"Mean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... free forest would mean death to those raw lads who have come out from England or from the provinces," said Fritz gravely. "It would be hardly more than a choice of deaths; and yet I would sooner die sword in hand, hewing my way to freedom, than cooped up between walls where ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... belief. I don't mind giving up a little of my claim, just a thousand or so, for ready cash. The old sinner ought to be dead, and can't last long. My belief is when 'e's gone I'm so circumstanced I shall get the whole. Whether or no, I've gone in for 'elping the captain with all my savings, and I mean to stick ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... they are studded with old cities renowned in history and rich in relics of the past. But there is no redeeming feature in the Manchegan landscape; it has all the sameness of the desert without its dignity; the few towns and villages that break its monotony are mean and commonplace, there is nothing venerable about them, they have not even the picturesqueness of poverty; indeed, Don Quixote's own village, Argamasilla, has a sort of oppressive respectability in the prim regularity of its streets and houses; everything ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... prostrate and panting state subject rejoice over the wondrous dispatch with which its parts can be dismembered, the arithmetical accuracy with which its financial plethora can be depleted. Eccentric in its motions and universal in its aspirations, for the genius of this age no conception is too mean, no subject too intricate, no enterprise too rash, no object too sacred. It will condescend with equal readiness upon torturing a pauper, fleecing the farmer, robbing a church, or undertaking "the command of the Channel fleet at a moment's notice." With Mr Secretary Chadwick, schooled in police ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... mean that I shall be appointed to the command of the Kestrel? I have not passed ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... mean that to these wheels return The honor of their influence and the blame, Perhaps his bow ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... Nushirvan, or Chosroes, conducted in person the siege of Dara; and although that important fortress had been left destitute of troops and magazines, the valor of the inhabitants resisted above five months the archers, the elephants, and the military engines of the Great King. In the mean while his general Adarman advanced from Babylon, traversed the desert, passed the Euphrates, insulted the suburbs of Antioch, reduced to ashes the city of Apamea, and laid the spoils of Syria at the feet of his master, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven! And on the other, scorn of sordid gain, Unblemished honor, truth without a stain, Faith, justice, reverence, charitable wealth, And, for the poor and humble, laws which give, Not the mean right to buy the right to live, But life, and home, and health! To doubt the end were want of trust in God, Who, if he has decreed That we must pass a redder sea Than that which rang to Miriam's holy glee, Will surely raise at need A Moses with ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... old fellow mean?" said Malbone in Harry's ear, as they came to a protected place and could hear each other, "by talking of Brenton's ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... if I did," replied Frank honestly, "I did not mean to. Mother knows how to be very nice to any one she likes and very freezing to any one she doesn't. She fell in love with you the night you sang, and I knew she would. That is why I almost begged you on my knees to sing," he added earnestly, "so please do not ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... the meaning of the oracle; there must be another, that is nobler. If this blind man would tell us who he is and why and with what object he has led us here, we should no doubt understand what our oracle really does mean. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... mean! What are you thinking of!" said Thomas, with a decisive wave of his hands. "Have you not seen what a number of armed soldiers and servants of the Temple there are here? Moreover, the trial has not yet taken place, and we must not interfere with the court. Surely he understands that Jesus ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Mr. CLEVELAND:—I did not mean to stir up anybody. I want to settle these unhappy points of difference here. I want to settle them to-day, now, this very hour. Suppose we do not settle them! Does not border war follow? does not civil war come? I speak to all of you, both North and South. What becomes of your property ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... phenomenon took place. The iron industry tends to affirm itself in France; she has the iron and now she wants coal. Should she succeed in getting it, German production would be doomed. To deprive Germany of Upper Silesia would mean killing production after having disorganized it at the ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... another set of enactments with the completion of a successful campaign of conquest over the Ruthenians, and shows Frode chiefly as a wise and civilising statesman, making conquest mean progress. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... "I mean, madame, that God did not give you so much beauty that you should use it in the decoying of an unfortunate, that you should hire it at an assassin's fee to serve the crapulous ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... I mean I haven't seen anything that's easy to describe. Some green things which pass right close to us—so close and so fast that they give one a slap in the eye. A flat field turning 'round and 'round and over there, a little pointed steeple—it's ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... don't mean anything, only I do wish I had my hat. I always did like all black. I can't imagine what ails Try, if ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... taken from chairs that are next to one another; and remember the important point of making the two children change sides, as this latter is the distinctive feature of the puzzle. By "change sides" I simply mean that if, for example, you first move 1 and 2 to the vacant chairs, then the first (the outside) chair will be occupied by 2 and the second ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... that strange! I never expected to live to see that. What is your trade? I mean how do you get your living? What is your line ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a half-dollar." The factor opened a drawer and drew forth a handful of brass tokens which he handed to Connie for inspection. "These are skins, or made beaver. We offer an Indian so many skins for his pack of furs. He has little idea of what we mean when we tell him he has five hundred skins' worth of fur, so we count out five hundred of these made beaver—he can see them, can feel them—the value of his catch is immediately reduced to something concrete—something he can understand—then we take away ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Knowing the jealous sovereign under whom he served, he had gone over to France to obtain Henry's sanction to the Irish enterprise, but had been answered by the monarch, in oracular phrases, which might mean anything or nothing. Determined, however, to interpret these doubtful words in his own sense, he despatched his vanguard early in the spring of the year 1170, under the command of his uncle Herve and a company of 10 knights and 70 archers, under Raymond, son of William, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... "Then you mean to say," answered Mark, in a voice that was hard from the effort at self-control, "that you think it is my fault that lies are told against me, although you do ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... from the form and taste, I greatly doubt. Mr. Bridge put it again into his coat pocket, and walked through the street with L10,000 in his pocket. I wonder he is not hustled and robbed. I have sometimes envied rich citizens, but it was a mean and erroneous feeling. This man, who, I suppose, must be as rich as a Jew, had a shabby look in the Duke's presence, and seemed just a better sort of pedlar. Better be a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... used before vowel sounds, and a before consonant sounds. Remember that a vowel sound does not necessarily mean beginning with a vowel, nor does consonant sound mean beginning with a consonant, because English spelling does not coincide closely with the sound of words. Examples: "a house," "an orange," "a European," "an ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... re-mustering of his cardinal presumption, he thought he could shortly render himself qualified to speak. I admired the very presumption of the theory, and finally told him to call the next day on my agent, Mr. Schenck, at such a number (Martin Baum's) in Maine Street, to whom, in the mean time, I transferred the hoax, and duly informing Schenck of the affair; and I do not recollect, at this time, how he shuffled ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... has occurred to me. Well, never mind, if you are busy; perhaps I had better not state it crudely, though it is not true that it happens every hour. I shall turn it over in my mind throughout the evening service. I mean to be there, just to let them see. They think that I am crushed, of course. They will see their mistake; and, Erema, you may come. The gale is over, and the evening bright. You sit by the fire, Mary, my dear; I shall not let you ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... mean time, Mr. Effingham began to discover that Chili was not paradise, nor its inhabitants saints; many thefts, robberies, and frauds, were practised upon him, for which he could obtain no redress from the contemptible magistrates; an earthquake, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... nae sae ignorant as ye wad pass for. Ye ken weel eneuch what I mean. What care I for the missionars mair nor ony ither o' the Lord's fowk, 'cep that they're mair like his fowk nor ony ither that I ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Master Benjamin, "that we build a wharf, for the purpose of carrying on our fisheries. You see these stones. The workmen mean to use them for the underpinning of a house; but that would be for only one man's advantage. My plan is to take these same stones and carry them to the edge of the water and build a wharf with them. This will not only enable us to carry on the fishing business with comfort ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... case and decide y^e matters, they agreed to chose 2. eminente men for moderators in the bussines. Lyfords faction chose M^r. White, a counselor at law, the other parte chose Re[v]e^d. M^r. Hooker, the minister, and many freinds on both sids were brought in, so as ther was a great assemblie. In y^e mean time, God in his providence had detected Lyford's evill cariage in Ireland to some freinds amongst y^e company, who made it knowne to M^r. Winslow, and directed him to 2. godly and grave witnesses, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... to York, to attend the meeting of the legislature, and I hope to return on Wednesday. The charge of this frontier will in the mean time devolve on Lieut.-Colonel Myers, who appears worthy of every confidence. The actual invasion of the province has compelled me to recall that portion of the militia whom I permitted to return home and work at harvest. I am prepared to hear of much discontent in consequence; the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... adequate substitute. His old faith is shaken, but no new one is established. Before, he could see God in clouds or hear him in the wind; but now he can scarcely see God in any thing. His physical system, in the mean while, deprived as it is of the forest atmosphere, in which it was alone fitted to exist and reach its greatest perfection, suffers even more than his mental one. And his whole man, both mental and physical, begins to degenerate, and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... feed, assimilate, and grow; in other words, they carry on not only the destructive but also the constructive changes. Plainly, this means that the nucleus controls the constructive processes, although it does not necessarily mean that the cell substance has no share in these constructive processes. Without the nucleus the cell is unable to perform those processes, while it is able to carry on the destructive processes readily enough. The nucleus ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... referred when he told a body of Congregational preachers that their sermons were marked by "intellectual frugality." It is this which a great New England theologian-preacher, Dr. Gordon, means when he says "an indescribable pettiness, a mean kind of retail trade has taken possession of the preachers; they have substituted the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... civilians, Sylvae, nup. lib. 2. numer. 30. [5875]"A maid past twenty-five years of age, against her parents' consent may marry such a one as is unworthy of, and inferior to her, and her father by law must be compelled to give her a competent dowry." Mistake me not in the mean time, or think that I do apologise here for any headstrong, unruly, wanton flirts. I do approve that of St. Ambrose (Comment. in Genesis xxiv. 51), which he hath written touching Rebecca's spousals, "A woman should give unto her parents the choice ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... hide a smile she couldn't keep back, and a cloud overspread her dark face. Surely this was an evil sign—this spirit of irreverent levity in the mind of a child so young. What could it mean? She had forgotten that she had been teaching him to think, and didn't know, perhaps, that he who thinks must ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Phoebe looked at the girl so inquisitively that her colour rose in anger, and exclaimed, "Madam, I know not what you mean!" ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Twemlow be damned too!" cried Sir Jeoffry, who had a great quarrel with his lordship and hated him bitterly. "What does the canting fool mean?" ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... impalpable powder or dust. The showering down of the various ejected materials round the orifice of eruption gives rise to a conical mound, in which the successive envelopes of sand and scoriae form layers, dipping on all sides from a central axis. In the mean time a hollow, called a CRATER, has been kept open in the middle of the mound by the continued passage upward of steam and other gaseous fluids. The lava sometimes flows over the edge of the crater, and thus thickens and strengthens the sides of the cone; but sometimes it breaks down the cone ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... lots of them for the girls, too—little short ones, I mean; not a long one like this is going to be, of course. And it'll be so exciting to be living a story instead of reading it—only when you're living a story you can't peek over to the back to see how it's all coming ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... see what you mean," she exclaimed. "The thing is clear enough. The card I have just given you ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... for whom erudition and interest in the past are not to be lightly dismissed as academicism. I can imagine no greater disaster to letters than a breach between the literary originator and the man of learning. Such a breach can only mean that learning is cast back upon itself, loses humanity, and becomes academic; and that the author who despises or ignores erudition, and with it the sense of human continuity and permanence for which it ought to stand, tends ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... pay, too. Although Mrs. Paine works the hardest of the two, Mr. Paine handles all the money, and everything is in his name. He has not noticed just how old and worn her clothes are. Being away so much, the manner of living does not mean so much to him as to her, for she is always here. Mrs. Paine is not the sort of woman who talks. She never complains to the other women, and they call her proud. I think Mrs. Paine has been to blame in not telling Mr. Paine just how badly she needs new clothes. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... one at the whist table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and—resents being left out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach—and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather; and will thrust in some mean, and quite unimportant anecdote of—the family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth—favourable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Herbert put in irreverently. "Let her rave, or it, or whatever it is. Do you mean that a man is ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not say anything that caused you pain in the parlour. If I did you must know that I did not mean it. I I hope ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... long, gasping breath, as he stared wonderingly at her. "Go on," he added: "tell me what you mean." ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... to laugh at the patience Doctor Johnson shewed, when a Welsh parson of mean abilities, though a good heart, struck with reverence at the sight of Dr. Johnson, whom he had heard of as the greatest man living, could not find any words to answer his inquiries concerning a motto round somebody's arms which adorned a tomb-stone in Ruabon church-yard. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... we saw was the President's poster saying not to be alarmed, that the measures of military preparation were required by circumstances (les evenements) and did not mean war. Then over this bill the maire posted a notice that in case of a real mobilization (une mobilisation serieuse) they would ring the tocsin. At eleven o'clock the tocsin rang, oh, la la, monsieur, what a fracas! All the bells in the town, Saint-Martin, Saint-Laurent, the hotel de ville. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... must seem to be. His post was hemmed around by tradition. It was his by divine right, and it involved on its holder duties sometimes onerous, often dangerous; but for him to abate one iota of his privileges would be a reflection on his predecessors, an injustice to his heirs. It would mean scholastic revolution. He knew that I must yell at him. My position also was hemmed about by tradition. To appear not to fear the biggest boy was one of the chief duties of a successful pedagogue. We understood ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... which nearly corresponded with the time of his distracted flight from the big slum house. He had made up his mind to keep Ziemianitch out of the affair completely. To mention him at all would mean imprisonment for the "bright soul," perhaps cruel floggings, and in the end a journey to Siberia in chains. Razumov, who had beaten Ziemianitch, felt for him now ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... touched her heart. She's a temper. But she's clean both in body and in spirit, as I believe, and say before my God. I—what I'd pray for is, to see this girl safe. All I have shall go to her. That is, to the man who will—won't be ashamed—marry her, I mean!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... we mean what can in nowise be so clearly defined as by "rough-house." For instance, the turbulent Euclio in Aul. delivers bastings impartially to various dramatis personae and as a climax drives the cooks and music-girl pell-mell ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... work of the destroyers engaged in protecting the ships of the Scandinavian convoy was telling heavily on the personnel, particularly on the commanding officers, and one report stated that the convoy work produced far greater strain than any other duty carried out by destroyers. No mean proportion of the officers were suffering from a breakdown in health, and since the whole of the work of the Devonport, Queenstown and North of Ireland flotillas consisted of convoy duty, whilst only a ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... sir, to go to offer a poor chap sixpence.' The postillion laughed hollow from the end of his lungs. 'Sixpence for a night's work! It is a joke, if you don't mean it for one. Why, do you know, sir, I could go—there, I don't care where it is!—I could go before any magistrate livin', and he'd make ye pay. It's a charge, as custom is, and he'd make ye pay. Or p'rhaps you're ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... right," said Helen. "I will go tell mother. She was not sure I ought to come." She disappeared once more through the little gate, and Rosanna waited. She was not happy. Her grandmother had certainly not named any little girl, but Rosanna knew that she did not mean or intend that Rosanna should entertain the little girl who lived over the garage. Her grandmother thought every one was all right if they belonged to an old family. The first thing she ever asked Rosanna about ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... unmanly tears on his pillow, while she looked at the wall, pale to the lips and cut to the heart. Her worst misgivings, even those nightmare fears which haunt the dawn, had not pictured a thing so mean as this, a heart so low, a spirit so poor. And this was her brother, her idol, the last of the McMurroughs of Morristown, he to whom she had fondly looked to revive the glories of the race! Truly she had not understood him, or others. She had been ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... time since the second of August! What could it mean? Probably the arrival of wounded. I literally flew to ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... article is: "And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord." What does this mean? It means I believe that He is the Son of God, God of God, true God of true God. It means I believe that He became incarnate for the sake of our salvation. It means I believe in the doctrines that He proclaimed, in the miracles that He performed. ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... "You mean Tilghman's Lely—the one in his house in Kennedy Square? Oh," said Richard, lifting his fingers in appreciation, "I know every line of it. It is one of the best Lely's I ever saw, and to me the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... waited on him, at the time when I expected to suffer death, giving him letters for my friends in Scotland; there are none other to whom the dog is familiar. But then my own person is well known—my very speech will betray me, in a camp where I have played no mean part for ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... in Vedantic works, is generally misunderstood. It does not mean the negation of everything; it means "that which does not exhibit the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the Crown and "criminal actions'' (see Co. Litt. 284b; Bracton, de Legibus Angliae, bk. iii. ch. v. f. 1046; Bradlaugh v. Clarke, 1883, 8 App. Cas. 354, 361, 374), in popular language it is taken to mean a proceeding by a subject and is now rarely applied in England even by lawyers to criminal proceedings. What are now known as "penal actions,'' i.e. proceedings in which an individual who has not suffered personally by a breach of the law sues as a common informer for the statutory penalty either ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "character" in its origin is suggestive. It is from a root which signifies to scratch, to engrave, to cut into furrows. Then it comes to mean that which is engraved or cut on anything. In life, therefore, it is that which experiences cut or furrow in the soul. A baby has no character. Its life is like a piece of white paper, with nothing yet written upon it; or it is like a smooth marble tablet, on which, ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... weakness to which the wisest of us are subject—a kind of manly measles which this flesh is heir to, particularly when the flesh is heir to nothing else. Even I have felt the divine damnation—I mean emanation. But the lady united herself to another, which was a very good thing for me, and anything but a misfortune for her." This is altogether false: no man could ever say such things seriously—at least no man of sense ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... is not fitting that I should teach you, but you have said; are we to blame that the moons come together in the sky? No. But we have learned from the Terrans not to blame the moons in the sky for our own ignorance of the ways of the Gods—by which I mean the ways of sickness ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... mean, cruel thing to do!" it said. "Were the ants doing any harm to you? In future, remember that you are never to hurt or frighten any creature, even the smallest of them, for your own poor pleasure or amusement. I am ashamed ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... beg your pardon, Mr Barlowman I mean to say," said I—"the first duty of every man, when his country is in danger, is to take up arms in its defence, and to be ready to lay down his life, if his body will form a barrier to the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... "Nonsense! I mean that I don't care to win things. Oh!"—and she laid her hand impulsively on his arm as a huge sheaf of rockets roared skyward, apparently ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... following: There was a poor little fellow by name Vog. He once came into King Rolf's hall while the king was yet a young man, and of rather delicate growth. Then Vog went before him and looked up at him. Then said the king: What do you mean to say, my fellow, by looking so at me? Answered Vog: When I was at home I heard people say that King Rolf, at Hleidra, was the greatest man in the northlands, but now sits here in the high-seat a little crow (krake), and it they call their king. Then made answer the king: You, my fellow, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... prayer, "That is good-night,'" he used to say, and then we would go in for dinner. Dinner was served at eight o'clock, and was as formal an affair as the noon meal. The evening would be spent at study, for the padre was a scholar of no mean ability. He had translated some of Stockton's stories into the Visayan language. Speaking of Stockton, Padre Pedro said that he "knew well the spirit of your countrymen." His work was frequently disturbed by the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... magnificence, that is the great point, but their being well assorted to character and circumstances. The French are notoriously faulty in over-dressing their characters, and in making them fine and showy, where their simplicity would be their greatest ornament. I do not mean a simplicity that should have any thing mean, low or indifferent in it; but, for example, in rural characters, the simplicity of nature, if I may use ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... her for us, but we'll never tell him we mean the money to go for the rent until we put it in his hands," Eileen answered, "and we won't tell any one else ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... We can't complain. She's not mean about the food. We have wheat bread every Sunday, and fish when a holiday happens to be a fast-day too, and those ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... my honor, and my cause, I tender free to Scotland's laws. 775 Are these so weak as must require The aid of your misguided ire? Or, if I suffer causeless wrong, Is then my selfish rage so strong, My sense of public weal so low, 780 That, for mean vengeance on a foe, Those cords of love I should unbind, Which knit my country and my kind? O no! Believe, in yonder tower It will not soothe my captive hour, 785 To know those spears our foes should dread, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... that when first she heard it, twenty years ago, she sat up in bed and rousing the camp, with stage whispers (afraid to speak aloud), demanded: "Do you hear that? What on earth can it mean? Surely something awful has happened!" On and on it went endlessly. (She has since been told that it is all repeated three times.) And not until morning was it learned that the long speech had been merely the announcement of a rabbit hunt for the next day. The oldest traditions of the ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... he understands very well requires support of its policies as one of the prices of the constituent-demanded appropriations. Thus those who would have opposed the machine in the organization of the Assembly realized that failure would probably mean a hammering of their appropriation bills, which would result in their political undoing at home. So the independent movement to organize the Assembly came to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... cried the girl, tears brimming up at last into her pretty eyes, and all her heat of valiance suddenly gone. "What does it mean?" ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... by thee, Once by thy love, next by thy poetry; Where thou the best of unions dost dispense, Truth cloth'd in wit, and Love in innocence; So that the muddy lover may learn here, No fountains can be sweet that are not clear. There Juvenal, by thee reviv'd, declares How flat man's joys are, and how mean his cares; And wisely doth upbraid[60] the world, that they Should such a value for their ruin pay. But when thy sacred Muse diverts her quil The landscape to design of Sion's hill,[61] As nothing else was worthy ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the nature of the specified powers. The clause, it was said, was in fact merely declaratory of what would have resulted by unavoidable implication, as the appropriate, and as it were technical means of executing those powers. Some gentlemen observed, that "the true exposition of a necessary mean to produce a given end was that mean without which the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "I am worried about her," he meant that he was worried about Joan. If he said, "She would have liked this," "She" would mean Joan. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... encampments to the amount of near one hundred thousand men at Constantinople and Adrianople, for the ostensible purpose of overawing the spirit of revolt among the Bulgarians. The National Assembly, which had in the mean time met at Belgrade, declared the election of Prince Alexander legal and valid, and refused to abrogate it; and as the agents of Russia found that their original object could only be effected by an invasion, an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... mean?" Flavia said. "What could Sempronius with two slaves be doing in my house after midnight? It is a grave outrage, and there will be a terrible scandal in Rome tomorrow—the son of a praetor and a ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... "I mean," said Mrs. Maurice again, "that if Frarnie should have the same fancy for him, I don't know that there'd be any objection. He is quite uncommon—quite uncommon when you consider all things—but I don't know why you want to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Ensal's opinion of himself he was compelled to admit that the net result of this short interview was a decided conviction that Tiara was not altogether indifferent to him, that he held no mean place in her regard. But he was the more mystified as to why she had so persistently refused to allow ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... temples, quieting their throbbings and making the blood course less madly through the swollen veins. They had told her how kind, how attentive he had been, and to herself she had said: "He's sorry about that certificate. He wishes to show me that he did not mean to be unkind. Yes; I forgive him: for I really was very stupid ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... gun within reach," he warned in an undertone to Wilson. "Maybe they don't mean no harm; maybe they does. We'll make 'em pay heavy fer what ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... to laws impressed upon them by the Divine Intelligence, constitute the universe of things. The true chemical philosopher sees good in all the diversified forms of the external world. Whilst he investigates the operations of infinite power guided by infinite wisdom, all low prejudices, all mean superstitions, disappear from his mind. He sees man an atom amidst atoms fixed upon a point in space, and yet modifying the laws that are around him by understanding them, and gaining, as it were, a kind ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... you mean!" cried Larry. "Why, how fine you planned it, Tony. Just to think of it, having the news flashed straight home, over miles and miles of swamps. But what if a hawk got ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... number of those authors who really and seriously think before they write is small, only extremely few of them think about the subject itself; the rest think only about the books written on this subject, and what has been said by others upon it, I mean. In order to think, they must have the more direct and powerful incentive of other people's thoughts. These become their next theme, and therefore they always remain under their influence and are never, strictly speaking, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the Spirit. But this feast represents the LORD tabernacling with men, and is only fulfilled when 'The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee.' On the Transfiguration-Hill, Peter, almost unwittingly, set forth this truth. He seemed to mean to say, 'Is not this the true joy of the Feast of Tabernacles? Is not the Lord here?'" If this be so, we can think of the palm-groves of Bethany again bared of their branches;—these waved in triumph as a new and nobler "Hosannah" awakes the ancient echoes of ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... overflowed sometimes, but it goes off immediately and leaves such a manure as you may imagine—tho' it has not for several years past; the other side is higher, the lands not so good in general. When I said not so Good I would not be understood to mean that they are not good, for even those are as good as any I ever saw in America, with the same kind and quality of wood, but does not run back ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... went on to Sainte Marie aux Mines, a mean sort of town, placed like a long corridor between two lofty, well-wooded mountains, which even at noonday deprive it of sun. Close by there is a shallow, rock-bound streamlet which divides Lorraine from Alsace. Sainte Marie aux Mines belonged to the Prince Palatine of Birkenfeld. This Prince ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it lamenting? What can the creature mean? Interrogatives which the mulatto puts to himself; for there is none else to whom he may address them. No man near—at least none in sight. No living ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... very much enraged at my freedom, talked a great deal about his quality and honour, and began to make some comparisons which I thought so injurious to mine, that I demanded an explanation with great warmth, and he was mean enough to equivocate, and condescend in such a manner that I left him with a ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... soil of inexhaustible fertility, and divided to the best advantage between prairie and forest. It was settled early in the history of the State, and the country was held in high esteem by the aborigines. The name of Sangamon is said to mean in the Pottawatomie language "land of plenty." Its citizens were of an excellent class of people, a large majority of them from Kentucky, though representatives were not wanting from the Eastern States, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... while—that's the tiresome part of the whooping-cough, you never know where you are with it, it lasts such a time; and when you think it's about over, very often you find children have got some other illness from it—I mean something the matter with their chests or throats, or bothers ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... speaks, for Lutwyche, telling Gottlieb, has told us; but Jules must glean it from her puzzled, broken utterance, filled with allusions that mean nothing until semi-comprehension comes through the sighs of tortured soul and heart from her who still is, as it were, in a trance. And this dream-like state causes her, now and then, to say the wrong words—the words he spoke—instead ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... resorted to, on account of the varying declination of the moon, and the inconstancy of the horizontal refractions, which are perpetually changing according to the state the atmosphere is in at the time. For the moon continues but for a short time in the equinoctial, and the refraction at a mean rate elevates her apparent place near the horizon, half as much ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... yet another species of sound, which I did not like half so well,—a sound as of the washing of a shallow current over a rough surface; and, on the minister coming below, I asked him, tolerably well prepared for his answer, what it might mean. "It means," he said, "that we have sprung a leak, and a rather bad one; but we are only some six or eight miles from the Point of Sleat, and must soon catch the land." He returned on deck, and I resumed my book. Presently, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... blame? "No, Pascualo! You're to blame yourself, and nobody else. I see it all clear as day. You robbed Tonet of his sweetheart. That boy and Dolores were lovers before you even thought of speaking to a girl of tio Paella's! Now that was a mean trick, come to think of it! Marry your brother's promised bride! As rotten a thing as ever I did! And so, what else could you expect? There they are together all the time—as had to be, brother-in-law, sister-in-law—and both in the family. Well, could ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... what type of education did the Quakers mean to provide for, as shown in the extract from their ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... sin, or that the population of London would be the worse if the most shameless persons among them were put by the Government in possession of Drury Lane and Covent Garden; and that, and nothing less than that, did the Roman pantomimes mean, from the days of Juvenal till those of the most holy and orthodox ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the man in the street. 'Social morality, art, philosophy, and religion take us far beyond the spatio-temporal externality of history; these are concrete and necessary living worlds, and in them the finite mind begins to experience something of what individuality must ultimately mean.' Our inquiry has thus led us to the threshold of one of the fundamental problems of philosophy—the value and reality of time. For the institutionalist, happenings in time have a meaning and importance ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... modestly downcast eyes, "this mustn't be known to any human being—no, not to a single human being—not yet, I mean. I will get a strip of white india-rubber to cover the ring, so that no one shall be able to see it ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black |
