"Lay claim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... earnestness and candor, to give it now your warm, your hearty support, so that you may not only assist in securing for yourselves and the public the great end of its establishment, but that you may, by and by, safely, and without the fear of successful contradiction, lay claim to the honor of being among its early friends and upholders. There is something noble and magnanimous in rendering substantial aid and support to a cause in the hour of its weakness and in the time of its need; whilst there is something not only selfish but mean, in stepping forward with proffers ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... own work is tainted with the spirit of advocacy it is not for him to say. He knows well that the author whom he has set himself to criticise is at least a writer of remarkable vigour and ability, and that he cannot lay claim to these qualities; but he has confidence in the power of truth—whatever that truth may be— to assert itself in the end. An open and fair field and full and free criticism are all that is needed to eliminate the effects ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... the lady for about a year, or a little longer; the gentleman only a few months; but I can scarcely lay claim to so an intimate a relation to them as 'friendship' would imply," answered the duke, evasively, and putting ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... passed through equal or greater dangers and privations than I, and are entitled to equal or greater credit. Reared in the wilderness and on the frontier of civilization, I was merely the product of environment, and lay claim to no particular distinction above those who were my companions. And yet, as I look back over the past, I must be excused for a feeling of pride in having been a part, however insignificant, in the building here on the western rim of the continent, of the ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... greatest honor to which Athens could lay claim was that she had been a democracy of sailors, her freemen serving their country as rowers and all her famous men as great ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Channel:—these traits in him made it very easy to understand why, after years of philandering with Cicely Farrell, he was now, apparently, alienated from her, and provoked by her. But then, why did he still pursue her?—why did he still lay claim to the privileges of their old intimacy, and why did Cicely allow ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his terms. A combination is supposed to have been entered into by the chief demanders of indemnities, by which they have bound themselves to resist all farther extortions. They do not, however, know the man they have to deal with; he will, perhaps, find out some to lay claim to their own private and hereditary property whom he will produce and support, and who certainly will have the same right to pillage them as they had to the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... ladyship an inkling, before long, that I'm not quite so stupid as I seem to be. She mustn't imagine she can "vamp" my Kaikobad with impunity. It's a case of any port in a storm, I suppose, for she has to practise on somebody. But I must say she looks well on horseback and can lay claim to a poise that always exacts its toll of respect. She rides hard, though I imagine she would be unwittingly cruel to her mount. Yet she has been more offhanded and friendly, the last two or three times she ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... superficially will as easily see that it is not all fact. In what proportions it is composed of either would probably require a very acute critic accurately to determine. As the Editor makes no pretensions to such acumen,—as he can lay claim to only an imperfect knowledge of the principal personage in the volume, and never had any personal acquaintance with the singular youth, some traits of whose character and some glimpses of whose ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... of Mordred.] Mordred the traitor immediately took advantage of his uncle's absence to lay claim to the throne; and loudly declaring that Arthur had been slain, he tried to force Guinevere to marry him. As she demurred, he kept her a close prisoner, and set her free only when she pretended to agree with his wishes, and asked permission to go to ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... as official interpreter for one of us?" queried Don Ruy. "I hold it best that the bond be understood lest the beauty be sent beyond reach—and some of our best men squander time on her trail! Since you, good father, have Jose,—I will lay claim to this Cleopatra who calls herself by another name,—a fire brand should be kept within vision. Your pardon, Eminence—and you to the head of the council in ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... he shall be punished with death, and his property shall be confiscated. Suits about these matters shall take place before the tribes, unless the plaintiff and defendant have got rid of the accusation either before their neighbours or before judges chosen by them. If a man lay claim to any animal or anything else which he declares to be his, let the possessor refer to the seller or to some honest and trustworthy person, who has given, or in some legitimate way made over the property to him; if ...
— Laws • Plato
... murdered his two nephews, he was crowned king, as Richard III, much pleased that his plans had succeeded so well. He thought that now nobody could lay claim to the throne. But he was mistaken. One person did claim it. This was Henry Tudor, earl ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... Soviet Republic of Russia, I am told, no one can lay claim to the title of worker unless his hands are hardened and roughened by toil, and LENIN and TROTSKY have to take their turns at the rack, like the commonest executioner. In England we are not nearly so particular about the manual test, and, besides feeling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... continent. From this it appears, that the Missouri affords the most extensive navigation of any river we know; so that it may justly be compared to an inland sea, which spreads over nine tenths of all the continent of North America; all which the French pretended to lay claim to, for no other reason but because they were possessed of a paltry settlement at the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... formulate a classification in which the various groups should be so defined as to obviate the interference of personal equation in the work of applying it, hoping thus to achieve greater accuracy. In this we can lay claim to only partial success; for, in the first place, having satisfactorily defined a number of groups, we found it necessary in the end to provide a special group for unclassified reactions, into which falls more than one-third of the ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... did, with the exception of the lighter forms of it in Catullus, of the grimmer in Lucretius—those greatest and most un-Roman of Roman poets.[204] In all the wide and splendid literature of French before the nineteenth century only Rabelais and Moliere[205] can lay claim to it. Romanticism brings humour in its train, as Classicism brings wit; but it is curious how slow was the Romanticisation of French in this respect, with one exception. There is no real humour in Hugo, Vigny, George Sand, Balzac, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... connected with many of these less known matters, claim for my master a reputation wholly different from that given to him in any garbled "history" of his life. I lay claim in his name for foresight beyond that of any man of his time. He made mistakes, but he made them bravely, grandly, and consistently. Where his convictions were enlisted, he had no reservations, and he used every means, every available weapon, as I have shown. But he was ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... Glasgow cannot lay claim to a hereditary aristocracy. She has, however, what is infinitely better for the purposes of commercial, political, and social progress—an aristocracy of energy, talent, and moral worth. There are very few of her merchants and manufacturers who have not been ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... afraid you will lose anything by it," he said in a bitter tone; "you know I shall never lay claim to my father's property, ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... and Westerners. As events proved, there was no national organization to take its place. One of the two political ties had snapped that had held together North and South. The Democratic party alone could lay claim to a national ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... to posterity by his muse. Of these, "The complaint of a lover wearing black and tawny" has ceased, in the change of manners and fashions, to interest or affect the reader. "Fancy and Desire" may still lay claim to the praise of ingenuity, though the idea is perhaps not original even here, and has since been exhibited with very considerable improvements both in French and English, especially in Ben Jonson's celebrated song, "Tell ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... wed her if he will, but he will be a duke no longer. In fact, he will be an outcast with no title to lay claim to, if indeed the Babbianians will leave him a head at all; whilst I, at least, though not a duke with a tottering throne, am a count with lands, small but securely held, and shall become a duke if Gian Maria ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... in many of the cuts; and in both, the architecture of the buildings and the disposition of the gardens have a kindred and entirely English air. Whoever he was, the author of these wonderful little pictures may lay claim to be the best illustrator of Bunyan.[43] They are not only good illustrations, like so many others; but they are like so few, good illustrations of Bunyan. Their spirit, in defect and quality, is still the same as his own. The designer also has lain down and dreamed a dream, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not, so far as I know, lay claim to the "honors" of any medical institution, it cannot be doubted that his knowledge of physiology, to say nothing of anatomy, pathology, and medicine, is such as to entitle him to a high rank among medical men; and I have, therefore, without ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... literature. It is too well known, too easily accessible, for any snippets to be quoted from it here. But with the English version of Mandeville at the beginning of our period, and Malory's Arthur completed in 1469 and published in 1483, it is evident that we can lay claim to two masterpieces which have not yet lost their hold on modern readers. The simplicity and feeling of Everyman has lately obtained recognition. I hope that, when boys and girls are taught a little more of their own language, the ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... verse is to show that as Janaka rules his kingdom without being attached to it, he cannot lay claim to the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... colonisation of Tasmania. Although Bass and Flinders had in 1798 circumnavigated the island, adding extensive discoveries to those already made by Furneaux, Hayes, Bligh, and other British seamen, it was realised in Sydney that the French might lay claim to some portion ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... each other; a defect that sensibly lessens the grandeur of the north front. A few feet, more or less, in such a case, may carry the architect too much without, or too much within, the just proportions. I lay claim to very little science on the subject, but I have frequently observed since, that, to my own eye, (and the uninitiated can have no other criterion,) these towers, as seen from the parks, above the tops of the trees, have ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... make it noble, too, of exquisite shape and colour, possessing a voice capable of we know not what compass and expression; just as we can turn it out by the thousand, degrading the name of art to which it has the impudence to lay claim, on every feature of its brazen face stamped that nationality which, so far from seeking, it in vain tries to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... "Robinson Crusoe," seems to be the only one we can properly lay claim to as being "of our own make," so to speak, and written by Daniel De Foe, and, in the main, from the imagination. De Foe, it has been stated, derived his idea for this story from the adventures of one, Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman, who had been a castaway ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... blanks they dispose of; but when a great prize happens to be drawn, the newspapers are presently filled with it, and the world is sure to be informed at whose office it was sold: indeed, commonly two or three different offices lay claim to the honour of having disposed of it; by which, I suppose, the adventurers are given to understand that certain brokers are in the secrets of Fortune, and ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Purpose. Having by their bad Courses made themselves contemptible to all who know them, they will endeavour to stop the Mouths of all Opposers, by barely naming the Minute Philosopher; and having, by the Credit of that Book, repell'd the Censure they had deserv'd, insult the Laity, and lay claim to the Honour and Deference, which ought only to be paid to worthy Divines. These I will take in Hand, and convince, that you have not wrote to justify those Ecclesiasticks, who by their Practice contradict the Doctrine of Christ; and that they ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... Knight, "in dealing with Eustace, her nephew. There will be no need to apply to the King. The ambition was his mother's. Now Eleanor is dead, he cares not for the Castle. Next month he weds an heiress, with large estates, and has no wish to lay claim to Mora's home. All is now once more as it was when she left it. Her own people are in charge. I plan to take her there when we leave Warwick, riding ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... upon the public, the author would also solicit their indulgence, for the manner in which the task has been performed. The only merit to which he can lay claim, is that of having faithfully described what he saw, and the impressions which were produced upon him at the time. In other respects it is feared that a work, which was entirely (and consequently very hastily) prepared for the press from the original notes, whilst voyaging from Australia ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... some protection against the insults to which your conduct has exposed me. I write in the hope that you may possibly possess some of the generosity which you have several times denied that I can lay claim to. I will keep whatever appointment you may make at any ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... before their eyes, were prone to make merry and get fuddled with mint-julep and apple-toddy. They were, moreover, great horse-racers and cock-fighters, mighty wrestlers and jumpers, and enormous consumers of hoe-cake and bacon. They lay claim to be the first inventors of those recondite beverages, cock-tail, stone-fence, and sherry-cobbler, and to have discovered the gastronomical merits of terrapins, soft ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Sophist; upon this view, the Sophist may be regarded as the answer to the problems about One and Being which have been raised in the Parmenides. Any of these arrangements may suggest new views to the student of Plato; none of them can lay claim to an exclusive ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... optimistic note is set upon with a ferocity which becomes clear if we bear in mind that hope is the pioneer's preserving arm. I do not mean to discredit the validity of hope and optimism. I can honestly lay claim to both. America was builded on a dream of fair lands: a dream that has come true. In the infinitely harder problems of social and psychic health, the dream persists. We believe in our Star. And we do not believe in our experience. America is filled with poverty, with social disease, with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Faa makes it possible that they are as old as the middle of the seventeenth century. None of the pastoral ballads, indeed, can show any credentials which would suggest an earlier date than the second half of the sixteenth century, nor can any of them lay claim ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... was not what it had been. [See Arp and all his works.] There had come, as the years went by, a few recruits; but faces were missing: the two Tabors had gone, and Uncle Joe Davey could no longer lay claim to the patriarchship; he had laid it down with a half-sigh and gone his way. Eskew himself was now the oldest of the conscript fathers, the Colonel and Squire Buckalew pressing him closely, with Peter Bradbury no great ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... which differs most from the Italian school,—it is the antithesis, or, to use a phrase that enraged Leopardi, "the opposite pole in art." The Italian and the Dutch are the two most original schools of painting, or, as some say, the only two schools that can honestly lay claim to originality. The others are only daughters or younger sisters, which bear a certain resemblance to their elders. So Holland even in its art offers us that which we most desire in ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... house, fitted with everything that could make him comfortable for life;—how, when all hope was gone, my unexpected appearance brought a crowd about me, each one anxious to assist me in my distress, though some maliciously said, in order to lay claim to the reward;—and how I was finally brought again to my senses through the care of our clever canine doctors, and the kind ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... Pindar's own phrase, 'a black heart forged when the flame was cold?'" "I pass over then," said I, "the similar proclamation at Sparta, 'After the Lesbian singer,' in honour and memory of old Terpander, for it is a similar case. But you yourselves certainly lay claim to be better than other Boeotians as descended from Opheltes,[846] and than other Phocians because of your ancestor Daiphantus,[847] and you were the first to give me help and assistance in preserving for the Lycormae and Satilaei their hereditary privilege of wearing crowns as descendants of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... non-existence of Homer ever arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in favour of our early ideas on the subject: let us now see what are the discoveries to which more modern investigations lay claim. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Fosdick. "My friend Stephens, here, is a man of few words; he credits me with more talkativeness than he'll lay claim to. So I'm to tell the tale. There mayn't be much in it, and there may be a lot. We think there's a big lot! But this is what it comes to: Ashton was a close man, a reserved man. However, one night, when the three of us were having a quiet cigar in a corner of the smoking saloon ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... in the grave. He mused on Lysia's scornful words with a perplexed pain. Was he then so selfish? "The one great absolute 'I' scrawled on the face of Nature!" Could that apply to him? Surely not! since in his present state of mind he could hardly lay claim to any distinct personality, seeing that that personality was forever merging itself and getting lost in the more clearly perfect identity of Sah-luma, whom he regarded with a species of profound hero-worship such as one man seldom feels for another. To call ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... slavish service. Let us do our work like men,—till the soil, build homes, refine brute matter, be learned in law, in medicine, in theology; but let us never chain our souls to what they work in. No earthly work can lay claim to the whole life of man; for every man is born for God, for the Universe, and may not narrow his mind. We must have some practical thing to do in the world,—some way of living which will place us in harmony with ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... study of mankind was, not man, as that age thought, but man reduced to his beggarly elements—a being animated solely by the sensuous springs of pleasure and pain, which should properly, as Carlyle thought, go on all fours, and not lay claim to the dignity of being moral. All things were reduced to what they seemed, robbed of their suggestiveness, changed into definite, sharp-edged, mutually exclusive particulars. The world was an aggregate of isolated facts, or, at the best, a mechanism into which particulars were ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... to enforce an inherited claim to the crown of Naples, Charles VIII in 1494 started that career of foreign war and aggrandizement which was to mark the history of France throughout following centuries. His efforts in Italy were far from successful, but his heir, Louis XII (1498-1515), continued to lay claim to Naples and to the duchy of Milan as well. In 1504 Louis was obliged to resign Naples to King Ferdinand of Aragon, in whose family it remained for two centuries, but about Milan continued a conflict, with varying fortunes, ultimately merging into the general struggle ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... against a clump of piles driven about in the centre of the stream. These had evidently been planted as the extreme outwork of a long shunting boom. Men working there could shunt into the sawmill enclosure that portion of the drive to which they could lay claim. The remainder could proceed down the open channel to the left. That was the theory. Unfortunately, this division of the river's width so congested matters that the whole drive ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... along with Lord Nelville, and said to him on their way home, "allow, my dear Oswald, that I may lay claim to some merit for not having paid my court to so charming a lady." "But," observed Nelville, "it seems, according to general opinion, that she is not easy to please in that respect." "It is said so," replied the Count, "but I can hardly believe it. A single woman of independent means ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... a well-formed conviction that this strange she belonging to the Tarmangani must look with admiration upon so handsome a creature as Go-lat, for there could be no doubt in the mind of any that his beauty entirely eclipsed such as the hairless white ape might lay claim to. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... know of as many as ten satellites circling around Saturn, which is more than any other planet of the solar system can lay claim to. Two of these, however, are very recent discoveries; one, Phoebe, having been found by photography in August 1898, and the other, Themis, in 1904, also by the same means. For both of these we are indebted to Professor W.H. Pickering. Themis is said to be the faintest object in the solar ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... him, nor seek to alter his laws; but that they should own, confess, stand by, and acknowledge him for their rightful king, in defiance to any that do or hereafter shall, by any pretence, law, or title whatever, lay claim to the town of Mansoul; thinking, belike, that Shaddai had not power to absolve them from this covenant with death, and agreement with hell. Nor did the silly Mansoul stick or boggle at all at this most monstrous engagement; but, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale, they swallowed ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... cards (Vol. ii., p. 462.), I would throw out a suggestion to all your readers for notices of similar emblematic playing cards: whether such were ever used for playing with? what period so introduced? and where? as both France and Spain lay claim to their first introduction. I see that Mr. Caton exhibited at one of the meetings of the Archaeological Institute this season a curious little volume of small county maps, numbered so as to serve as ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... cooperative affairs. Though I am only anxious to shoulder my share of the responsibility in the escapades, as well as in every other line of life, my brother Algernon possessed any genius to which the family could lay claim, in that as in every other line. He was my father over again, while I was a second edition of my mother. Father was waiting to get into the sixth form at Rugby when he was only thirteen years old. He was a brilliant scholar ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... professes to speak nothing but the plain truth. He does not aspire to an elegant style of writing, adorned with the ornaments of the orator and the scholar; but to one quality may lay claim, without being thought a vain or immodest man. He speaks with an earnest sincerity. Whatever he says comes from his heart, and is spoken with all the sympathy ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... to me that there is nothing in connection with the mysteries of religion which thou dost not know.' The fowler replied, 'O good and great Brahmana, thou shalt perceive with thine own eyes, all the virtue that I lay claim to, and by reason of which I have attained this blissful state. Rise, worshipful sir, and quickly enter this inner apartment. O virtuous man, it is proper that thou shouldst see my father and my mother.' Markandeya continued, 'Thus addressed the Brahmana went in, and beheld a fine beautiful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the 145 million uneducated tillers of the soil. There is nothing quite like them in this country, though the expression "the professional class" describes them in part. Broadly speaking, they are people who have passed through school and university, and can therefore lay claim to a certain amount of culture; their birth is a matter of no moment, they may be the children of peasants or of noblemen. It is from this "class," if we can call it so, that both the bureaucracy and the revolutionary movement draw their ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... poetry, with but three necessary exceptions, are complete wholes, and represent, as fairly as single pieces can, the respective merits and styles of their authors. The selections in prose cannot, of course, lay claim to this excellence; but they are all complete in themselves, or have been made so by short introductions; and it is hoped that they too are not unfairly representative of their authors. In many cases they are of somewhat unusual length; by this, however, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Tyburn, the only Place that we poor Rogues can claim for an Inheritance. Trust a Woman, and with a Matter of such Importance, what a simple Dog am I? I cou'd find in my Heart to run away: And that were base to run from a woman; I can lay claim to nothing but her Vows, and those the Women ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... claims the honour of the invention of the screw steamer. At Trieste and Vienna are statues erected to Joseph Ressel, on whose behalf his countrymen lay claim to the invention; and patents for some sort of a screw date ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... my soul, in an affair you have often hinted to me, and I take no pleasure to remember: I hope you will at least think my aversion reasonable; and that being thus indisputably free from all obligations to Myrtilla as a husband, I may be permitted to lay claim to Sylvia, as a lover, and marry myself more effectually by my everlasting vows, than the priest by his common method could do to any other woman less beloved; there being no other way at present left by ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... drew back a little with all the haughtiness of a sensitive person ill at ease with the world, and expecting from it nothing but rebuffs and insolence. I fancied that an anxious suspicion crossed his mind that I was about to lay claim to some payment for lessons, of which he had hitherto ignored the necessity. I waited till the greater part of the crowd had squeezed through the narrow door of the amphitheatre, dismissed the loiterers, and then turned to my companion with a frank air of relief, as to an equal with whom I ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... in fact, an insult towards the man and towards the sovereign; and finally, because—and the word, too, burnt like a hot iron—because, in fact, it was nothing but a mystification after all. This girl, therefore, who, in strictness, could not lay claim to beauty, or birth, or great intelligence—who had been selected by Madame herself, on account of her unpretending position, had not only aroused the king's regard, but had, moreover, treated him with disdain—he, the king, a man who, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that these would undoubtedly be faults in another style of poetry, but not in this. The late M. de Voiture is a proof in point. We need only read the works in which he brings to life again the character of Marot. For our Author does not lay claim to praise for himself, nor to rounds of applause from the public for having put a few tales into rhyme. Without doubt he has entered on quite a new path, and has pursued it to the utmost of his power, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... admiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not through suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her ability, will power, and her endurance in the struggle for liberty. Where are the women in any suffrage country or State that can lay claim to such a victory? When we consider the accomplishments of woman in America, we find also that something deeper and more powerful than suffrage has helped her in ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... when they do exist, it is usually with the pretension and effort that so commonly accompany infant knowledge. The struggle is only so much the more severe, in consequence of the late pele mele, while men lay claim to a consideration that would seem beyond their reach, in an older and more regulated community. It is during this period that manners suffer the most, since they want the nature and feeling of the first condition, while they are exposed to the rudest assaults ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... general outline with the ideas of the grand prototype of the eternal city, derives a degree of importance which a minuter inspection would not confer. There are numerous churches in Berlin, but three only which lay claim to particular notice, St. Nicolas, the French Church, (standing on one side of the above mentioned square) and the Catholic Church. The architecture of these is not pure in any single instance; it having been the prevailing taste of the period ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... Little Miss Grouch, aggrieved, "and you want my lawyer. Is there anything else of mine you'd like to lay claim to?" ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... plundered, and were consequently obliged to go supperless to rest. It was not till the following day that they learned the death of Cyrus; tidings which converted their triumph into sorrow and dismay. They were desirous that Ariaeus who now commanded the army of Cyrus, should lay claim to the Persian crown, and offered to support his pretensions; but Ariaeus answered that the Persian grandees would not tolerate such a claim; that he intended immediately to retreat; and that, if the Greeks wished to accompany ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... will." And then, with a laugh, "I did not know that you gave yourself out to be manly," he added. "It was one of the points that I inclined to like about you; inclined, I believe, to admire. The names of virtues exercise a charm on most of us; we must lay claim to all of them, however incompatible; we must all be both daring and prudent; we must all vaunt our pride and go to the stake for our humility. Not so you. Without compromise you were yourself: a pretty sight. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on my life, I do not know how they will take this thing or that, with scorn or tears or shame or what, or again with some surprising turn of softness and (if I may make bold to say it) a pliability of mind to which few of us men lay claim and none give honour. But the last mood was not Barbara's, and, as I looked at her, I dared not tell her where lay my only hope of help in Dover. I put my wits to work how I could win the aid for her, and keep the hand a secret. Such deception ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... or ancestress born again and therefore should be his or her equal, in practice they appear to admit that their forefathers of the remote alcheringa or dream time were endowed with many marvellous powers which their modern reincarnations cannot lay claim to, and that accordingly these ancestral spirits were more to be reverenced, were in fact more worshipful, than their living representatives. On this subject Messrs. Spencer and Gillen observe: "The Central Australian ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... likely, enter upon some new villany, which may engross him: and it may be given out, that you are gone to lay claim to the protection of your cousin ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... again found himself at liberty, she induced the frankly unwilling proprietor of the Cliff Hotel—the only hotel of any pretension to which Monkshaven could lay claim—to take him into his employment as an odd-job man. How she accomplished this feat it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that she did accomplish it, and perhaps Jane Crab delved to the root of the matter in the terse comment which the circumstances elicited from her: ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... make the most disturbance and do the most damage. The Brahmans, Rajas and several classes of Sudras are content to remain neutral and take no part in these quarrels. The opposition between the two factions arises from certain exclusive privileges to which both lay claim. But as these alleged privileges are nowhere clearly defined and recognised, they result in confusion and uncertainty, and are with difficulty capable of settlement. When one faction trespasses on the so-called right of the other, tumults arise which spread ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Democratic party lay claim to any anti-trust glory? Is it not a Republican administration that is at present investigating the alleged evils ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... how a girl could be so wrapped up in the memories of a murdered father, that no place was left in her mind for the tendernesses of a present adorer. After all, this father, what was he? A middle-aged and, doubtless, quite uninteresting burgher, who could lay claim to but one distinction, that of great wealth, most of which had been amassed by ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... does not. Nor is the dictum true. We authors who have studied a subject for years, are, I am convinced, ready enough to learn, but we justly object to sink our opinions and our judgment in those of a counsellor who has only "crammed" for his article. Moreover, we must be sure that he can fairly lay claim to the three requisites of an adviser—capacity to advise rightly, honesty to advise truly, and courtesy to advise decently. Now the Saturday Review has neither this, that, nor the other qualification. Indeed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the institution, but from those who came destitute of property, and who, generally speaking, have been no benefit to the society in any way, but, on the contrary, after having enjoyed its hospitality, and brought no small share of trouble upon the people, have had the assurance to lay claim to wages which they never earned, or property to which they never had any just ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... nature that I write this book. Like the phenomena of physical and psychical life those of social life should be classified into certain groups and each group investigated with regard to its origin and development. Only when treated in this way can history lay claim to the rank and honour of a science in the highest sense of the term, as forming an important part of Sociology, the youngest of the principal ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... that Atheism is more than the speculative philosophy of a few, that it is in sober truth the logical outcome of mental growth. So far as any phase of human life can be called inevitable Atheism may lay claim to being inescapable. All mental growth can be seen leading to it, just as we can see one stage of social development giving a logical starting point for another stage, and which could have been foretold had ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... true that Colonel Shute had probably never led so unquiet a life while fighting the French as he did now, while governing this province of Massachusetts Bay. But his troubles consisted almost entirely of dissensions with the Legislature. The king had ordered him to lay claim to a fixed salary; but the representatives of the people insisted upon paying him only such sums from year to year as they ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Carlyle's picture is drawn from the neighborhood of a plantation, and so are Trollope's. Mr. Trollope, it is true, takes all imaginable pains to write himself down an ass. By his own ostentatious confessions, the only intellectual comprehensiveness to which he can lay claim is an astonishingly comprehensive ignorance. In view of this, his sage discoursings upon grave questions of political and social economy have about as comical an effect as the moralizings of a harlequin. But he is a lively describer of what passes under his eyes, and his sketches ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... by that Ship and Goods. It is reported That the Dutch of Curacao have loaded Three Sloops with those Goods, and sent them to Holland; perhaps it were not amiss to send and watch their Arrivall in Holland, if it be practicable to lay Claim to them there. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... shoemakers and shopkeepers; ministers, bankers, and doctors; printers, booksellers, editors; knights, earls—nay, a duke; factors and wine-merchants; army officers, and officers of Excise. His female correspondents were women of superior intelligence and accomplishments. They can lay claim to a large proportion of his letters. Mrs. McLehose takes forty-eight; Mrs. Dunlop, forty-two; Maria Riddell, eighteen; Peggy Chalmers, eleven. These four ladies received among them rather more than one-fourth of the whole of his published correspondence. No four of his male correspondents can be ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... covering up the breaches, but also in barring the entrance of fresh air from without. If it be true that, in pursuing its system of tutelage and oppression, the Russian Government was genuinely actuated by the desire to graft the modicum of European culture, to which the Russia of Nicholas I. could lay claim, upon the Jews, it certainly achieved the reverse of what it aimed at. The hand which dealt out blows could not disseminate enlightenment; the hammer which was lifted to shatter Jewish separatism had only the effect of hardening ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... could lay claim upon his personal assets. To surrender these possessions proved no act of self-sacrifice, considering his wife's fortune, upon which the law had no claim. His wife, however, joined him in the act of renunciation, and they stood together penniless. Beyond this point there could be no legal, and, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... extremely well, though a severe critic might have thought she was OVER dressed for the streets, still she had alighted from a carriage. Her face was decidedly handsome, and her person exquisitely proportioned. As a whole, I had scarcely ever seen a young creature that could lay claim to more of the loveliness of her sex. Both the young ladies who had just left us were pleasing and pretty; and to own the truth, there was an air of modest refinement about them, that was not so apparent in this new visiter; but the dazzling appearance ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... Its characteristic is its repudition of both theology and metaphysics as pseudo-sciences, and its high esteem for science. That esteem is not disturbed by the confession that "noumenal causes,"—that is, the actual reality of things,—are unknown; for we can still lay claim to valid knowledge of the laws of phenomena. Having acknowledged that natural things as known are merely phenomena, positivism treats them in all respects as if they were realities; and it rejoices in the triumphant progress of ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Black Gang Chine when their lives are secure from Dutch Bill," he answered. "Don't be terrified, my queen; though I cannot lay claim, like Prospero, to having raised this storm by my art magic, yet it perforce gives me time to make you understand who and what I am, and how I have recovered my better angel to give her no mean nor desperate career. It will be better thus than with the suddenness with ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... meaning in its appropriate form. The artistic ideal is not to be thus understood. For any content whatever is capable, according to the standard of its own nature, of adequate representation, but yet it does not for that reason lay claim to artistic beauty in the ideal sense. Judged by the standard of ideal beauty, even such correct representation will be defective. In this connection we may remark that the defects of a work of art are not to be considered simply as always due to the incapacity ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... is prophetic,—an anticipation of manhood for this boy, who is the King's son, child of Eternity, and only changeling of Time. Wherever any magnanimity is revealed, I lay claim to it. The courage of heroes, the purity of angels, the generosity of God, is no more than I need. Only show virtue unmixed at the heart of this system, and you open my destiny in that. If there be but the least spark of pure benignity, it is a fire will spread through all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... poverty as social stock-in-trade, and charity towards their neighbors as security reserve fund. We may therefore imagine what bitter and ardent rivalry must exist between the different congregations with regard to the various estates that each can lay claim to; with what ineffable satisfaction the richer society crushes the poorer beneath its inventory of houses, and farms and paper securities! Envy and hateful jealousy, rendered still more irritable by the leisure of a cloistered ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Thomas, 'who is not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and who is not, in a greater or less degree, an admirer of them. Now, I hold opinions in reference to these particular members of the quadruped creation, which may lay claim (as I believe) to the disastrous distinction of being unpartaken by any other human being, civilised or savage, over the whole surface of the earth. Taking the horse as an animal in the abstract, Francis, I cordially despise him from ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... dream of attempting it; otherwise the will would not be wanting. The evil which you anticipate is already perceptible in its effects. Well would it be if men were as moderate in their desire of wealth, as those who enter the ranks of literature, and lay claim to distinction there, are in their desire of knowledge! A slender capital suffices to begin with, upon the strength of which they claim credit, and obtain it as readily as their fellow adventurers ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... Liddesdale yeomen with whom he has been acquainted, and whose hospitality he has shared in his rambles through that wild country, at a time when it was totally inaccessible save in the manner described in the text, might lay claim to be the prototype of the rough, but faithful. hospitable, and generous farmer. But one circumstance occasioned the name to be fixed upon a most respectable individual of this class, now no more. Mr. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... all publick questions it has hitherto happened, fame is, I suppose, the voice of the majority; for, if the two parties are equal in their numbers, fame will be equal; then how great must be the majority before it can lay claim to this powerful auxiliary? and how shall that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... work, called 'Manhood,' is one of the few books now coming before the public on such a subject which can lay claim to the character of being strictly professional, at the same time that it is fully intelligible to all who read it. The moral and medical precepts given in it render ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... wish to lay claim to any special prescience or wisdom, for, in spite of lucid intervals of foresight, we were all deceived by Germany. Nearly fifty years of peace had blinded us to fifty years of relentless preparation for war. But if we were deceived by the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch |
