"On the face of it" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Purees. For instance, Palestine soup is really a puree of Jerusalem artichokes; ordinary pea soup is a puree of split peas. In making our ordinary vegetarian soups of all kinds, as a rule, all the ingredients should be rubbed through a sieve. The economy of this is obvious on the face of it. In the case of thickening soup by means of some kinds of flour, for richness and flavour there is nothing to equal ordinary flour that has been cooked. This is what Frenchmen ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... were circulated gratis soon after 1807. Nobody ever has found one line of these poems in any known writing older than James Macpherson. I agree with many speakers of Scotch Gaelic who have studied this question. We hold that the Gaelic Ossian of 1807 is, on the face of it, a manifest translation from English; and that the English was founded upon an imperfect acquaintance with genuine old Scotch Gaelic ballads. These are still commonly sung. They are founded upon the mythical history which still is traditionally known all over Scotland and ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... you are sick," he returned. "I should be if any one had done to me what we did to you and Foster this afternoon. It looks pretty rotten on the face of it, and I am as sorry as blazes that you had to have a row ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... when he was still at Pignerol, the name of Mattioli, freely used before, never occurs in the correspondence. But we still often hear of 'l'ancien prisonnier,' 'the old prisoner.' He was, on the face of it, Dauger, by far the oldest prisoner. In 1688, Saint-Mars, having only one prisoner (Dauger), calls him merely 'my prisoner.' In 1691, when Saint-Mars had several prisoners, Barbezieux styles Dauger 'your prisoner of ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... instinctively to the consideration of Obenreizer's motives. He had put obstacles in the way of the courtship; he was now putting obstacles in the way of the marriage—a marriage offering advantages which even his ingenuity could not dispute. On the face of it, his conduct was ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... could in visiting his theatre and rejoicing in the sight of his brave gestures and the sound of his vibrant voice. It was even said that they had a badge by which they could know each other; although on the face of it, judging by what sparse scraps of information concerning the nature of woman I have been able painfully to collect, I should say that segregation would be, in such a case as this, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... just received, Roger reentered the sitting-room. The ghastly audacity of the idea that Sartorius had a moment ago been on the very point of introducing the germs of lock-jaw—tetanus to give it its proper name—into the wound on his hand seemed on the face of it beyond the bounds of possibility. Why, what man would dare to do such a thing? The risk of it! ... Yet was there so great a risk? Hadn't the doctor repeatedly warned him of the danger he was running? Why, if there was nothing in it, did ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... But on the face of it, what an appalling story! It brought him violently to earth. He could not move, but sat staring at the woman, wanting to tell her that she lied, but knowing that she had spoken according to the truth ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... it, you didn't say anything. But I am wondering about this request to go to New York. I can't help thinking there is something in this request that doesn't appear on the face of it." He turned to Professor Brierly: "What are you going to do, sir?" Professor Brierly looked mutely at Norah. She shook ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... for services rendered to that monarch in 1222, and he is again on record as their possessor in 1234, four years after the latest date on which the reputed charter to Colin Fitzgerald, keeping in view the witnesses whose names appear on the face of it, could possibly have been a genuine document. Even the most prominent of the clan historians who have so stoutly maintained the Fitzgerald theory felt bound to admit that, "it cannot be disputed that the Earl of Ross was the Lord paramount under Alexander II., by whom Farquhard ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... there is an M alike in Macedon and Monmouth, so Thomas Carew and I have a common grievance—that our names are constantly mispronounced. It is their own fault, of course; on the face of it they ought to rhyme with "few" and "vouch." And if it be urged (impolitely but with a fair amount of plausibility) that what my name may or may not rhyme with is of no concern to anybody, I have only to reply that, until a month or so back, I cheerfully shared ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was food for men and horses. 1,700 bushels of oats every day and 15,000 pounds of provisions, Sundays and all, for an entire season, which at the beginning of the work had to come about 170 miles by rail, and then be taken from 50 to 150 miles by teams across a wilderness, is on the face of it considerable of an undertaking, to say nothing about hauling the pile-drivers, piles, and bridge-timber there. To keep from delaying the track, sidings 1,500 feet long were graded, about 7 miles apart. A side-track crew, together with an engine, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... such a one limb from limb, you will almost certainly be subjected to the utmost rigour of the law, and you will be lucky if you escape a heavy fine of five or ten shillings, exclusive of the costs of the case. Now, this is not right on the face of it. It is even wrong. The law should take into account the extreme provocation which led to the action. Punish if you will the man who travels second-class with a third-class ticket, or who borrows a pencil and forgets to return it; but there are occasions when justice should be tempered ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Paul, with keen interest. "On the face of it, it seems impossible. It seems entirely uneconomic. Co-operative trading is one thing; private insurance another. But how can you ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Clementina; but there's a reasonable hope that she won't know how." He found the Claxons struggling with a fresh misgiving, which Claxon expressed. "The way I look at it is like this. I don't want that woman should eva think Clem was after her money. On the face of it there a'n't very much to her that would make anybody think but what we was after it; and I should want it pootty well undastood that we wa'n't that kind. But I don't seem to see ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... we started out, I rode ahead on my mule as usual, and when I had got about half-way to the fort I saw the white shoulder-blade of a buffalo setting up on end about fifty yards from the road. I rode out and picked it up; it was standing on end with a little wisp of grass wrapped around it; on the face of it were three men painted red. The broad end of the blade in the ground was marked out like a fort, with little black spots, meaning tracks of soldiers, and a man in black was there with his rifle drawn, and resting across one of the red men's necks. Another ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... in this essay merely as a figure of speech, and is this not the poet's usage when he addresses her? The casual reader is inclined to say, yes, that a belief in the Muse is indeed dead. It would be absurd on the face of it, he might say, to expect a belief in this pagan figure to persist after all the rest of the Greek theogony has become a mere literary device to us. This may not be a reliable supposition, since as a matter of fact Milton and Dante impress us as being quite as ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... know—never, in this life shall I discover—how rumour operates in Troy, how it arrives or is spread. Early in August a rumour, incredible on the face of it, reached me that Kirris-vean intended a Regatta! . . . For a week I disbelieved it; for almost another week I forgot it; and then lo! Sir Felix himself called on ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... does not allow of our placing the Weimar drawings in the same category as those here reproduced. The mode of grouping in the Weimar drawings is of itself sufficient to indicate that they were not executed before the picture was painted, but, on the contrary, afterwards, and it is, on the face of it, incredible that so great a master should thus have copied ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... which would have been indecent in an officer did not interfere with the duties of a private was a preposterous incongruity. Sometimes, after listening to a sustained invective concerned with a dull and, on the face of it, absurd subject known as military "courtesy," he suspected that the dim purpose of the war was to let the regular army officers—men with the mentality and aspirations of schoolboys—have their fling with some real ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... This certainly bears on the face of it a close resemblance to Spenser's measure. There are, moreover, occasional difficulties in this method of scansion, some lines refusing to accommodate themselves to the Procrustean methods of sixteenth-century editors, and exactly similar anomalies ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the name of the grantor had been omitted in the operative part of a grant, but, as it was clear from another part of the grant who he was, the deed was held to be valid. (2) Latent ambiguity is where the wording of an instrument is on the face of it clear and intelligible, but may, at the same time, apply equally to two different things or subject matters, as where a legacy is given "to my nephew, John,'' and the testor is shown to have two nephews ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have come away round the base of the beak. The most generally accepted explanation of this disfigurement is the rook's habit of thrusting its bill deep in the earth in search of its daily food. This, on the face of it, looks like a reasonable explanation, but it should be borne in mind that not only do some individual rooks retain through life the feathers normally missing, but that several of the rook's cousins dip into ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... high banks, for the most part following the courses of rivers, and forming a step from the high ground, of which the country generally consists, to the river level. Thus almost the whole of France, though, on the face of it, flat, is raised from 300 to 500 feet above the level of the sea, and is traversed by valleys either formed by, or directing, the course of its great rivers. In these valleys lie all its principal towns, surrounded, almost without exception, by ranges of hills ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... all right, on the face of it." Johnny was trying to be extremely cautious. "I'll have to think it over, though. For one thing, I'll want to do some figuring before I can say whether the price is right. It costs money to keep an airplane in the air, Mr. Lowell. You'd be surprised to see just how much a fellow has to pay ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... cars in order to win Becky seemed absurd on the face of it. But he would at least be doing something towards solving the problem of self-support, and towards increasing the measure ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... told Romano. "Royalty," he said, "has only, on the face of it, advanced beyond the pirate and robber-baron period. Au fond all princes and kings would be criminals if they happened not to be ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... get your diploma," argued Midshipman Dalzell, "the faculty of the Naval Academy will testify on the face of it that you're a competent midshipman and on your way to being fit to hold an ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... permitting reinstatement to communicant status following remarriage after divorce: "If one commits so grave a sin as to demand excommunication, how can one be reinstated while continuing to live in that sin? It is absurd on the face of it."[19] ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... to understand the relevance of this extremely improbable narrative. It did not appear, on the face of it, complimentary to connect me with a declared thief and gaol-bird. Still it was my duty to be courteous to one who was for the time a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... evidence. You see, we have the servants' testimony that they heard him come up to the top storey of the house; that he stood at their bedroom door and then went down again; that they, wondering what had happened, followed, and saw him go out into the night alone. Of course, on the face of it, it does seem unlikely that a clever fellow such as Stepaside undoubtedly is, with a great career possible for him, should have done the deed so clumsily. But, don't you see, everything points to him, and unless he brings ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... brought against any of them is that of pertinacity, disinterested, conscientious pertinacity, in error. The real evil is the state of the law. You have two supreme powers in India. There is no arbitrator except a Legislature fifteen thousand miles off. Such a system is on the face of it an absurdity in politics. My wonder is, not that this system has several times been on the point of producing fatal consequences to the peace and resources of India;—those, I think, are the words in which Warren Hastings described the effect ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... keys of the monotype machine, piano or typewriter were not located permanently in the same relative position. Consider the loss of time in not being able to use habits in finding each key. Such an arrangement sounds ridiculous on the face of it, yet it is a common practice for many operators, especially of monotype machines, to make a complete mental decision as to the muscles and fingers with which they will strike ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... English noise; see Bartsch and Horning, Section 90.]] which is not sea-sickness. I remember once asking a class of school-children, whether an announcement which during one very hard winter appeared in the papers, of a 'white blackbird' having been shot, might be possibly correct, or was on the face of it self-contradictory and absurd. The less thoughtful members of the class instantly pronounced against it; while after a little consideration, two or three made answer that it might very well be, that, while without doubt the bird had originally ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... of, assume the semblance of; look like; cut a figure, figure; present to the view; show &c (make manifest) 525. Adj. apparent, seeming, ostensible; on view. Adv. apparently; to all seeming, to all appearance; ostensibly, seemingly, as it seems, on the face of it, prima facie [Lat.]; at the first blush, at first sight; in the eyes of; to the eye. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he remarked, thoughtfully, "I should say that the writer is laboring under keen excitement—though there is no evidence of insanity on the face of it. Yes; I think ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... differently and was unwilling to be deposed. Royal letters, which he produced, had styled him 'President of the Council,' and on the face of it Duchesneau's commission only indicated that he should preside in Frontenac's absence. With these arguments the governor stood his ground. Then followed the representations of both parties to the king, each taxing the other with misdemeanours both political and ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... No. 13, Birket Street, Limehouse. The treasure, of course, was given in the first place to Thorndyke, but transferred by him to my wife on the pretence that but for my suggestion of shell-dust the robber would never have been traced. Which is, on the face of it, preposterous. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... against Mr. Rendall were ready to vanish altogether if he were ready to let them. In fact the grim ironic Mr. Rendall conversing with the suspicious stranger was an entirely different person from the friendly Mr. Rendall who conversed with the innocent-looking Thomas Sylvester Hobhouse. On the face of it this was obviously to be explained by his suspicions of the stranger. But of what did he suspect him? Of being a German spy, as he professed? Or of being what he was? That was the whole point, and it seemed to me that getting him arrested and removed was equally ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... of meaning above insisted on was, on the face of it, almost as obscure as that between "eveque and bishop." Yet we know that "eveque" is "episc" and "bishop" "piscop," and that "episcopus" is the Latin for bishop; the words, therefore, are really one and the same, in spite of the difference in their appearance. I think I can show, moreover, that ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... never speak truth, yet were so blind to his well-known propensity, that they always believed the lie to be truth, until they discovered it to be a falsehood. When he related a story, for instance, which carried not only improbability, but impossibility on the face of it, they never questioned his veracity. The neighbors, to be sure, were vexed and nettled at the obstinacy of their credulity; especially on reflecting that they were as sceptical in giving credence to the narrative of any other ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... not understand it at all. If Mr. Sam had a legal right to stop him, why hadn't he sent the police, or at least a 'summons'? As for going to prison, that only happened to thieves and criminals. No man could be locked up for pulling a boat to and fro; the notion was absurd on the face of it. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into those other contingencies later if necessary," he said, "but on the face of it I am inclined to back the lorries. They supply the tied houses in Hull, which would seem the obvious places for the brandy to go, and, besides, railway transit is too well looked after to attract the gang. I think we'll follow this lorry ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... sure of that, Professor Schaefer," said Hugo Raeder. "I was in Germany when that law was passed. It aroused a great deal of interest. I have not looked into it myself, but on the face of it I should say it possesses ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... Shelby. "I tell you, man, there's a blunder in the returns. Look, man, look!" snatching up the report from the Flats. "Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it? The Flats, mind you; our own little pocket borough of the Flats! Don't talk to me about the Poles muddling things; those inspectors of election can give them cards for stupidity and take every trick. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... this return to nature that you say you learned at college before I was born, permit me to point out that on the face of it you cannot have learned anything since. Socialism has no more to do with the state of nature than has differential calculus with a Bible class. I have called your class stupid when outside the realm of business. You, sir, have brilliantly ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Jamestown from London a report of great complaints of him for his dealings with the savages and not returning ships freighted with the products of the country. Misrepresented in London, and unsupported and conspired against in Virginia, Smith felt his fall near at hand. On the face of it he was the victim of envy and the rascality of incompetent and bad men; but whatever his capacity for dealing with savages, it must be confessed that he lacked something which conciliates success with one's own people. A new commission was about ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Corny; another to my angel, Dora; another to the dear aunt; and a fourth to my dearer self. First promise to King Corny, to settle in the Black Islands; a gratuitous promise, signifying nothing—read Burlamaqui: second promise to Mademoiselle, to go and live with her at Paris; with her—on the face of it absurd! a promise extorted too under fear of my life, of immediate peril of being talked to death—see Vatel on extorted promises—void: third promise to my angel, Dora, to live wherever she pleases; ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... long, long way, till they came to a great steep hill. There, on the face of it, the White Bear gave a knock, and a door opened, and they came into a castle where there were many rooms all lit up; rooms gleaming with silver and gold; and there, too, was a table ready laid, and it was all as grand as ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... occasion of this drear Genzano that I had a difference of opinion with a friend who maintained that there was nothing in the same line so pretty in Europe as a pretty New England village. The proposition seemed to a cherisher of quaintness on the face of it inacceptable; but calmly considered it has a measure of truth. I am not fond of chalk- white painted planks, certainly; I vastly prefer the dusky tones of ancient stucco and peperino; but I succumb on occasion to the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... was the thing, so far as she could herself go; which, from the moment her tenure of her loved palace stretched on, was possible but by his remaining near her. This remaining was of course on the face of it the most "marked" of demonstrations—which was exactly why Kate had required it; it was so marked that on the very evening of the day it had taken effect Milly herself hadn't been able not to reach out to him, with an exquisite awkwardness, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... the results of a great mass of HEREDITARY EXPERIENCE" (p. 77), so that what he is driving at can be collected by those who take trouble, but is not seen until we call up from our own knowledge matter whose relevancy does not appear on the face of it, and until we connect passages many pages asunder, the first of which may easily be forgotten before we reach the second. There can be no doubt, however, that Mr. Romanes does in reality, like Professor Hering and myself, regard development, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... to a finish. A crucial question, very much affected by what the Admiral told me last night. Nothing easier than to ask for 150,000 men and then, if I fail say I didn't get what I wanted, but the boldest leaders, Bobs, White, Gordon, K., have always "asked for more" with a most queasy conscience. On the face of it I need many more men if the Fleet is not to attack, and yet I am not even supposed to have knowledge, much less an opinion, as to what passes between ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... make them but all do not excel. Therefore I would counsel those who own the old aristocrats produced by skilled makers to hold on to them, even if they venerate neither their history nor their age. They may discard a treasure they cannot equal or replace. On the face of it, it stands to reason that any mechanism which will run two centuries or more was turned out by a workman who knew what he ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... in it yet, And the day we forget not, and never may live and may think to forget. And the years that were kindlier and fairer, and kindled with pleasures as keen, Have eclipsed not with lights or with shadows the light on the face of it seen. For softly and surely, as nearer the boat that we gazed from drew, The face of the precipice opened and bade us as birds pass through, And the bark shot sheer to the sea through the strait of the sharp steep ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... obsolete and the other half erroneous, or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with the various classes of evidence which had been brought to light since his time. Moreover his one suggestion as to the cause of the gradual modification of species—effort excited by change of conditions—was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial judge who reads the 'Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who afterwards takes up Lyell's trenchant and effectual criticism (published as far back as 1830), will ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... sure, myself, that there is. For, as I remember it now, it deals almost exclusively with imaginary or worse than imaginary quantities. I remember distinctly that i with the acute accent meant the square root of minus one—and stood for 'imaginary' on the face of it. That was right at the start, and the farther you went the farther from reality you found yourself. But I don't remember anything of the subject—only the name—I wouldn't dream of being so Bostonian ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... knew. But she was firmly convinced that if anyone could get to a Misfit planet, they would be welcomed. There were no Classes among the Misfits, she said. (The Guesser dismissed that completely; a Classless society was ridiculous on the face of it.) ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... though on the face of it just, is for some reason unjust to the plaintiff, a still further allegation is necessary for his protection, which is ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... the devotee; but no ascetic or devotee could be more profoundly penetrated with the great contrast between holiness and evil, and show more clearly in his whole manner of thinking the ineffaceable impression of the powers of the world to come. Whatever else the book may be, this much is plain on the face of it—it is the work of a mind of extreme originality, depth, refinement, and power; and it is also the work of a very religious man: Thomas a Kempis had not a more solemn sense of things unseen and of what is meant by ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... furniture vans A transparent untruth used for transporting on the face of it. If only wounded to the hospitals one train came into Potsdam at Potsdam and other why use furniture vans at cities have proved a great all? The furniture vans success. These vans, are used for purposes of moreover, all bear the sign concealment, and because of the Red Cross, and may ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... thither and left my country. Yet even so I will tell thee as I see him in spirit. Goodly Odysseus wore a thick purple mantle, twofold, which had a brooch fashioned in gold, with two sheathes for the pins, and on the face of it was a curious device: a hound in his forepaws held a dappled fawn and gazed on it as it writhed. And all men marvelled at the workmanship, how, wrought as they were in gold, the hound was gazing on the fawn ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... where the Blackford plan has not been adopted in its entirety. The plan referred to was formulated in 1912. The fact that this method has been in actual commercial use under widely varying conditions and in the hands of many different individuals, for more than three years, is, on the face of it, a reasonably fair presumption of its reliability. At any rate, it is fully as convincing as ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... highly well-intentioned people—a frantic and unbridled desire to eliminate from our social world any form of "Temptation." (One wonders how far this attitude may have been fostered by that petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into Temptation," which, on the face of it, seems to support Nietzsche's extravagant reaction against Christianity. Yet surely the Church has misunderstood that petition. Jesus himself faced the Tempter, and it is evident that he could not have so lacked insight into the soul's secrets as to countenance the impossible notion ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... maintains it as a conviction, that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a Creole in the strict sense of the term, that of a person born of white parents in the West Indies, and that an unmistakable dash of dark blood passed from her to her son and grandson. Such an occurrence was, on the face of it, not impossible, and would be absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I think I may add, to that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and his father were what we know them, and if negro blood had any part in their composition, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... nationality. Three nationalities, each with its own language, live there side by side,—the Dutch, the Flemings, and the Walloons; but of these the Dutch and the Flemings are very closely allied racially, Flemish being only a slight variant of the Dutch language. It would therefore seem natural on the face of it that these two sections would amalgamate together, leaving the Walloons to attach themselves to their French cousins. That it is not so is due to the fact that the Flemings and the Dutch are adherents ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... both of whom have decided unhesitatingly in favour of its being an original by Giorgione. Dr. Harck has written enthusiastically of its beauty. "Once seen," he says, "it can never be forgotten; the same mystic charm, so characteristic of the other great works of Giorgione, pervades it; ... it bears on the face of it the stamp of a great master."[44] Even more decisive is the verdict of Mr. Claude Phillips.[45] "All doubts," he says, "vanish like sun-drawn mist in the presence of the work itself; the first glance ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... custom of sale, that on the face of it was harsh and barbarous, some slight mitigation of the cruelty of the system had come; for the practice had grown up of permitting parents to buy back their own children—nominally thereafter holding them as slaves—and so to save them at a single stroke from both death ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... A tract of country unaltered from that sinister condition which made Caesar anxious every year to get clear of its glooms before the autumnal equinox, a kind of landscape and weather which leads travellers from the South to describe our island as Homer's Cimmerian land, was not, on the face of it, friendly to women. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... her home, I had told Mary the whole truth! And yet—how could I have convinced her that she was impaling some one with her arm while her hand rested on the bar of the bicycle? Is not that an absurdity on the face of it? Yes, indeed; but the sequel is no absurdity. That's ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the Truth, and deceivest not, nor canst be deceived. And on the other hand, Every man is a liar,(3) weak, unstable and frail, especially in his words, so that one ought scarcely ever to believe what seemeth to sound right on the face of it. ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... way in which this was said seemed so absurd on the face of it that the cousins could not refrain from smiling: but the sight of a great mass of rock ahead dividing the swift stream into two, and toward which the raft seemed to be rushing fast, made all turn to seize their poles and fend it off from ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... of Balzac's scouring Paris for a name for one of his characters. I assure you I scoured England for William Arbuthnot Blain—'identified with the movement for improving the dwellings of the labouring classes'—or is that Richard Farrant, Esq.? In any case, what more likely, on the face of it? 'Frederick Wills, Esq., of the well-known tobacco firm of Bristol'—the public swallows that readily: and yet it never buys a packet of their Westward Ho! Mixture (which I smoke myself) without reading that the Wills's of Bristol are W. D. and ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a terrible passion; I cannot but finally take heart to say, even in the absence of all external or traditional testimony, that it seems to me not pardonable merely nor permissible, but simply logical and reasonable, to set down this poem, a young man's work on the face of it, as the possible work of no ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... definitely located on Romance soil, while the names of the heroes are clearly Latin (Amicus and AEmilius). It was, however, only at a later stage that the story was affiliated to the Epic Cycle of Charlemagne. On the face of it there is clearly stamped the impress of popular tradition. Heads are not so easily replaced, except by a freak of the Folk imagination. It is probably for this reason that M. Gaston Paris attributes an ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... the subject for a couple of hours he went back to one of his first points, relating to the fitness and capacity of Corny to accomplish the task he had undertaken. It was evident enough on the face of it that his cousin, even if he had been a veteran naval officer, could not carry out the plan alone. He must have confederates, in the double sense, on board of the Vernon. In the early stages of the war, men who had served in the navy as officers were coming home from all parts of the world to ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... face was the face of a pig, nothing else—just pure pig; insolent, cunning, vulgar, and blatant. Occasionally men name a wild beast correctly, and this little beast could only have one name—hedgehog: It was obvious on the face of it. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... sweeping statement might have made Ortensia smile at any other time. But she was staggered by it now, and forgot the speech she had prepared. On the face of it, to tell anything to a man who knew everything was superfluous. She reflected a moment, and he took advantage of her silence to speak again in ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... illegal sentiment. The celebrity bestowed upon Michaelis on his release two years ago by some emotional journalists in want of special copy had rankled ever since in his breast. It was perfectly legal to arrest that man on the barest suspicion. It was legal and expedient on the face of it. His two former chiefs would have seen the point at once; whereas this one, without saying either yes or no, sat there, as if lost in a dream. Moreover, besides being legal and expedient, the arrest of Michaelis solved a little personal difficulty which worried Chief ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation, that, after all, India was four millions still in debt to them? India in debt to them! For what? Every debt, for which an equivalent of some kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a fraud. What is the equivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What are the articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which those gentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the sciences they beamed out to enlighten it? What ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... abnormal thing. You can't make it right, and of course we are a long way from making it wrong. But that is what it is coming to, I believe. Divorce will be against the law some day! No divorce on ANY GROUNDS! It cannot be reconciled to law; it defies law. Right on the face of it, it is breaking a contract. Are any other contracts to be broken with public approval? We will see the return of the old, simple law, then we will wonder at ourselves! I am not a woman who takes naturally to ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... situation lay in the fact that my earnings both as teacher and as story writer were as yet hardly more than enough to pay my own carefully estimated expenses, and I saw no way of immediately increasing my income. On the face of it, my plain duty was to remain on the farm, and yet I could not bring myself to sacrifice my Boston life. In spite of my pitiful gains thus far, I held a vital hope of soon,—very soon—being in condition to bring my mother and my sister east. I argued, selfishly of course, "It ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... April 18, that the American Marconi Company authorised the issue of the new capital. On the day after that, April 19, the shares were put on the market at L3.5.0. That same day they rose to L4. In the course of the day Rufus Isaacs sold 700 shares at an average price of L3.6.6, which on the face of it looks like clearing L3000 more than he had paid for all his shares and still having 3000 shares left. But he explained later that there had been pooling arrangements between himself and his brother, and himself and his two friends: ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... must do it all. If you tell them to take bitter herbs every morning and every night for the next five years, they think that's all right, and if he had told Naaman to do that he would have done it. But to tell him merely to dip in the river Jordan seven times, why, it seemed absurd on the face of it! But this servant suggested to him that he had better go down to the Jordan and try ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... [Footnote: Diaries of a Lady of Quality.] on Miss Wynn's book. I am convinced that the facts must be taken with large allowance; some of them are to my personal knowledge erroneously given—from no intention to deceive, but from hasty belief. But there is one story which on the face of it is not only untrue, but impossible; which she appears to have had from a Mrs. Kemble, and to have swallowed whole. How could any being believe in Lord Loughborough's telling such a tale? Mrs. K. may have, from ignorance, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... dodged the question. On the face of it this looked as though Pete might have been trying to shield himself by disclaiming any knowledge of that kind of weapon. But Owen knew the type of man he was talking to—knew that he would shield a companion even more quickly than he would ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the Irish members at Westminster is on the face of it a gross and patent injustice to Great Britain. It is absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though vitally interested in the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... kind of trouble should develop the Council would be almost impotent in offering them assistance. On the face of it, there was no reason to expect trouble. But the peculiarly oblique opposition of the Markovian delegate in the Council continued ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... said the Corsair. "Who can believe that a woman will always love her husband because she swears she will? The oath is false on the face of it." ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to reconcile the opinions which he had expressed to the War Office with the discharge of his duties as military adviser to Lord Milner during these two critical months is a matter which need not be discussed. The decision to retain him in the South African command would seem, on the face of it, to have been a grave administrative error. It is enough for us to record the undoubted facts that Lord Milner was supremely dissatisfied with the action of General Butler as his military adviser, and that whereas the High Commissioner had requested the Home Government to provide him with ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... than the reality of seeing and hearing—the other, how vague, shadowy, problematical! Could its so limited probabilities be worth taking into account in any practical question as to the rejecting or receiving [49] of what was indeed so real, and, on the face of it, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... explore fresh fields for themselves, that drove Hugo to writing his Hernani, and Gautier to wearing his red waistcoat, and all the other Romanticists to their favourite pastime of shocking the bourgeois. Versailles was so wonderful on the face of it that we resented the presence of people who needed a book to tell them so and to explain why; and we made our protest against the bourgeois in our own fashion or, to be exact, in Furse's fashion. He was then ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... well enough on the face of it, and many patentees have been misled, supposing that under the assignment the proceeds from the patent should be divided pro rata, according to the several interests. This, however, is not the case in such ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee
... a falsehood on the face of it," said the expert, turning red. "I was called simply and solely to prove Penfold did not write the forged note; I proved it to the judge's satisfaction, and he directed the prisoner to be acquitted on that count. Miss ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... from him, and, pressing the end against the circle, told him to push with me, and, to his wonder, the rod sank, seemingly, into the solid stone, forcing out a bolt which had been fitted so cunningly into the pillar that the end of it looked no more than a circle traced on the face of it. ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... thing was that the man fooled us. In the Dutchman's heart, I believe, there was nothing but astonishment at his own success. Signet, on the face of it, was the typical big talker and little doer; a flaw in character which one tends to think imperishable. He fitted so precisely into a certain pigeonhole of human kind.—What we had not counted on was the fierceness ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Ralston," remarked Eileen suddenly, during a lull in what had been a desultory, flippant, bantering sort of conversation, "I can't explain how it is and I know it is ridiculous on the face of it; but sometimes I have the feeling that I have ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... example, we invite people to visit us, and we pay visits in return, when both occasions are, on the face of it, a bore. Yet there may be good reasons why we should sacrifice any mere impulse of choice and exert ourselves to manifest a hospitable spirit toward certain people who are most uncongenial to us. Sometimes for the sake of another who is dear to us, and who, in turn, is attached to these same unattractive ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... denies that there is anything certain in what he calls breeding problems. "It seemed," he writes, "wildly improbable at one time that Flying Duchess would produce a Derby winner, for I believe it is correct that two of Galopin's elder brothers ran in a bus, and there were two others quite useless So, on the face of it, the chances were against Galopin, the youngest brother." I quote these passages as evidence of the immense demand the serious pursuit of horse-racing puts on the intellect. The betting man must be as well versed in precedents as a lawyer and in genealogical trees ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... prosaic young gentleman enough. Everything with him was to be exactly in all its parts what it appeared on the face of it, and everything was to go on doing exactly what it had been doing hitherto. If a thing looked solid, it was to be very solid; if hollow, very hollow; nothing was to be half and half, and nothing was to change unless he had himself already become accustomed ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... girl was afraid, was she afraid for herself or for her friends? And to what degree was her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs. Dorset, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there are generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are brought with the greater audacity where the original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs. Fisher ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... best thing we have struck," said George; "we had better make the most of this." Which was good advice, on the face of it. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... world places much confidence in promises. The note in the bank is a written evidence of the promise. The note says on the face of it "I promise to pay." The Government of the United States issues bank notes on the face of which is ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... the money was offered!" cried Jim. "It won't do, Loudon; it's nonsense on the face of it! I don't say but what you and Nares did your best; I'm sure, of course, you did; but I do say you got fooled. I say the stuff is in that ship to-day, and I say ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... materials," replied the artist, "and give me a board and I'll put half a dozen woods on the face of it." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... brushed her hair, put an extra pin in her tie to make sure that it was straight, wriggled round before the glass to see that belt and bodice were immaculately connected, put a clean handkerchief in her pocket, nicked the clothes-brush over her skirt, and, what could one do more? It seemed on the face of it that one could do nothing, but the other girls had accomplished a great deal more than this. Rhoda never forgot the shock of dismay which she experienced on first stepping forth, and beholding them. It was surely a room full of boys, not girls, for ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fitted as they ever were to animate its defenders in the struggle with the unfriendly opinion of the day. They could not open their Prayer-Books, and think of what they read there, without seeing that on the face of it the Church claimed to be something very different from what it was assumed to be in the current controversies of the time, very different from a mere institution of the State, from a vague collection of Christian ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... agent, his name was Jheru Bulchand, was definite. He went over it with Ronny and Tog in a bar adjoining UP headquarters. He had dossiers on each of the ten men, detailed dossiers. On the face of it, none of them ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... is the best known and the best conceived. Hypatia was written in 1853 in the prime of his manhood and was on the face of it a controversial work. Its sub-title was—New Foes with an Old Face,—its preface elaborates the moral and spiritual ideas that it teaches, the very titles of the chapters bear biblical phrases and classical moralising as their style. I should be sorry ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... asserted the Major, shrewdly scrutinizing the letter, which he had taken from Patsy's hands. "It surely looks genuine enough, on the face of it. I've seen the bank letter-head before, and this is no forgery, you can take my word. Get your things on, Patsy. Instead of walking in the park we'll hunt up Willing Square, and we'll ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... judicial system that in every place where there is a Court of Justice, higher or lower, there exists a Consultation Bureau where people without means may obtain gratuitous advice in legal matters. Unless a charge laid before this Consultation Bureau appears on the face of it to be unsustainable, the Bureau appoints one of its members to act as legal adviser and counsellor to the applicant free of cost. In criminal cases the President of the Court concerned appoints a legal adviser for the accused, though the latter ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... here, boys. There's not a sailor alive who hasn't had some mighty queer experiences, and you haven't taken that into consideration. I never heard of the Coralie, and while I admit that Jerry may have seen piratical days, and probably has, the whole thing's absurd on the face of it. Now get off to bed, and don't chase any more ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... d'etre. The bearing of this argument on contemporary theories, may to some appear a merit, to others a blemish. To make the dying John refute Strauss or Renan, handling their propositions with admirable dialectical skill, is certainly, on the face of it, somewhat hazardous. But I can see no real incongruity in imputing to the seer of Patmos a prophetic insight into the future—no real inconsequence in imagining the opponent of Cerinthus spending his last breath in the defence of Christian truth ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... of aneurysms into two classes, true and false, is unsatisfactory. On the face of it, an aneurysm which is false is not an aneurysm, any more than a false bank-note is legal tender. A better classification is into spontaneous and traumatic. The man who has chronic inflammation of a large artery, the result, for instance, of gout, arduous, straining ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... and then she ventured, "Brice, I have an idea, but I don't know what you will think of it. Why not take Godolphin's letter on the face of it, and say that you are very sorry he must give up the play, and that you will be greatly obliged to him if he can suggest some other actor? That ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... its strategic strength was obviously enormous. Gordon, however, with the eye of a born general, perceived that he could convert the very feature of the country which, on the face of it, most favoured an army on the defence— its complicated geographical system of interlacing roads and waterways, canals, lakes and rivers— into a means of offensive warfare. The force at his disposal was small, but it was mobile. He had a passion for ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Melky about the rare book left in old Multenius's parlour inclined Purdie to be somewhat suspicious that Levendale was concealing something which he knew about that affair—and now here was Miss Bennett writing what, on the face of it, looked like an appealing letter to him, as if ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... sometimes works out the work of a lifetime, touches the key-note of an anthem of everlasting praise,—does it with as little ostentation as the son of science draws yellow gold from the quartz rock which tells no tale on the face of it concerning its "hid treasure." So, wisely and without ostentation, work the true agents, the apostles of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... that the Germans should imitate Frederick the Great, which is not so preposterous as appears on the face of it, because of comparatively easy means of transportation, and should be able to make successive victorious dashes, first in the east and then in the west, backward and forward; leadership would be hers, and France would be a minor power ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... so foolishly, then, gone to sleep? And what, at the final analysis, could we have stolen but bales of hay, sacks of guano, and plowshares? All of them too unwieldy to carry away unless we had other conveyance than our backs. It was absurd, on the face of it. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... was plain as day on the face of it. Why, it sounded just like you from start to finish. Of course, if you had been in New York, I should have tried to suspect somebody else, but when I found you were staying only about six miles from Maple Bank, ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... mistake, Bobtail. In my opinion, there's something about this business that don't appear on the face of it." ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... on the face of it. Universal convictions are not to be shaken by the whimseys of overfed butchers and firemen, or by the sentimental fears of girls who would keep the infantile bloom on their cheeks. We know the value of experience. Life and art are cumulative; and he who has accomplished something in any department ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the game was up. The remedy was an absurd one, on the face of it; and if her common sense told her as much it would also make her guess my motive. But what limits are there to the credulity of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... got instead an unsatisfactory young ass whom he suspects, or says he suspects, of murder, and who so loathes Rattar that, as far as I can judge, he will probably take his business away from him. To suspect Rattar of actually conniving at, or taking any part in the actual crime itself is, on the face of it, to convict either ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... go behind both the Stuarts and the Tudors; and to apply the principles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in 1640 was, in effect, to institute a revolution. In our own time, to maintain the right of the Commons against the Lords is, on the face of it, to adhere to old constitutional right, but to do so under the new circumstances which have made the Commons representative of the nation as a whole is, in reality, to establish democracy for the first ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... are not a cattle thief," she protested. "You have only to explain who you are; no one would for a moment believe that Lawrence Knight could be guilty of stealing; it's ridiculous on the face of it!" ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... On the face of it there would seem to be no call for an increase as the resistance met when going against the wind is apparently offset by the propulsive force of the wind when the machine is travelling with it. This, however, is called faulty reasoning. The increase in fuel consumption, as figured ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell |
