"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seas would be prevented. We are of the same opinion, only we do not think either the experiment fair or the result desirable. The very atmosphere of our country is pervaded by a conventionalism which, as is proved by what passes every day before our eyes, cannot be counteracted by mere external circumstances. The family in question would feel themselves to be only amateur Crusoes; they would be haunted by the idea, that they were surrounded, at a distance of only a day or two's travel, by the 'genteel' society of which they had formed a part; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... moment in a constitutional sense. It made the Parliament of Ireland subordinate to the Parliament of England; it reduced the Irish House of Lords from a position in Ireland equal to that of the House of Lords in England, down to the level of a mere provincial assembly. The occasion of the passing of this Act was the decision given by the Irish House of Lords in the celebrated cause of Sherlock against Annesley. It is not necessary for us to go into the story of the case ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the sun had shone upon you in vain, when you had the opportunity of relieving some unhappy man. This, my lord, has justly acquired you as many friends as there are persons who have the honour to be known to you. Mere acquaintance you have none; you have drawn them all into a nearer line; and they who have conversed with you are for ever after inviolably yours. This is a truth so generally acknowledged that it needs no proof: ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... distinguished tenor, who had travelled all the way from Buda Pesth in haste, so that he might 'create' the chief role in the work of his friend Valdor, began to feel that there was something more in operatic singing than the mere inflation of the chest, and the careful production of perfectly-rounded notes. Valdor himself played the various violin solos which occurred frequently throughout the piece, and never failed to evoke a storm of rapturous plaudits,—and many were the half-indignant glances of the audience ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Provincial mansions of Philadelphia, especially its countryseats, as of the plantation houses of Virginia and the early settled communities farther south. In the city residences of Philadelphia, built in blocks as elsewhere, the halls were of necessity narrower, mere passageways notable chiefly for their well-designed staircases, which consisted for the most part of a long straight run along one side with a single turn near the top to the second-floor passageway directly above that to the rear of the house on the floor below. In a few of the earlier country ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... maintained by Jean-Francois Boissonade. The representative of Hellenism in modern letters was Courier, a brave but undisciplined artillery officer under Napoleon, who loved the sight of a Greek manuscript better than he loved a victory. PAUL-LOUIS COURIER DE MERE (1772-1825) counts for nothing in the history of French thought; in the history of French letters his pamphlets remain as masterpieces of Attic grace, luminous, light and bright in narrative, easy in dialogue, of the finest irony in comment, impeccable ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... their outward appearance exactly fitted every detail of the prophecy—that was another fact; and these two facts together seemed to point to a conclusion so irresistible that, shrewd and experienced as he was, Nam, was unable to set it down to mere coincidence. Therefore in the first rush of his religious enthusiasm he had accorded a hearty welcome to the incarnations of the divinities whom for some eighty years he had worshipped ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... the fugitives returned on the following day, convinced that the prophet was a false one; but many judged it more prudent to allow a week to elapse before they trusted their dear limbs in London. Bell lost all credit in a short time, and was looked upon even by the most credulous as a mere madman. He tried some other prophecies, but nobody was deceived by them; and, in a few months afterwards, he was confined ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... admit that proposition of a ransom [Footnote: 66] by auction; because it is a mere project. It is a thing new, unheard of; supported by no experience; justified by no analogy; without example of our ancestors, or root in the Constitution. It is neither regular Parliamentary taxation, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... spread of education and with the great increase of literature among all civilized nations, more especially since the invention of printing and its vast multiplication of books, the making of volumes of selections comprizing what is best in one's own or in many literatures is no longer a mere matter of taste or convenience as with the Greeks, but has become something little short of a necessity in this world of many workers, comparatively few scholars, and still fewer intelligent men of leisure. Anthologies ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... interested in things themselves, but in their elusive, animating spirit. In the lyric poem, To Night, he does not address himself to mere darkness, but to the active, dream-weaving "Spirit of Night." The very spirit of the autumnal wind seems to him to breathe on the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... reached his prime in the underworld, of which he also was a native, without touching affluence, until his fortieth year. Nevertheless, he was a travelled man, and no mere nomad of the bush. As a mining expert he had seen much life in South Africa as well as in Western Australia, but at last he was to see more in Europe as a gentleman of means. A wife had no place in his European scheme; a husband was the last thing Rachel wanted; but a long ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... /Lucillius/ is a mere barbarism, the /l/ being doubled to indicate the long vowel: so we find ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... he was out of himself, a mere conquering male, unthinking, ruthless, exigent. Then the sweet strange touch of her cheek brought him back to the awful thing he had done. His reason worked with a lightning quickness. Terrified by his violence she would wrench ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... drifting