"Invariable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proved his stumbling-block, and he weakly evaded a frank expression of his true feelings. "Life," he began somewhat haltingly, to break the embarrassing pause, "is only serious when we make it so; and as soon as we make it serious it makes us unhappy. So I've adopted one invariable rule: to laugh ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... he went to Gonda, where the Nazim, Mahommed Hussan, was encamped with his force, to take leave preparatory to his going to bathe at Ajoodheea, on the last day of the month of Kartick, as was his invariable custom. He was accompanied by the Rajah of Bulrampoor, and they encamped separately in two mango-groves near to each other, and about a mile and a half from the Nazim's camp. About nine at night the Nazim sent two messengers, with silver sticks, to invite and escort them to his tent. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... suspected. The record, which could not have been meant for anyone's eyes but his own, was not, I think, the outcome of that strange impulse of indiscretion common to men who lead secret lives, and accounting for the invariable existence of "compromising documents" in all the plots and conspiracies of history. Mr. Razumov looked at it, I suppose, as a man looks at himself in a mirror, with wonder, perhaps with anguish, with anger or despair. Yes, as a threatened man may look fearfully at his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... will furnish us with an excellent example of Seneca's invariable method of improving every occasion and circumstance into an opportunity ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts, is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... washed after, as well as before, dinner; an invariable custom throughout the East, as among the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and others; and Herodotus speaks of a golden basin, belonging to Amasis, which was used by the King, and "the guests who were in the habit of eating at ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... velocities that of the satellite may be taken as sensibly invariable, when close enough to use his pencil. This depends upon the law of centrifugal force, which teaches us that the mass of the planet alone decides the velocity of a satellite in its orbit at any fixed distance from the planet's centre. The other velocity—that of the planet upon its axis—was, ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... young man, there lived in our neighborhood one who was universally reported to be a very liberal man, and uncommonly upright in his dealings. When he had any of the produce of his farm to dispose of, he made it an invariable rule to give good measure, over good, rather more than could be required of him. One of his friends, observing him frequently doing so, questioned him why he did it, told him he gave too much, and said it ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... it was agreed on all hands, that conviviality is no where better understood than at Loo-choo. After a time, at our request, they played some games, of which we had heard them speak. The object of these games was drinking; a cup of wine being the invariable forfeit. That every thing might be in character during the games, some of their own little cups were put on table. One person holds the stalk of his tobacco-pipe between the palms of his hands, so that the pipe rolls round as he moves his hands, which he is to hold over ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... another. Along with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, savage man has a different, and probably still older, conception in which we may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of superstition. In early ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... racing droshky made Rudin raise his head. Lezhnyov was driving to meet him with his invariable trotting pony. Rudin bowed to him without speaking, and as though struck with a sudden thought, turned out of the road and walked quickly in the ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... differing reasons, like death apprehend a dissolution. But notwithstanding these, there is an handful of salt, a sparkle of soul, that hath hitherto preserved this gross body from putrefaction, some gentlemen that are constant, invariable, indeed Englishmen; such as are above hopes, or fears, or dissimulation, that can neither flatter, nor betray their king or country: but being conscious of their own loyalty and integrity, proceed throw good and bad report, to acquit themselves ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... superstitions still linger in the public mind we may, perhaps, charitably forgive Gilbert for the introduction of an empirical remedy for sterility, which, he assures us, he has often tried and with invariable success, and which enjoys the double advantage of applicability ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... old Betteredge's grog helped me, as I believe nothing else would have helped me, in the state of complete bodily and mental prostration into which I had fallen. I can only offer this excuse for myself; and I can only admire that invariable preservation of dignity, and that strictly logical consistency of conduct which distinguish every man and woman who may read these lines, in every emergency of their lives from ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... intelligence and ability. There was also at the table a niece of Mr. Harris, a modest and highly interesting young lady. All the luxuries and delicacies of a tropical clime loaded the board—an epicurean variety of meats, flesh, fowl, and fish—of vegetables, pastries, fruits, and nuts, and that invariable accompaniment of a West ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... great musician, and, in fact, was more at home in the village shop, of which he was proprietor. Sunday after Sunday he made the most awful mistakes, and, in consequence, was continually warned of his probable dismissal. The Princess, with her invariable kindness, had been the cause of his staying so long as he had; but one Sunday the climax was reached and the Royal patience fairly exhausted. Mr. Gladstone (then in office) was on a visit, and his solemn, grim countenance as he stood in the church quite frightened the poor man, inasmuch as he lost ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and in the course of my life I have received much advice. My invariable rule has always been to thank for it, expressing my gratitude with some warmth and every appearance of sincerity. This is all that the adviser requires. It gives him, or her, complete satisfaction. It costs nothing. Afterwards, I proceed precisely as if ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... the new year he became bedfast and suffered excruciatingly at times. "But he submitted himself wholly to God's will and bore his terrible suffering with true Christian patience," one of his biographers tells us. To those who asked about his condition, his invariable answer was, that all was well with him. If anyone expressed sympathy with him, he usually smiled and said that "it could not be expected that the two old friends, soul and body, should part from each other ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... white marble is itself inlaid with precious stones arranged in lovely patterns of flowers. A feeling of purity impresses itself on the eye and the mind from the absence of the coarser material which forms so invariable a material in Agra architecture. The lower wall and panels are covered with tulips, oleanders, and fullblown lilies, in flat carving on the white marble; and although the inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant when looked ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to form an exception to this rule, being somewhat taller. They are almost universally straight and well proportioned; their limbs are clean, but less muscular than those of the whites, and their whole appearance strongly indicative of effeminacy. In walking, they invariable place one foot directly before the other—the toes never verging from a right line with the heel. When traveling in companies, their manner of marching is so peculiar as to have given rise to the expression, "Indian file;" and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... on the ship and she was in no condition to weigh anchor immediately; she would have to be re-supplied and the sick men in her crew replaced by drafts from the shore. Besides, in accordance with the invariable custom, the great majority of the men had been given shore leave for that afternoon and evening, and those few who were not on duty were carousing at the Blue Anchor Inn and similar taverns and would be utterly ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... some expression or other is now an essential element in the highest presentation of human life. Here is not the Unknown. On the contrary, we are in the very heart of science; tragedy to the modern is not [Greek: tuchae], but a thing of cause and effect, invariable antecedent and invariable consequent. It is the presence of this tragic force underlying action that gives to all Hugo's work its lofty quality, its breadth, and generality, and fills both it, and us who read, with pity and gravity ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... result? Thousands of half-baked romances ending in Gretna Green marriages are the invariable harvest of this season of Summer silliness; marriages which bring suffering and bitter repentance and a tragic climax in the divorce courts—if they do not ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... as a rule for my guidance, the principle of non-interference with the provisional State governments, and though many appeals were made to have me rescind rulings of the courts, or interpose to forestall some presupposed action to be taken by them, my invariable reply was that I would not take cognizance of such matters, except in cases of absolute necessity. The same policy was announced also in reference to municipal affairs throughout the district, so long as the action of the local officers did not ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... years of labour and opposition. He had, however, already decided on the subject of his first attempt—Joseph and Mary resting on the road to Egypt. On October 1,1806, after setting his palette, and taking his brush in hand, he knelt down, in accordance with his invariable custom throughout his career, and prayed fervently that God would bless his work, grant him energy to create a new era in art, and rouse the people to a just estimate of the moral value ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... opening to "good society." There was not a member of his own college, graduate or under-graduate, of any pretensions to family, who could not speak from experience of the dean's capital dinners, and his invariable urbanity. No young honourable, or tenth cousin to an honourable, ever got into a row, that he had not cause to bless the dean's good offices for getting him out. And if some of the old stagers contented themselves with eating his dinners, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... of those in this condition is so invariable and so profound, that nothing either in earth or hell can disturb it for a moment. The senses are still susceptible to suffering; but when they are overpowered by it, and cry out with the anguish, if they are questioned, or if they examine themselves, they will find nothing in ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... thirst, hot skin, quick pulse, with difficulty of swallowing; the tongue is coated, presenting through its fur innumerable specks, the elevated papillae of the tongue, which gives it the speckled character, that, if not the invariable sign of scarlet fever, is only met with in cases closely analogous to that disease. Between the second and third day, but most frequently on the third, a bright red efflorescence breaks out in patches on the face, neck, and back, from which it extends over the trunk and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... whole intercourse with her husband, try the efficacy of gentleness, purity, sincerity, scrupulous truth, meek and patient forbearance, an invariable tone and manner of deference, and, if he is not a brute, he cannot help respecting her and treating her kindly; and in nearly all instances he will end by loving her and living happily ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Britain, by the mouth of his ambassador, thanked their high mightinesses for the sincere desire they expressed to put an end to the ravages of war, which had extended desolation over the face of Europe: he readily closed with their gracious offer; and in consequence of his high regard and invariable friendship for their high mightinesses, wished earnestly that it might be acceptable to the other powers at war. The French king expressed his sentiments nearly to the same purpose. His ambassador declared, that his most christian majesty was highly sensible of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... obliged to take oath that he would support William's claim to the English throne, but he was still undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much confidence in an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of Ganelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval society. No feudal lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw them ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... all that day and the night before. Several times groups of fraternity men got into a room, closed the door, and then talked to him until he was almost literally dizzy. He was wise enough not to make any promises. His invariable answer was: "I don't know yet. I won't know ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... nature do not prove the existence of a God, except to a few forewarned men, to whom has been shown in advance the finger of God in all the objects whose mechanism could embarrass them. The unprejudiced philosopher sees nothing in the wonders of nature but permanent and invariable law; nothing but the necessary effects of ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... belonged to Colonel Hastings, colonel of a native regiment stationed there, and at present, in virtue of seniority, commanding a brigade. Tiffin was on, and three or four officers and four ladies had taken their seats in the comfortable cane lounging chairs which form the invariable furniture of the verandah of a well-ordered bungalow. Permission had been duly asked, and granted by Mrs. Hastings, and the cheroots had just begun to draw, when Miss Hastings, a niece of the colonel, who had only arrived the previous ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands were thrust into his trousers pockets, as was his almost invariable custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were usually expressed in this ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... about old times in the Army Pay Corps, in which we served together for nearly sixteen months during one of the hottest periods of hostilities 'out yonder.' More famous amongst the general public for his black ribboned tortoiseshell monocle and invariable presence at all truly semi-smart Bohemian functions, Poppington keeps a brindled bulldog, grows primulas and is, of course, known to a select circle as the energetic Organising Secretary of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... the Government are now and have been during the whole period of these wide-spreading difficulties conducted with a strict and invariable regard to this great fundamental principle, and that by the assumption and maintenance of the stand thus taken on the very threshold of the approaching crisis more than by any other cause or causes whatever the community at large has been shielded from the incalculable evils of a general and indefinite ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... art of making castings of brass and copper. From this time and from this beginning, as Mr. Davis firmly believed, ships built in New England were fastened with bolts, spikes, etc., made of composition instead of iron as had formerly been the invariable practice. Mr. Crocker was a man of somewhat irregular habits, and not infrequently severe in his treatment of the apprentices, of whom, as was then quite a common custom, he always had several. At this time it happened that they all revolted and left him, save Mr. Davis, the youngest of the number. ...
— Fifty years with the Revere Copper Co. - A Paper Read at the Stockholders' Meeting held on Monday 24 March 1890 • S. T. Snow
... high compliment," I said, "but I cannot give you a decision at once. I must hear what it is that you want me to do and have time to think it over, before I can answer you. That is my invariable rule, and I never depart from it. Do ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... seemed to indicate, now formed a right angle with the plane of the ecliptic, her various seasons, like those of the planet Jupiter, would become limited to certain zones, in which they would remain invariable. But even if he had understood the rationale of the change, the convulsion that had brought it about would have been as much a mystery ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... lodging, warming, and lighting have an invariable proportion whatever the income," does not hold under modern conditions for the group we are considering, for our wise ones need the best, and not a few of them are unwilling to buy their family sanctity at the price of a closet in the basement ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... eyes at night her dreams are of one invariable subject—blackberries! She cannot get rid of the impression, and I have serious fears that we shall all break out in brambles. There are not so many mosquitoes here as I had expected; just enough to keep us lively. How I shall ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... an inestimable privilege to claim the friendship of a man whose life and letters are a perpetual stimulus to action, an invariable provocative of thought. I have just had a letter from my friend, telling me that he is in despair of the stage. His play is a thing of the past, and he vows that he has done with dramatic ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... I did not recoil from this infamous burden. I disposed it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length; and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with six or seven others, was examining a church ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (making five books) of "Aurora Leigh "; but she planned at least two more books to complete the poem, which must needs be ready by June; and when, by the author's calendar, it is February, by some necromancy June is apt to come in the next morning. The Brownings made it an invariable rule to receive no visitors till after four, but the days had still a trick of vanishing like the fleet angel who departs before he leaves his blessing. At all events, the last days of May came before "Aurora Leigh" was completed, and its author half despairingly realized that two weeks ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... to me suddenly, but with his invariable kindliness of tone, "oblige me to-night. I have written a message here. You will see ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... millions of dollars, in order to secure her good will and active alliance. But his proposition met with no favor at home, except among the ultra partisans of the French republic; and he was officially reminded that it had been, and still was, the invariable policy of the president to have his country as independent as possible of every nation upon the face of the earth—a policy which he had pursued from the beginning; "not assumed now for the first time, but wise at all times, and certain, if steadily pursued, to protect his country ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... not know where Lady Sellingworth was. Nothing had appeared in the Morning Post about her movements. Nobody seemed to know anything about her. He met various members of the "old guard" and made inquiry, but "Haven't an idea" was the invariable reply. Even, and this was strangest of all, Seymour Portman did not know where she was. Braybrooke met him one day at the Marlborough and spoke of the matter, and Seymour Portman, with his most ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... the invariable custom, an interval of prayer preceded their further advance, made under cover of the night. Approaching the bridge, they are asked, "Who's there?" and answer, "Friends;" to which the enemy reply, "Kill! kill!" emphasized by a tremendous fire for a quarter of an hour. ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... themselves to Nikias. Indeed, there was nothing harsh or overbearing in the pride of Nikias, which arose chiefly from his fear of being thought to be currying favour with the people. By nature he was downhearted and prone to despair, but in war these qualities were concealed by his invariable success in whatever enterprise he undertook; while in political life his retiring manner and his dread of the vulgar demagogues, by whom he was easily put out of countenance, added to his popularity; for the people fear those who treat them with haughtiness, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... cavalier servente must have been a serious impediment; he was always La plante ... a contrecarrer un pauvre tiers, in the words of the witty President de Brosses, who, though he did not wholly credit the assurances he received as to the invariable innocence of the institution, was yet far from passing on it the sweeping judgment arrived at by most foreigners. There is no doubt that habit and opportunity did, now and then, prove too strong for the two individuals thrown so constantly together. 'Juxtaposition is great,' ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men—happily not one invariable or inevitable—that they can not allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... adjective 'motarkee' with violent emphasis. Kolory however, is so desirous his conduct should meet with unqualified approbation, that he inquires of each individual separately whether under existing circumstances he has not done perfectly right in shutting up Moa Artua. The invariable response is 'Aa, Aa' (yes, yes), repeated over again and again in a manner which ought to quiet the scruples of the most conscientious. After a few moments Kolory brings forth his doll again, and while arraying ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... supreme in his library, and even the Curators trembled before him when he told them what had been the invariable custom of the Library for years, and could not be altered. And, curiously enough, he had always funds at his disposal, which is not the case now, and whenever there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Tanith is invariable placed before Baal, as though superior to him, and can be no other than the celestial goddess (Dea coelestis), whose temple in the Roman Carthage was so celebrated.[1190] The Greeks regarded her as equivalent to their Artemis;[1191] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... ever-present and ever-ready individual with official information from sources that could not be questioned, travelled with remarkable regularity on each and every craft that ventured out upon the Hun-infested waters. In the smoke-room the invariable word went round that raiders were sinking everything in sight. Every ship that sailed had on board at least one individual who claimed to have been chased on a former voyage by a blockade-breaker,—(according to the most ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... about to rise I noticed something rather odd. I listened attentively. It was certainly remarkable. As I knelt I could just hear a low, continuous hissing sound. Directly I moved away it ceased. As I tried it several times with the same invariable result, I became seriously puzzled to account for it. What devilry could be at work to produce this? Was it possible that some one was playing a trick on me?—and if so, by ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... more cheerful view. "Oh, Reginald Clifford, of Craighton!" he cried with a smile, his invariable smile. "I know all about HIM. He's a friend of Colonel Kelmscott's down at Tilgate Park. C.M.G., indeed! What a ridiculous old peacock. He was administrator of St. Kitts once upon a time, I believe, or was it Nevis or Antigua? I don't quite recollect, I'm afraid; but anyhow, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... contradiction. This is the only comprehensive satire ever written, for it is utterly independent of time, place, and manners. Faust gives us the natural history of the human intellect, Mephistopheles being merely the projected impersonation of that scepticism which is the invariable result of a purely intellectual culture. These four books are the only ones in which universal facts of human nature and experience are ideally represented. They can, therefore, never be displaced. Whatever moral significance there may be in certain episodes of the "Odyssey," the man of the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... not seen Afy for some days—had never been able to come across her since the trial at Lynneborough. Every evening had he danced attendance at her lodgings, but could not get admitted. "Not at home—not at home," was the invariable answer, though Afy might be sunning herself at the window in his very sight. Mr. Jiffin, throwing off as best he could the temporary disappointment, was in an ecstasy of admiration, for he set it all down to Afy's retiring ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... him: "His sagacity, impartiality and plain sense, his industry and clear sightedness made him an admiration of non-professional spectators: while among lawyers he was very highly esteemed for his invariable kindness to all who appeared before him. He retained to the last their respect and affection." With such a man presiding Sergeant Buzfuz's eccentric violence and abuse of the defendant would have been restrained ("having the outward appearance of a man and not of a monster.") Mr. ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... lightning of heaven against the ministers and sons of corruption, blasting where it smote, and withering the nerves of opposition; but his more substantial praise was founded upon his disinterested integrity his incorruptible heart, his unconquerable spirit of independence, and his invariable attachment to the interest and liberty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... couch and thus making a hole that would soon wet the skins. While on the march the skins for the bed are usually spread over the top of the loaded sledge, and then the whole is securely lashed down with seal-skin thongs. It is the invariable custom to turn the fur-side of the skins up, because it is easy enough to beat the snow from the hair, while it might thaw and make the skin-side wet. You often, therefore, find that water has fallen upon the skin that makes your bed, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... them myself within a mile of the trenches, marching quietly up through the fall of the March evening to take their places in that line, where, every night, however slack the fighting, a minimum of so many casualties per mile, so many hideous or fatal injuries by bomb or shell fire, is practically invariable. Not the conscript soldiers of a military nation, to whom the thought of fighting has been perforce familiar from childhood! Men, rather, who had never envisaged fighting, to whom it is all new, who at bottom, however firm their will, or ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not appear in the guise of a comforter, nor of one who gives counsel in the secret affairs of the heart, but rather as a man of the law or a chemist who enunciates his bald formulas, invariable and unfailing. ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... are absolutely one, and therefore this will has reached the greatest possible degree of intensity. Now the use of power depends on the degree of this intensity, and as the absolute power of the government is always that of the people, and therefore invariable, it follows that the rule of one man is the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... "One doesn't even peer." As to whether, in the years that have elapsed since he said this either of our friends (now adult) has, in fact, "peered," is a question which, whenever I call at the house, I am tempted to put to one or other of them. But any regret I may feel in my invariable failure to "come up to the scratch" of yielding to this temptation is balanced, for me, by my impression—my sometimes all but throned and anointed certainty—that the answer, if vouchsafed, would be ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... favourite study chair; but he always regarded this anecdote as displaying an agreeable trait in the Prophet. For he himself was very fond of animals, and, though we seldom kept dogs in London, cats were invariable members of the household. Apropos of these, a letter may be quoted which was written in 1893 in reply to an inquiry from a journalist who was collecting anecdotes for an article on ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... speech, and then no less than seven other speeches by as many men, on a variety of barrels, each orator being affectionately tugged to the pedestal and set on end by his special constituency. Every speech was good, without exception; with the queerest oddities of phrase and pronunciation, there was an invariable enthusiasm, a pungency of statement, and an understanding of the points at issue, which made them all rather thrilling. Those long-winded slaves in "Among the Pines" seemed rather fictitious and literary in comparison. The most eloquent, perhaps, was Corporal ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... have already shown, the invariable expedient of Richelieu, who was aware that the prospect of the Queen-mother's return to France was not more repugnant to himself than the idea of retiring in disgrace and dishonour to her birthplace had ever ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... distance from the places to which, if we have the secondary base system of supply, he knows for certain that our ships must resort. We shall have to do one of two things—either let him carry on his operations undisturbed, or conform to his movements. To this is due the common, if not invariable, experience of naval warfare, that the fleet which assumes the offensive has to establish what are sometimes called 'flying bases,' to which it can resort at will. This explains why Nelson rarely used Gibraltar as a base; why we ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... opportunity of investigating the question, and able interpreters wherever I wintered; but I never could learn that any such tradition existed. Even in their tales and legends there is never any reference to a distant land; when questioned in regard to this, their invariable answer is, "Our fathers and our fathers' fathers have hunted on these lands ever since the flood, and we never heard of any other country till the whites came among us." These tribes have the same tradition in regard to the flood, that I heard among the Algonquins ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... may be the reason why, these many centuries later, our bee experts still recommend that, if we wish to increase the strength and productivity of a backward hive of bees, we buy and introduce into the hive an Italian queen. Her ancient and still prepotent virility can almost invariable be relied upon to transfuse the colony with new and fruitful vigor. An "Italian" queen, is it? We wonder, as we think of that venerable land of Eden which once flowed with milk and honey, whether ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... from man's consciousness of an individual Will perpetually affirming itself, Mr. Green proceeds to evolve the Idea of the Trinity, by (as he considers it) an equally necessary process from two of the invariable accompaniments of the above-mentioned introspective act. "For as in our consciousness," he truly says, "we are under the necessity of distinguishing the relation of 'myself,' now as the subject thinking and now as the object ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... when sung at the top of Mr. James Finnegan's voice that while the original warp and woof of those very popular melodies were entirely unrecognizable to any but the persons interested, to them they were as gall and wormwood. This was Cully's invariable way of expressing his opinions on current affairs. He would sit on the front-board of his cart,—the Big Gray stumbling over the stones as he walked, the reins lying loose,—and fill the air with details of events passing in the village, with all ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... coal-black hair, beard and eyes, the latter very keen and piercing. There was a distinct touch of hauteur in his manner to Kedah; but to Dick he and his wife were friendliness itself, while to Earle they showed that deep reverence which seemed to be the invariable rule ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... who studied a little of everything, had not failed to take note of the curiously diversified degrees of single and double rapping by means of which his visitors sought admittance to his abode. In fact, he rather prided himself on being able to guess with almost invariable correctness what special type of man or woman was at his door, provided he could hear the whole diapason of their knock from beginning to end. When he was shut in his "den," however, the sounds were muffled by ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the great cardinal's eye rested on Giovanni Saracinesca, accompanied by that invariable smile that so many can remember well to this day, his delicate hand made a gesture as though beckoning to the young man to follow him. Giovanni obeyed the summons, and became for the moment the most notable ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cold, conclusively, continually, entirely, essentially, extreme, faultless, French, fundamental, golden, happy, impregnable, inaudible, incessant, incredible, indispensable, insatiate, inseparable, intangible, intolerable, invariable, long, masterly, round, sharp, square, sufficient, unanimous, unbearable, unbounded, unerring, unique, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... New Zealanders consisted of one piece of stuff, something between reed or cloth, attached to the shoulders and falling to the knees, and of a second rolled round the waist, which reached to the ground. But the latter was not an invariable part of their dress. Thus, when they had on only the upper part of their costume, and they squatted, they presented ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... form of the government. But that form may be changed, and all the powers of all persons under it revoked, at the will of the society itself, by which and for which all government is established. Laws, to be just, must have for their invariable end the general interests of society; they must procure for the greatest number of citizens the advantages for which those citizens have combined. A society whose chiefs and whose laws do not benefit its members loses all ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... gratitude, no sympathy, no kindliness. If you are kind to them, they think you are a fool. If you are gentle with them they think you are afraid. And when they think you are afraid, watch out, for they will get you. Just to show you, let me state the one invariable process in a black man's brain when, on his native heath, he encounters a stranger. His first thought is one of fear. Will the stranger kill him? His next thought, seeing that he is not killed, is: Can he kill the stranger? There was Packard, a Colonial trader, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... The invariable methods of the colonists, when facing a demand from the king, were evasion and delay. "Avoid or protract" were Winthrop's own words in 1635. In 1684 the General Court wrote advising their attorney, employed in ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... Convention have probably less knowledge of political economy than any single average Northern merchant whose success depends on an intimate knowledge of the laws of trade and the world-wide contingencies of profit and loss. Such a man would tell them, as the result of invariable experience, that the prosperity of no community was so precarious as that of one whose very existence was dependent on a single agricultural product. What divinity hedges cotton, that competition may not ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... appearance in the family. Ward was so much a child in those days that Harriet used to go with him to pick out suits and shirts, and to buy matinee seats for him and his school friends, and they laughed now to remember his favourite and invariable luncheon order of potato salad and French pastries. Nina had had a nurse then, and Harriet practised French with both the boy and girl, but now the nurse was gone, and Ward could buy his own clothes, and Nina went to a finishing school. So Miss Field had made herself useful in new ways; she ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the only difficulty lay in executing it upon a week-day. Sunday came and as usual Brother Brown, with his customary bravado, made his appearance in the city. That evening Gottlieb invited me to dine with him at the resort ordinarily frequented by our quarry. True to his invariable custom, Brown turned up there with a party of his cronies and spent the evening in merry feasting, presumably upon the money of our client. It was a clear, moonlight night and when the glowworm showed the matin to be near—or, more correctly, when it neared ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... at Crome Ivor had left, according to his invariable custom in these cases, a poem. He had improvised it magisterially in the ten minutes preceding his departure. Denis and Mr. Scogan strolled back together from the gates of the courtyard, whence they had bidden their last farewells; on the writing-table in the hall ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Dick Whittington, and now, a rich London merchant, had come back to take his old love home. Being an old friend, it was obviously a youthful attachment; and being a merchant, he must be very rich. This happy combination—universal in fiction, though not invariable in real life—was all that could be desired, and received strong confirmation from the fact of his coming from London; for in those days country girls seldom visited the metropolis, and we regarded the great city with awe, as the centre of all ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Wood, and the riders, arriving in small and breathless companies, thanked God for a check, and tightened their girths and took courage. The latter would undoubtedly be needed if the run continued; Drumkeen Wood was hung like a cloak upon the side of a steep hill, and was the invariable prelude to the worst going within the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... printer of the House of Commons, succeeded to the business and became widely known for his despatch and accuracy in printing Parliamentary papers and debates. He died in 1828, but the business was continued by his family, and to refer to Hansard became the invariable custom when an M.P. was to be condemned out of his own mouth—as Hansard was supposed never to err. Recently Hansard has been carried on by a company, but the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... joyful hour of evening, usually about nine o'clock, is the time for marriage—as it often is for burial—in Japan. In the starlight of a June evening the bride set forth on her journey to her intended husband's home, as is the invariable custom. Her toilet finished, she stepped out of her childhood's home to take her place in the norimono or palanquin which, borne on the shoulders of four men, was to convey ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... difference that he leaned on a different foreign power for support. Neither Armansperg nor Rudhart conferred any benefit on Greece. They formed a phalanx or corps of veterans; but as they laid down no invariable rules for admission, but kept the door open as a means of creating a party among the military, this institution has become a scene ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... of Tibullus is smooth, easy, and graceful, but tame. He generally concludes his period at the end of the couplet, and closes the couplet with a dissyllable; but he does not like Ovid make it an invariable rule. The diction is severely classical, free from Greek constructions and antiquated harshness. In elision he stands midway between Catullus and Ovid, inclining, however, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Zayton, or rather of the department attached to it, written by the French Thsiuan-tcheou, but by Medhurst Chwanchew, were it not that Polo's practice of writing the term tcheu or chau by giu is so nearly invariable, and that the soft ch is almost always expressed in the old texts by the Italian ci (though the Venetian does use the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... may be distinguished partly by the form of the arches, which are triangular-headed, semicircular or segmental, simple pointed, and complex pointed; though such forms are by no means an invariable criterion of any particular style; by the size and shape of the windows, and the manner in which they are subdivided or not by transoms, mullions, and tracery; but more especially by certain minute details, ornamental accessories ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... part taken by her people, not less in the life of the Saxon and Germanic races, than in that of the Latin Occident. Such a dissertation, it appeared to me, would have been an ingenious method of thanking the lady for having thus appeared to an old scholar, contrary to the invariable custom of her kindred, who never show themselves but to innocent children ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the dust, the only pattern of survival that he knew when strength beyond his own was shown. But even while he knelt, to scheme a way that he-and-his might find ascendancy in future days. The one invariable pattern persisting from the cave man dressed in furs to diplomat in striped pants, the only pattern possible while me-and-mine ascendant is ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... trouble. We can assure our patients that there is less risk of the appearance of the rupture at the point where the operation is performed than there is of a new breach forming. The success of this treatment has been invariable. None of the plans of treatment that we pursue for the cure of rupture tend to keep the patient in bed more than a few hours. There is little or no pain, after either of our plans of treatment, and out of the many hundreds which we have treated and perfectly ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... contracted a habit of enjoying things," he remarked once, when Mother had commented on his invariable cheerfulness. "It's got so chronic that I believe I even enjoy the disagreeable things. It's great fun thinking they can't last. 'Old rheumatiz,' I says, when it grips me hard, 'you've got to stop aching sometime. The worse you are the sooner you'll stop, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to Mr. Bowles's "invariable principles of poetry." These Mr. Bowles and some of his correspondents pronounce "unanswerable;" and they are "unanswered," at least by Campbell, who seems to have been astounded by the title. The sultan of the time being offered ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... from a kindred tongue is delightful as mere language. In its rude joviality, and simple and direct delineation of character, it is a thoroughly good representative of the famous ancient Beast Epic.' The edges of this book, and of all subsequent books, were trimmed in accordance with the invariable practice of the early printers. Mr. Morris much preferred the ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... been the invariable response; and generally Erica would avail herself of the interruption to ask his opinion about some square-headed cat, with eyes askew and an astonishing number of legs, which she had just drawn. Then would come what she called a "bear's hug," after which silence reigned ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... by the early instruments of this great maker.[16] Never has affinity in the art of Violin manufacture been more marked than that between Stradivari and Niccolo Amati during the early life of the former. I have, in another place, remarked upon the almost invariable similarity occurring between the works of master and pupil, and have used this canon in refutation of the doctrine that Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu was ever a pupil of Antonio Stradivari. Lancetti states that the instruments of Stradivari made in 1665, and others in 1666, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... them. "I have wanted an apple more than anything," was often the eager reply, as they were offered to those who had recently come from a long captivity; and as they were distributed through the wards, not the least gratifying circumstance was the invariable refusal of the ward-masters and nurses to take any. Their diet was not sumptuous, and apples were a great luxury to all; but they would say, "No, thank you, let the men who have just come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Doge, save the Doge." It is well known that little fisher-canoes are safer and better to manage in the Lagune when it is stormy than are larger boats; and accordingly these little craft were hastening from all sides to the rescue of Marino Falieri's invaluable person. But it is an invariable principle in life that the Eternal Power reserves every bold deed as a brilliant success to the one specially chosen for it, and hence all others have all their pains for nothing. And as on this occasion it was poor Antonio who was destined to achieve the rescue of the newly elected Doge, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the conduct of the guards, with the same justice with which you collect the sense of the people from the representations of the ministry. Your marching regiments, Sir, will not make the guards their example either as soldiers or subjects. They feel and resent, as they ought to do, that invariable, undistinguishing favour with which the guards are treated, while those gallant troops, by whom every hazardous, every laborious service is performed, are left to perish in garrisons abroad, or pine in quarters at home, neglected and forgotten. If they had no sense of the great original ...
— English Satires • Various
... our camp at 7.30 a.m., when the north wind fell; and within an hour afterwards the temperature had risen to 45 degrees. Having had our sticks* [It was an invariable custom of our Lepcha and Tibetan attendants, to warm the handles of our sticks in cold weather, before starting on our daily marches. This is one of many little instances I could adduce, of their thoughtfulness ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... torches. The great hall was crowded with knights and equerries, and those who would supped, saying nothing meanwhile. Mostly game seemed to be the favorite viand, and the legs and wings only of fowl were eaten. Music and chants were the invariable accompaniment and the company remained at table until after two in the morning. Little or nothing ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... seems to illustrate the history of so interesting a people. A slight sketch of the subject, as given in that work, may suffice for the reader's consideration. The person next in rank to the king is his own father, if alive—it being the invariable maxim of this government, though quite unexampled elsewhere, for a son to succeed to the title and dignity of king, immediately on his birth, and in prejudice of his own father, who, however, is usually, but not always, entrusted with the regency, till the young man have ability ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... Service & under the Direction of the British Ministry. I hope it will not be in the Power of this Querist to do essential Injury to so eminent a Patriot; who took the earliest & most decisive Part in opposition to the Measures of the British Court, and whose invariable Attachment to the Liberties of our Country never was, and I think cannot be justly suspected. Yet it may be necessary to guard against it; for I plainly though silently saw when I was last in Boston a Malevolent Disposition towards Dr Lee, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... 12 mm. in diameter. Its bottom is of porcelain, and bears on its inner surface the date 1882 in black characters. Above, and at the level that corresponds to a volume of three cubic centimeters, there is a black line which serves as an invariable datum point. A rubber bulb of twenty-eight cubic centimeters capacity is fixed to a tube which reaches its bottom, and is flanged at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... if it was an invariable sign of lunacy in America to take your breakfast in bed. Lucy couldn't say. All she knew was that nobody ever took it so in Greyridge, Vermont, unless they were on the point ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the twenty-four hours; it was the time of the moon, and the shadows that fell from the cocoanut leaves were so sharply defined that one involuntarily stepped over them. After a simple dinner and a dip in the soft sea, we awaited our invariable visitor, M. Donat Rimareau, the half-caste vice-president. As it was not the season for pearl fishing, there were no white men on the island, though now and again a schooner with a French captain would appear and disappear like ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... of any delay. Orders were therefore given to go at full speed, and by daylight we had made an offing of forty or fifty miles from the coast. Clear and pleasant weather enabled me to establish our position accurately—it was my invariable custom, at sea, during the war, to take my own observations—and early in the night we made the Mound Light ahead, for which I had shaped our course. The range lights were showing, and we crossed the bar without interference, but without a suspicion of anything ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... same time they formed the indictment against her which was, perhaps, best calculated to weigh upon her conscience. She saw it, holding them at arm's length, in enormous characters that ever stamped and blotted out the careful, taught-looking writing, and the invariable "God bless you, yours truly," at the end. They were all there, aridly complete, the limitations of the lady to whom she was helping Lindsay to bind himself without a gleam of possibility of escape or a rift through which tiniest hope could creep, to emerge smiling upon the other side. When she ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... said in the Upper House: "In all the course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communications with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw in the whole course ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... of accuracy must be perfect time and perfect notation of time. As has been said, we get our time from the stars. Thus the infinite and heavenly dominates the finite and earthly. Clocks are set to the invariable sidereal time. Sidereal noon is when we have turned ourselves under the point where the sun crosses the equator in March, called the vernal equinox. Sidereal clocks are figured to indicate twenty-four hours in a day: they tick exact seconds. To map stars we wish ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... sake most of the men in the district received Chunerbutty with courtesy. But his manager, a rough Welshman of the bad old school, who openly declared that he "loathed all niggers," treated him with invariable rudeness. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... them. In this way folkways arise. The young learn them by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time, provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform, universal in the group, imperative, and invariable. As time goes on, the folkways become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative. If asked why they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive people always answer that it is because they and their ancestors always have done so. A sanction also arises from ghost ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Miss Oldys remained in her chair looking at the tablet, which she was holding in the palm of her hand. The smile that had been on her face faded slowly from it and gave place to an expression of curiosity and almost strained attention. Her reverie was broken by the entrance of Mrs. Maple, and her invariable opening, "Oh, Miss, could I ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... his invariable habit, whenever he found that more than one agent or instrument was necessary, to employ them, as far as was possible, independently of each other. For instance, he had not at all communicated to Gillespie the fact of his having engaged ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... An invariable rule with regard to the food of children should be that their meals should be regular, that they should consist of good, varied, nourishing food taken at regular hours, and that nothing should be eaten between meals. The ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... me a dreadful old tyrant for keeping you slaving away at your classics and mathematics, because you recollect the work that you are often so unwilling to do, while the hours I give you for play quite slip your minds. Now, this is my invariable rule, that you shall do everything well: work hard when it's work, and play hard when ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... partakers of his holiness; that we may be his children, looking up to him as our father, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning; and who therefore will and can give us, his children, light, more and more to understand those his invariable and eternal laws, by which he has made earth and heaven; who has given us his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and will with him likewise ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... the general rubric already quoted, which permits such variation as the minister, moved by the Spirit of God, shall deem desirable. There is nothing to show that it was expected that the Lord's Prayer should be used as an invariable part of ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... indiscriminate outcry when moved by the excitement of the moment. Repeatedly I advised them to practise in concert three hearty cheers, these to be immediately followed, should the exuberance of the occasion warrant, by a ringing tiger. This I recall was the invariable habit of the playfellows described in such works as "Sanford and Merton" and "Thomas Brown's Schooldays." I also urged on them the substitution of the fine old English game of cricket for baseball, ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... feign to be asleep. At first Dawn suspected me of only pretending, but I was so emphatic in declaring that the fresh air and motion of the boat induced the sleep I could not woo in bed, that they grew to believe me, and carefully covering me from mosquitoes, it became invariable that at a certain distance on our homeward way the rower relinquished rowing, the steerer stopped steering, and the boat drifted down-stream with the gentle flow, while two-thirds of its occupants tasted ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... and she was often driven down from her secret chamber to the dining-room by the cold. When Dan came in and found her at work, he would sniff contemptuously or facetiously, according to his mood at the moment. "Wasting paper as usual, eh? Better be sewing on my buttons," was his invariable remark. Not that his buttons were ever off, or that Beth ever sewed them on either. She was too good an organiser to do other ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... like the French, Belgians and Italians, copied our practice, acquired during the South African War, of putting away these symbols of commissioned authority for the time being. They were not worn actually at the front; but officers were supposed to appear in them elsewhere just as used to be the invariable practice on the Continent in pre-war days. That our airmen should not possess swords took the Russians quite aback, a sabre being about as appropriate in an aeroplane as are spurs on a destroyer. Transporting a sword through ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the works of Boccaccio, a perpetual popularity. The establishment of a new and delightful dialect conferred an immortality on the works in which it was first fixed. The sonnets of Petrarch were, for the same reason, fated to survive his self-admired Africa, "the favourite of kings." The invariable traits of nature and feeling with which the novels, as well as the verses, abound, have doubtless been the chief source of the foreign celebrity of both authors; but Boccaccio, as a man, is no more to be estimated by that work, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... them with a great desire to convert them to Christianity. Indeed, throughout these volumes we trace an evident partiality to the Tartars as compared with the Chinese; and they furnish a fresh instance of the invariable absence of congeniality between Europeans of all nations and the natives of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... second of time is quickly learned and more easily estimated, perhaps, than any other interval of time; however, we describe here a little device which will accustom one to estimate it very accurately in a short time. The pendulum oscillates by an invariable law which says that a pendulum of a certain length will vibrate always in a corresponding period of time, whether it swings through a short arc or a long one. A pendulum thirty-nine and a half inches long will vibrate seconds by a single swing; one nine and seven-eighths inches long will ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... defensive, it seems also advisable to have the artillery not in reserve distributed at equal intervals in batteries along the whole line, since it is important to repel the enemy at all points. This must not, however, be regarded as an invariable rule; for the character of the position and the designs of the enemy may oblige the mass of the artillery to move to a wing or to ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... after taking a few hours' rest, Jules entered his wife's room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leaving the house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of light passing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across the face of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired her forehead and the freshness of her ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... weather came with the rush that was always so unexpected and so invariable, and another season was over. It was a busy, silent, thoughtful summer for Lydia. Of course (much to Lydia's distress), Ariadne had been weaned when her mother had been forced to leave her to "go out" again, and this necessitated ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... subject that physicians know nothing about." This was doubtless an extreme way of putting the case. Yet it was in a certain sense exactly true. There is one of the geysers in Iceland, into which visitors throw pebbles or turfs, with the invariable result of causing the disgusted geyser in a few minutes to vomit the dose out again, along with a great quantity of hot water, steam, and stuff. Now the doctor does know that some of his doses are pretty sure to work, as the traveler knows that his dose will ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... spirit and such commanding influence in that house. I also remember that when I became a private citizen up to the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus, when the opinions expressed by me had great weight in the senate, the feeling among all the loyalists was invariable. Afterwards, while you were holding the province of hither Spain with imperium and the Republic had no genuine consuls, but mere hucksters of provinces, mere slaves and agents of sedition, an accident threw my head as an apple of discord into the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... industry, which it is mere baseness not to pay toward the common burden; the supreme worth of the teacher's vocation;—these, even if they had been eloquently preached to her, could have been no more than faintly apprehended doctrines: the fact which wrought upon her was her invariable observation that for a lady to become a governess—to "take a situation"—was to descend in life and to be treated at best with a compassionate patronage. And poor Gwendolen had never dissociated happiness from personal pre-eminence ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot |
