"Inordinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... story of a rebuke that Richardson's amiable but inordinate egotism on one occasion received, much to Johnson's secret delight, which is certainly worth quoting before we dismiss the old printer altogether. "One day," says Boswell, "at his country house at Northend, where a large company was assembled ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... afternoon, before quitting the place, I accidentally stopped longer than usual, to gaze on the Venus, and I never saw so clearly her superiority over the Apollo, the impositions of whose style, even more than the great beauties with which they are mingled, have gained for it an inordinate and indiscriminating admiration. On this day, very few, if any of the statues had been taken away—and many said that France would retain them, although she was losing the pictures. On the following morning I returned, and the pedestal on which the Venus had stood for so many years, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... had Hollis. The inordinate personal pride characteristic of the mountaineer precluded his feeling a shrinking pain at the prospect of being presented, a sorry contrast, among the well-clad, well-to-do town's people, to compete in a public contest. He did not appreciate the difference—he thought ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... deceitful, and full of cunning. He never gives others their dues. He is arrogant. He keeps evil company and is always boastful. He fears and suspects all with whom he comes into contact. He is of foolish understanding. He practises miserliness. He praises his associates. He cherishes an inordinate aversion and hatred for all recluses who have retired into the woods. He takes delight in injuring others. He is utterly regardless of distinguishing the merits and faults of others. He is full of lies. He is discontented. He is exceedingly covetous, and always acts cruelly. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the son of Theseus, and Bellerophon are well known. They were accused of incontinence, by the women whose inordinate passions they had refused to gratify at the expense of their duty, and sacrificed to the fatal credulity of the husbands of the disappointed fair ones. It is very probable that both the stories are founded on the Scripture account of Joseph and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... what the contractors furnished, at the regulation prices—one third in paper-money and two thirds in peltries; and thus the garrisons at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes were supplied with powder, lead, sugar, flour, and, above all, hogsheads of taffia, of which they drank an inordinate quantity. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... law hung dangling at the hip. Saloons, gambling halls, dance halls, and brothels flaunted themselves shamelessly upon every hand; the streets exhibited one continual riot, while all higher life was seemingly rendered inactive by inordinate grasping after wealth, and reckless squandering of it on appetite and vice; over all, as if blazoned across the blue sky, appeared the ever-recurring motto of careless humanity, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die." Hardly a week before a short railroad spur had been constructed ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... incompatible with the interest of art. [Laughter.] I cannot help suspecting that the chief difficulty of a manager, under even the most artistic and least commercial conditions, will always be, not to check the inordinate proportions of success, but to secure plays which ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... no heed to the scoffs and the jeers of those who passed along the street, laughing him to scorn as they beheld him lying there in a stupor from excessive drink at that inordinate hour of the day. And among those who came by at last was a man from Satsuma, who was moved to voice the reproaches of all ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... town, as, indeed, he took care that they should be), made it impossible that he should ever think of her; and therefore she held herself excused for thinking of him, without any fear of that "self-seeking," and "inordinate affection," and "unsanctified passions," which her religious books had taught her to dread. Besides, he was not "a Christian." That five minutes on the shore had told her that; and even if her station had been the same as his, she must not be "unequally yoked with an unbeliever." ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... was rapidly lightening, and the country grew visible for miles around. In the camp of Gian Maria he observed a coming and going of men that argued an inordinate bustle for so early an hour. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... (then in command of the Palinurus at Makullah) that great insecurity to navigation prevailed on both the African and Indian shores, at the entrance of the Red Sea; and one particular instance was adduced, in which the crew of a Muscat vessel, wrecked on the coast near Aden, were subjected to such inordinate extortion by Sultan Mahassan, that "the master, in anger or despair, burned his vessel. The Bombay government could only give general instructions, that in case of any outrage being offered to a vessel under British colours, redress should be peremptorily demanded. But long before these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... children, Bob and I got on splendidly together; but later on, when we were respectively about seven and eight years of age, my cousin gradually developed a feeling of jealousy that at length became inordinate—although he was very careful to conceal the fact from his parents; so that when, in my second year at Dartmouth, the matter of sending him there also was mooted, I was exceedingly sorry, although I of course ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... all the varied forms that are met with, either in normal or abnormal morphology, may be referred by bearing in mind the different modifications and adaptations that the organs have to undergo in the course of their development. Some parts after a time may cease to grow, others may grow in an inordinate degree, and so on; and thus, great as may be the ultimate divergences from the assumed standard, they may all readily be explained by the operation, simply or conjointly, of some of the four principal causes of malformation before ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... jester in a feudal castle; our camp would have been lifeless without him. For the past week he had fattened in a most amazing manner; and indeed this was not at all surprising, since his appetite was most inordinate. He was eating from morning till night; half the time he would be at work cooking some private repast for himself, and he paid a visit to the coffee-pot eight or ten times a day. His rueful and disconsolate face became jovial and rubicund, his eyes stood out like ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow." (I have owned that I do not think Addison's heart melted ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Instruction as this give to the subduing the corrupt Affections, and the bridling betimes the inordinate Desires and Appetites of Humane Nature, whereby Men are inabled to live like rational Creatures, and to acquit themselves well in all the Relations they shall be hereafter plac'd in, in the World? When it does not so much as perswade ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... at auction of certain books at extraordinary prices, prove nothing whatever as to the real market value, for these reasons: (1) The auctioneer often has an unlimited bid, and the price is carried up to an inordinate height. (2) Two or more bidders present, infatuated by the idea of extreme rarity, bid against one another until all but one succumb, when the price has reached a figure which it is a mild use of terms to call absurd. (3) Descriptions in sale catalogues, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... productive effort." Known officially as "OIR Notice CP75," Hague's statement left little doubt that segregation would remain the norm in most instances. It specified that a change to integrated facilities would be allowed only after the commander had decided that it could be accomplished without "inordinate interference with the Station's ability to carry out its mission." If other facilities stood nearby, the change would be allowed only after he had coordinated with the naval district commander.[19-34] Shortly ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... as little guessed the height of Angelique's ambition as she the depths of his craft and wickedness, and yet there was a wonderful similarity between the characters of both,—the same bold, defiant spirit, the same inordinate ambition, the same void of principle in selecting means to ends,—only the one fascinated with the lures of love, the other by the charms of wit, the temptations of money, or effected his purposes by the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... who was his own country rode in the marshal's landau to court, with a retinue of Lancers that was also his guard. Soon they entered the Paseo, which Maximilian was making beautiful at inordinate cost as a link between the City and his summer palace, the alcazar of Chapultepec. Turning into the wide, stately boulevard, Driscoll was that moment plunged into an eddying splendor of Europe transplanted, and he blinked ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... he took the greater part of the conversation upon himself, and evidently expected to be listened to. But that was nearly all he wanted. Let him talk, and hear you laugh when he was funny, and he was satisfied. He seemed to have no inordinate desire for admiration or even for approbation. He was fond of telling tales of adventure, some wonderful, some absurd, some having nothing in them but his own presence, and occasionally, while the detail was good the point for the sake of which it had been introduced would ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... all prouisions that could be thought on for an Armie, and tooke the fittest season, in the yeere for our Climate) auoyd sicknes among their souldiers? May it then be thought that ours could escape there, where they found inordinate heat of weather, and hot wines ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... the duck sat in the corner, and was very sad; when suddenly it took it into its head to think of the fresh air and the sunshine; and it had such an inordinate longing to swim on the water, that it could not help telling the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... "'From all inordinate and sinful affections,'" repeated the rich voice of Mr. Candish, thrilling the church from floor to vaulted, roof, "'and from the deceits of the world, the flesh, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... reason for this inordinate ambition to "get on"? Louis Stevenson was happier, as a small boy with a bull's-eye lantern at his belt, than any king upon his throne. The secret of enjoyment is to learn to look about us, to value what our destiny has given us, to transform it into magic by some contributory ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... he always was, never seeking power with inordinate ambition, simply that he might use power; still he was never afraid to assume responsibility when it was his duty to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... notions, such as I have mentioned, are not so apt to be excluded from the mind, and in this way many girls of good natural parts are spoiled, merely for lack of husbands. With the exception of this inordinate liking for the romantic and mysterious,—by which she was sometimes betrayed into follies and absurdities that provoked a little harmless scandal or ridicule,—Miss Cornelia has ever been held in good repute among her neighbors as a kind-hearted, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... beauty, and of poetic truth. The illusion was a happy one, if it excited on behalf of a brave people an interest which Servia or Montenegro might have failed to gain; but it led to a reaction when disappointments came; it gave inordinate importance to the question of the physical descent of the Greeks; and it produced a false impression of the causes which had led up to the war of independence, and of the qualities, the habits, the bonds of union, which ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... up, gingerly. Elaine was speechless. Was this Kennedy? Was he possessed by such an inordinate jealousy ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... aside our modesty like people who, awakened by an alarm of fire, rush into the streets in their nightdresses or in no dresses at all. The fictitious Free Lover, who was supposed to attack marriage because it thwarted his inordinate affections and prevented him from making life a carnival, has vanished and given place to the very real, very strong, very austere avenger of outraged decency who declares that the licentiousness of marriage, now that it no longer recruits ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... even to the ruin of families, are the evils arising from this inordinate love for dress. They derive their fashions from the French and the Americans—seldom from the English, whom they far surpass in the neatness and elegance ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... exhilaration, and sense of energy are all there; but the re-action comes surely, and only a stronger dose next time accomplishes the end desired. Nervous headaches, hysteria in its thousand forms, palpitations, and the long train of nervous symptoms, own inordinate tea and coffee drinking as their parent. Taken in reasonable amounts, tea can not be said to be hurtful; and the medium qualities, carefully prepared, often make a more wholesome tea than that of the highest price, the harmful properties ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... as to how (the "how" was the great matter and the fine emphasis) they had last appeared and might be conceived as carrying themselves; and that their consumption of neckties and Eau de Cologne was somehow inordinate: I might have been judging it in my innocence as their only consommation. I refer to those sources, I say, the charm of the scene, the finer part of which must yet have been that it didn't, as it regularly lapsed, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... the maid's words, Constance in jealous rage fell to inordinate laughter and shook her work to the floor, and as Lord Cedric stooped to regain ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... May 11.—For a while PRIME MINISTER'S protest against inordinate questioning, his announcement of determination not to take part in further shorter catechism more or less distantly related to the "plot" and the "coup," had wholesome effect. As he stated, since the plot was discovered he had made seven hundred replies to friendly inquiries. A Member below Gangway ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... generosity, honesty, justice, and self-sacrifice; as well as the practical virtues of economy and providence. On the other hand, there are their counterparts of avarice, fraud, injustice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate lovers of gain; and the vices of thriftlessness, extravagance, and improvidence, on the part of those who misuse and abuse the means entrusted to them. "So that," as is wisely observed by Henry Taylor in his thoughtful 'Notes from Life,' "a right measure and manner in ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... sudden cloudbursts are common from October to April, they bring inordinate amounts of rain which can damage roads and houses; sandstorms and dust storms occur throughout the year, but are most common between ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Jacob, by his beloved Rachel, being the youngest, except Benjamin, of a large family of twelve sons,—a beautiful and promising youth, with qualities which peculiarly called out the paternal affections. In the inordinate love and partiality of Jacob for this youth he gave to him, by way of distinction, a decorated tunic, such as was worn only by the sons of princes. The half-brothers of Joseph were filled with envy in view of this unwise step on the part of their common father,—a proceeding difficult to be reconciled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... personal motives for cultivating cordial relations with the country of his birth. From the Austrian Government he expected to be saved from the necessity of abdicating and expiating his unwisdom. It was his inordinate ambition and vanity which had brought the Bulgarian nation to the very brink of ruin. He it was who had insisted on breaking off negotiations with Turkey during the London Conference and recommencing hostilities. In vain the Chief of the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... appears from his "Gnowthi seauton, De Essentia Originalis Institutiae," of 1568. After admitting that Augustine, Luther, and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession are correct when they define original sin as an inordinate disposition, a disorder (ataxia), perversion, and confusion of the parts of man, Flacius proceeds: "The substantial form of a certain thing for the most part, consists in the right position and disposition of the parts; ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... her eyes swam in tears. But some trick of her jackanapes brought back her mirth, and so the hours passed, as happy as any in my life. Truly the memory of these things tells me how glad this world might be, wherein God has placed us, were it not troubled by the inordinate desires of men. In my master's house of Tours, then, my days of holiday went merrily by, save for one matter, and that of the utmost moment. For my master would in no manner permit me to wed his daughter while this war endured; and Elliot ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... of 8000L. a year to prefer his appetite to his health!—He deserves to die!—But we have all of us our inordinate passions to gratify: and they generally bring their punishment along with them—so witnesses the nephew, as well as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... and Plunder.—The kings of these Oriental despotisms seemed to be possessed with inordinate vanity, and when once raised to power used not only all the resources of the nation and of the people for magnifying that power, but also used the masses of the people at home at labor, and abroad in war, for the glory of the rulers. Hence, wars of conquest ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes such inordinate drafts upon the parts of speech that the dictionary is almost emptied these defective observers jump to the conclusion that his intrinsic notions are of corresponding weight. This is not unseldom quite untrue. What makes philosophy ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... ancient practices and beliefs were on the ordinary level of today and of all days: and to show that the ordinary numbers of abnormal phenomena were supposed to be present in the ancient civilisations. In the Middle Ages—the 'dark ages'— modern opinion would expect to find an inordinate quantity of ghostly material. But modern opinion would be disappointed. Setting aside saintly miracles, and accusations of witchcraft, the minor phenomena are very sparsely recorded. In the darkest of all 'dark ages,' when, on the ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... it, I had scarcely read a baudy book, none of which excepting "Fanny Hill" appeared to me to be truthful, that did, and it does so still; the others telling of recherche eroticisms, or of inordinate copulative powers, of the strange twists, tricks, and fancies, of matured voluptuousness, and philosophical lewedness, seemed to my comparative ignorance, as baudy imaginings, or lying inventions, not worthy of belief; although I now know by experience, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... histrionic movements"; their lips, their shoulders, their fingers are twisted, shrugged, or spread out as they think best to suit their delivery. The audience, filled with wonder and admiration at those inordinate gesticulations, at length bursts into laughter: "It seems to them they are at the play and not at church, and that they have only to look and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 'landlady' of the house; she had been a celebrated and beautiful courtezan in her day, but age and vice had done their work, and she was now an object hideous to look upon. Though tottering upon the verge of the grave (she was over eighty,) an inordinate love of money, and an equal partiality for 'the ardent,' were her characteristics; but stranger than all, the miserable old creature affected still to retain, undiminished, those amorous propensities which had ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... rakkat loukoum (Turkish Delight), dill-pickles and molasses candy, and had through this spoiled their appetites. Only Nina alone—a small, pug-nosed, snuffling country girl, seduced only two months ago by a travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a brothel—eats for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman of the common people has not yet ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... delightful ones. By this Means I can improve my self with those Objects, which others consider with Terror. When I look upon the Tombs of the Great, every Emotion of Envy dies in me; when I read the Epitaphs of the Beautiful, every inordinate Desire goes out; when I meet with the Grief of Parents upon a Tombstone, my Heart melts with Compassion; when I see the Tomb of the Parents themselves, I consider the Vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: When I see Kings lying by those ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a few years ago, a financial giant collected and exhibited one of the finest bunches of collies on earth. He had a competent manager and an army of kennel-men to handle them. He took inordinate pride in these priceless collies of his. Once I watched him, at the Garden Show, displaying them to some Wall Street friends. Three times he made errors in naming his dogs. Once, when he leaned too close to the star collie of his kennels, the dog mistook ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... excel. I believe Winn to be both ambitious and persevering; but he is impulsive, easily influenced, and impatient of control. He has no idea of that implicit obedience to orders that is at the foundation of success in civil life as well as in the army; and, above all, he is possessed of such an inordinate self-conceit that if it is not speedily curbed by one or more severe lessons, it may ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... as the Kaiser's emissary placed the letter carefully in his wallet, "please impress upon Number Seventy what I have said about money. All this costs much. Tell him that sometimes when inordinate demands are made upon me—as you know they are often are—I have to use my own funds in order to satisfy them. Smith in London receives unlimited funds through the Deutsche Bank, I know, so please tell our friend from me ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint's and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... He is interested, not so much in effecting a fundamental reform in the lives of his characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the eighteenth ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... and a little good brandy too, and am as free from any inordinate appetite as your most confirmed abstainer; but then I take especial care ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... necessary to ascertain the worth of the conquered culture. This might be very little; in which case, even if the victory had involved the most glorious display of arms, it would still offer no warrant for inordinate rapture. ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... inordinate ambition, or acts of injustice, is far from being the only instance of such conduct in men thus raised from humble situations. The officers of government in general, though intended by the constitution as a kind of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... dear child, you forget that you have entered your fifteenth year, and as you grow older you will gradually lose your inordinate fondness for pets. Your childish tastes will ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... him, tended his geraniums and smoked his pipe on that warm July evening as indifferently as if nothing were afoot. One other thing he did. He flung after those war-fevered enthusiasts a line of Horace—a poet for whose work he had early conceived an inordinate affection: ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... echoed, with less languor and more of impetuosity than she had ever displayed, "are you ever in love, any of you, ever? You have senses and vanity and an inordinate fear of not being in the fashion—and so you take your lovers as you drink your stimulants and wear your wigs and tie your skirts back—because everybody else does it, and not to do it is to be odd, or prudish, or something you would hate to be called. Love! it is an unknown thing ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... every object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is more generally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than any constitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence of gloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitual melancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generally early acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. Childhood is too buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth—when its passions are developing, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... not punish her if she had done wrong in His sight. Surely, if she lived henceforth in fear of Him, He would let her keep this priceless love which had come to her! And it was impossible that He should regard it as an inordinate and sinful affection—since it had filled her life with light. As the wife of Hugh Chiltern she sought a blessing. Would God withhold it? He would not, she was sure, if they lived a sober and a righteous life. He would take that into account, for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of his fantastic bows, and waved his hand, dismissing Madame Fontaine from further attendance on him. Secretly, he was as eager as ever to show the keys. But the inordinate vanity which was still the mad side of him and the incurable side of him, shrank from opening the leather bag unless the widow first made a special request and a special favor of it. Feeling no sort of interest in the subject, she took the shorter way of making ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... bestial side of the war-regime (already done justice to by many writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one deny that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to admit for a moment that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the least alter their colonial and perfectly natural habit of regarding with enormous respect Englishmen and Frenchmen, and indeed anybody who had had the good fortune to be born in Europe. The result was that they distributed commissions and gave inordinate rank to the many volunteers who came over the ocean, actuated by various motives, but all filled with a profound sense of their own merits. It is only fair to Congress to say that the American agents abroad were even more to blame in this respect. Silas Deane especially ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... well that Shirley did not wear a high silk hat and carry a cane, and he had a sufficient knowledge of human nature and of himself to know that if his present personal appearance were made the subject of ridicule, or even inordinate surprise, it would not afford him the same stimulating gratification which he ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... knew that if I once yielded to the flinching at my heart, no mercy would be shown me in this house of tragedy, and thrilling shrieks would of themselves arise and ring through its haunted chambers. The rattling continued an inordinate time, and so instant and imperative, that it seemed as if it could not fail to force the door. But, though horrified, I whispered to my heart that it could only be the storm which was struggling at it like the grasp of a man, and after ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... port had a plan or mode of its own, and there was no one that was so perfect that it could be accepted as a model in all the ports. The books and forms were made and prepared at the several ports and often at inordinate rates of cost. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... were still there, but in my heart a chill had entered to drive out the warmth. My ruin, my failure, the poverty to which I had brought Sally and the child through my inordinate ambition, and the weight of the two hundred thousand dollars of debt on my shoulders—all these things returned to my memory, with an additional heaviness, like a burden that has been lifted only to drop back more crushingly. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... a constant flowing in of success and prosperity. From the time that I had been dean of guild, I was sensible of a considerable increase of my worldly means and substance; and although Bailie M'Lucre played me a soople trick at the election, by the inordinate sale and roup of his potatoe-rig, the which tried me, as I do confess, and nettled me with disappointment; yet things, in other respects, went so well with me that, about the eighty-eight, I began to put forth ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... according to the principles either of morality, or of what we believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-sighted policy. Nevertheless the common sense of mankind, which in questions of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognise a distinction between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of Benares, or the spoliation of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... small throbbings of the arteries in the temples, back and neck, which often cast them into fevers when the humour is over vicious; also loathing of meat and the distention of the hypochondriac part, by reason of the inordinate effluxion of the menstruous blood of the greater vessels; and from the abundance of humours, the whole body is often troubled with swellings, or at least the thighs, legs and ankles, all above the heels; there is also a weariness of the body without ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... spared whilst the poor were called upon to pay everything.(172) Accounts of the commotion differ according as the writer favoured the autocratic or democratic side. One chronicler, for instance, finds fault with Fitz-Osbert's personal appearance, imputing his inordinate length of beard—he was known as "Longbeard"—to his desire for conspicuousness, and declares him to have been actuated ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... various kinds of provisions. There was, however, a persistent rumour that Valens himself had been bought with a heavy bribe. He had long been in mean circumstances and ill concealed his sudden accession of wealth. Prolonged poverty had whetted his inordinate desires, and the needy youth grew into an extravagant ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Russia? It must be some higher and more stable principle of action that must govern you. It must not be the mere wish to please this or that friend;—the defect of your character, Helen, remember I tell you, is this—inordinate desire to be loved, this impatience of not being loved—that which but a moment ago made you ready to abandon two of the best friends you have upon earth, because you imagine, or you suspect, or you fear, that a third person, almost a stranger, does not like ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... ingredients I have enumerated, many culinary scribes indiscriminately cram into almost every dish (in such inordinate quantities, one would suppose they were working for the asbestos palate of an Indian fire-eater) anchovies, garlic,[93-] bay-leaves, and that hot, fiery spice, Cayenne[93-Sec.] pepper; this, which ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... childish dignity of manner after years of faithful service and were not disturbed in their ideas of their own importance, he would have been regarded as merely an amusing infant of great age, reaping a reward for by-gone merits in the careful consideration and indulgence now extended to him. His inordinate vanity of his personal appearance and his dignity might have given rise to smiles, down there; here there were those upon the platform who laughed loudly as he walked away, boasting vaingloriously, although he evidently ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... enemy I had to engage with, stiffly bearing up the port of its head imhooded, and glowing red. Then I plainly saw what I had to trust to: it was one of those just true-sized instruments, of which the masters have a better command than the more unwieldy, inordinate sized one are generally under. Straining me then close to his bosom, as he stood up foreright against me, and applying to the obvious niche its peculiar idol, he aimed at inserting it, which, as I forwardly favoured, he effected at once, by canting up my thighs over ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... me to learn; and my own, who would not learn, Thou didst use for my punishment- a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and so great a sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst well for me; and by my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other officers, and dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those that had newly gained possessions, that they might not fight in a cowardly manner, out of an inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy those blessings. When he had thus disposed his soldiers, he encouraged them to fight by the following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... light, like a stound of golden din, A shadowless light like weather of infinite plains, Light not narrowed into place, Amazes the naked nerves of the soul; And like the pouring of immortal airs Out of a flowery season, Over us blows the inordinate desire.— Ah, who from Hell did the wisdom bring That would make life a formal thing? Who has invented all the manner and wont, The customary ways, That harness into evil scales Of malady our living? ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... she was a Yorba, and drew herself up in lonely pride. It was a privilege for these girls to be intimate with her, to call her 'Lena, great as might be their social superiority over the many in San Francisco whose names she had never heard. In her inordinate pride of birth, in her intimate knowledge of the fact that she was the daughter of a Californian grandee who still possessed the three hundred thousand acres granted his fathers by the Spanish crown, she in ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... after the little affair in Marseilles I don't trust them," replied The Sparrow. "When anyone makes a slip, either by design or sheer carelessness, or perhaps by reason of inordinate avarice, then I always have to safeguard myself. I suspect—and my suspicion ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... swollen with the consciousness of important news, dashing off to the Foreign Office in a taxi-cab, posing Ministers of State with unanswerable conundrums, very probably ruffling the calm waters of Washington with cablegrams of inordinate ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... of your greatest strength, and the destruction of your faithfullest servants?' His fury against Ralegh seems too excessive to have been genuine. In part it may be explained by his knowledge, on which Sir John Pope Hennessy has laid inordinate stress, that Ralegh was the most strenuous opponent of his Irish policy. He would detect the voice and hand of Ralegh in all the hindrances to, and in every criticism upon, his measures. He would imagine he heard ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... more than his legs and feet, has the former unusually large; one who is much accustomed to walking, has large feet; and in a tailor, who from childhood uses his lower limbs comparatively little, they are both small and slender. On the same principle, the stomach, by inordinate use, and by carrying unreasonable loads, may be made nearly twice as large as nature intended, and may demand twice as much food. And I have no doubt that the bulk of mankind, young and old, eat about twice as much ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... very olla-podrida of moral and mental combination. They were chiefly those to whom the ordinary operations of human trade or labor had proved tedious or unproductive—with whom the toils, aims, and impulses of society were deficient of interest; or, upon whom, an inordinate desire of a sudden to acquire wealth had exercised a sufficiently active influence to impel to the novel employment of gold-finding—or rather gold-seeking, for it was not always that the search was successful—the very name of such a pursuit carrying with it to many no small degree of charm ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... his secret Doome, out of my Blood, Hee'le breede Reuengement, and a Scourge for me: But thou do'st in thy passages of Life, Make me beleeue, that thou art onely mark'd For the hot vengeance, and the Rod of heauen To punish my Mistreadings. Tell me else, Could such inordinate and low desires, Such poore, such bare, such lewd, such meane attempts, Such barren pleasures, rude societie, As thou art matcht withall, and grafted too, Accompanie the greatnesse of thy blood, And hold their leuell with thy Princely heart? Prince. So please your Maiesty, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... about Nollekens the sculptor, whose inordinate love of money was such a curious blemish in his character. Macaulay told one or two stories illustrating his parsimony. Then he came to speak of art in general, and said he did not think the faculty for it a high ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... several persons, one of whom, there can be little doubt, was Cotton Mather; for it is not easy to mistake the mingled flippancy and pedantry of his style. He bore the governor a grudge, for Dudley had chafed him in his inordinate ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... this velocity were imparted to the body, by any other means, the quantity of heat generated by the stoppage of its motion would be that stated above. Six times that velocity, or 1,338 feet, would not be an inordinate one for a cannon-ball as it quits the gun. Hence, a cannon-ball moving with a velocity of 1,338 feet a second, would, by collision, generate an amount of heat competent to raise its own weight of water 36 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... no other hands; so that the only means of satisfying my taste for romantic reading was by stealth. Although novels were proscribed, no other books were placed in my hands; there were then scarcely any children's books published, and consumed as I was by an inordinate passion for reading, was determined to indulge it without being very particular about the means. How often have I watched my opportunity when my grandmother had left her apartment for an afternoon visit or drive, and then drawn forth the cherished ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law. For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall at the proper time ask Congress to fix the tenure of the minor offices of the several Executive Departments and prescribe the grounds upon which removals shall be made during the terms for ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... fountaine of all goodnes, too loue and fauour man. SP. I almost consent with you. HED. But now marke howe far they bee from all pleasure, whiche seeme openly emongist all men too folowe nothyng, but the inordinate delectation in in thynges carnall. || First their mynde is vile, and corrupted with the sauour and taste of noughtie desires, in so muche that if any pleasaunt thing chaunce them, forthwith it waxeth bitter, and is nought set by, in like maner as where ye welle hed is ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus
... the afterthoughts of Theology, are nothing to him:" (p. 338:) that "he has to imagine himself a disciple of CHRIST or Paul, and to disengage himself from all that follows:" (Ibid.:) is not the language of modesty, but of inordinate conceit. In Mr. Jowett it is in fact something infinitely worse; for he shews that his object thereby is to "obtain an unembarrassed opportunity of applying all the resources of a so-called criticism to discredit and destroy the written ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Fear paralyzes healthy action, worry corrodes and pulls down the organism, and will finally tear it to pieces. Nothing is to be gained by it, but everything to be lost. Long-continued grief at any loss will do the same. Each brings its own peculiar type of ailment. An inordinate love of gain, a close-fisted, hoarding disposition will have kindred effects. Anger, jealousy, malice, continual fault-finding, lust, has each its own peculiar ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... I shave, I feel an inordinate desire to cut my throat; and my face, which I see in the little mirror, always the same, with soap on my cheeks, has several times ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... through you, there can be no exteriorities, nothing can be trivial, in a record of life so conceived. And this point of view also helps the writer to keep all his details in proportion; the autobiographer's usual fault, artistically at least, being an inordinate valuation of small concerns, because they happened to him. To St. Augustine, while not the smallest human event is without significance, in its relation to eternity, not the greatest human event is of importance, in its relation to time; and his own share in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... transmitted to his son, who, under the care of his mother and a nurse named Mary Beach, grew from a sickly infant into a frail, large-eyed boy with a sweet voice, an eager, precocious temperament, and an inordinate love of books, from copying the type of which he first learned to write. Like his father, he was slightly deformed, while from his mother he derived a life-long tendency to headache. His early education was of a most miscellaneous character. After some tuition from the family priest, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... persisted, although there were times when his inordinate vitality and his caresses gave her a sense of physical weariness, times when sheer contact revolted her. He seemed always to want to touch her. Fastidiously reared, taught a sort of aloofness from childhood, Lily found ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... two hours after the train for Richmond had left, but in full time to get half a cold breakfast, at double price. For, about the first development one noted in the South was the growth of an inordinate greed in the class who had anything to sell, or to do, that was supposed to be indispensable. The small hotels and taverns along the railways peculiarly evidenced this; for, demands of passengers must be supplied, and this was the moment for harvest full and fat. Disgust, wetting, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... measure of help, pressed down and running over, and having bestrewn themselves upon the ground around her chair, would depart in high fettle to spread the news of this wonder woman, their mistress, in whom they felt such inordinate pride; so that one, then two, then more, from distances long and short, would creep into the council with pretexts ranging from the thin to the absolutely transparent, until one morning the whole seance ended in an ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and it often happens that your most lamentable shaker will stand you longer at the breach than the man of iron nerve, with a white liver. I have seen such. However, the majority of these were resolute and dangerous-looking men, and, though without any marks of inordinate zeal, seemed willing enough to fight whatever appeared. They held their rifles in the hand cocked, and, as they advanced, threw their eyes sharply into the bushes on either side the road,—having received orders to shoot the first greaser that showed himself, without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... and died in 1761. He was a very diligent collector of antiquarian materials, and the author of a Life of Raleigh. He was intimate with Captain Grose, Burns' friend, who used to rally him on his inordinate thirst for ale, although, if we believe Burns, it was paralleled by Grose's liking for port. The following Anacreontic ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... his blustering and raging Nero, the man who, as Tacitus says, seemed formed by nature "to veil hatred with caresses?"—the cowardly Sybarite, fantastically vain till the very last moment of his existence, cruel at first, from fear, and afterwards from inordinate lust. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... about twelve, who had a crushed expression, and seemed to take gloomy views of life. The only name by which he was known to himself and others was Biler; but whether that was a Christian name, or a surname, or a nickname, cannot be said. Biler's chief trouble in life was an inordinate and insatiable appetite. Nothing came amiss, and nothing was ever refused. Zac had picked the boy up three years before, and since that time he had never known him to be satisfied. At the present moment, Terry was standing at the tiller, while Biler was at the masthead, to which he had climbed ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... Augustus in an inordinate fit of enthusiasm, at the supposed sympathy of his companion, "I never met with a gentleman so peculiarly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... elementary in her strong nature, inherited from strong, full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter inordinate passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished at any moment? What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything else could ever ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... to the far northwest, and you begin in spite of all your previously inrooted sentiments, to share the beliefs and talk the language that lie at the basis of even so arrogant an organization as the Grain Growers' Association and so inordinate an oligarchy as the Canadian Council of Agriculture. A man cannot fight the paralyzing combination of drouth, wet, early frost, rust, weevil, grasshoppers, eastern manufacturers, high tariffs, centralized banks and bankrupt octopean railways in the production of under-dollar ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... to obtain in a concise form the views of a person of greater or less eminence on subjects of which he is entitled to speak with authority. By the majority of journals, however, the interview is abused to an inordinate extent, both as regards the individual and the public. It is used as a vehicle for the cheapest forms of wit and the most personal attack or laudation. My own experience was that the interviewer put a series of pre-arranged questions to me, published those of my answers which met his own preconceptions, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Melancolia. Even then she wouldn't care. She says I can only do blood and bones. I don't believe she has blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia—"the Melancolia that transcends all wit." I'll do ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... short, unadorned, and practical. He has endeavoured, by moving a resolution, to reduce the inordinate length of the speeches in the House as the only way of saving time to get through the yearly increasing work of legislation, and he has proposed some other resolutions for facilitating the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... the globe should venture upon the most humble act of annexation. So it was with Catharine. Though adding to her vast dominions in every quarter; though appropriating, alike in peace and in war, all the territory she could lay her hands upon, she could inveigh against the inordinate ambition of other nations ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Through the inordinate number of hours when she was potentially alone she had developed a strain of almost painful thought out of keeping with the whole of her naturally unreflective being. In moments such as the present—she was sitting in her room overlooking Hardy Street on its landward reach—she followed ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that section of the city where Cantonese of high and low degree are laid away after death, we encounter a returning funeral party that made a curious procession, and one stretching to inordinate length. In front was a ragamuffin corps of drummers and men extracting ear-racking noises from metal instruments that looked like flageolets, but were not. Twenty or thirty bedraggled Buddhist priests in pairs trotted behind, proving by their ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... organised companies of men, are parties, they are in the highest degree ceremonious; they require a variety of symbolical acts and words intended to impress the business on the memory of all who take part in it; and they demand the presence of an inordinate number of witnesses. From these peculiarities, and others allied to them, springs the universally unmalleable character of the ancient forms of property. Sometimes the patrimony of the family is absolutely inalienable, as was the case with the Sclavonians, and still oftener, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine |
