"Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wish that we might have a vision of Christ. He is the chiefest among ten thousand, and the one altogether lovely. He is a mighty Savior and a mighty helper. I cannot bring him a burden too great, nor talk to him about a trial too insignificant. Oh, that we might ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... of the learned president there, worthy Mr. Chauncey and two colonies—namely, Massachusetts and Plymouth—by the death of two governors, who died within a twelvemonth after.... Shall, then, such mighty works of God as comets are be insignificant things?"(113) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... fishing, shooting, and field work seemed quite in the background, and very insignificant compared with my treasure hunt; but Alec seemed to be quite indifferent to it; in fact, I think he had an idea that my fall had slightly shaken my brain, and perhaps addled it. I more than suspected this, for I noticed he kept his eye ever on me, and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... contain above 10,000 houses, inhabited exclusively by Turks. The population of the suburbs, which comprise nearly 4000 houses, is a mixed one of Christians, Jews, Greeks, etc. The town numbers three hundred and sixty mosques; but the greater portion of them are so insignificant and in such a dilapidated condition, that ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... and fifty deputies, four hundred criminal judges, three thousand and seven civil judges, five thousand justices of the peace, twenty thousand assessors forty thousand communal collectors, forty-six thousand cures, without counting the accessory or insignificant places which exist by tens and hundreds of thousands, from secretaries, clerks, bailiffs and notaries, to gendarmes, constables, office-clerks, beadles, grave-diggers, and keepers of sequestered goods. The pasture is vast for the ambitious; it is not small for the needy, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with horror. All my adventures were insignificant compared to this terrible shadow which was creeping over ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... food of the common people in England. In some parts of Europe, India, and other Eastern countries, it is still largely consumed as the ordinary farinaceous food of the peasantry and soldiers. The early settlers of New England also largely used it for bread making. At the present day only a very insignificant quantity of barley is used for food purposes in this country, and most of this in the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... a speech in proposing him, and Mr. Shortribs another in seconding him; and these were all the speeches that were required. The thing seemed to be so very easy that he was afterwards almost offended when he was told that the bill for so insignificant a piece of work came to L247 13s. 9d. He had seen no occasion for spending even the odd forty-seven pounds. But then he was member for Loughton; and as he passed the evening alone at the inn, having dined in company with ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... God are always loaded." Doubtless we must always pay for greatness by isolation, or some more bitter toll. And for our insignificance, in turn, come the Bobbies as reward. It behooves those of us, then, who are insignificant, to appreciate our blessing, to cherish our penguins, the more since we, when "the world is too much with us," when the tyranny of economic conditions oppresses and the wrongness of life seems almost more than we can bear, have not that inward strength, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self,—"it isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... dreams concern themselves rather, other things being equal, with the thoughts which we have passed through rapidly or upon objects which we have perceived almost without paying attention to them. If we dream about events of the same day, it is the most insignificant facts, and not the most important, which have the best ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Jackson and Blaine, and many others, under like accusations, I would have been content with answering as Washington and Jackson did, or by silent indifference, but my temperament led me to defy and combat with my accusers, however formidable or insignificant they might be. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... himself and them; but their real income is their share of his corn, cattle, and hay, and it makes no essential difference whether he distributes it to them directly, or sells it for them and gives them the price. There can not, in short, be intrinsically a more insignificant thing, in the economy of society, than money; except in the character of a contrivance for sparing time and labor. It is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it; ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... I haven't the slightest doubt that he was. While he was still drifting amongst the islands, enigmatical and disregarded like an insignificant ghost, he told me so himself on a certain occasion. It was a long time before he materialized in this alarming way into the destroyer of our little industry—Heyst ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... from the stable yard, followed by Nicola. He is a cheerful, excitable, insignificant, unpolished man of about 50, naturally unambitious except as to his income and his importance in local society, but just now greatly pleased with the military rank which the war has thrust on him as a man of consequence in his town. The fever ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... allowing the Nepaulese the fertile portion of the Jurac, which then yielded only two lacs of rupees, but now yields thirteen, and will, ere long, yield twenty. Without this their military force would have been altogether insignificant; but it is not ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... said she, "I leave Naples to-night, and for ever. Before I did so, however, I wished to see and give you a piece of advice. Death menaces you from all sides, and your most insignificant actions are observed. Escape from the country, for here you will no longer find the faithful friends who ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... custodian's register, he was angry beyond measure, believing that they had dared on both sides to disobey his orders. Investigation was immediately made; and it was fortunately ascertained that the visitor was a most insignificant person, whose only fault was that of bearing a name which ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fact that their reputations were at stake, and that the merest trifle might disclose the truth. A precaution neglected, the most insignificant detail, a word, a gesture might ruin ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... true character of what they see. In this way a shallow surface depression, possibly only a few feet below the general level of the neighbouring country, is often described as a "vast gorge," because, under very oblique light, it is filled with black shadow; or an insignificant hillock is magnified into a mountain when similarly viewed. Hence the importance, just insisted on, of studying lunar features under as many conditions as possible before finally attempting to ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... conveyance. We roar through a wonderful and exciting world, and all the while we sit with glazed eyes and cotton-wool in our ears, and think about ourselves. They were mostly men in Jay's 'bus at that moment; they were almost all alike, and all insignificant, but not one of them knew it. Such a lot of men could never be loved ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... something else capable of very many activities, and referable to a mind which is highly conscious of itself, of God, and of things; and we desire so to change it, that what is referred to its imagination and memory may become insignificant, in comparison with its intellect, as I have already said in the ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... esteemed as an amiable piece of still-life, now became so insipid, that I could hardly keep awake in her company: the daughter, too, whom I had regarded as a good-humoured, pretty sort of a girl, now seemed too insignificant for notice: and as to the Captain, I had always thought him a booby,-but now he appeared ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... but the stay I am making in this place is not altogether on account of my health. I have been trying to do a good turn to our little friend La Briere. The poor fellow has fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie, a rather pale, insignificant, and thread-papery little thing, who, by the way, has the vice of liking literature, and calls herself a poet to excuse the caprices and humors of a rather sullen nature. You know Ernest,—he is so easy to catch that I have been afraid to leave him ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... have rendered more galling to Italy the deprivation of these two provinces, it was the tone adopted in France when speaking of the transaction. What were Savoy and Nice? A barren rock and an insignificant strip of coast! The French of thirty-four years ago travelled so little that they may have believed in the description. The vast military importance of the ceded districts has been already referred to. Some scraps on the Nice frontier were saved in a curious way: They were ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... not move in its orbit with a perfectly uniform velocity (see Chapter IV.). The consequence is that we now get a slight glimpse round the east limb, and now a similar glimpse round the west limb, as if the moon were shaking its head very gently at us. But it is only an insignificant margin of the far side of the moon which this libration permits ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... come. The great political concussion was not favourable to art. Abstract ideas united with the passions of the hour produced poetry which was of the nature of a declamatory pamphlet. Innumerable pieces were presented on the stage, but their literary value is insignificant. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... very helpless and insignificant object, whatever may have been the terror which he inspired while he was alive. As long as Henry continued to breathe, the attendants around him paid him great deference, and observed every possible form of obsequious respect, for they did not know but that he might ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... do not mean that in the matter of his genius Mr. Conrad is not entirely original. Henry James could no more have written Mr. Conrad's stories than Mr. Conrad could have written Henry James's. His manner of discovering significance in insignificant things, however, is of the school of Henry James. Like Henry James, he is a psychologist in everything down to descriptions of the weather. It can hardly be questioned that he has learned more of the business of psychology from Henry James than from any other ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... right to ask a poem or a picture to look manly or womanly, any more than you have any right to ask a man or a woman to look manly or womanly. There is no such thing as looking manly or womanly. There is looking beautiful or ugly, distinguished or commonplace, individual or insignificant. The one law of externals is beauty in all its various manifestations. To ask the sex of a beautiful person is as absurd as it would be to ask the publisher the sex of a beautiful book. Such questions ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... affectionate and generous people. I then bid my postilion drive on fast; and I never looked back, never once cast a lingering look at all I left behind. I felt proud of having executed my purpose, and conscious I had not the insignificant, inefficient character that had formerly disgraced me. As to the future, I had not distinctly arranged my plans, nor was my mind during the remainder of the day sufficiently tranquil for reflection. I felt ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... as trees, others uncurled snaky stems from masses of rusty-colored matting, and everywhere was spread the delicate lace of the uu-fenua, a maiden-hair beside which the florist's offering is clumsy and insignificant. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... heard good counsel," but was obliged to drive to the theatre to fetch my sister from rehearsal, and so, most reluctantly, came away. It seemed to me very good, and amiable, and humane, and condescending of Lord Dacre to spare so much of his time and attention to us young and insignificant folk; the courtesy of his reception was as deeply appreciated by me, I assure you, as the interest of his conversation; and so tell my lord, with my ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... considers this substitution as a necessity for the continued life of the Review. For, says he, "you will oblige the public much more by giving them an account of such books as are worthy of their regard than by filling your paper with all the insignificant literary news of the time, of which not an article in a hundred is likely to be thought of a fortnight after the publication of the work that gave occasion to it." He then proceeds to a review of contemporary continental literature, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... resigned office; the law of censorship was repealed, and the Estates struck two millions from the civil list. The first chamber, however, refused its assent to these resolutions, the law of censorship was retained, and the saving in the expenditure of the crown was reduced to an extremely insignificant amount. In the autumn of 1832, Prince Otto, the king's second son, was, with the consent of the sultan, elected king of Greece by the great maritime powers intrusted with the decision of the Greek question, and Count Armansperg, formerly minister of Bavaria, was placed at ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... come to the Carsons in the fulfilment of an aspiration. Mrs. R. Gordon Carson bored him. Her fussy conscious manners bespoke too plainly the insignificant suburban society in which she had played a minor part. He came because Dr. Lindsay had told him casually that Louise Hitchcock was in town again. He arrived late, when the lecture was nearly over, and lingered in the hall on the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... or races I stem from, obviously more important, since in thousands of good Americans it is impossible to determine what races have gone to their making. There is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon American—and so few English Americans that they are nationally insignificant. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... repaired to their respective quarters they had very different thoughts in their minds. Reimers was full of admiration: "What a man is that," thought he, "who, with all his heavy duties, yet occupies himself with the insignificant destiny of a poor ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... very important. I am about to set you a difficult task, my friend! no one else could do it, but then you are so wonderfully clever. Sit down and write a list of all those likely to have joined in this plot—men and women—the powerful and the insignificant; do not leave out one. And if you can make a guess what each has promised the other, put that in also. It will be interesting to see ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... to believe this stream was the same river which we came upon about a degree further to the eastward. The banks were low and water-worn, the southern or left bank being in general the steepest, its height about 14 feet, the breadth was insignificant, not more than 12 or 14 feet; the current slow but constant; and the water of a whitish colour. I at first supposed it might be only a branch of the river we had seen above, until I ascertained, by sending Mr. White ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... of the kingdom. The fact that it was forced from a reluctant king by those who spoke for the whole nation, that it placed definite limitations on his power, and that it was confirmed again and again by later kings, has done more to give it this position than its temporary and in many cases insignificant provisions, accompanied only by a comparatively few ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... and natural enough nervousness he had shown, for it was nothing more, turned his annoyance on the Major, who by such an insignificant display of coolness, had gained so great an advantage over him in the eyes of the ladies, and made up his opinion that in every word he said about the horse of the Rajah of Rumtool he was romancing—and that although there had been no slightest pretence to personal prowess ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Buddhism into Brahmanism the latter abandoned its sacrifices and accepted the Buddhistic emphasis upon Karma, and doomed every soul to the tread-mill of its own destiny. To every human word, deed or thought, however insignificant, there is fruit which must ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... all places. This shelter afforded to Gutenberg sheds everlasting lustre on Nassau and its prince. We meet in history with instances where a generous hospitality has given happiness and immortal fame to the most insignificant potentates and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... conceit. Wesley enjoyed the experience of having a conceited clerk at Epworth, who not only was proud of his singing and other accomplishments, but also of his personal appearance. He delighted to wear Wesley's old clerical clothes and especially his wig, which was much too big for the insignificant clerk's head. John Wesley must have had a sense of humour, though perhaps it might have been exhibited in a more appropriate place. However, he was determined to humble his conceited clerk, and said to him one ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... influences the mild governors of North Africa were powerless. They had so long enjoyed peace and friendship with the Mediterranean States, that they were in no condition to enforce order with the strong hand. Their armies and fleets were insignificant, and their coasts were long to protect, and abounded with almost impregnable strongholds which they could not afford to garrison. Hence, when the Moors flocked over from Spain, the shores of Africa offered them a sure and accessible refuge, and the hospitable ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... sweep the streets of pea-shells, lest old women might break their necks, would doubtless have good intentions; yet his office would only be that of a scavenger. Speak, but speak to the world at large, not to insignificant individuals. Speak in the tone of a benevolent and disinterested heart, and not of an inflamed and revengeful imagination! otherwise you ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... insignificant rumours. They say of her, as of all women not actually ugly, that she is more beautiful than Aphrodite or Helen; but no person could form even the most remote idea of such perfection. In vain have I besought Nyssia to appear unveiled at some public festival, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... may be regarded as his or her representative, and those of dead people are believed to be endowed with the attributes of their former owners and actually to impart them to any one who happens to carry them about with him. Hence these apparently insignificant sticks and stones are, in the opinion of the natives, most potent instruments for conveying to the living the virtues and powers of the dead. For example, in a fight the possession of one of these holy sticks or stones is thought to endow the possessor with courage and accuracy ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... and twenty-five minutes old when a gentleman from Abilene, Texas, made the first UFO report of the year. What he saw, "a fan-shaped glow" in the sky, was insignificant as far as UFO reports go, but it ushered in a year that was to bring feverish ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... insignificant seemed that petty disagreement now! Had she but known the bitter separation that must come, she would have let no trifling difference, such as this had been, rob her of a single precious moment ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... again to his uneasy pacing, but now with an irrational and supporting sense of duty done. He had dug his grave that morning; now he had carved his epitaph; the folds of the toga were composed, why should he delay the insignificant trifle that remained to do? He paused and looked long in the face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance. Could the thing continue? What bound him now? ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... long in the country, sir," said Coja Solomon, with a shrewd look at Desmond, "and therefore you will find it hard to believe, perhaps, that these goods, so insignificant in bulk, are worth over two lakhs of rupees. A precious load indeed, sir. This delay is naturally a cause of vexation to my distinguished superior, but it is not due to any idleness or inattention on my part. It is caused ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... said by Sloane to make, in the West Indies, webs so strong as to catch birds. A small and pretty kind of spider, with very long fore-legs, and which appears to belong to an undescribed genus, lives as a parasite on almost every one of these webs. I suppose it is too insignificant to be noticed by the great Epeira, and is therefore allowed to prey on the minute insects, which, adhering to the lines, would otherwise be wasted. When frightened, this little spider either feigns death by extending its front legs, or suddenly drops from the web. A large Epeira ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... indestructible Union party. Three months after the close of the year there remained in the city no trace of Union sentiment. To show how this feeling was destroyed, sinking slowly, and with many reactions, under influences in themselves insignificant, and to narrate, as they fell under personal observation, that short train of events which make up the historic period of this first capital of the Southern confederacy, will be the object ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... certainly some sense which can relish the delights of sound and show, which I have not; for surely mankind would not labour so much, nor sacrifice so much for the obtaining, nor would they be so elate and proud with possessing, what appeared to them, as it doth to me, the most insignificant of all trifles." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... blooming bride of to-day was saved by a lifeboat, and the brave man who steered that boat, and dived into the sea to rescue the child, now sits on my left hand. Again, years after, a lifeboat saved, not only the bride, but her father and her father's ship; which last, although comparatively insignificant, was, nevertheless, the means of preventing the fortunes of the family from being utterly wrecked, and the man who steered the boat on that occasion, as you all know, was the bridegroom? But—to turn from the particular to the general question—I am sure, Ladies and Gentlemen, that you will ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... privilege of an acquaintance with Friend Hopper. I shall always recur to his memory with pleasure, and I trust with that moral advantage, which the recollection of his Christian virtues is so eminently calculated to produce. How insignificant the reputation of riches, how unsatisfactory the renown of victory in war, how transient political fame, when compared with the history of a long life spent in services rendered to the afflicted ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... which he could neither judge of my good nor bad qualities. How, then, can I flatter myself, or do the Count Sobieski so great an injury, as to imagine that he could conceive any preference for so insignificant a being as I must ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... sunset. William and his little sister were playing hide-and-seek around the hill. There were thousands of light, delicate colors, hundreds of strong radiant ones. Mogens turned away from them and looked at the dark figure by his side. How insignificant it looked in comparison with all this glowing splendor; he sighed, and looked up again at the gorgeously colored clouds. It was not like a real thought, but it came vague and fleeting, existed for a second and disappeared; it was ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... an odd place for festivities. The people say that it is fear of fire which makes them separate their insignificant wooden houses by such disproportionately broad streets. Certainly it gives to the town a ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... Tourville's own fleet were insignificant, but its service to the commerce-destroying warfare of the French, by occupying the allies, is obvious; nevertheless, the loss of English commerce was not as great this year as the next. The chief losses of the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Charlemagne was no insignificant legislator. His Capitularies may not be equal to the laws of Justinian in natural justice, but were adapted to his times and circumstances. He collected the scattered codes, so far as laws were codified, of the various Germanic nations, and modified them. He introduced a great Christian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... tea, or spend a few days in the family circle. But the place to which they repaired for the enjoyment of a complete rest, or for considering and maturing a plan for some very great and important object, was an insignificant little spot of the name ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... horizon's blue distance—the boundless deep spread afar, till, at the misty edge of vision it bends, in mingling threefold circles, to embrace the globe, the impenetrable below and the infinite above him, how slight and insignificant a creature he seems! like a fly that clings to the ceiling, or a mote that swims in the sunbeam, one of the mere mites of nature, easily lost by the way or a frail figure ready to be crushed by any stroke of the ponderous machinery mid which he moves. When ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... and others. Excepting the King's they all looked rather dark against so much marble-white wall space. Overhead, I am told, there was once a line of crystal chandeliers, which must have given a perfect finish to the room; but these have been improved away for rather insignificant modern lights, and all over the roof are these hideous whirling electric fans which spoil the whole effect of the classic Georgian style—the swinging punkah can at least be good to look at, and even tolerable, if it is far ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... reached the stage where he was keenly susceptible to external impressions from any source whatever. Those hurrying multitudes, that unending stir, the kaleidoscopic shifts of this human antheap made him at first profoundly lonely, immeasurably insignificant, just as the North had made him feel when he was new to it. But just as he had shaped himself to that environment, so he felt—as he had not at first felt in the North—that in time, with effort, he would become an integral part ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of France. He actually entered Burgundy, while the Spaniards from the Netherlands made progress in Picardy; and John De Werth, a formidable general of the League, and a celebrated partisan, pushed his march into Champagne, and spread consternation even to the gates of Paris. But an insignificant fortress in Franche Comte completely checked the Imperialists, and they were obliged, a second time, to ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... Summerling and Jarrold were mystified. She looked so little like laughter! And, as both had cause to regard the situation, there was so little call for laughter. But they could have no clue to Gloria's thoughts. Her wedding! With that insignificant little grey man in his cheap wrinkled clothes to officiate; with that unshaven, leering, dirty man to witness! Holy matrimony! Gloria Gaynor's wedding! She was near madness with the hideous, cruel travesty of such weddings as are dear to the hearts ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... woman has her own little circle and in it can use her influence for good, if she will. I do will heartily, and I'll prove that I'm neither proud nor fussy by receiving, here or at home, any respectable man you like to present to me, no matter how poor or plain or insignificant he may be." ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... peculiarly oppressive in being cooped within the confines of such narrow entries, and being compelled to reflect upon the immense mass of rock and earth resting above, and prevented from crushing him down into everlasting silence only by insignificant props of wood, whose melancholy groaning in the darkness bore evidence of the vast weight they upheld. There was nothing for me but to struggle onward, although I do not claim that it was without quaking heart, or many a start at odd noises echoing and re-echoing along that grim gallery. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the little six and had done the mischief before they were born. Let us double-column the twelve; then we shall see at a glance that each little reason is in turn answered by a retorting reason of a size to overshadow it and make it insignificant: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... great service, without doubt. Verily as the illustrious Hari had slain the Nagas in the great lake, he, by sight alone, is capable of slaying those Asuras called the Nivatakavachas, along with their followers. But the slayer of Madhu should not be urged when the task is insignificant. A mighty mass of energy that he is. It swelleth to increasing proportions, it may consume the whole universe. This Arjuna also is competent to encounter them all, and the hero having slain them in battle, will go back to the world of men. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hung directly above the river. The water twisted far below like a sinuous brown ribbon. The nooning sky was bronze blue and burning hot. The world seemed very huge, to Enoch; the three of them, toiling so carefully over the yellow plateau, very small and insignificant. He did not talk much during the rest intervals. He would light his pipe and smoke as if in physical contentment, but his deep blue eyes were burning and somber as they rested on the vast emptiness about them. Na-che always dozed during ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... flourished for an embrace. My immediate impression of her had been that she was dressed in mourning, but during the few moments she stood talking with our friend I made more discoveries. The figure from the neck down was meagre, the stature insignificant, but the desire to please towered high, as well as the air of infallibly knowing how and of never, never missing it. This was a little person whom I would have made a high bid for a good chance to paint. The head, the features, the colour, the whole facial oval and radiance ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... oscillate between these opposite poles of belief. Sometimes you will think that your house is remarkably comfortable, sometimes that it is unendurably uncomfortable; sometimes you will think that your place in life is a very dignified and important one, sometimes that it is a very poor and insignificant one; sometimes you will think that some misfortune or disappointment which has befallen you is a very crushing one; sometimes you will think that it is better as it is. Ah, my brother, it is a poor, weak, wayward ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of a place I'd like," said Duncan impulsively. Then he laughed a little, uneasily. "I mean, I'm willing to take any position, no matter how insignificant. I mean it, honestly." ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... entire improvisation there ran in the middle voices, like a thread, or cantus firmus, the insignificant notes, wholly insignificant in themselves, which he found on the page of the quartet, which by chance lay open on the music-stand; on them he built up the most daring melodies and harmonies, in the most brilliant concert style. Old Pleyel could only give expression to his amazement by kissing ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... three of the strongest, which will form the crowns for cutting in the following year. At the same time take away any small blanched shoots that may have been left because they were too small or insignificant for table use. This proceeding will prevent the production of flower-stems, which is injurious to the plant, and there never need be any fear that the crop will be diminished, because plenty of buds around the crowns, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... of the province, forty-five miles from the nearest town—which happened to be the village of Ainsley—dumped down on the crest of a far-reaching ocean-like swell of rolling prairie, bare to the blast of the four winds except for the insignificant shelter of a small bluff on its northeastern side, stood a large farm-house surrounded by a small village of barns and outbuildings. It was a typical Canadian farm of the older, western type. One of those places ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... others desiring to accumulate for the everlasting rainy day—there will, and necessarily must, arise stable methods of preserving values. Oh, pshaw! Who wants to make all men—and all women, too—in a single mental and physical mould?—and a mighty insignificant mould at that? The world is not made better by ease and plenty, but by hardship. Ease and plenty come not but as a reward of striving. When every man is like every other man, and all are too lazy to want anything, the reign of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... fall upon the defenseless; of our catamounts, deer, wolves, bears, foxes—all these we killed without molestation from anybody; I told him how all American sportsmen were like the Nimrods of old. How galling, then, for a true shootist to be misunderstood, decried, denounced, and arrested for so insignificant a beastie as a rabbit! This indignity my very dear friend, Herr Wilhelm Fuedels-Shimmer, had suffered—a most estimable young man—careless, perhaps, in his interpretation of the law, but who would not be—that is, what sportsman would ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this occasion, when she had been so profoundly agitated by a seemingly insignificant cause, that her father and Old Sophy were sitting, one at one side of her bed and one at the other. She had fallen into a light slumber. As they were looking at her, the same thought came into both their minds at the same moment. Old Sophy spoke for both, as she said, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... enough, for at that time pirates were by no means as scarce as they are at present. But it was not a favourite locality with pirates. The merchant-craft that traded along this part of the coast were usually small vessels with insignificant cargoes, and, when outward bound, carried only such bulky articles as salt, iron, and rum, with toys and trinkets; which, though sufficiently attractive to the black savages of Dahomey and Ashantee, were not the sort of merchandise that pirates cared to pick up. They were sometimes ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... including the four McGuffey Readers. When Mr. Truman arrived, Mr. Smith expressed the desire to dissolve the partnership, showed the two piles and offered Mr. Truman his choice. He pounced on the cash and the larger pile and left the insignificant schoolbooks for Mr. Smith, who thereupon became the sole owner of ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... Helicon); but the more general belief assigned to the fertility of his genius a variety of other works, some of which, if we may judge by the titles, aimed at a loftier vein [172]. And were he only the author of the "Works and Days"—a poem of very insignificant merit [173]—it would be scarcely possible to account for the high estimation in which Hesiod was held by the Greeks, often compared, and sometimes preferred, to the mighty and majestic Homer. We must either, then, consider ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... feeling that he had wounded his opponent, now on his side called out to halt. At first Fadrique would not acknowledge to the injury, but soon the blood began to trickle down, and he was obliged to accept his friend's careful assistance. Still this wound also appeared insignificant, the noble Spaniard still felt power to wield his sword, and again the deadly contest was renewed with ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... must also, by consequent, be their use and helpe, and no lesse all they that trust unto them. . . . How can religion or reason suffer men that are not void of both, to give such impious credit unto an insignificant and senseless mumbling of idle words contrary to reason, without president of any truly wise or learned, and justly suspected ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... in the parlor below; but, as we have seen, she had the faculty of arranging all future events to her mind. That matters had not turned out in the past as she had expected, counted for nothing. She was one who could not be taught, even by experience. The most insignificant thing in Holcroft's dwelling had not escaped her scrutiny and pretty accurate guess as to value, yet she could not see or understand the intolerable disgust and irritation which her ridiculous conduct excited. In a weak mind egotism and selfishness, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... 165 pounds of meat a year; the Japanese, four pounds; the people of South China less—practically none at all. Taking the human race as a whole, meat fills only a very insignificant place in the world's bill of fare. Bread is the staff of life, and nuts, the real meat, are gradually recovering their old prestige. It is only in comparatively recent years that meat has entered so largely into the bill of fare of civilized nations. Major J. B. Paget, a writer in the English ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... less, and which should be preferred: namely, that matters should remain in their present and past condition until his Majesty, after thorough information, make suitable provision; or that, in order to remedy this insignificant evil, we should run the risk of ruining and depopulating all the islands. I, my Lord, have not the slightest inclination to go to hell merely because the encomendero collects one or two thousand. After all, whatever your Lordship may consent to, and whatever we resolve to do, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... Empire kept up its name and forms. Besides smaller sovereignties, as Saxony and Bavaria, there were two hundred and fifty petty principalities, fifty imperial cities, and several hundred knights, each with an insignificant domain subject to him. The empire was one body only in theory. National feeling had died out. The Diet had little to do, and no efficiency. Austria, which held the imperial office, and included in its extensive dominions Milan and Southern Netherlands, had sunk ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that it should be an accident," said Desiree. "It must have been the work of fate—if fate has time to think of such an insignificant person as myself and so small an event as ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... began to wane, and he saw appearing the fatal hollow in its circle. His wife was exactly in that state of mind which we attributed at the close of our first part to every honest woman; she had taken a fancy to a worthless fellow who was both insignificant in appearance and ugly; the only thing in his favor was, he was not her own husband. At this juncture, her husband meditated the cutting of some dog's tail, in order to renew, if possible, his lease of happiness. His wife had conducted herself with such tact, that it would have been very ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... wilderness poured forth its savage population, till all the shores of the St. Lawrence seemed one vast aboriginal encampment. These massed at the rendezvous about the puny settlement of Montreal in such numbers that, in comparison, the white population seemed insignificant. Then, had there been a Pontiac or a Tecumseh, had there been one leader of the tribes able to teach the strength of unity, the white settlements of upper America had indeed been utterly destroyed. Naught but ancient tribal jealousies ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and keen analytical powers for the grand episodes, the prolific crises, and the leading characters of history, instead of indiscriminately devoting them to a consecutive account of national incidents and persons, both great and small, illustrious and insignificant? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... his orders. Factions and sects, divided by mortal antipathies, had recognised him as their common head. Without carnage, without devastation, he had won a victory compared with which all the victories of Gustavus and Turenne were insignificant. In a few weeks he had changed the relative position of all the states in Europe, and had restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one power had destroyed. Foreign nations did ample justice to his great qualities. In every Continental country where Protestant congregations met, fervent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... purpose was eminently beautiful, from the small and comparatively insignificant ridge of hills which melt irregularly down into the plains stretching between the pass which we occupied and Laodicea. The town was about one hundred stadia distant, and some of our more sanguine warriors pretended that they could already ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... entire supreme body in order to bring to an external severance the practical disunion which existed between that member and Great Britain. This member—Ireland—as compared with other parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against Great Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of the United Kingdom. Measured against Australia, its trade with Great Britain was ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... shrink from the dizzy height of yonder magnificent pine? then climb it, and "throw down the top," as they do in the forests of Maine. Goethe cured himself of dizziness by ascending the lofty stagings of the Frankfort carpenters. Nothing is insignificant that is great enough to alarm you. If you cannot think of a grizzly bear without a shudder, then it is almost worth your while to travel to the Rocky Mountains in order to encounter the reality. It is said that Van Amburgh attributed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... any one about him. He never boasts of his achievements, or fishes for compliments by affecting to underrate what he has done. He is distinguished, above all things, by his deep insight and sympathy, his quick perception of, and prompt attention to, those small and apparently insignificant things that may cause pleasure or pain to others. In giving his opinions he does not dogmatize; he listens patiently and respectfully to other men, and, if compelled to dissent from their opinions, acknowledges his fallibility and asserts his own views in such ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... she was and he gazed at her with disfavour. Norman Douglas liked girls of spirit and flame and laughter. At this moment Faith was very pale. She was of the type to which colour means everything. Lacking her crimson cheeks she seemed meek and even insignificant. She looked apologetic and afraid, and the bully ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord Douglases. Motape was the chief of the Bambiri, a tribe of the Banyai, and is now represented in the person of Katolosa. He was probably a man of greater energy than his successor, yet only an insignificant chief. Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of the word Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north. In the transformation of this name the same error has been committed as in the others; and mistakes ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Elkins, W. Va. The prize for black walnut was awarded to J. G. Rush of West Willow, Pa. Mr. Rush returned his prize to be used for the purposes of the Association. No prize for hazels was awarded as only one or two insignificant specimens were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Accumulated hardship and disappointment had broken him down, and he died on Ascension day, May 20, 1506, at Valladolid. So little heed was taken of his passing away that the local annals of that city, "which give almost every insignificant event from 1333 to 1539, day by day, do not mention it."[616] His remains were buried in the Franciscan monastery at Valladolid, whence they were removed in 1513 to the monastery of Las Cuevas, at Seville, where ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... part of his life in those days was in his visits to his mother. These were agony to him, feeling as he did more and more how utterly insignificant and helpless he was; but he had one satisfaction to keep him going and make him look forward longingly for the next meeting—paradoxical as it may sound—so as to suffer more agony and despair, for he could plainly see that his ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... know. I do not think that MY HUSBAND"—the last two words certainly emphasized—"cares much about it. I suspect that music and painting, however much they delighted and employed our girlhood, form but a very insignificant part of our duties and enjoyments ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... his own preoccupation, neither deduced aught from the drift of her remarks nor saw the tender glances which attended them. While he was making some insignificant answer, the maid, in moving the candelabrum on the spinet, accidentally brushed therefrom his hat, which had been lying on it. She picked it up, in great confusion, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the excitement before you of making a good speech in answer. You are in the fight. A poor woman, shut up in a cage, feels there more acutely than anywhere else how insignificant a position she fills ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... queer-looking little Italian boy who was thus studying French at Autun school. You would scarcely have looked at him twice; for his figure was small, his appearance insignificant, his face sober and solemn, his hair stiff and stringy, and his complexion sallow. The boys made fun of the way in which he talked, as boys are apt to make sport of those who do not talk ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... rather to indicate a confidence that the Governor General would punish as was fitting the impertinence of the intruders from Kaintock. He bestowed only a single glance upon them, as if his victory over such insignificant opponents were already assured. The blood slowly rose to the faces of Paul and Henry, but they were about to witness an extraordinary exhibition of Spanish ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... There were then no gorgeous cathedrals as nowadays. The Christians were instructed and sanctified in the Catacombs, and in poor private dwellings. So, in a country like ours, the kingdom of heaven is compared to a mustard seed. Churches and schools are insignificant in the beginning; but, by degrees, more life and splendor is infused into them, and ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Disease, and Mutual Slaughter, fit nurses of the future lord of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to know that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... one point on which she was exquisitely sensitive. The slightest encroachment of any other European power even on the outskirts of her American dominions sufficed to disturb her repose and to brace her paralysed nerves. To imagine that she would tamely suffer adventurers from one of the most insignificant kingdoms of the Old World to form a settlement in the midst of her empire, within a day's sail of Portobello on one side and of Carthagena on the other, was ludicrously absurd. She would have been just as likely to let them take possession ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 1664, the East India Company presented to the king, among other "raretyes," 2 lb. 2 oz. of "thea"; and in 1667, they desire their agent at Bantam to send "100 lb. waight of the best tey that he can gett."[B] From this insignificant beginning the importation has grown from year to year, until ninety million pounds went to Great Britain in 1856, forty million coming to the United States ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... fault with the insignificance of the Swiss cottage, because "it was not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility." Now, had it not been seen to be pretending, it would not have been felt to be insignificant; for the feelings would have been gratified with its submission to, and retirement from, the majesty of the destructive influences which it rather seemed to rise up against in mockery. Such pretension is especially ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... of mountain-girt valleys, on the edges of which these hidden ranches lie, make even the largest fields seem comic in size. The smallest, however, are by no means insignificant in a pecuniary view. On the east side of the Toyabe Range I discovered a jolly Irishman who informed me that his income from fifty acres, reinforced by a sheep range on the adjacent hills, was from seven to nine thousand dollars per ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... under the stars, and gazing up into the field of suns, each the probable centre of a system, forming the Milky Way, a friend said to him, "What an insignificant creature is man in sight of so immense a creation as that!" "Yes!" was his reply; "but how wonderful a creature also is man, to be able to think and reason, and even in some measure to comprehend ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... East Anglians—became more powerful than that of Godwin; for, in that last House, Harold was now the only possessor of one of the great earldoms, and Tostig and the other brothers had no other provision beyond the comparatively insignificant lordships they held before. But if Harold had ruled no earldom at all, he had still been immeasurably the first man in England—so great was the confidence reposed in his valour and wisdom. He was ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that she hadn't, after all, awaited him in fond singleness, but had again just a trifle inconsiderately exposed him to the drawback of having to reckon, for whatever design he might amiably entertain, with the presence of a third and quite superfluous person, a small black insignificant but none the less oppressive stranger. It was odd how, on the instant, the little lady engaged with her did affect him as comparatively black—very much as if that had absolutely, in such a medium, to be the graceless appearance of any item not positively ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... insignificant in the great world of politics and business, is one of pleasing interest to the friends of American science, and it has been thought proper that the following record of it should be preserved in a permanent form. I have regretted the frequent recurrence of my own name in the ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... him. His appearance was that of a very common man; and the anticipations of Colleton, as he was one of those persons apt to be taken by appearances, suffered something like rebuke. His figure was diminutive and insignificant; his shoulders were round, and his movements excessively awkward; his face was thin and sallow, his eyes dull and inexpressive, and too small seemingly for command. A too-frequent habit of closing them in prayer contributed, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of periostitis is often difficult to determine. The signs of inflammation are so obscure, the swelling of the parts so insignificant, any increase of heat so imperceptible, and the soreness so slight, that even the most acute observer may fail to find the point of its existence, and it is often long after the discovery of the disease itself that its location is positively revealed by ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... denomination. My favourite ambition is to have those services acknowledged. I now appear before you to make trial, whether my earnest endeavours have been so wholly oppressed by the weakness of my abilities as to be rendered insignificant in the eyes of a great trading city; or whether you choose to give a weight to humble abilities, for the sake of the honest exertions with which they are accompanied. This is my trial to?day. My industry is not ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... diamonds, still to be seen about Cap Rouge, are rock crystals. The gold which he later on showed to Roberval, and which was tested, proved genuine enough, but the quantity of such deposits in the region has proved insignificant. It is very likely that Cartier would make the most of his mineral discoveries as the readiest means of exciting ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... the less I liked it. It was the knot from which sprang all the main routes to our Picardy front. If the Boche ever broke us, it was the place for which old Hindenburg would make. At all hours troops and transport trains were moving through that insignificant hamlet. Eminent generals and their staffs passed daily within sight of the Chateau. It was a convenient halting-place for battalions coming back to rest. Supposing, I argued, our enemies wanted a key-spot for some assault upon the morale or the discipline or ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... railway train, conveying the redoubtable genius, glid into the well-lighted, elegant little station of Laverick Wells, and out of a first-class carriage emerged Mr. Sponge, in a 'down the road' coat, carrying a horse-sheet wrapper in his hand. So small and insignificant did the station seem after the gigantic ones of London, that Mr. Sponge thought he had wasted his money in taking a first-class ticket, seeing there was no one to know. Mr. Leather, who was in ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... wrinkled like concertinas; his comparative self-assurance was quite unjustified. He had looked at her consistently since he entered the room, and Henrietta was angrily aware that Mrs. Batty was trying to make herself insignificant in her corner of the sofa. Henrietta could hear the careful control of her breathing. She was hoping to make the young people forget she was there. Henrietta frowned warningly ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... beginning of a mighty inundation is oft-times an insignificant-looking leak, and as the cause of a series of great events is not unfrequently a trifling incident, so the noteworthy circumstances which we have still to lay before our readers were brought about by a very small matter—by a baby—the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... is an insignificant interest compared to what it is in some parts of Europe, in the United States, and in our Indian possessions. In these latter places it becomes a matter of importance to inquire what influence fungi exert on forest trees. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... Montmartre, the roystering realism of the scene in a dressmakers' shop, the splendid acting of Miss Garden and Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, the fine singing of M. Dalmors, and the more than superb acting and singing of M. Gilibert—found their complement in the finish of a hundred little details, insignificant in themselves, but singularly potent in helping to create the atmosphere without which "Louise" would be little better than Bowery melodrama,—a play that would be a hundred times more effective if its hero and heroine were represented as living in Williamsburg, swelling at the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... amounting to five only—although two more died before they could receive proper surgical attention— while, of the wounded, seven had received injuries serious enough to completely disable them, the rest, amounting to no less than twenty-three, suffering from hurts ranging from such an insignificant prod as I had received in the leg, up to a cutlass-stroke that had all but scalped one ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... most convenient outlet of the West toward the sea. Those States, just as they are arriving at a controlling influence in the affairs of a great and powerful nation, are hardly likely to seclude themselves from the rest of the world in what would, from its position, be at best an insignificant republic. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... seen so much system and such equipment. The machine is certainly wonderful; and, no matter what is the final issue of the war, nobody can deny that so far as that part of the preparation went, the Germans were hard to beat. The most insignificant details were worked out, and all eventualities met with promptness. The horses were shod for a campaign in the country, and naturally there was a lot of slipping on the smooth cobble pavements. The instant a horse went down there was a man ready with a coarse cloth to put under his head, and another ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... Paul's Epistles, or in the Old Testament quotations in the Gospels, have a validity for the mind of the nineteenth century, when in truth they are the imperfect, half-childish products of the mind of the first century, of quite insignificant or indirect value to the historian of fact, of enormous value to the historian of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that Mr Limpney allowed the littleness of his nature to come uppermost, and he laboriously explained the most insignificant portions of the lessons in a sarcastic manner which made Dexter writhe, for he was not slow to find that the tutor was treating ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Street, Nassau Street, Merrion Square North, Lower Mount Street, and Northumberland Road to Ballsbridge. The men were dressed in civilian clothes, but wore their medals and other decorations, and many showed by their appearance that they, too, had played no insignificant part in the recent campaign. They were accompanied by the massed bands of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Battalions Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The 2nd Battalion of the regiment arrived from Buttevant by train at the Ballsbridge siding at 11.30 a.m., and marched across the roadway into the Royal Dublin ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... Hetty Gunn's comprehension before she was twelve years old, and it was a most important force in the growth of her nature. No one can estimate the results on a character of these slow absorptions, these unconscious biases, from daily contact. All precepts, all religions, are insignificant agencies by their side. They are like sun and soil to a plant: they make a moral climate in which certain things are sure to grow, and certain other things are sure to die; as sure as it is that orchids and pineapples thrive in the tropics, and would die ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... I have thought a creature so insignificant as that, had power to excite sensations such as I feel at present! I am, indeed, worse than he is, as much as the crimes of a man exceed those of ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... permanently a large mass of interests and existences in the completest dependence upon itself; where the Government surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and guards society, from its mightiest acts of national life, down to its most insignificant motions; from its common life, down to the private life of each individual; where, due to such extraordinary centralization, this body of parasites acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a quickened capacity for motion and rapidity that finds an analogue only in the helpless lack of ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... that came in with a rush upon the discovery of a battery with insignificant weight, compact form, and great capacity, was the substitution of electricity for animal power for the movement of all vehicles. This, of necessity brought in good roads, the results obtainable on such being so much ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... to go to bed at night, a peculiarity in itself sufficiently great to individualize her. She greeted each new experience with enthusiasm and managed to extract the largest possible quota of happiness out of the smallest and most insignificant occasion. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... confessed, is not an exciting term, hardly a banner to carry in processions. Affections for old habit, currents of self-interest, and gales of passion are the forces that keep the human ship moving; and the pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a relatively insignificant energy. But the affections, passions, and interests are shifting, successive, and distraught; they blow in alternation while the pilot's hand is steadfast. He knows the compass, and, with all the leeways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes some headway. A small force, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... terms of tenderness which experience had led him to believe were irresistible, yet to which he seldom had recourse, for hitherto he had not been under the degrading necessity of courting. He had dwelt with fondness on the insignificant past, because it was connected with her; he had regretted, or affected even to despise, the glorious present, because it seemed, for some indefinite cause, to have estranged him from her hearth. Yes! he had humbled himself before her; he had thrown with disdain at her feet all that dazzling fame ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and looked about him as though to take counsel with his officers. But the best of these were away at the fight, and those with him were few and insignificant and inexperienced. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... much grandeur in the view of the outer shores of these lagoon islands. The ocean, throwing its waters over the broad barrier-like reef, appears an invincible, all-powerful enemy. Yet these low, insignificant coral islets stand and are victorious; for here another power, as an antagonist, takes part in the contest. Organic forces separate the atoms of carbonate of lime, one by one, from the foaming breakers, and unite them in a symmetrical structure. Let the hurricane tear up its thousand ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... and between that town and Portslade-by-Sea, is Aldrington. Aldrington is now new houses and brickfields. Thirty years ago it was naught. But five hundred years ago it was the principal township in these parts, and Brighthelmstone a mere insignificant cluster of hovels. Centuries earlier it was more important still, for, according to some authorities, it was the Portus Adurni of the Romans. The river Adur, which now enters the sea between Shoreham and Southwick, once flowed along the line of the present canal and the Wish Pond, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... notes exchanged between the home offices instead of personal conferences. People blenched at the thought of war; stocks fell; the attention of the whole world was arrested. The innumerable and intimate bonds of friendship and interest which would thus have to be broken merely because of an insignificant jog in a boundary remote from both the nations made war between the United States and Great Britain seem absolutely inconceivable, until people realized that neither country could yield without an admission of defeat both galling to national pride and involving fundamental ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... that can hear a whisper in New Orleans, and legs that can walk six hundred miles in a day, and if, in consequence of any defect of rail or carriage, you should be so injured that your own very insignificant walking members must be taken off, I can make the surgeon's visit a pleasant dream for you, on awaking from which you will ask when he is coming to do that which he has done already,—what is the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various |
