"More or less" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bit, but there are certain things they'd choke on if they tried to swallow them, and they won't even try. Better give it up before they find it out and tackle you. I don't fancy you'd stand for that. It would be devilish disagreeable. You've got to know and be more or less intimate with them all—" ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... interest is far more deeply implicated than any concern or vanity of mine. In the first place, the matter lies entirely with the Marshal. And then, my good fellow, we are blamed for so many things, that one more or less! We are not at the maiden stage in our experience of fault-finding. Under the Restoration, men were put in simply to give them places, without any regard for the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking aspects more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... fontis varied, as well as their length and their density, according to the more or less bad quality of the sub-soil. Sometimes a fontis was three or four feet deep, sometimes eight or ten; sometimes the bottom was unfathomable. Here the mire was almost solid, there almost liquid. In the Luniere fontis, it would have taken a man a day to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... entry of the United States was regarded with warm approval; her cause was acknowledged to be just and the Latin American press reflects nothing but admiration for her step. The Republics of Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, and in an informal manner, Costa Rica, as well as the more or less American-controlled Nicaragua, Haiti and Santo Domingo, quickly aligned themselves with the United States, with whose fortunes their own are ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... did not die was in this wise; and his example affords another instance of that reflex rule of the vassal soul over the sovereign body, which, operating so wonderfully in elastic natures, and more or less in all, originally gave rise to the legend that supremacy ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... much less prominent place than it usually occupies; adoration, confession and thanksgiving should between them take the predominant share in our communion with the Most High, thus correcting the tendency to make of prayer a mere recital of wants more or less indiscriminately addressed to the Divine bounty. The supreme object to be kept in view is that we should become of God's way of thinking—not that we should attempt to make Him of ours; in Matthew Henry's shrewd comparison, prayer ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... is so exhausted as is sometimes assumed. If it is, these pages will soon find their appropriate resting-place. But I venture to present them, because, though a good many judgments upon the movement have been put forth, they have come mostly from those who have been more or less avowedly opposed to it.[1] The men of most account among those who were attracted by it and represented it have, with one illustrious exception, passed away. A survivor of the generation which it stirred so deeply may not have much that is new to tell about it. He may not be able ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... justifiable and commendable but—insignificant. Quite insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and honest folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one dirty blackmailer more or less—what does it matter to anybody"? There are so many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop—i.e. the reader—here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little episode," and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant events." He was glad that the whole affair ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... outer office was crowded with the usual set of English and would-be English persons who went there for gossip. My appearance called forth more or less derisive shouts. I was a nice young man to go and buy a village—from a native, too!—without the forethought to secure a title to the property! It was plain that they knew more about the matter than I did myself. I felt ashamed, and must have looked dejected, I suppose, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... careful attention accorded to his commands by both gardener and servant was characteristic of every one in Patrick Lovell's employment. Although he had been a more or less helpless invalid for seven years, he had never lost his grip of things. He was exactly as much master of Barrow Court, the dominant factor there, as he had been in the good times that were gone, when no day's shooting had been too long for him, no ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... that lie in the way. This false notion takes a stronger hold on him when he comes to read poetry and romance, and to be deceived by outward show—the hypocrisy that characterizes the world from beginning to end; on which I shall have something to say presently. The result is that his life is the more or less deliberate pursuit of positive happiness; and happiness he takes to be equivalent to a series of definite pleasures. In seeking for these pleasures he encounters danger—a fact which should not be forgotten. He hunts for game that does not ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and she laid her hand gently on the head of the girl who had sunk on the floor beside her. "We are all slaves, more or less, to something in this world. Our hearts arrange that without appeal ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... into that box, dear," answered Jenny, gladly sitting down beside her on the sofa, which was strewn with trinkets of all sorts, more or less damaged by careless handling, and the vicissitudes ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... development of the material of war, to the comparative exclusion of the study of naval warfare. This naturally results from the national policy, which does not propose to put afloat a fleet in the proper sense of the word; and whose ideal is a number, more or less small, of cruisers neither fitted nor intended for combined action. Under these circumstances, the details of the internal economy of the single ship usurp in the professional mind an undue proportion ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Brilliant was the one word for the scene; a little hard, perhaps, in colouring, and the women in their plumes and veils were too uniform to be artistic. There was too much gold, too much red silk, too many women in the long rows waiting with more or less impatience or nervousness to get through with it. The scene had an almost crude simplicity of insistence on fine feathers and gilding the obvious pride of life. Yet he saw the little fair country girl near him look awe-struck, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the ground the work had just begun. It was necessary to erect tents for the housing of 30,000 men. A commissary for their subsistence must be provided. Stores and storehouses had to be rushed to the spot and there was a huge amount of work of a more or less permanent character in the shape of water works with many miles of piping, shower baths, drinking troughs, an electric light plant and the like. The engineers were called upon immediately to lay out the camp and its many auxiliary features. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... As I tell you, she was constantly in and out of the car, and more or less intimate with ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... hastily, for he saw an expression of protest on Reverend Moore's face, "we are more or less familiar with a phenomenal existence, with appearances, with effects; and our knowledge of these is entirely mental. We see all things as thought. These thoughts, such as feeling, seeing, hearing, and so ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... this Heaven does in order to show how much power the influences of its stars and constellations have over us, distributing more of its favours to one, and to another less; which influences are for the most part the reason that we mortals come to be born with dispositions more or less fiery or sluggish, weak or strong, fierce or gentle, fortunate or unfortunate, and richer or poorer in talent. And whoever has any doubt of this, will be enlightened in this present Life of Perino del Vaga, a painter of great ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... was checked, even the waiters stood still in their places. The eyes of every one seemed turned towards the door. One or two of the men rose, and in the faces of these was manifest a sudden expression in which was present more or less of absolute terror. Bartot for a moment shrank back in his chair as though he had been struck, only to recover himself the next second; and the lady with the turquoises bent over and whispered in his ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... subsistence she had her small fixed allowance from home; for credentials she was furnished with an introduction or two to literary men from her friends in the country who had some appreciation, more or less vague, of her intellectual powers. Though courageous and determined, she was far from self-confident; she asked herself if she might not be mistaking a mere fancy for a faculty, and her first step was to seek the opinion of some experienced authority ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... one's Susie should be a rest, do you think? It is always more or less comforting, but not rest; it means further employment of the already extremely strained sensational power. What one really wants! I believe the only true restorative is the natural one, the actual presence of one's "helpmeet." The far worse than absence of mine reverses rest, and what ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... year 1844. The main purpose of its writer was to vindicate the just claims of the Tory party to be the popular political confederation of the country; a purpose which he had, more or less, pursued from a very early period of life. The occasion was favourable to the attempt. The youthful mind of England had just recovered from the inebriation of the great Conservative triumph of 1841, and was beginning to inquire what, after all, they had conquered to preserve. It ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... just related, as Ralph was on his way to school, he fell in with Willie Davenport, or "Whistler," as he was often sportively called, by his playmates, in allusion to his fondness for a species of music to which most boys are more or less addicted. And I may as well say here, that he was a very good whistler, and came honestly by the title by which he was distinguished among his fellows. His quick ear caught all the new and popular melodies of the day, before they became threadbare, which gave his whistling an air of freshness ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... carved articles, the intrinsic value of which aggregates millions of dollars. Where could such an accumulation of wealth come from? History knows nothing of the importation of the precious metals, though it is true they are found in more or less abundance all over the country. Copper of the best and purest quality is a native product, the exportation of which is prohibited, and mining for the precious metals is carried on to but a very limited extent. The temple of Shiba is located near the centre of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... he had not been able to convince himself of the existence of an unfriendly design. "But it was not to be disguised that the fact of the continued stay of the pseudo-commissioners in this city, and still more the knowledge that they had been admitted to more or less interviews with his lordship, was calculated to excite uneasiness. Indeed, it had already given great dissatisfaction to my Government. I added, as moderately as I could, that in all frankness any further protraction of this relation could scarcely fail ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... case Mrs Lawford intends to suggest not so much that—that her husband is in that condition; habitual sin, you know—grave enough, of course, I own—but that he is actually being compelled, even to the extent of a more or less complete change of physiognomy, to follow the biddings of some atrocious spiritual influence. It is no breach of confidence to say that I have myself been present at a death-bed where the struggle against what I may call the end was perfectly awful to witness. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... old friends who followed me across the Atlantic, who are invaluable, and shield me from impertinent annoyances, to which all women of my profession are more or less subjected. The world to which you belong sometimes seem disposed to forget that beneath and behind the paint and powder, false hair and fine tragic airs and costumes they pay to strangle time for ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... said Antony in a lower voice. "We're more or less over the hall, and Cayley may be there." He led the way to the window. "We'll go out this way to-night. Going downstairs is too risky. It's easy ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... administering his remedies. But, in a slight indisposition, like that from which your child suffered, it is, in my opinion, always better to give no medicine for a time. Drugs thrown into the tender system of a child, will always produce disease of some kind, more or less severe; and where slight disorders already exist, they are apt to give them a dangerous hold upon the body, or, uniting with them, cause a most serious, and, at times, ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... wickedness which is every where seen in the world, and in which, alas! each of us has more or less his share, is our curiosity to have some fellowship with darkness, some experience of sin, to know what the pleasures of sin are like. I believe it is even thought unmanly by many persons (though they may not like to say so in plain words), ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... we know there are seven Sacraments and no more or less? A. We know there are seven Sacraments and no more or less because the Church always taught that truth. The number of the Sacraments is a matter of faith, and the Church cannot be mistaken in ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... in years gone by, were nearly all professional gamblers, a fact which is more or less true to-day, where the real, genuine house of that character exists, but there are hundreds of women who work the "panel game" upon their victims, who hire a simple room in some furnished-room house. If detected the entire ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... of human feelings; and this great natural law, often the last remnant or the substitute of conscience, character, and self-respect, is even more fully operative in a highly civilised than in a savage or a semi-savage state of society. Of a truth, every human being is more or less of a Pharisee with regard to certain conventionalities of life. Complete disregard for the maintenance of some sort of standard of outward appearances is the absolute vanishing point of self-respect. Till that has been reached by any individual ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... frequently stoppin' an' kissin' me; An' maybe we didn't live happy for years, In spite of my brothers' and sisters' sneers, Who often said, as I have heard, That they wouldn't own a prison-bird; (Though they're gettin' over that, I guess, For all of 'em owe me more or less;) But I've learned one thing; an' it cheers a man In always a-doin' the best he can; That whether on the big book, a blot Gets over a fellow's name or not, Whenever he does a deed that's white, It's credited to him fair and right. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... might have been lonelier if she had been very much at home; but she was President of the First Charitable, and Secretary of the Second, and belonged to a reading-club, and a sewing-circle, and a bible-class, and had every case of illness in town more or less to oversee, and the circulation of the news to attend to, and so she was away from home a good deal, and took many teas out. Some people thought that if she hadn't to feed her cat she never would go home. But the cat was all she had, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... flash that morality is not a method of happiness. The revelation was terrible. He saw at once that nothing of what he knew mattered in the least. The acts of men and women, success, humiliation, dignity, failure—nothing mattered. It was not a question of more or less pain, of this joy, of that sorrow. It was a question of truth or falsehood—it was a question of life ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Birmingham, however, remained tolerably quiet until the beginning of April, 1839. On the 1st of that month, and again on the 3rd, large meetings were held, at which Feargus O'Connor, a Dr. John Taylor, "delegates" named Bassey, Donaldson, and Brown, made violent and inflammatory speeches. Meetings more or less numerously attended were held almost nightly. Upon the representation of the shopkeepers that their business was greatly hindered, the Mayor and magistrates, on the 10th of May, issued a notice forbidding the holding of the meetings. Of the twelve gentlemen whose ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... parts of the civilized and uncivilized world I have had to swallow B. O. S. with more or less benefit to myself, though without great pleasure. Prepared with hot water and abundantly peppered to bring out the taste, this extract is not really unpalatable. But I have never swallowed its advertisements. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... cold and silent still, And everybody wondering more or less, Fair Adeline enquired, 'If he were ill?' He started, and said, 'Yes—no—rather—yes.' The family physician had great skill, And being present, now began to express His readiness to feel his pulse and tell The cause, but Juan said, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... you blood-money for betraying your brothers that he's wasting his coin. You couldn't catch a cold. And tell him that all he'll ever get on us, or ever has got, is just his own sneaking plots that he's framed up to put us in jail. We are what our manifesto says we are, neither more or less—and we'll give him a copy of that any time he calls. And as for you—[He glares scornfully at YANK, who is sunk in an oblivious stupor.] Oh, hell, what's the use of talking? You're ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... physicians of the public schools in our large cities report that seventy-five percent of all school children show defective health in some way. Diagnosis from the Eye proves that the remaining twenty-five percent are also more or less affected by hereditary and acquired disease conditions. Christian Science says, "There is no disease." Nature's records in the iris of the eye say ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... been elaborated by the most acute and laborious dialecticians. The inquiry shows how a philosophical system can be hooked on to an imaginative conception of the universe; but it does not give the cause of the belief, only the way in which it can be more or less favourably combined with abstract logical principles. The great poet unconsciously reveals something more than the metaphysician. His poetry does not decay with the philosophy which it took for granted. We do not ask whether his reasoning be sound or false, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... usual,' the man answered. 'Listen to them. Anyone would think it mattered whether they had a little more or less to eat. Dregs of society!' said ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... first to be drawn up from the pit; by a miracle he had escaped injury; unfortunately, the clerks of the Barbey-Nanteuil bank had not got off so well; bruises, contusions, cases of severe shock, more or less serious, had to be attended to by ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... thing of chief importance. His views (as they are called) upon religious matters varied much; and he could never be induced to think them more or less than views. "All dogma is to me mere form," he wrote; "dogmas are mere blind struggles to express the inexpressible. I cannot conceive that any single proposition whatever in religion is true in the scientific sense; and yet all the while I think the religious view of the world is the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sorts of shadows: those cast by a luminary a long way off, such as the sun; and those cast by artificial light, such as a lamp or candle, which is more or less close to the object. In the first case there is no perceptible divergence of rays, and the outlines of the sides of the shadows of regular objects, as cubes, posts, &c., will be parallel. In the second case, the rays diverge according to the nearness of the light, and consequently the lines of ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... the train, stopping at several towns of more or less importance. The girls and boys amused themselves studying the time-table and in gazing out of the window, and Dunston Porter told them of some of his experiences while roving in various portions of the globe, for, as my old readers are aware, ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... has been in the desert for a long time," Jack answered, "a few days more or less hardly matter in the time of his departure. In a week Dr. Patterson says that I may go. Meanwhile, I shall have the pleasure of getting acquainted with Little Rivers, which, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds. You know the same of me. And yet I confess to a certain tremor at the audacity of the enterprise which I am about to begin. For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. I have no right to assume that many of you ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... things considered, it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and for a little time—only a very little time—to make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again. Every one is more or less mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular monomania was his old love, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Unfortunately, the only valuable she possessed was a cow, the produce of which formed the chief support of the family; four young children, and a boy of about fourteen, whose brains were generally supposed more or less oddly constructed than those of his neighbours, depended on this supply for their daily support. Cold, bitter cold, was the season, and it had set in with more than common severity. Day after day the payment ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... 1536 (p. 381) had only granted to the King religious houses which possessed an endowment of less than two hundred pounds a year; the dissolution of the greater monasteries was now gradually effected by a process of more or less voluntary surrender. In some cases the monks may have been willing enough to go; they were loaded with debt, and harassed by rules imposed by Cromwell, which would have been difficult to keep in the palmiest days of monastic enthusiasm; and they may well have thought that ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... material things are a source of more or less pain to the growing and evolving soul, which tends to urge it along the line of the least spiritual resistence—the least spiritual friction. It may be that the soul does not recognize the direction of the urge, and insist in tasting this material pleasure ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... the room presided over by Mr Durfy. That magnate had not yet arrived, much to their relief, and they consoled themselves in his absence by standing at the table watching their fellow-workmen as they crowded in and proceeded with more or less alacrity to settle down to their ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... correspondence paused for want of topicks. I had said what I had to say on the matter proposed to my consideration; and nothing remained but to tell you, that I waked or slept; that I was more or less sick. I drew my thoughts in upon myself, and supposed yours employed upon your book. That your book[1117] has been delayed I am glad, since you have gained an opportunity of being more exact. Of the caution ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... employee have to bear a proportionate share.... For each job there is the quickest time in which it can be done by a first-class man; this time may be called the "Standard Time," for the job.... Under all the ordinary systems this quickest time is more or less completely shrouded in mist. ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... Mac, more or less concerned over the expected arrival, and anxious that his listeners should not consider the magnate as a fair example of his countrymen, launched out upon the absence of all class distinctions at home-one man ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said the other, passing a finger round his neck. "What does it matter? A little dirt more or less, in a world ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... is said that even the suspicious flea is tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will allow himself to be caught and caressed without misgivings. This should be taken with allowance, for doubtless there is more or less brag about it. In San Francisco they used to claim that their native flea could kick a child over, as if it were a merit in a flea to be able to do that; as if the knowledge of it trumpeted abroad ought to entice immigration. Such a thing in nine cases out of ten ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the street. You heard curses in every tongue the sound of blows, cries; and in the middle of the room a dozen men were fighting with all their might. On a sudden the police rushed in, and everyone who could made for the door. When the bar was more or less cleared, Tough Bill was lying insensible on the floor with a great gash in his head. Captain Nichols dragged Strickland, bleeding from a wound in his arm, his clothes in rags, into the street. His own face was covered with blood from a blow ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... constructed like little fortresses, no doubt these wretches would have carried their violence further. It seems to me, when I look back at that time, that even in the Louvre or the Luxembourg, one's ears were never free from the sound of howls and yells, more or less distant. ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so much open country that they may run away for miles without an upset; whereas in England, when this difficulty occurs, the ribands are generally handed over to the Jarvey of the opposite party. This old state of affairs is entirely changed in both hemispheres; each party is more or less broken up, and in neither country is there at present any distinct body sufficiently numerous to form ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of us knew more or less the direction we were to take, but having got out of the route between the forts, the country immediately around was strange to us. We went on and on, keeping on the lower ground, and hoping in time to strike the right trail. Our horses making no objection, we ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... or what we may perhaps term the crypt of the forest. Here it is that the consideration of any piece of woodland conceived as a solid comes naturally in; for this solid contains a portion of the atmosphere, partially cut off from the rest, more or less excluded from the influence of wind, and lying upon a soil that is screened all day from isolation by the impending mass of foliage. In this way (and chiefly, I think, from the exclusion of winds), we have underneath the radiating leaf-surface a stratum of comparatively stagnant air, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He knew well the untamable spirit of his brothers, and the small influence he was likely to have upon them, and for a moment his heart shrank from the task. But again he bethought what his refusal must mean to them — captivity of a more or less irksome kind, harsh treatment perhaps, resulting in actual imprisonment, and a sure loss of favour with any guardian who had the least love for the English cause. At Dynevor they would at ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... no one approached him. It was the only day that the monsignore had not waited on him. Father Coleman was equally reserved. Strange to say, not one of those agreeable and polite gentlemen, fathers of the oratory, who talked about gems, torsos, and excavations, and who always more or less attended his levee, troubled him this morning. With that exquisite tact which pervades the hierarchical circles of Rome, every one felt that Lothair, on the eve of that event of his life which Providence had so long ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Both architectural and traditional evidence are in accord in establishing a continuity of descent from the ancient Pueblos to those of the present day. Many of the communities are now made up of the more or less scattered but interrelated remnants of gentes which in former times occupied villages on the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... of the French teacher's name Professor Garlach seemed to bristle up. There was always more or less ill feeling between them on account of their nationalities, but of late it ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... would give—as it did to Sylla, to Caesar, and to Augustus—then there was nothing to restrain the men. There was to such a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. His cruelty or his clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of the utility of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong with him. Or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood about his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing diversion or a painful process to him; but there was ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... majority of teachers occupy a middle ground between the two types just described. Teachers of this class touch, more or less, on every topic of instruction, mechanical, empirical, and interpretive. Their application of most of the topics of instruction is not quite so mechanical as in the first type of method considered. The student's attention is always directed to the vocal organs, but the idea of direct ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... synthetic; reflection begins with doubt, spontaneity with affirmation; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to all; reflection produces science, spontaneity gives truth. Reflection is a process, more or less tardy, in the individual and in the race. It sometimes engenders error and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, from being rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... provincial levies, the transports destined to carry them, and the ships of war which were to serve as escort, all lay idle. In the interval Loudon showed great activity in writing despatches and other avocations more or less proper to a commander, being always busy, without, according to Franklin, accomplishing anything. One Innis, who had come with a message from the Governor of Pennsylvania, and had waited above a fortnight for the General's reply, remarked of him that he was like St. George on a tavern ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... there is nothing quite like them elsewhere in England. The contrast on turning eastwards from the quiet West Walk into bustling High West Street is striking and bears out the claim that Dorchester still keeps more or less within its ancient bounds, for turning in the other direction we are soon in a different and "suburban" atmosphere. High West Street is lined with pleasant eighteenth century houses, the residences or offices of professional men intermixed with some ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... indefatigable research for a correct explanation of the myth, and after a strictly impartial inquiry he comes to the conclusion that all the various phases which these fabulous concoctions assumed, had their beginnings in nothing more or less than the simple mature pod of the ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... their views, while Johnny swung there, vainly trying to reach up and catch hold of the limb, with the turkeys twittering, and showing more or less alarm. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if two such anomalous terms ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... place, raising hopes which were quickly abandoned. From April 5th to April 12th these rallies occurred at frequent intervals, always followed by a condition of increased depression, more or less augmented fever and partial unconsciousness. On Saturday, April 12th, a great change became apparent. For many hours the patient had been unconscious. As the day wore on, it became evident that he could not live through another night. All of Dr. Talmage's family—his ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Stacey recognised her at once. Then Hartstein, the adjuster for the insured, and Lazard, the adjuster for the company, both of whom had had more or less to do with her in connection with settling up for other fires, recognised her. She was a very clever woman, was Miss Wend, and a very important cog in the Stacey enterprises. And to think she was the firebug, after all. I can hardly ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... who take up this volume may recollect a series of conversations held many years ago over the breakfast-table, and reported for their more or less profitable entertainment. Those were not very early breakfasts at which the talks took place, but at any rate the sun was rising, and the guests had not as yet tired themselves with the labors of the day. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... John-o'-Groat's to the Mull of Galloway. I visited a well at Craiguck, in the parish of Avoch, Ross-shire, some years ago, and found numerous offerings fastened to a tree beside it; and of at least a dozen wells in Scotland the same thing is more or less true. An anxious loving mother would bring a sick child to such a well at early morning on the 1st May, bathe the child, then cause the little one to drop an offering into the well—usually a pebble, but sometimes a small coin. Then ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... no more. She woke, however, the next morning, with that uncomfortable conviction of something disagreeable about to happen, with which all human beings are more or less familiar. It gradually dawned upon her that Licorice was going to "get it out of her," and was likewise about to devise a false tale for her especial benefit. She had not heard two sentences which passed between her parents ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... is a continuation of the "Orlando Innamorato" of Matteo Maria Boiardo, which was left unfinished upon the author's death in 1494. It begins more or less at the point ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... his creatures. Example is the means given universally to all whereby to benefit society. I therefore look on it as one of our principal duties to avoid every imputation of evil; for vice appears more or less hateful as it becomes more or less familiar. Every vicious person abates the horror which it should naturally excite in a virtuous mind. There is nothing so odious to which custom will not in some degree reconcile us; can we expect then, that vice, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... few billions, proves that the rigidity is very slight, but exists; and that suffices for a characteristic distinction to be founded on this property. In a general way, M. Spring has also established that we meet in solids, in a degree more or less marked, with the properties of liquids. When they are placed in suitable conditions of pressure and time, they flow through orifices, transmit pressure in all directions, diffuse and dissolve one into the other, and react chemically on each other. They may be soldered together by compression; ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled or repressed; but in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissention, which, in different ages and countries, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... living fish, first sending them from afar a shock, the energy of which was proportionate to the size of the prey. The gymnotus seldom failed in its aim; one single stroke was almost always sufficient to overcome the resistance which the strata of water, more or less thick according to the distance, opposed to the electrical current. When very much pressed by hunger, it sometimes directed the shocks against the person who daily brought its food of boiled meat. Persons afflicted with rheumatism came to touch it in hopes of being cured. They took it at ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... animal is one having more or less pure-bred blood, but not enough, or otherwise too irregular, for registry under the rules of the association of the breed to which it has affiliation. It does not refer to selection without use of a pure-blood sire at some point ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... his hat. This likewise struck me as peculiar, for the deference he displayed was more marked than that usually bestowed on strangers, while his lack of surprise at an encounter more or less startling in such a mist was calculated to puzzle an ordinary man like myself. Indeed, he was so little impressed by my presence there that he was for passing me without a word or any other hint of good fellowship, ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... of the sea towered the purple crags, whose summits were crowned with greensward that stole down the sides of the scaur a little way in grassy veins. Here and there a brook forced its way from the heights down to the sea, making its channel into a valley more or less broad in long process of time. And in the moorland hollows, as in these valleys, trees and underwood grew and flourished; so that, while on the bare swells of the high land you shivered at the waste desolation of the scenery, when you dropped into these wooded 'bottoms' you were charmed with the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sitting by me upon an angarep, when the people closed around my men, and one very tall specimen of a Tokroori came forward, and, snatching a knife from its sheath that was worn upon the arm of my servant, he challenged him to fight. As Tokrooris are always more or less under the influence of drink, their fights are generally the effect of some sudden impulse. It was necessary to do something, as the crowd were determined upon a row; this was now commenced by their leader, who was eyeing me from head ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... State was alarming. A belt extending from Barkly East near the Basuto border westwards and northwards as far as the Molopo River, and interrupted only near the Orange and Modder Rivers, had been annexed by the Boers and was more or less effectively occupied by them; and had they acted with enterprise and concurrence during the period of Lord Roberts' journey from England, the task before the new Commander-in-Chief would have been still more formidable. In rear of French and ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... that Peter's death caused a shock to the boy's never strong nerves and that the shock has caused the fever. Keep him in bed for a few days. He'll probably come around all right. There doesn't seem to be anything really serious—except that in a constitution like his everything is apt to be more or less serious." ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... perhaps in the department store more than anywhere else that every possible weakness in a girl is detected and traded upon. For while it is true that "wherever many girls are gathered together more or less unprotected and embroiled in the struggle for a livelihood, near by will be hovering the procurers and evil-minded", no other place of employment is so easy of access as the department store. No visitor is received in a factory or office unless he has definite business there, whereas ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... ventured to remonstrate with him, to say non est tanti, but I spoke too late, or spoke in vain. He carried independence too far, or carried it into the wrong field, for a piece of humorous verse, say in Punch, is not an original masterpiece and immaculate work of art, but more or less of a joint-stock product between the editor, the author, and the public. Macaulay, and Carlyle, and Sir Walter Scott suffered editors gladly or with indifference, and who are we that we should complain? This extreme sensitiveness would always ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... into his head—or shall I say her head? No? Well, no offense, I assure you—his head then, that he's smarter than a world full of experience, ought to be put in jail—for his own protection; he's too big a jay to be left out of doors. For five thousand years, more or less, the world has been putting people like him behind bars, where they can't make asses of themselves. Yet each year, and every day and every hour, a new ninny is born who fancies he's cleverer than all his predecessors put together. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... marks of honor were the actual possessions of nobles and clergy. Each noble bequeathed to his eldest son a castle or a mansion with more or less territory from which to collect rents or feudal dues. Bishops, abbots, and archbishops received their office by election or appointment rather than by inheritance, and, being unmarried, could not transmit their stations to children. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... more or less, from most of the ships that have been at the Society Islands; but it has always been in the commander's power to make the chiefs return their people; the knowledge, therefore, that it was unsafe to desert, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... made was the old one of endeavouring to control details in distant countries from Downing Street, instead of sending out the best man to the spot, and giving him more or less of ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... relieve the anxiety of my counsel, who now looks wistfully upon me, and add that that little will scarcely embrace the object of defence. Why should I defend myself? Why should I endeavour to protract a life that a few days, more or less, will terminate, according to the ordinary calculations of chance? Such as it is and has been, my life is vowed to the law, and the law will have the offering. Could I escape from this indictment, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peculiarly and entirely its own, alter, whether little or much, in one way or another, the condition of the world it entered at birth. We can then, in our personal experiences every day, verify the universal law of history—a law that can act with greater or less intensity, more or less rapidity, according to times and places, but that ceases to authenticate itself at no time and ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... look from the deeply-set eyes and of the absolute integrity of purpose and of devotion to principle which were behind the thought and the words of the speaker. In place of a "wild and woolly" talk, illumined by more or less incongruous anecdotes; in place of a high-strung exhortation of general principles or of a fierce protest against Southern arrogance, the New Yorkers had presented to them a calm but forcible series of well-reasoned considerations ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... symbolic tracing of the Rosicrucians was a Square Temple approached by seven steps ... here also we find the two pillars of Hermes, the five-pointed star, sun and moon, compasses, square and triangle." Yarker further observes that "even Wren was more or less a student of Hermeticism, and if we had a full list of Freemasons and Rosicrucians we should probably be surprised at the numbers who belonged ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... more or less fragmentary. With Olaf Trygvason's Saga reliable history begins, and the narration is full and connected. The story of Hakon the earl ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... likewise a physician, in his "Entwickelungsgeschichte der Seele des Kindes" ("History of the Development of the Mind of the Child," Vienna, 1851, p. 68), says: "Naturally the first sound formed in the mouth, which is more or less open, while the other organs of speech are inactive, is the sound resembling a, which approximates sometimes more, sometimes less, nearly to the e ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... the plants, has been prepared chiefly from a memoir presented to the Ceylon Government by the late Dr. Gardner, in which he traces the history of the insect from its first appearance in the coffee districts, until it had established itself more or less permanently in all the estates in full cultivation throughout ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... in the melee, and some hard blows were given back and forth. Other boys were much wrought upon by the trouble, and allowed their sympathies to draw them to the side of one party or the other. Thus the school was divided in opinion upon the question, each party blaming the other with more or less demonstration. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... letters; and, if possible, to intercept every one of them. I felt confident that she would describe her visit to the fortune-teller in part, at least, and I was anxious to know how much she would reveal to him. Besides if he were disposed to be superstitious, he would probably be more or less affected by her account, and I might use the knowledge ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... to consider that I was insulting her personally when I was connected with anything which was not successful. At any rate I was thankful that we were still a long way above Oriel, for I knew that Nina would never understand that Oriel had given themselves up, more or less, to cricket and soccer, and were not very afflicted by the fact that their boat was nearly ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Sheriff Will. "I cannot allow you to go unless one of my men accompanies you. You see all of you are more or less under suspicion until the matter is cleared up, and I prefer that ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... fame as the modern Demosthenes. You knows how eloquent I am about Shoestring? That won't be a marker to the oration I'll frame up for these miscreants in the calaboose. For why? Shoestring's time I ain't organised; also, I'm more or less shook by the late bullets buzzin' an' hummin' like a passel of bloo-bottle flies about my office. But now will be different. I'll be ready, an' I'll be in a cool frenzy, the same bein' a mood which is excellent, partic'lar if a gent is out to break records for rhetoric. I shore regyards ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... of troops were moving towards the waterside. Dr. Joseph Warren, knowing or easily guessing the destination of the troops, at once despatched William Dawes, and later in the evening Paul Revere also, to Lexington and Concord to spread the alarm. As the little army of Colonel Smith—a thousand men, more or less—left Boston and marched up into the country, church bells and the booming of cannon announced their coming. Day was breaking when the British troops approached the town of Lexington; and there on the green they could see, in the early morning light, perhaps half a hundred men ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... the pirates were forward in their bunks, but one who was keeping watch on deck took pity on me and gave me a couple of biscuits and a swig of water. He was more or less talkative, besides, and from him I learned that Daggs planned to start about midnight for your side of the island, carrying buckets of pitch and tinder, so ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... pleasant inspiration, both his elder and his younger companion, with the latter of whom he had taken the tone that they were introducing Granddaddy, Granddaddy nervous and rather funking it, to lions and tigers more or less at large. Touch by touch she thus dropped into her husband's silence the truth about his good nature and his good manners; and it was this demonstration of his virtue, precisely, that added to the strangeness, even for herself, of her failing as yet to yield to him. It ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... deceased priest. Abbe Troubert even won over to his side the Listomeres, defenders of Francois Birotteau. [The Vicar of Tours.] About 1839, at Troyes, Monsiegneur Troubert was on terms of intimacy with the Cinq-Cygnes, the Hauteserres, the Cadignans, the Maufrigneuses, and Daniel d'Arthez, who were more or less concerned in the matter of the Champagne elections. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... called a draw, which must be played over again at Harmony on the succeeding Saturday. As playing on the home ground is usually considered a great advantage, because the players are accustomed to every peculiarity of the field, Harmony would reap more or less profit from having the postponed game on their diamond. And consequently, when they trooped out for the finish of the thirteenth inning, several of them seemed to have conspired to delay ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... 220,000 cu. ft. of free air occurred in 10 min. This averages only a little more than 19,000 cu. ft. per min., the maximum recorded supply to one tunnel for a period of 24 hours. Of this quantity, however, probably from 30 to 40% escaped in the first 45 seconds, while the remainder was a more or less steady loss up to the time when the supply could be increased sufficiently to maintain the lowered pressure. Very few blows showed losses approaching this in quantity, but the inherent inaccuracy of the observations make the foregoing figures only ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... There was more or less commotion, but the women did not scream or get panic-stricken. They were used to ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... to believe that Byron had not read, and more or less consciously turned to account, the imagery of this novel; but it is needless to add that any charge of plagiarism falls to the ground. Thanks to a sensitive and appreciative ear and a retentive memory, Byron's verse is interfused with manifold strains, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... has been already granted," said he, "that one soul is not more or less a soul than another; and this is an admission that one harmony is not to a greater degree or more fully, or to a less degree or less fully, a harmony, than another; is ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... Tiber to slay King Porsena and killed the King's secretary by mistake, a piece of business so similar to certain actions of the man who claimed him for an ancestor as to lend some color to the claim. De Mores was related more or less nearly to the Orleans family which had never renounced what it regarded as its title to the throne of France; and he himself had his eye on a crown. Behind all his activities in the Bad Lands loomed a grandiose purpose. To one or two of his associates ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... that the average man and woman in Europe and America to-day professes a more or less nebulous feeling of respect and admiration for the scientific investigator. This feeling is not logical, for very few have ever met or seen a scientist, fewer still have ever seen the inside of a scientific laboratory, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86 |