and the pieces on the political chessboard bewilderingly disposed, outsiders came to look upon the Conference as a lottery. Unhappily, it was a lottery in which there were no mere blanks, but only prizes ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Fourteen hundred francs is of course a mere trifle, and they say that lawyers have to be well paid, and that it is because they are well paid that there are so many of them. I should have done better if I had been a lawyer—then she would ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... lamb, even in London; inveterate foes in the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological merging their fate in one Anthropological Institute. In 1915 the reluctance of the 'tall fair people who come from the north'—I borrow a phrase from Professor Ridgeway—to fraternize with mere brunettes, beyond Rhine and Danube, comes in its turn before the same ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Mere party issues never counted with me. I have read too much and seen too much. At my present time of life they count not at all. I used to think that there was a principle involved between the dogmas of Free Trade and Protection as they were preached by their respective attorneys. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... through a variety of chambers, differing in size and form, but essentially similar in character, and the attention is invited to the innumerable multitude of striking and fantastic objects which have been formed in the lapse of ages, by the mere dropping of water. Pendants hang from the roof, stalagmites grow from the floor like petrified stumps, and pillars and buttresses are disposed as oddly as in the architecture of a dream. Here, we are told to admire a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... wine,' he says. 'Tom,' he says, 'we've been frinds f'r years,' he says. 'We have,' says Tom. 'We've concealed it fr'm th' vulgar an' pryin' public,' he says; 'but in our hear-rts we've been frinds, barrin' th' naygur dillygates at th' convintion,' he says. ''Twas a mere incident,' says Mack. 'We've been frinds,' he says; 'an' I've always wanted,' he says, 'to do something f'r ye,' he says. 'Th' time has come,' he says, 'whin I can realize me wish,' he says. 'I offer ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... breakfast reading his letters, a note was brought to him, which, coming in the midst of a lively chronicle of home news from his sister Letty, almost stopped for the moment the beating of the Curate's heart. It took him so utterly by surprise, that more violent sentiments were lost for the moment in mere wonder. He read it over twice before he could make it out. It was from the Rector, and notwithstanding his wife's remonstrances, and his own qualms of doubt and uncertainty, this was what Mr ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... early Anglo-Saxon poetry was mostly warlike, for the reason that the various earldoms were in constant strife; but now the peace of good will was preached, and moral courage, the triumph of self-control, was exalted above mere physical hardihood. In the new literature the adventures of Columb or Aidan or Brendan were quite as thrilling as any legends of Beowulf or Sigard, but the climax of the adventure was spiritual, and the emphasis was ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... mouth. The eccentricities and shortcomings of the foreign bride were a priceless boon to the scanty population of the district; in castle and in peel tower little else for a time was talked of. To begin with, the mere fact that she was a foreigner, and that neither she nor any of her immediate followers could speak English, told heavily against the lady in the estimation of the countryside. Then, hardly anyone ever ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... came to the clergyman by mere chance, though he admits his belief that the habits of asceticism and meditation he had practiced for years may have made him in some way receptive to the vision, for as a vision, it seems, the thing first ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... on his Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth, pub. about 1692, first in Latin and afterwards in English, a work which, in absence of all scientific knowledge of the earth's structure, was necessarily a mere speculative cosmogony. It is written, however, with much eloquence. Some of the views expressed in another work, Archaeolgiae Philosophicae, were, however, so unacceptable to contemporary theologians that he had to resign his post ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... "unintelligible moonshine," and so will probably hold their tongue. It is my fixed opinion that we are all at sea as to what is called Poetry, Art, &c., in these times; laboring under a dreadful incubus of Tradition, and mere "Cant heaped balefully on us up to the very Zenith," as men, in nearly all other provinces of their Life, except perhaps the railway province, do now labor and stagger;—in a word, that Goethe-and- Schiller's "Kunst" has far ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Thwackum with some warmth: "mere stubbornness and obstinacy! Can honor teach any one to tell a lie, or can any ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... self-assertive men who press forward to leadership in ordinary times, whether impelled by mere love of notoriety, personal ambition, or an honest desire to promote the welfare of their fellow-men, seldom become masters of the situation when a supreme emergency arises. They may set in motion great contending forces; they may precipitate conflicts whose ultimate ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... filled, the Germans almost immediately began to think about sleep. In truth, they all looked as though they had been up all of the night before, as probably they had. One of them, a mere youth certainly not yet out of his teens and the youngest in the party, yawned. The lieutenant saw it, and in a fit of apparently unreasonable anger said, in his ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless and implacable—of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation. Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree—loftier, straighter, wider-spreading—and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... John Bull," to hold up Marlborough and Marlborough's wife to ridicule and to hatred. He depicted the great soldier as a low and roguish attorney, who was deluding his clients into the carrying on of a long and costly lawsuit for the mere sake of putting money into his own pocket. He lampooned England's allies as well as England's great general; he described the Dutch, whom the Tory ministers had shamefully betrayed, as self-seeking and perfidious traitors, for whose protection we were sacrificing ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... reversions to, and also perhaps more often than we suspect, magnifications of acts and psychic states that were at one time the fittest of which our forebears were capable.[9] However, all the pathological phenomena of today are not mere revivals of the acts and states of primitive man and his ancestors, but "they are often, on the other hand, grotesque variants and intensifications of phylogenetic originals that were more sane and simple if also more generic. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Shakespeare? It was indeed a characteristic of Professor Putnam, and one cause why his knowledge was becoming, had indeed become, at once so ample and so serviceable, that it was not an accumulation of facts disconnected or bound together by mere accidental associations, but an organic growth, every fibre of the most distant branch tracing itself back to the one trunk, and the sap from the living root ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... or leave to die!" Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the gory sod ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... exercise prescribed by the Rugby Union, in which fifteen men pit strength, speed, endurance, and every manly attribute they possess in a prolonged struggle against fifteen antagonists. There is no room for mere knack or trickery. It is a fierce personal contest in which the ball is the central rallying point. That ball may be kicked, pushed, or carried; it may be forced onwards in any conceivable manner towards the enemy's goal. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the republic were extended, its dogeship became a mere figurehead. All real power was lodged in the dread and secret council of three.[11] Genoa was defeated and crushed in a great naval contest with her rival, Venice.[12] Everywhere tyrannies stood out triumphant. The first modern age of representative government ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... by reducing mere practice to art and method, in a way new at least to German painters. With Albrecht all was ready, certain, and at hand, because he had brought painting into the fixed track of rule and recalled it to scientific principles; without which, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the mere presence of a woman supplies a distinct want. She need not be clever, or very capable; she need have no great learning or experience. She merely has to be a woman—the more womanly the better. There are times when a man may actually be afraid for the want ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... these Herculean Efforts to vaporize his Income, he found himself at the age of 40 afflicted with Social Gastritis. He had gorged himself with the Pleasures of this World until the sight of a Menu Card gave him the Willies and the mere mention of Musical Comedy would cause him to break down and Cry ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... provision for the payment of L9,986, which represented claims fully investigated and recognized as justifiable before the union, and left the general question of indemnity for future consideration. Indeed, it is doubtful if the Conservative ministry of that day, the mere creation of Lord Metcalfe, kept in power by a combination of Tories and other factions in Upper Canada, could have satisfactorily dealt with a question which required the interposition of a government having the confidence of both sections of the province. ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... looked round, with an instant change in his face. The mere sound of Penrose's name seemed to act as a relief to the gloom and suspicion that had oppressed him the moment before. "You don't know how I miss the dear gentle little fellow," he ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... inches in diameter. The whole of the fan is made by machinery! An amazing machine cuts out each layer of paper of the proper size and shape, and when all the parts are ready, sticks them neatly together. Most Japanese toys—which really are Japanese, not mere imitations of Japanese designs—are made by hand; but this one ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... letters. I have endeavored to present the Christian character, and the duties required of the followers of Christ, in the light of God's word. I know, however, that I have done it with much imperfection. But, do not rest with the mere mechanical performance of the duties here recommended. Do not engage in any of them with the hope of meriting God's favor. Use them only as the means of promoting your spiritual progress; depending on the Holy Spirit, through the blood and merits of Christ, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... (EMU), but Denmark has decided not to join the 12 other EU members in the euro; even so, the Danish Krone remains pegged to the euro. Given the sluggish state of the European economy, growth in 2003 was a mere 1.1%. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not much of a reader, and if she had been, there were no books within her reach but the Bible and a cookery book, on the former of which, for private reading, Jenny looked as a mere precursor of ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for them, for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have broken every ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... evening," he remarked. "It's no matter of surprise that father says that I am so narrow-minded that I look at things through a tube and measure them with a clam-shell. I mentioned something last night about having nothing but tears, shed by all of you girls, to be buried in. But this was a mere delusion! So as I can't get the tears of the whole lot of you, each one of you can henceforward keep her own for herself, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... underlying them, would be comprehensible to a mind like Cherubini's, in which, while the creative faculties were finely developed, the critical faculty was atrophied and its place supplied by a mere disciplinary code inadequate even as a basis for the analysis of his own works. On the other hand, it would be impossible to exaggerate the influence Les Deux Journees had on the lighter parts of Beethoven's Fidelio. Cherubini's librettist was also the author of the libretto from which Fidelio ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... cannot have too many women or wives, which, they say, assist their devotion—a sentiment which they pretend to have received from Mahomet himself by tradition. The fact is, the prophet was very fond of women. The Catholics would seem to think a priest better with absolutely no wife. This is a mere struggle between sensuality and asceticism. There is no love or affection in it. I showed Mohammed an empty bottle. He took a piece of paper and wrote: "The bottle is empty of wine, God fill it again." Such is Arab ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... an obligation of duty of the highest order by recognizing as independent states nations which, after deliberately asserting their right to that character, have maintained and established it against all the resistance which had been or could be brought to oppose it. This recognition is ... the mere acknowledgment of existing facts." [Footnote: Wharton's International Law ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... cattle stolen at will, settlers' homes burned over their heads, their hearths blown up by planted powder when they returned from any small trip, their horses run off—these things had seemed to him preposterous, mere shadows of facts. Now they were down to straight points before him, tangible, solid. He got them from the blue eyes of Tharon Last, the gun woman, and he had taken sides! He who had meant to keep so far out ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... fair England's territories, They will by violence tear him from your palace And torture him with grievous lingering death. They say, by him the good Duke Humphrey died; They say, in him they fear your highness' death; And mere instinct of love and loyalty, Free from a stubborn opposite intent, As being thought to contradict your liking, Makes them thus forward in his banishment. They say, in care of your most royal person, That if your highness should intend to sleep And charge that no man should disturb ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... this but a short distance when it broadened out to such an extent that the walls on either side could be seen but dimly. It still sloped upward, but at a very slight angle, and we had little difficulty in making our way. Another half-hour and it narrowed down again to a mere lane. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... glad to hear the word "friend," but this was a mere form of expression with his Honour the Judge. He always said "friend" to lawyers' clerks, lackeys, and even to the parties to a suit whom it was his duty to tear to ribbons. Meyer, however, set forth his grievance quite confidently. He even sat down, though he ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... general shift in the mass would do it. So would the mere application of force at the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the establishment to the Rhine did not allow of the cellars being excavated to a greater depth than 30 feet below the surface—a mere trifle when compared with the depth of many vaults in the Champagne. Any lower excavation, however, would have been attended with danger, and as it is, when the Rhine rose to an unusual height in March, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... person cannot pass through a wall by a mere operation of will. To go in or out of a room requires a passage; and, as the act was accomplished in the space of a few minutes, it was necessary, in the circumstances, that the passage should be previously in existence, that it should already have ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... he has nobody else to stand up for him," stuttered Roland, so excited as to impede his utterance. "We were both in the same office, and the shameful charge might have been cast upon me, as it was cast upon him. It was mere chance. Channing is as innocent of it as you, mother; he is as innocent as that precious dean, who has been wondering whether he shall dismiss him from the Cathedral. A charitable lot ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... watching the rapidly receding whaler through my glasses until she was a mere speck—alone on the ocean, 150 miles from land, Then the navigator came up, and with strangely mixed feelings of exultant joy and depressing ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... broad passageway between the boxes—a mere crack it would have been before. They turned into it, and, a few feet beyond, came to a larger square space with a box making a roof over it some ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... had seen the angry glance of her eyes, and the excited tone of her voice still rang in his ears. He guessed that, although she had come to Constantinople with the full intention of forgetting the accusations she had once uttered, the mere sight of him was enough to bring back all her virulent hatred. She still believed that he had killed his brother. That was clear from her words, and from the tone in which they were spoken. Whether the thought was a delusion, or whether she sanely believed ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... said mamma, "knew an artist to make such a study of another's face as Mr. Hart did of brother's. He was not content with a mere sitting from him now and then; he visited him at the house; he watched his face in company, and attended every occasion when he spoke in public, that he might model him, he said, in his best mood. Consequently the bust was the most perfect likeness that had ever been made of ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... for what they lost by being debarred from entering those circles of culture and amusement, the conditions of entrance to which were, not a love of and proficiency in art, but that ignoble and foolish one, the mere ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... floor with his thick lips, tumbling down and rolling over in the effort; for a pouched turkey has no wings with which to balance himself. So much hilarity in the family room drew the Pawnee servants. I saw their small dark eyes in a mere line ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... men who can call ladies by their Christian names. One day he met twenty-four duchesses walking on a red carpet, and he winked at them, and they were all delighted. It was so at first he appeared to her. Has a mere girl any protection against a man of that quality? and she was the very merest of girls—she knew it. It was not that she was ignorant, for she had read widely about men, and she had three brothers as to whom she knew ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the oppressive Minister is printed in Ramusio's Collection Achmach. But the c and t are so constantly interchanged in MSS. that I think there can be no question this was a mere clerical error for Achmath, and so I write it. I have also for consistency changed the spelling of Xandu, Chingis, etc., to that hitherto adopted in our text ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... wake up again until the spring has again brought out the green things for his delectation. To be sure tradition has it that the ground hog comes to the mouth of his burrow on Candlemas Day and looks for his shadow that he may figure out how much longer he may sleep. But that I take to be a mere literary furnishing, like the chuck part of the animal's name, brought from England with the pioneers and adapted to use in this country. Probably it is said in England of the dormouse, which also sleeps winters, as does ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Damascus, must be as clay in the hands of a potter. The Syrians marvel how the Franks can walk, so difficult is it to bend their joints. Moreover, they know the difference between him who comes to the Bath out of a mere idle curiosity, and him who has tasted its delight and holds it in due honor. Only the latter is permitted to know all its mysteries. The former is carelessly hurried through the ordinary forms of bathing, and, if any trace of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... thing. Things that must be done and quickly. Perhaps it sounds nothing much—a mere bit of a map. But maps are like lamps to men in the dark. And they must be accurate. To me, therefore, the most inaccurate, absent-minded mortal before the war that ever breathed, it is all a source of ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... faintly. "Store-shelves are full. People are carrying last year's stock with no call for it. It has always seemed to me, Eastman, that a liberal policy to workmen brought its own reward. They are large consumers. Cut them down to mere food and shelter, and clothes are the first to go. In decent times your workman is ashamed ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... most part a throng of men without defensive armour. For inasmuch as the general was elsewhere, many sailors and servants in the Roman camp, in their eagerness to have a share in the war, mingled with that part of the army. And although by their mere numbers they did fill the barbarians with consternation and turn them to flight, as has been said, yet by reason of their lack of order they lost the day for the Romans. For the intermixture of the above-mentioned men caused the soldiers to be thrown into great ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... to her, her little fluttering hands held out appealingly. "And do not misunderstand me. The thing may seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman says, but if you will listen patiently to my explanations I am sure you will see that it was a mere eager over-sight—the fault of absent-mindedness, hardly the sin of covetousness, and surely not a crime. I am making ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... way. Per Baccho! I would as soon be shot in the hand with an escopette ball as drink the quantity of wine and eat the quantity of food that I have seen even women and children dispose of, as if it were mere pastime, on these railway journeys. I think it must be either this or the frost that accounts for the extraordinary prevalence of red noses in Russia, and it even occurred to me that the stations are painted a fiery red, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... difficulty—for the narrow thoroughfares were much fuller of rubbish, and much less freed from smoke and fiery vapour, than the wider—until he reached a part of it with which he had once been well acquainted. But, alas! how changed was that familiar spot. The house he sought was a mere heap of ruins. While gazing at them, he heard a voice behind him, and turning, beheld Mr. Bloundel and his son Stephen, forcing their way through what had once been Maiden-lane. A warm greeting passed between them, and Mr. Bloundel gazed for some time in silence upon the wreck ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... courts were trying to administer the statutes, but the courts were impotent. The statutes were mere printed words. For the rank and file of the bad men were raiding and murdering under the guidance of new leaders who furnished them with food and ammunition, notified them of the movements of the officers, procured perjured ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... a woman—young by her step, light and quick as the antelope's, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... remonstrance useless, and unwilling to waste time returned to his labours. Just at that moment there came a fearful crash, the stout timbers and beams were rent, as if composed of mere touchwood. The ship broke in two. The sea, rushing through the stern ports, swept every one out of the cabin, and the ribald songs and jests of those within were in a moment changed for ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... when the movement in favour of "self-determination" is almost world-wide, and is especially active in India, this book comes as a welcome exposition of the ideals which have inspired the great leaders of Indian thought. It is not a mere statement of India's claim to self-government, but a sympathetic study of eleven leaders whose influence and personality have gradually led to that development of India which will make self-government possible. The influence of Western thought—in ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... the world. I interviewed the Chief-of-Staff, General Lebediff, as to his orders for suppressing the revolters and went downstairs to find the vestibule empty except for my "monks." No one who was not there could believe the absolute transformation that the mere presence of a few English soldiers had on this critical situation. In revolutions every rule and safeguard of society is uprooted; the people feel as in an earthquake, nothing is secure, everyone ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... railleries—often in nothing else. The stage character of the tailor is stereotyped from generation to generation; his goose is a perennial pun; and his habitual melancholy is derived to this day from the flatulent diet on which he will persist in living—cabbage. He is effeminate, cowardly, dishonest—a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body. He is represented by the thinnest fellow in the company; his starved person and frightened look are the unfailing signals for a laugh; and he is never spoken to but in a gibe ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... surprise, on getting down early the next morning, and eagerly opening the newspapers, there was not a word about the arrest! There was a column of mere padding about "The Styles Poisoning Case," but nothing further. It was rather inexplicable, but I supposed that, for some reason or other, Japp wished to keep it out of the papers. It worried me just a little, for it suggested the possibility that there might be further ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... beings there were a few tents and huts, but in face of the searching wind canvas seemed quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings to the bitter air. But up at the Bluff conditions were terrible. The trenches had disappeared under repeated bombardments, and had become mere chains of shell holes in which the men stood up to their thighs in liquid mud. When the C.O. arrived to take over the headquarters' dug-out he found it blown to pieces. Within lay the bodies of the previous occupants—four ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... said, "after a great American. To my mind, the greatest—Theodore Roosevelt. His championship of the cause of votes for women at a time when mere politicians were afraid to commit themselves is enough in itself to gain him ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... lowered tones. Barbara, between Vandeman and myself, continued to show an almost feverish attention to Vandeman. It was plain enough from where I sat that nothing Ina Vandeman could say gave the lad any less interest in his plate. But I suppose with a girl, the mere fact of some other girl being allowed to show intentions counts. Did the flapper get what was going on, as she looked proudly across at her handiwork, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... abandoned his claim to the reward. Had he looked abashed or mortified, Jenny felt that she might have relented, but the braggart was as all-satisfied, as confident and boastful as ever. Nevertheless, as his eye seemed to seek hers, she was constrained, in mere politeness, to add her own to her father's condolences. "I suppose," she hesitated, in passing him, "that this is a mere nothing to you after all that you did last night that was really ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and no mention was made in the English Press of the fact that on the day of the postponement of the coronation, owing to the illness of the King, the organ of the "disloyalists"—the Freeman's Journal—ended its leading article with the words "God Save the King," which were a mere expression of the feelings of the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... allotted for reduction of passage money, and until further notice no new members or associates can be elected except by special vote of the Council. This is as it should be, otherwise the meeting would be largely one of mere "trippers," instead of genuine representatives of British science. The Council have taken every precaution to render the Montreal Meeting one of real work, and no mere holiday; from respect to itself as well as to its hosts, the Association is bound ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... some of the reasons. Mary had just returned from guiding her dear papa in a pleasant shady walk, and now, throwing off her bonnet, and putting on her apron, she prepared to lay the cloth for dinner; for as they had only one servant, and that was a mere country girl, to do the drudgery of household work, Mary assisted by performing a thousand little offices, which Harriet was too haughty ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... shoulder of ground, later called Mount Independence, raised its bulk out of the surrounding forest. The formidable promontory on which the French had built Ticonderoga twenty years before, commanded a great sweep of the lake. For mere foot-soldiers, without artillery or explosives, to attack these ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... accompany his father on his cruise in the West Indies to break up piracy in those waters. When, two years later, Captain Porter entered the Mexican navy he appointed his son a midshipman. He acquitted himself gallantly in more than one fight with the Spanish cruisers. While still a mere boy he was made a midshipman in the United States navy. As a lieutenant he saw plenty of active service in the war with Mexico, and, at the beginning of the Civil War, was one of our most trusted officers. In command of the Powhatan he covered the landing of the reinforcements ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... "fooling with running water," the mere trickle here in question had to be dragged out of its cradle to make it run at all. It remained for me to find out by experience that even that weakling, imprisoned and grown to a pool, though of only ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... accomplishment of this great, beneficent, and necessary work for civilization, that I find the greatest pleasure in accepting your election as a member of this Academy, and find cause for gratification beyond that of mere personal ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... her all; and that all meant far more than mere earthly love. To her he was something that must be cherished as a priceless gem entrusted to her care, and his honor was more sacred to her than her own. Therefore all personal considerations must be passed over, and she must ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... above the union. This great difference, the butternut being so much smaller, was no doubt the cause of a shortage of food supply elaborated through the bark circumference which limited the top to a mere growth of leaves, not leaving sufficient additional supply for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... the Po to the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean, the most serene republic was mistress of the whole coastline, and Italy and Greece seemed to be mere suburbs of Venice. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vital facts about plants and animals may be interesting and may possess a certain intellectual value, but nothing more. The investigation of man and of men and of human life is regarded by the majority as a mere cultural exercise which has no further result than the recording of present facts and past histories; but it is far otherwise. Science and evolution must deal with mere details about the world at large, and with human ideals and with ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... or less). What he was supposed to accomplish was stated thus in the London Pall Mall Gazette, issue of December 2: "Dr. Luys then showed us how a similar artificial state of suffering could be created without suggestion—in fact, by the mere proximity of certain substances. A pinch of coal dust, for example, corked and sealed in a small phial and placed by the side of the neck of a hypnotized person, produces symptoms of suffocation by smoke; a tube of distilled water, similarly placed, provokes signs of incipient hydrophobia; ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... daikwan (another term for "deputy") was often given. These daikwan were selected from among the members or vassals of a shugo's family to act provisionally as shugo-dai. As for the jito, from the middle of the Kamakura epoch their posts became mere sinecures, the emoluments going to support their families, or being paid over to a temple or shrine. Occasionally the office was sold or pawned. The comparatively small areas of land within which the jito officiated soon came to be recognized as ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... haste to abase himself. "It is mere snobbery our making so much of London. A kind of despicable cant, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... nodded. "After all these years! Once," she went on in a triumphant voice, "our fields of vision were so small that our differences of opinion loomed up like insurmountable barriers. Now the differences are mere specks on our broadened outlooks. Oh, I know," she went on as if inspired, "I've been a long journey, simply to come back to Bob again. But it hasn't been in vain. There was no short cut to the perfect understanding that is Bob's ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... was, not that they were passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful. Even her busy hands, which of their own thinness alone might have besought compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that made mere compassion an unjustifiable assumption of superiority, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... at these words, and answered, "I tell you again that Siegfried is a king far nobler and richer and higher than any other king on earth. Think you that my brothers would have given me to a mere vassal to ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... laughing, "a little fellow, about as big as I am. You could soon manage poor Francois; he would be a mere child in the grasp of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... it will not do to stifle this conviction. Comprehensive endeavours must be made to educate and enlighten; to touch the heart as well as to train the intellect. And it must not be forgotten, that education involves very much besides mere book-learning—the mechanical duties, namely, of everyday life. Something of the latter is to be tried in the City Hospice and Soup-kitchen just opened near the foot of Holborn Hill. Though fitted up in an old house, it is a training institute ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... and Systole are not mere arbitrary processes. They usually represent an earlier pronunciation which had passed out of vogue ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... had remained mere wretched patchwork, his logic came to an end wherever bold reliance upon the intuitive process was needed to supply missing links in the ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Thus measured it is not less truly important, but it may be important in a lower degree. On the other hand, and for exactly the same reason, nothing that is real is unimportant. The "failures" are not mere mistakes. We see them, in St Augustine's words, as "scholar's faults which men ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... man having a marked tendency to depressing, morbid ideas, to rid himself of them. Dr. Hinkle helps the sufferer to gain that confidence and cheer which result from knowledge of certain immunity from dreaded ills and positive assurance of recovery by mere regulation of food or employment along the lines of simple, ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... yourselves by ever rubbing against other people's elbows? You are all heaped up to such a degree that you no longer have the amount of air needful for a man's lungs. Your largest stretches of land, what you call your big estates, are mere clods of soil where the few cattle that one sees look to me like lost ants. But ah! the immensity of our Niger; the immensity of the plains it waters; the immensity of our fields, whose only ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... passages have been embodied in our version: but the translator did not give all, for the same reasons that prompted Pere Premare to give none—"they are full of allusions to things unfamiliar to us, and figures of speech very difficult for us to observe." They are frequently, moreover, mere repetitions or amplifications of the prose parts; and being intended more for the ear than the eye, are rather adapted to the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Cumberland, &c.; but, as all must see who take the trouble to reflect, not likely to repay the trouble; seeing that every thing which offers a picture, when viewed from a station nearly horizontal, becomes a mere map to an eye placed at an elevation of 3000 feet above it; and so thought, in the sequel, the Aetna party. The sun, indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds than was desirable; yet so disappointed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... this reason, or for others which escape me, the Banded and the Silky Epeirae think it wise to produce durable work and to strengthen their toils with a cross- ribbon. The other Epeirae, who are put to less expense in the fabrication of their maternal wallet—a mere pill—are unacquainted with the zigzag binder and, like the younger Spiders, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... forts. It is quite certain that if the Versaillais do attack they are repulsed, as they make no progress whatever; but do they attack, that is the question? I am rather inclined to think that these attacks and repulses are mere inventions. It seems evident to me that the generals of the National Assembly, who are now busy establishing batteries and concentrating their forces, will not make a serious attempt until they are certain of victory. In the meantime they are satisfied to complete the ruin of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... of the water. It was a close shave, but once more we were safe; and the doctor, in the exuberance of his gratitude, said that night: "If William wants a glass eye I'll send to New York to get him one." But when William learned that the glass eye was a mere matter of looks and would in no wise improve his vision, he lost interest in it. Looks do not count for ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... melancholy." This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy Man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The Author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... phrenologists, by acknowledging no spiritual substance, virtually deny that ancient doctrine, "It is not in flesh to think, or bones to reason," [42] and make the mind either a material substance, or a mere mode without ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... for he knew how to attract both the high and the low. His sermons were life-pictures; and this gave them their charm, their power, their practical effect. The doctrine of Christ, designed for all nations and all ages, is so simple, and can be traced back to such a few principles, that by a mere repetition, paraphrase, or exclusive explanation of these only, the most dexterous orator, obliged to appear so often, must become dull and cold; but infinitely rich, and ever new, is life surveyed in the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... the Germans seemed also, on the occasion, to have broken down. General von Ditfurth's order of the day bears witness to this: "It seemed to me that the infantry at certain points was confining its action to a mere defensive.... I cannot protest too strongly against such an idea, which necessarily results in destroying the spirit of offensive in our own troops and in arousing and strengthening in the mind of the enemy a feeling ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his wastebasket. "A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clockwork. I have got the idea now. I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way I look I can see a golden-flame tongue of inspiration burning. I'll rewrite that thing and animate it. Take ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the face of fashion, bigotry, and conservatism—so liberal, so eloquent, so brave—is a model for every young man, who, like the orator, would devote his talents to the best interests of the race, rather than to his personal ambition for mere worldly success. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Wood. Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, a malady incident to young men; physicians call it caprice. Nothing else. He that slighted her knew her value: and 'tis odds, but, for thy sake, Margaret, John will yet go to his grave ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... stand by an employee who had suffered at the hands of murderous ruffians, because of his sympathy with law enforcement, and the promotion of the moral welfare of his community. But the Assistant Superintendent of the C. P. R., under whom Mr. Smith worked, was not moved by such consideration, a mere sentimental consideration he would probably call it. He preferred to cooeperate with the rum ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... of them of more or less value; those yielding the best results, however, requiring a considerable length of time for their execution, and involving so large an amount of manipulatory skill as to render them fairly impracticable to a chemist at all pressed for time, and receiving but a mere trifle for the results. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... by mere appearances, the Jesuits were nowadays dispossessed of all influence in Rome. They no longer officiated at the Gesu, they no longer directed the Collegio Romano, where they formerly fashioned so many souls; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... but Frank could not help having it repeated. It was a mere formal necessity to ask them, and had been accepted as such; but there was some amazement when Cecil brought home Lady Tyrrell and Miss Vivian to lunch and spend the afternoon. It might be intended as one of her demonstrations; for though it was understood that any ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with all the more eagerness as it seemed so long delayed, so urgently needed. Still, they made their yearly journeys to Jerusalem, and participated in the great convocations, which, in outward splendour, eclipsed memories of the past; but they realized that the glory had departed, and that the mere husk of externalism could not long resist the incoming tides of militarism, of the love of display, and the corrupting taint of the worst aspects of Roman civilization. When the feasts were over, these pious hearts turned ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... doubts Sangara on account of having brought no letters. Nothing can be believed in this land unless it is in black and white, and but little even then; the most circumstantial details are often mere figments of the brain. The one half one hears may safely be called false, and the other ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the shadow of a clump of sumach, hungrily regarded the "roasting ears" which Pinetop had just rolled in the ashes. A malarial fever, which he had contracted in the swamps of the Chickahominy, had wasted his vitality until he had begun to look like the mere shadow of himself; gaunt, unwashed, hollow-eyed, yet wearing his torn gray jacket and brimless cap as jauntily as he had once worn his embroidered waistcoats. His hand trembled as he reached out for his share of the green corn, but weakened as he was by sickness and starvation, the defiant humour ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow |
