Church at South Tredegar, a liberal contributor, and a prime mover in a plan to tear down the old building and to erect a new one more in keeping with the times and South Tredegar's prosperity. Yet he was careful to draw the line between religion as a means of grace and business as ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... goods is four shillin', but I don't suppose she'll want to pay for them. Don't take coonskins. I won't have coonskins. If I can't sell my goods for cash, I'll keep 'em. Butter and eggs will answer once in a while, if the customer is poor and has no money, but I draw the line on coonskins. The Hawkinses always have coonskins. I believe they breed coons, but they can't trade their odoriferous pelts to me. If she has them, tell her to take them to Hackett's. He'll trade for fishing worms, if she has any, and then perhaps get more than ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... any man that stands on two feet," said Tim, with such sincerity that it could not have been taken for a boast, "you can ask about me far and near, but I draw the line at the devil. I've stood up with four men against me, with meat cleavers and butcher knives in their hands, when I used to work as a sheep butcher back in the packin' house in Chicago, and I've come ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... now, Miss Kate, that's all right," said the lieutenant, "but you must draw the line somewhere, you know. Those colors now you must ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... it all," said Mr. Kernan sensibly, "I draw the line there. I'll do the job right enough. I'll do the retreat business and confession, and... all that business. But... no candles! No, damn it all, I ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... accordingly species that receive at the hands of different authors diverse generic reference as one feature or another in the structure is emphasized in the different cases. It is granted that it is hard to draw the line sometimes between forms in which the dehiscence is irregularly circumscissile and those in which the wall breaks without any regularity whatever, since, in all, the breaking up of the peridium usually begins at the top. Species here included ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... completely Richard seemed to have changed in his judgment of Mr. Keene. 'His connection with newspapers makes him very useful,' said one letter. 'Be as friendly with him as you like; I trust to your good sense and understanding of your own interest to draw the line.' When at the house Mr. Keene was profoundly respectful; his position at such times was singular, for as often as not Alice had to entertain him alone. Profound, too, was the journalist's discretion in regard to all doings down at Wanley. Knowing he had several times ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... a considerable amount of truth in this opinion; still, it cannot be regarded as altogether correct. First, as regards faults, it is no easy matter to draw the line between the trifling and the serious; maybe it is not because a fault is trifling that it makes us laugh, but rather because it makes us laugh that we regard it as trifling, for there is nothing disarms ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... Oh, if you please, ma'am, I really must draw the line at sitting down. I couldn't let myself be seen doing such a thing, ma'am: thank you, I am sure, all the same. (He looks round from face to face wretchedly, with an expression that would ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... wear epaulets, and be entitled to all the rights and privileges 'of an officer and a gentleman;' he is no longer doomed to inferiority. In case of battle, where bullets have no respect of persons, and do not draw the line at color, it may easily happen that a regiment or battalion will do its best work in the face of the enemy under the command of a Negro chief. Thus far the Government has been swift to recognize heroism and efficiency, whether performed by Commodore Dewey ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... smile.] Well, they saw them in Ireland. I suppose it's quite correct to see fairies in Ireland. It's like gambling at Monte Carlo. It's quite respectable. But I do draw the line at their seeing fairies in England. I do object to their bringing their ghosts and goblins and witches into the poor Duke's own back garden and within a yard of my own red lamp. It shows a ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... felt that one ostensibly engaged in applied entomology and paid by the State or national government to the end that he may benefit the agricultural community can be true to his trust only by largely overcoming the pleasure of entomological work having no practical bearing. I would, therefore, draw the line at descriptive work except where it is incidental to the economic work and for the purpose of giving accuracy to the popular and economic statements. This would make our work essentially biological, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... up and tore it into pieces. I could stand a good deal, as I have said, but even a boy of twelve must draw the line somewhere. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... title of Evil and Evolution. The author maintains that the original motive in all living things was self-preservation for self-realisation; and that this elementary law was in itself necessary and good, the essential condition of progress. But just as we to-day know well how hard it is to draw the line which distinguishes a right self-seeking from the wrong, so it has been from the outset. The distinction is a fine one, and the balance is easily upset. We have but to suppose that this perversion of the right and lawful happened at an early stage, to see ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... "Well, draw the line somewhere," she returned. "If we're going to play duets after tea and you continue to absorb sandwiches at your present rate of consumption, you'll soon be incapable of detecting the inherent difference between a quaver and ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Doctor or a quack will do it; but you could do it so much better. If you should have yielded on the two former occasions, if you have already stained your heart with innocent blood, will you now refuse? Where are you going to draw the line? ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... discovered east of this line should belong to the Portuguese, and all west of it should belong to the Spaniards. This was hailed as an exercise of divinely illuminated power by the Church; but difficulties arose, and in 1506 another attempt was made by Pope Julius II to draw the line three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This, again, was supposed to bring divine wisdom to settle the question; but, shortly, overwhelming difficulties arose; for the Portuguese ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... interesting. The palmist may claim to read the true character from the lines of the hand, but it is only by solistry that the real sole is laid bare and the character of a subject in any walk of life is exposed. The lines of the sole are greatly indicative of character, for all traits must draw the line somewhere. Now, Mrs. Petticoat, this line extending from the Mount of Trilby to the outer side of the sole is the life line. If that appears to be broken it indicates future death. If more pronounced ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... didn't invite us in," said Captain Fyter. "I hope I'm not too particular about my associates, but I draw the line at pigs." ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... you carry more money in gold and bank-notes than any other man in the country. The fact that Kid Rickard pulled the game the way he did this afternoon, shooting down Roberts when there was no need of bloodshed, ought to be enough to show us that they are not going to draw the line anywhere this side of ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... the Jacobins generally borrowed their phrases from the legendary history of the early Roman Republic, while the Girondins preferred to take metaphors from the literature of Rousseau (p. 75). There was plenty of nonsense talked about Brutus and Scaevola by both parties, and It Is not possible to draw the line with precision. But the received view Is that the Girondins were Voltairean, and the Jacobins Rousseauite, while Danton was of the school of the Encyclopaedia, and Hebert and Chaumette ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... grace, and the new Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, to honour all men; to love the brotherhood; to throw away our own private fancies and personal antipathies; and, like the Lord Jesus Christ, copy the all-embracing charity of God. And no one has a right to answer, 'But I must draw the line somewhere.' Thou must not. I am afraid that thou wilt, and that I shall, too, God forgive us both! because we are sinful human beings. We may, but we must not, draw a line as to whom we shall endure in charity. For Christ draws no line. Is it not written, 'No man can say ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... said Ned quickly; "only you must draw the line somewhere, and I want to know whether black fellows who shoot poisoned arrows into you, and when you're swimming for your life, and ain't never interfered with them, and they come and try to knock ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... people, who are invariably the greatest offenders in this respect, and yet, when they are refused orders, they at once book seats for the play. Of course there are certain people who are thoroughly entitled to orders, and I am only too glad to give them in such cases, but I draw the line at giving them to any one who chooses to ask me. I can't go into a restaurant and get a dinner for nothing—I wish I could; a tailor won't make me a coat for nothing—why should I play to people for nothing? They cannot have any idea how much it costs to keep up a theatre, or perhaps ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Therefore, to the challenge to prove himself a Christian on purely dogmatic grounds, he had no reply. To attempt to explain what separated him from his accusers, to show how from his point of view they were all Christian—although, remembering their point of view, he hesitated to say so—to draw the line between mysticism and emotionalism, would have resulted only in a worse confusion. Lincoln, the tentative mystic, the child of the starlit forest, was as inexplicable to Cartwright with his perfectly downright religion, his creed ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... together, and if one strays behind, it is likely to incur danger of life. Now the other interrogative and relative pronouns (which, what, that), with which whom should properly flock, do not distinguish the subjective and objective forms. It is psychologically unsound to draw the line of form cleavage between whom and the personal pronouns on the one side, the remaining interrogative and relative pronouns on the other. The form groups should be symmetrically related to, if not identical with, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... course, evident that the latitude of opinion which may be reasonably claimed by the clergy of a Church encumbered with many articles and doctrinal formularies is not unlimited, and each man must for himself draw the line. The fact, too, that the Church is an Established Church imposes some special obligations on its ministers. It is their first duty to celebrate public worship in such a form that all members of the Church of England may be able to join in it. Whatever interpretations may be placed upon the ceremonies ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... is once allowed I don't see where you are to draw the line. The heathen are very likely ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... imaginations, and not according to his revealed will, and therefore their worship is idolatrous". Church of England Christians and Dissenting Christians, when fraternising amongst themselves, often publicly draw the line at Unitarians, and positively deny that these have any sort of right to call ...
— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh
... finally lost in the obscurity of unlettered antiquity. The flesh and blood heroes of the more modern times regularly and slowly pass from view, and in their places the unsubstantial worthies of dreamy tradition start up. The transition is so gradual, however, that it is at times impossible to draw the line between history and legend. Fortunately for the purposes of this volume it is not always necessary to make the effort. The early traditions of the Eternal City have so long been recounted as truth that the world is slow to give up even the least jot or tittle of them, and ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... had a rooted conviction that he did everything a shade better than anybody else. This belief did not make him arrogant at all, and certainly not offensive, for he was exceedingly popular in the School. But still there were people who thought that he might occasionally draw the line somewhere. Watson, the ground-man, for example, thought so when Pringle primed him with advice on the subject of preparing a wicket. And Langdale, who had been captain of the team five years before, had thought so most decidedly, and had not hesitated to say so when Pringle, then in ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... was in England. I was, indeed, in Frank Richardson's Bayswater. "Wells?" exclaimed a smart, positive little woman—one of those creatures that have settled every question once and for all beyond reopening, "Wells? No! I draw the line at Wells. He stirs up the dregs. I don't mind the froth, but dregs I—will—not have!" And silence reigned as we stared at the reputation of Wells lying dead on the carpet. When, with the thrill of emotion that a great work communicates, I finished reading "Tono-Bungay," I thought ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... a large, soft, yellowish man. Ransome said, "I don't mind a man being large and yellowish, or even soft in reason; but when he shines, too, I draw the line." Henkel had thick hands with bent fingers, and large, brown eyes. He was a Hollander, and in that place he stood apart. For he didn't drink, or gamble, or fight, or even buy rubber. He was just a large, peaceful person who ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... sure,' answered Mr. Van Torp in a doubtful tone. 'Perhaps I wouldn't. But it would only have been business if I had. It's not as if Bamberger and I had started a story on purpose about our quarrelling in order to make things go down. I draw the line there. That's downright dishonest, I call it. But if we'd just let things slide and taken advantage of what happened, it would only have been business after all. Except for that doubt about getting back to par,' he added, as an afterthought. 'But then I should have felt whether ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... than they used to be," admitted Stephanie candidly; "but I'd draw the line at specimens ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... because people get put off their balance, and ain't themselves, and so get careless, or confused, or excited, and then mischief follows. And yet no one can say they're drunk; and where are you to draw the line? A man's the worse for drink long before he's anything like intoxicated; for it is in the very nature of the drink to fly at once to a man's brain. Ah, give me the man or lad, Jacob, that takes none. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... dismiss first eleven experts with deliveries that bounce twice and shoot. So that nobody is greatly surprised in the ordinary run of things if the cup does not go to the favourites, or even to the second or third favourites. But one likes to draw the line. And Wrykyn drew it at Shields'. And yet, as we shall proceed to show, Shields' once won the cup, and that, too, in a year when Donaldson's had four first eleven men and ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of disappointing poor Laura, who might have hoped to get rid of him," said Betty, sharply. "No!—if I were Mrs. Allison I should draw the line at ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree with Gunderson on that. If we must honor the command of the Junior E, then why not the Associate E? Why not the student E? Why not the apprentice student E? Why not any kid in the universe who thinks he is ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... know where to draw the line. Into a balloon I will never go. I have been into a Madeira sledge, and that is quite enough for me. I always dream about it ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... your own grandfather's great-grandson make P. T. Barnum look a Kickapoo medicine man—if necessary," said Henry. "Only don't you worry about any pollution. That's where I draw the line. I'm not going ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... prominent in this, as in all expositions, that it is difficult to draw the line between public and private interest among its different features, and particularly among what may be called its outgrowths, overflowings or addenda. Here is half a square mile dotted with a picturesque assemblage of shops and factories, among which everything may be found, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Hazelton gasped. "That's where I draw the line. Before I'll stir a step from here I must have at least food enough to grubstake ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... was not merely in relation to forms of church government that the heart of the pastor now in his old age began to widen. It is foolish to say that after a certain age a man can not alter. That some men can not—or will not, (God only can draw the line between those two nots) I allow; but the cause is not age, and it is not universal. The man who does not care and ceases to grow, becomes torpid, stiffens, is in a sense dead; but he who has been growing all the time need never stop; and where ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... was drawn primarily between the rich and the poor, not between the functional classes, employers and employes. While the workmen took good care to exclude from their ranks "persons not living by some useful occupation, such as bankers, brokers, rich men, etc.," they did not draw the line on employers as such, master workmen and ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... that Christ was a mere man and a false prophet, and then defended this act in a long manifesto asking whether all religious customs of antiquity, such as the violation of women, be tolerated, and, if not, why they should draw the line at those who aimed not at the physical dishonor, but at the eternal damnation, of their wives ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... I guess we'll manage to make out. But I tell you one thing, Smoke, straight an' flat. I'll eat any dog in the team exceptin' Bright. I got to draw the line on Bright. I just ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... if it were a question of killing hares and foxes, was more than I could stand. I am not strait-laced, but I draw the line ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... nice, dear, but I'm sure your father would draw the line at a real boarder. I'd never have gotten this beautiful room with that big old-fashioned open fireplace in your home if it hadn't happened that our fathers fought each other in the war, and became friends one day on ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... physical solution. Besides, the educators had been themselves educated, through Vocational Apt. And while they, and the government, fervently upheld the principle of freedom of speech, they had to draw the line somewhere. As everyone knows, freedom of speech does ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... was too far advanced for her to damage it. The door of the neat wire inclosure was left open for her to go and come at will. There was danger of foxes at night, but we did not shut it. The foxes, however, did not come. Even foxes have to draw the line somewhere. That venerable old lady wandered about the place, pecking and contentedly singing, and in that part we really became fond of her. I think she died at last of ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 'Une Femme genante', are written in the same humorous strain, and procured him many admirers by the vivacious and sparkling representations of bachelor and connubial life. However, Droz knows very well where to draw the line, and has formally disavowed a lascivious novel published in Belgium—'Un Ete a la campagne', often, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "We draw the line at that," cried Tom. "Those who can't toddle along to the top of the chute needn't expect ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... or anything white, you're way off your ca-base! Algy! for a Chinaman! Not but what he's a good enough cook, and I like him as a friend of yours—and him almost makin' me cry with his tryin' to nurse you four old helpless galoots, but I draw the line at fancy names, and don't ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... ring clearer than this. No man could draw the line more accurately between the tendency to dispense with principles and the tendency to stereotype them, which are the twin dangers of the critic. But it is specially important to note Carlyle's relation, in this matter, to Hazlitt ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... organizing and practical spirit characteristic of Rome. Greek democracy, tending to the decomposition of things, led to the Sophists and Sceptics. Roman imperialism, ever constructive, sought to bring unity out of discords, and draw the line between orthodoxy and heresy by the authority of councils like that of Nicea. Following the ideas of St. Augustine in his work, "The City of God," I adopt, as the most convenient termination of this age, the sack of Rome by Alaric. This makes it overlap the age of Faith, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... one meaning when I say that, and you know it. I'm pretty liberal. But you understand where I draw the line. You've not ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... And by Jove, it's an ugly thing. Odd how naturally women take to it, isn't it? They won't steal, as a rule—draw the line at murder, but they think nothing of making damned fools of men who are insane ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... order committed all the necessary crimes. I don't know why I've been so squeamish, when there were so many penitentiary offenses that I did consent to, and, for that matter, commit, without a quiver. I thought I ought to draw the line somewhere—and I drew it at keeping my personal word and at keeping the books reasonably straight. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... line at killing the woman—though she did not know that—but they did not draw the line at making her talk. She was a half-breed, and she spoke English very badly, but with a gun thrust in her face, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... extremes: the juste milieu is the proper thing always. In seeking introductions for ourselves, while we need not be shy of making a first visit or asking for an introduction, we must still beware of "push." There are instincts in the humblest understanding which will tell us where to draw the line. If a person is socially more prominent than ourselves, or more distinguished in any way, we should not be violently anxious to take the first step; we should wait until some happy chance brought us together, for we must ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... at Bologna; but he did not confine himself to the study of other men's works, but sometimes gave himself, with honest sincerity and affection, to the study of Nature; and thus it is that it becomes hard to draw the line of praise between some of his pictures and some of those by Gainsborough, and to say which are the best. Gainsborough was no academician; he did not believe in conventionalities. When Sir Joshua ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... occur where it may be scarcely possible to draw the line of demarcation between the Newer Pliocene and Pleistocene, or between the latter and the recent deposits; and we must expect these difficulties to increase rather than diminish with every advance in our knowledge, and in proportion ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... mechanical perfection for the sake of living our lives in a way more satisfactory to us than a constant care for that perfection would permit. Even the most ardent of health enthusiasts—unless he be an insane fanatic—draws the line somewhere. What he forgets is that other people prefer to draw the line somewhere else. They choose to run a certain amount of risk rather than have their health on their minds. To compel—whether by legal means or by social pressure—every man to take precautions concerning his own body which he deliberately prefers not to take; to make impossible, in this most intimate ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... my essay was this:—the Articles do not oppose Catholic teaching; they but partially oppose Roman dogma; they for the most part oppose the dominant errors of Rome. And the problem was to draw the line as to what they allowed ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... such a tertiary document, and that it may be the same which is the source of his apocryphal quotations: that he did draw from apocryphal sources, partly perhaps oral, but probably in the main written, there can, I think, be little doubt. Neither is it easy to draw the line and say exactly what quotations shall be referred to such sources and what shall not. The facts do not permit us to claim the exclusive use of the canonical Gospels. But that they were used, mediately or immediately and to a greater or less degree, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... O'Grady," said the Major, "I'm as fond of a joke as any man; but I must draw the line somewhere. I'm hanged if I'll be mixed up in any way ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... realize your position in society. It is all well enough to please your relatives, although I think you often overdo that. You could just as well send them a present now and then, and please them more than to go yourself. But as for any outsiders, it is impossible. I draw the line there." ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... long as they continue to love them. For many women the phrase in the Lord's Prayer, "as we forgive them that trespass against us," had better be expunged. It is a dead letter. The exceptions are so rare as to prove the rule—and even they, though they may forgive their enemies, draw the line at forgiving ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... had a visitor yet whom she did not drag into her stables, from archbishops downwards; and I don't suppose she'd draw the line at a queen,' answered Bessie, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... said Lance. "You take a view of the matter which I confess with shame had not presented itself to me, and I am convinced. These men have committed crimes of exceptional enormity, it is true; but it is not for us to draw the line—to say to whom mercy shall be granted and from whom it shall be withheld; therefore let us accept their offer, and leave the matter of their punishment ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood |
