"Perchance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Nothing in clouds or flowers, on bird-wings or the lips of shells, could rival it in fineness. It was the most divinely beautiful mass of rejoicing yellow light I ever beheld—one of Nature's precious gifts that perchance may come to us ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... their fault, Will more than make amends. It rains again, Beating a doleful measure on the pane, Sobbing in sad, wild cadence through the street While ever 'mid the rising, falling strains The eaves drop notes as those of muffled drum, Alone in rhythm, save, perchance, the beat Of some tired horse's hoofs, as, homeward bound, He treads the flooded pavement stones. And now The sun, weary of contest for the day, Forsakes the scene and sinks away to rest, Leaving the world ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... from the shattered low fronts of the overhanging wooden houses we are passing under - shut up now, pasted over with bills about the literature and drama of the Mint, and mouldering away. This long paved yard was a paddock or a garden once, or a court in front of the Farm House. Perchance, with a dovecot in the centre, and fowls peeking about - with fair elm trees, then, where discoloured chimney-stacks and gables are now - noisy, then, with rooks which have yielded to a different sort of rookery. It's likelier than not, Inspector Field thinks, as we turn into the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Perchance it may be with you the season of trial, the chamber of protracted sickness, the time of desolating bereavement, some furnace seven times heated. Herein, too, you may sweetly glorify your God. Never is your Heavenly Father more glorified ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... create a comic-opera set of rules for their below-stairs life, and the man who has butlered for a lord, even if the latter be the greatest fool of his day, looks with scorn upon the valet of some lesser fellow who, perchance, is forced to make a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of enchantment the surroundings seem to take on a more mysterious air. Sounds that awhile before meant nothing more than the wind in the trees now begin to make one think of the rush of galloping cowboys or Hessians on mischief bent; or, if perchance we catch through the gathering dusk a glint of white on the river below, may it not be that Flying Dutchman who, tired of the narrow bounds of the Tappan Zee, is trying to steal out to the open ocean while the constable sleeps, but the cause of ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... awoke and remembered her dream she trembled for fear. In the early dawn the beautiful maiden slipped into her mother's bower. Perchance the Queen would be able to tell her ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... cinder track the express waited, dreamily indifferent, with a flagman ahead and behind to guard its safety, and while men slept the enemy took wings and flew down the white morning road to Tinsdale, but no one ran ahead with a little red flag to the gray cottage where slept Betty, to warn her, though perchance an angel with a flaming sword stood invisibly ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... half-starved and naked over the plateau. Even those who had aided the Spaniards in the conquest fared no better; and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant over the lands where he once held rule, and if driven, perchance, by his necessities, to purloin something from the superfluity of his conquerors, he expiated it by a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... I now would introduce Which may, perchance, be now and then of use In leading youths to greater carefulness, When to sweet pleasure they themselves address. Near Esthwaite's foot exists a lonely spot, Named by the country people "The Priest's Pot"; A strange, deep hole, with crystal water filled, By land surrounded which was never ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... time may come, perchance, when midst The ruins of Italian palaces, Will herds of cattle graze, And all the seven hills the plough will feel; Not many years will have elapsed, perchance, E'er all the towns of Italy Will the abode of foxes be, And dark groves murmur ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... lone vastness of the afterglow, Unknown before; Shall e'er I see that face where violets grow, Perchance, once more! ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... watch for one alone May grow reluctant; for the open gate Lets in, with him, perchance a guest unknown, On whom slow words ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... eyes and thoughts have all been directed to you and your son in a wonderful manner; but so it has been ordered by the providence of God. You perceive that we cannot withdraw them; and you would do well to tell us exactly what you know concerning the fearful state of the boy. Perchance, the solemn tale, which I expect from you, might do ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Klondike, the hero of the Arctic, the thirty-million-dollar millionaire of the North, had come to New York. What had he come for? To trim the New Yorkers as he had trimmed the Tonopah crowd in Nevada? Wall Street had best watch out, for the wild man of Klondike had just come to town. Or, perchance, would Wall Street trim him? Wall Street had trimmed many wild men; would this be Burning Daylight's fate? Daylight grinned to himself, and gave out ambiguous interviews. It helped the game, and he grinned again, as he meditated that Wall Street would ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... of that; yet, Master Cairnes, you are scarcely the sort who would involve a lady in such broil, when, if we escaped at first, the chances are we should have wounded to care for, or, perchance, be prisoners borne southward under Spanish guard—a contingency not over-pleasant, I imagine, to ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... colonel was speaking he had taken from the drawer of a cabinet that stood close by a sheet of paper folded in the form of a letter. It was one, though it bore no postmark. For all that, it looked as if it had travelled far—perchance carried by hand. It had in truth come all the way across the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... frequented men of my own profession, and particularly inquired for those who were strangers, that perchance I might hear news from Bagdad, or find an opportunity to return. They put a thousand questions respecting my country; and I, being willing to inform myself as to their laws and customs, asked them concerning everything ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... possibility, but I didn't see how any intruder could do all that, without being seen by the waiters. Unless, perchance, the waiters had been bribed to silence. And that, in the face of Luigi's earnest, and convincing ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... coal to crown the bowl— My pipe and I alone,— I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own:— It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And so I ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... object is to pick a quarrel with me; though I am not conscious of having given you offence. However, that matters little. I suppose you are one of those gallants who air their bravery when they think they can do so, with impunity. On the present occasion you may, perchance, find that you are mistaken. I am a stranger here, and know of no place where this matter can be settled, nor am I provided with a second; but I am quite content to place myself in the hands of one of these gentlemen, if they will act ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... system be indeed Divine, all this may be very well, and as it should be. But if, perchance, it should turn out to be a mistake if it be, in truth, not from God; will not, then, that system be justly chargeable with all those shocking cruelties which, on account of it, have been ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... wert not my love, And I perchance not thine—what then? Could gift of men Or favor of the God above, Plant aught in this bare heart Or teach this tongue the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... bark, bringing the very prohibited phosphorus. And, without its touching the shore, they must go to get that merchandise, by advancing on foot in the bed of the river, with long, pointed sticks in their hands, in order to assume, if perchance they were caught, airs of ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... the devil. There Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick, shall meet and censure me and my council. Therefore I reiterate my former speech: Le roi s'avisera. Stay, I pray, for one seven years, before you demand; and then, if you find me grow pursy and fat, I may perchance hearken unto you. For that government will keep me in breath, and give me work enough."[***] Such were the political considerations which determined the king in his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... marks the end of a cataclysmic epoch and the dawn of a dreary and confused age. We may picture the Muse of History, drawn distractedly from her abodes on the banks of the Seine, gazing in wonder on that event taking place under the lee of Berry Head, her thoughts flashing back, perchance, to the days when William of Orange brought his fleet to shore at that same spot and baffled the designs of the other great ruler of France. The glory of that land is now once more to be shrouded in gloom. For a time, like an uneasy ghost, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... have possessed little wiry-coated and wiry-dispositioned red dogs, which accompanied their owners to work, being stowed away in pockets of overcoats until the dinner hour, when they were brought out to share their masters' meals, perchance chasing a casual rat in between times. Old men of to-day who remember these little "red tarriers" tell us that they were the originals of the present-day Brussels Griffons, and to the sporting propensities of the aforesaid miners ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... chained, Even, unslipped their collars on that day To visit Jack in state, as though to pay A last, sad tribute there, while neighbors craned Their heads above the high board fence, and deigned To sigh "Poor dog!" remembering how they Had cuffed him, when alive, perchance, because, For love of them he leaped to lick their hands— Now, that he could not, were they satisfied? We children thought that, as we crossed his paws, And o'er his grave, 'way down the bottom-lands, Wrote "Our First Love Lies Here," ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... a sad state, when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself, with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birth-mark. But the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the Hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... Sir Peter Brome who fell at Bosworth Field—not fighting for me," and he smiled. "Did you know him perchance?" ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... so changed by time, Disguised by wandering in a foreign clime, I may return to reap My vengeance; for a wrong doth never sleep. But whither do I stray, Treading the shades of death in this dark way? My path is lost: I go Whither I do not know; Perchance escaping from my prison bands To fall again into my tyrant's hands. If the dark night doth not my sight deceive, Yonder a rustic cabin I perceive. Yes, I am right. I'll knock; I can't much err, They'll know the way. ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... God, inactively stands by. Not even a manly counsel comes from his lips. He believes he has fulfilled his Christian duty by trusting in Heaven for the conduct of human affairs, and trying to comfort his fellow-men by the hollow words that he 'sees no cause for despair. Perchance we have not yet arrived at the last stage. The maintenance of states is most probably something that goes beyond our powers of ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... gentlemen of the croupe, and that they are meekly inviting him to try his luck. "Well, there can't be much harm in risking a florin," he murmurs. He stakes his silver-piece on a number or a colour. He wins, we will say, twice or thrice. Perhaps he quadruples his stake, nay, perchance, hits on the lucky number. It turns up, and he receives thirty-five times the amount of his mise. Thenceforth it is all over with that ingenuous British youth. The Demon of Play has him for his own, and he may go on playing and playing until he has lost every florin of his own, or as many ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... ourselves—shall we never heed the teachings of Philosophy (unless perchance they have been sounding in our ears ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... me either compensation or consolation for the loss of her child's father, also died, of a broken heart, it was said. But God was right, as usual, in taking my parents; for I should have brought them no happiness, unless perchance they could have moulded my life to a better form than it has had—a doubtful chance, since our great virtues and our chief faults are born and die with us. My faults, alas! have been many and great. In my youth I knew but one ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... her lovers, as is very plain. Only because of the pains it costs to win her the greater number fall away; for the achievement of her is hid in obscurity; while the pains that cleave to her are manifest. Perchance, if only she were endowed with a visible bodily frame, men would less have neglected her, knowing that even as she is visible to them, so they also are not hid from her eyes. For is it not so that when a man moves in the presence of him whom he dearly loves, (24) he rises to a height above himself, ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... Is this some Spirit, O child of man? Doth Hecat hold thee perchance, or Pan? Doth she of the Mountains work her ban, Or the dread ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... the first faint perfume of mint is blown down the breezes, and one begins to wonder how the lambs are shaping. Is that the ideal February? Ah no! For we cannot be deceived. We know that spring is not here; that March is to come with its frosts and perchance its snows, a worse March for the milder February, a plunge back into the winter which poor February tried ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... If, perchance, the pre-coital secretion should be tardy in appearing on the part of the wife, so that the vulva is dry as the husband strokes it, let him moisten the part with saliva from his mouth. To do this, let him moisten ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep: No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,—'t is a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there 's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... returned Balfour, "you are already weary of me, and would be yet more so, perchance, did you know the task upon which I have been lately put. And I wonder not that it should be so, for there are times when I am weary of myself. Think you not it is a sore trial for flesh and blood, to be called upon ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... support on his miserable salary of three hundred dollars a year, voted him by a Common Council that spent ten thousand carousing in their tea-room. Had any one of those city fathers ever been up so early, they might often have seen this good man at daybreak toiling on foot to the city, or perchance miles away to some country town, in search of a service place for some repentant prisoner, or to carry a message from a sick child to its friends. In his gentle humility the good man never complained, never said that ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... "But perchance the bird has found herself a nest somewhere," said Clara, looking towards the bed; "methinks, indeed, I see some of the feathers, for surely a red gown never trembled that way under a bed unless there was something living inside of it." When the witch-girl heard this ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... teaching that may instruct our own times, especially when we see how, through scorn and persecution, and this world's contumely, and through the gloom and shadows of ignorance and fear, the form and substance of mighty Truth rises, slowly and dimly, perchance, at first, but grandly and majestically ere long? Little more than two hundred years have passed since the death of Galileo, but ample justice has been done to his memory. His name will be a watchword through all time, to urge men forward in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... vnkinde, vnthankfull, traiterous beast! Wherein had Balthazar offended thee, That thou should betray him to our foes? Wast Spanish golde that bleared so thine eyes That thou couldst see no part of our deserts? Perchance, because thou art Terseraes lord, Thou hadst some hope to weare this diademe If first my sonne and then my-selfe were slaine; But thy ambitious thought shall breake thy neck. I, this was it that ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good will and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are not. If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... them in mind as I would a person I wished to cultivate. When occasion rises, you must introduce them into your talk. You will feel a bit shy about it, for introductions are difficult to accomplish gracefully; you will steal a furtive glance at your hearer perchance, and another at the word itself, as you would when first labeling a man "my friend Mr. Blank." But the embarrassment is momentary, and there is no other way. Assume a friendship if you have it not, and presently ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... so faint, so feeble, yet so mighty, so conquering, this sign of the coming generation, the voice of the new-born babe. At this little human voice, born of sorrow and sin, born to suffering and to knowledge, born to life in all its wonders and to death in all its mystery—the elements perchance relented and averted their fury. Not yet was there to be punished sin, or wrong, or doubt, or weakness. Not at once would justice punish the parents of this babe and blot out at once the record of their fault. Storm and lightning, darkness and the night yielded to the voice of the infant and allowed ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Perchance their sacred rites have been disturbed By demons, or some evil has befallen The innocent herds, their favourites, that graze Within the precincts of the hermitage, Or haply, through my sins, some withering blight Has nipped the creeping plants that spread their arms Around ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... the morning he rose up, and plucked some bitter berries from the trees and ate them, and took his way through the great wood, weeping sorely. And of everything that he met he made inquiry if perchance they ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... of induction amongst currents which I had the good fortune to discover some years ago (6. &c. 1048.) may perchance here form a connecting link in the series of effects. When a current is first formed, it tends to produce a current in the contrary direction in all the matter around it; and if that matter have conducting properties and be fitly circumstanced, such ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... was alarmed for the safety of his pupil, and said to himself, "I will, if possible, preserve this amiable youth, and perchance Allah may gratify his wishes." He then anointed both his eyes with an ointment, which had the effect of rendering him invisible to human sight. After this, he said, "Go, my son, and gratify thy wishes, but return again, and be not too long ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... when he drew the blotted pages from their nook. He sat down to read,—there was a dead silence through the house. Melmoth looked wistfully at the candles, snuffed them, and still thought they looked dim, (perchance he thought they burned blue, but such thought he kept to himself). Certain it is, he often changed his posture, and would have changed his chair, had there been more than one ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... into decay. The poor Indian, without food, now wandered half-starved and naked over the plateau. Even those who aided the Spaniards fared no better, and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant over the fields where he once held rule; and if driven, perchance, by his necessities to purloin something from the superfluity of his conquerors, he expiated it by a miserable death." [Footnote: ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... great?" said he. "Yea," said Ralph, "I give thee joy thereof!" Said the new Lord: "Perchance thou wilt be deeming that since I was once thy war-taken thrall I should give myself up to thee: but I tell thee I will not: for I have much to do here. Moreover I did not run away from thee, but ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... he? Dia. That Iacke-an-apes with scarfes. Why is hee melancholly? Hel. Perchance ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... silence passed before I received the promised letter from Captain Wentworth—so gloomy, so incomprehensible, so portentous, that it filled me with despair. In this letter he spoke of obstacles between us—in which blood bore part—of the wreck of all earthly happiness for him—perchance for me. Yet he conjured me to be calm and patient, as he could not be, and alluded to my silence as conclusive of his misery. He referred frequently to the letter he had intrusted to the care of Gregory as explanatory of all that might otherwise ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... add that kennels only large enough for white mice, or perchance piebald rats, can never be successfully used to ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... from the things of the sea this life-giving essence, once they have attained it through growth during immersion in its depths, though perchance, as Emerson sang, "they left their beauty on the shore, with the sun and the sand and the wild uproar." The shell on the mantel shelf of the mariner's inland home may be unsightly and out of place. But put your ear to it. Out of the common noises of the day, it weaves for you the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of grey and black vapours that travel out slowly to seaward and vanish into thin air all along the front before the blazing heat of the day. The wasting edge of the cloud-bank always strives for, but seldom wins, the middle of the gulf. The sun—as the sailors say—is eating it up. Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away from the main body to career all over the gulf till it escapes into the offing beyond Azuera, where it bursts suddenly into flame and crashes like a sinster pirate-ship of the air, hove-to above the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... entertaining little book a short history of dear Ireland, such as even some profligate idle member of the House of Commons, voting as his master bids him, may perchance throw his eye upon, and reflect for a moment upon the iniquity to which ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... maintain'd, For all around was sea, sea without shore. This seeks a mountain's top, that gains a skiff, And plies his oars where late he plough'd the plains. O'er fields of corn one sails, or 'bove the roofs Of towns immerg'd;—another in the elm Seizes th' intangled fish. Perchance in meads The anchor oft is thrown, and oft the keel Tears the subjacent vine-tree. Where were wont The nimble goats to crop the tender grass Unwieldy sea-calves roll. The Nereid nymphs, With wonder, groves, and palaces, and towns, Beneath the waves behold. By dolphins now The woods are tenanted, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the town on her shoulders. Whatever may be The cause that is needy, we look to Miss Lee. Have you gold? She will make you disgorge it ere long; Are you poor? Well, perchance you can dance—sing a song— Make a speech—tell a story, or plan a charade. Whatever you have, gold or wits, sir, must aid ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of the great Spanish monarchy, which was slowly drowned in Dutch waters, smothered with mud and curses. One who is weak enough to feel an excessive tenderness for Spain need only go to Holland if he wishes to do penance for this sin. Never, perchance, have there been two nations which have had better reasons than these to hate each other with all their strength, or which tried with greater fury to establish those reasons. I remember, to mention one alone of a thousand contrasts, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... man almost, so much better did I feel. It was a wind of God, and had been blowing all about me as I slept, renewing me! It was so strange, and so delightful! Where I dreaded evil, there had come good! So, perchance, it will be when the time which the flesh dreads is drawing nigh: we shall see the pale damps of the grave approaching, but they will never reach us; we shall hear ghastly winds issuing from the mouth of the tomb, but when they blow upon us they shall be sweet—the waving of the wings of the angels ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Boabdil, in a softened voice, while he shaded his face with his hand, "we played together as children, and I have loved thee well: my kingdom even now, perchance, is passing from me, but I could almost be reconciled to that loss, if I thought thy loyalty ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and the leisure of a happy home Borrow could for the moment think of the ambition of 'twelve years ago'—an ambition to put before the public some of the results of his marvellous industry. The labours of the dark, black years between 1825 and 1830 might now perchance see the light. Three such books got themselves published, as we have seen, Romantic Ballads, Targum, and The Talisman. The Sleeping Bard had been translated and offered to 'a little Welsh ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... wonder on the gigantic offspring of the little railway, which has swallowed up its own sire. Lean mules no longer crawl leisurely along the little rails with trucks of stone through Croydon, once perchance during the day, but the whistle and the rush of the locomotive are now heard all day long. Not a few loads of lime, but all London and its contents, by comparison—men, women, children, horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... own party in all his political course, out of jealousy, forsooth, and envy of his great reputation? This historian, it seems, having raked up these stories, I know not whence, has befouled with them a man who, perchance, was not altogether free from fault or blame, but yet had a noble spirit, and a soul that was bent on honor; and where such qualities are, there can no such cruel and brutal passion find harbor or gain admittance. As to Ephialtes, the truth of the story, as Aristotle has told it, is this: that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... need. What an example her first word to Him sets us all! Like the two sad sisters at Bethany, she is sure that to tell Him of trouble is enough, for that His own heart will impel Him to share, and perchance to relieve it. Let us tell Jesus our wants and leave Him to deal with them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... darken any man's heart to you? And as you stumble on in the sickening cloud he has left behind him, you suddenly recollect that you were once compelled to vote against that man on a public question: on some question of home franchise, or foreign war, or church government, or city business; or perchance, a family has left his shop to do business in yours, or his church to worship God in yours, or such like. It will be a certain relief to you to recollect such things. But with it all there will be a shame and a humiliation and a deep inward pain that will escape into a cry of prayer for him ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... perchance unto their close; But at the least, whate'er the past, their end Shall be like ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... spirit waxing too hot within him, would sally forth into the fields and lay about him most lustily with his sabre; decapitating cabbages by platoons; hewing down lofty sunflowers, which he termed gigantic Swedes; and if, perchance, he espied a colony of big-bellied pumpkins quietly basking in the sun, "Ah! caitiff Yankees!" would he roar, "have I caught ye at last?" So saying, with one sweep of his sword, he would cleave the unhappy vegetables from their chins ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... And then, below, where trickling streams distil From some penurious source, their thirst allay, And feed their fainting flocks: so the wise hares Oft quit their seats, lest some more curious eye Should mark their haunts, and by dark treacherous wiles Plot their destruction; or perchance in hopes ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... soon as I know that your happiness is assured. Oh! do not refuse my last request; let the light of your eyes shine on me for the last time; after that I shall depart—I shall fly far away for ever. But if perchance, in spite of every effort, I fail, if the commander's jealousy should make him impervious to my entreaties—to my tears, if he whom you love should come and overwhelm you with reproaches and then abandon you, would you drive me from your ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Old Bughtrig found him with his wife; And John, an enemy to strife, Sans frock and hood, fled for his life. The jealous churl hath deeply swore That if again he venture o'er, He shall shrive penitent no more. Little he loves such risks, I know; Yet in your guard, perchance, will go." ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... bites me, the bacchantes are saints in comparison. But be just, and you will agree that your unworthy servant only wishes to perform honestly her duty as a servant. Now you know my secret, or at least a part of my secret, will you, perchance, act as a gentleman? Do I seem too handsome to serve you? Do you desire to change parts and become my slave? So be it! Frankly, I prefer that, but always on this condition, that I shall never go out of the house, and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... that of the poor baron! What a heartrending dilemma for a fond father and a member of the great family of Katzenellenbogen! His only daughter had either been rapt away to the grave, or he was to have some wood-demon for a son-in-law, and perchance a troop of goblin grandchildren. As usual, he was completely bewildered, and all the castle in an uproar. The men were ordered to take horse and scour every road and path and glen of the Odenwald. The baron himself ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... that which echoes through the wood? Is it the reedy note of an oaten pipe? Perchance a minute more will see the brood Of the shaggy forest god, and on his lip Will rest the rushes he is wont to play. His train in woven baskets bear ripe fruit And weave a dance with ropes of gray acorns, So light their touch the ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... herself into the waters while she cried to Heaven with her dying breath: 'Take me and my innocence as an offering, O Lord! Release my people from their extremity!'—that would be a victim indeed; and perchance, the Lord might say: 'I will accept it; but the will alone is enough. No child of mine may cast away the life that I have lent her as the most sacred and precious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... finger and thumb were upon the latch, the corporal did not knock as often as perchance your honour's taylor—I might have taken my example something nearer home; for I owe mine, some five and twenty pounds at least, and wonder at the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... girl, with which she wantons, which she presses to her bosom, and whose eager peckings is accustomed to incite by stretching forth her forefinger, when my bright-hued beautiful one is pleased to jest in manner light as (perchance) a solace for her heart ache, thus methinks she allays love's pressing heats! Would that in manner like, I were able with thee to sport and sad cares ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... door, there sat the frog in front of it. Then she slammed the door to, in great haste, sat down to dinner again, and was quite frightened. The King saw plainly that her heart was beating violently, and said, "My child, what art thou so afraid of? Is there perchance a giant outside who wants to carry thee away?" "Ah, no," replied she. "It is no ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... fresh bear tracks, and his breath began to come quickly. You may be sure he peered closely into every dark thicket, and looked behind all the large trees and logs, and had his eyes wide open lest perchance "Mr. Bear" should step out and surprise him with an affectionate hug, and thereby put an end ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the two dark figures he had passed on Clay street where the killing had taken place. Perchance if he had stopped as he was minded, the tragedy might have been averted. Nobody seemed to know just how it came about. The thing was most unfortunate politically. King would stir up a hornet's nest of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... years, and live them o'er again, Each culling, as his inclination bent, His parents for himself, with mine content, I would not choose whom men endow as great With the insignia and seats of state; And, though I seemed insane to vulgar eyes, Thou wouldst perchance esteem me truly wise, In thus refusing to assume the care Of irksome state I was ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... "Perchance you never heard of a certain letter dispatched to Hugo by his brother, Frederick, after Henry's ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... flaming town beneath, whence rose one continual wail of misery, the wail of women mourning their countless slain while the fire roared through their homes like some unchained and rejoicing demon. "Look Leo on the smoke of the first sacrifice that I offer to thy royal state and listen to its music. Perchance thou deemst it naught. Why then I'll give thee others. Thou lovest war. Good! we will go down to war and the rebellious cities of the earth shall be the torches of ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... one tree to another, his keen eye always fixed upon the fleeting figure and his ears alert to learn if, perchance, the Boche was being pursued. Not a sound could he hear except that of ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... heat, Winnowing the witless space, Without a let, What are they till they beat Against the sleepy sod, and there beget Perchance the violet! Is the One found, Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace, To make Heaven's bound; So that in Her All which it hath of sensitively good Is sought and understood After the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer? She, as a little breeze Following still Night, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... but possesses a dangerous quality of expansibility. However much he himself might protest against such a view, there was no particular reason why the easy and careless should not urge that God might perchance dispense with all future punishment of sin, and not only ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... himself erect between four fires under the burning sun. After some years, the solitary becomes "penitent"; then his only subsistence is from almsgiving; for whole days he lifts an arm in the air uttering not a word, holding his breath; or perchance, he gashes himself with razor-blades; or he may even keep his thumbs closed until the nails pierce the hands. By these mortifications he destroys passion, releases himself from this life, and by contemplation rises to Brahma. And yet, this way of salvation ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... your blessed eyes— It cannot be but that they are my sun; As strong they smite me as he smites upon The man whose way o'er Libyan desert lies, The while a vapour hot doth me surprise From that side springing where my pain doth won: Perchance accustomed lovers—I am none And know not—in their speech call such things sighs: A part shut in, sore vexed, itself conceals, And shakes my bosom; part, undisciplined, Breaks forth, and all around to ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... unaccounted for. There had been halfbreeds hanging about the store prior to the final escapade of Pete and Crapaud, but these had realized their unpopularity after the battle on the Elk, and had departed for other climes. Crapaud was still under guard. Pete was still at large, perchance, with Stabber's braves. There was not another man about the trader's place whom Flint or others could suspect. Yet the sergeant of the guard, searching cautiously with his lantern about the post of Number Six, had come upon some suggestive signs. The ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... therefore confide in no one on board for fear of making a mistake, but must rely upon giving Bienville prompt warning upon my return, and I must needs hide my reluctance and mingle with officers and men, for perchance by this means I might ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... for skill in astrology is hereditary, descending from father to son, and new minds are unprepared for such teachings, so that too much knowledge conveyed to outsiders may become a source of disturbance to themselves and perchance of danger and hurt to their fellow men. Thus, following the rules laid down for me by my grandfather, always, even when closely pressed with questions, did I exercise ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... blue is one of the birds suffering under a bad name whom I have wished to know better, to see if perchance something might be done to clear up his reputation a bit. I am not able to say that he never steals the eggs of other birds, though during nearly a month of hard work, when, if ever, a few eggs would have been a welcome addition to his resources, and sparrows ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Perchance the Indian climbed thy rugged side, Ere the pale face subdued his warlike pride, And bent him down to kneel, to serve, to toil, To alien shrines upon his native soil. It needs not thee, O mount! to tell the story That stained the wreath of many a hero's glory; But Nature's mysteries must ever ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... I, 'that they are so irascible, that if perchance their word is doubted, and they are called liars, they will fight on such an occasion till ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... others sat Not far, some grey; and one, a weed of years, Lay like a withered wreath. An old man spake: "See what thou seest, and scan the mystery well! The man who stands so stately in his prime Is of this company the eldest born. The Saviour in His earthly sojourn, Risen, Perchance, or ere His Passion, who can tell, Stood up at this man's door; and this man rose, And let Him in, and made for Him a feast; And Jesus said, 'Tarry, till I return.' Moreover, others are there on this isle, Both men and ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... long since been a "goner," Though the uttermost heel-tap be drained, I will give them a place of high honour, Well knowing that once they contained My solace when seasons were rotten, When the cold put my courage to flight, Or the sergeant, perchance, had forgotten To kiss ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... always feared to be near it; I had so longed to know what might be within it. As a little knickerbockered child I would pick the colored gravel-stones from the mortar, and play with them in the dust; and if perchance one stone struck the iron door, I would run away from the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... awakening. A silent waiter stood beside him, offering for his inspection an elaborate menu. The letters danced before his eyes as Henry looked at them. What did they mean, anyhow, and how did one pick out what one wanted, he wondered. Or, perchance, was one expected gracefully to consume everything? His momentary self- sufficiency died on the instant, and sickening fears of making a mistake before Maria's eyes again overcame him. A great longing filled him to appear to advantage, to do the thing ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... drooping chestnut-leaves and among alder-branches into some secret sanctuary of stillness. The emerald edges of these silent tarns are starred with dandelions which have strayed here, one scarce knows how, from their foreign home; the buck-bean perchance grows in the water, or the Rhodora fixes here one of its shy camping-places, or there are whole skies of lupine on the sloping banks;—the catbird builds its nest beside us, the yellow-bird above, the wood-thrush ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... "Perchance the self-same song that found a path To the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... once my wit, perchance, hath shone, In aid of others, let me shine, And when, alas! our brains are gone, What ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... compass of our own minds, do we not find thoughts and images that spring from sources that we cannot trace! Have we not more than once been called upon to perform some act of life, important to ourselves, or perchance to others; or been in some incidental circle of friends, or of persons who were strangers until then; or walked upon some lonely path in Europe—all for the first time as we suppose, and yet have we not had it irresistibly borne in upon our minds, that we have done ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... think that I could ever be loved; but perchance my devotion may win for me toleration. Since that morning when you smiled upon me with generous girlish impulse, divining the misery of my lonely and rejected heart, you reign there alone. You are the absolute ruler of my life, the queen ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions to the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter becomes a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... harbingers of the circus crying their wares. Timid youth, in shoes covered with dust through which the morning polish but dimly shone, and unalterably hooked by the arm to blushing maidens, bought recklessly of peanuts, of candy, of popcorn, of all known sweetmeats, perchance; and forced their way to the lemonade stands; and there, all shyly, silently sipped the crimson-stained ambrosia. Everywhere the hawkers dinned, and everywhere was heard the plaintive squawk of ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... And if a pang comes to you at all, it will be a pang of healthful hunger. All the puling sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of duty that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight of these woods, fall away from you like a garment. And if perchance you come forth upon an eminence, where the wind blows upon you large and fresh, and the pines knock their long stems together, like an ungainly sort of puppets, and see far away over the plain a factory chimney defined against the pale horizon—it is for you, as for the staid and simple ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... manufacturers received him with a certain distinction. Some, who in public would scarcely have dared to acknowledge his acquaintance, lest a little of the hate and vengeance laid up in store for him should perchance have fallen on them, in private hailed him as in some sort their champion. When the wine had circulated, their respect would have kindled to enthusiasm had not Moore's unshaken nonchalance held it in ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... that a deed of mercy is beyond and above all works of vengeance. What is the capture of a criminal, of many of them, compared to the rescue, the saving, perchance, of an honest man's life? I beg of thee, consent, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... sadder colors in 't: That most sweet gentle lady—rest her soul!— Shrunk to an epitaph beside her lord's, And six lines shorter, which was all a shame; Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth's end, (The younger son that was her sweetheart once,) Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance; And all dear old-time uses quite forgot. Slowly, unnoted, like the creeping rust That spreads insidious, had estrangement come, Until at last, one knew not how it fell, And little cared, if sober truth were said, She and the father no more climbed the hill To Twelfth ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... be left religiously alone. The more it is pulled out or irritated the lustier and heartier will be the growth that follows. As for cutting it—well! who does not know what the result is sure to be? A challenging Kaiser William mustache, maybe, or perchance a Herr Most style of hirsute trimmings. In applying creams of any sort to the face, it is wisdom to leave the upper lip untouched with the cosmetic, although one may feel perfectly safe in using home-made emollients which do not contain ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... earth's abatement! He who smites the rock and spreads the water, Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, Even he the minute makes immortal Proves perchance but mortal in the minute, Desecrates belike the deed in doing. While he smites, how can he but remember So he smote before, in such a peril, When they stood and mocked—"Shall smiting help us?" When they drank and sneered—"A stroke is easy!" When ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... returned home, weeping over what had befallen. Such was their case; but as regards Uns al- Wujud, he arose from sleep and prayed the dawn-prayer, after which he took horse and rode forth to attend upon the Sultan. On his way, he passed by the Wazir's house, thinking perchance to see some of his followers as of wont; but he saw no one and, looking upon the door, he read written thereon the verses aforesaid. At this sight, his senses failed him; fire was kindled in his vitals and he returned to his lodging, where ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... dream. You have transformed my nature. I suffer? Oh, would that I could sometimes suffer, that I might have somewhat to offer unto God, were it but the consciousness of a privation, the bitterness of a tear, in return for all he has given me in you! To suffer for you, might, perchance, be the only thing which could add one drop to that cup of happiness which it is given me to quaff. To suffer thus, is it to suffer, or to enjoy? No; thus to live, is, in truth, to die, but it is to die some years earlier to this wretched life, to live beforehand of ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... raged there among the trees of the forest. The colonists could hear the voice of Cornstalk as he passed from tree to tree among his men, encouraging them. Rarely did they see more of their foes than a coppery gleam from behind a tree trunk, perchance the arm or leg of a savage or a glimpse of his warlock, and it was sure death to leave ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... what we are seeking, is it not desirable to see for ourselves, or, as Emerson puts it, "leave others' eyes, and bring your own"? If one can give to the task patient observation, with a loving spirit, a desire to interpret faithfully and to see the best instead of the worst, may he not perchance find that the bird is not the monster he is pictured? And though the story be not so sensational, is it not better to clear up than to blacken the reputation of a fellow-creature, even a very ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... his character usually did triumph. How often had she seen it since! The first wrong step not a generous-hearted, hot-headed youth; but a hardened sinner who had wearied of other hardened sinners and turned his evil designs to youth and freshness, hoping perchance to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... witnessed from the shore the shipwreck of a vessel, of which the crew and passengers were all drowned. He inveighed against the injustice of Providence, which would for the sake of one criminal perchance sailing in the ship allow so many innocent persons to perish. As he was indulging in these reflections, he found himself surrounded by a whole army of Ants, near whose nest he was standing. One of them climbed up and stung him, and he immediately trampled ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... world of your day to the fact that there was an industrial question, and by their pathetic demonstrations of passive resistance to wrong for fifty years kept the public attention fixed on that question till it was settled? Was it your statesmen, perchance your economists, your scholars, or any other of your so-called wise men? No. It was just those despised, ridiculed, cursed, and hooted fellows up there on that pedestal who with their perpetual strikes would not let the world rest till ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... that is not in it, which you, in your innocence, have not suspected. There are as many natures as there are writers. I am deeply flattered that you have judged me capable of understanding you; but had you, perchance, fallen upon a hypocrite, a scoffer, one whose books may be melancholy but whose life is a perpetual carnival, you would have found as the result of your generous imprudence an evil-minded man, the frequenter ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... in the wireless room where Sammy Smith was listening at the microphone. If, perchance, Jack had made the surface and succeeded in arresting the attention of the passing vessel, then the microphones would reveal the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... achievement, and which goes far to prepare the mind for the ready acceptance of any genuine triumph. Indeed, a jealous attitude is often unconsciously adopted, involving a demand for special qualities, for which, perchance, the peculiar character of the past success has created an appetite, or obedience to certain arbitrary tests, which, though passively present in the recognised work, have grown mainly out of critical analysis of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... faith and zeal for the avenging of God's honour, these clerks were, as they said, always ready to burn witches. They feared the devil; but, perchance, though they may not have admitted it even to themselves, they feared him twenty times more ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... I had thought, "Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell, Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell, They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main—" Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... own conceit than seven men that speak sentences." For nothing hinders him from depreciating himself in some things, and having a high opinion of himself in others. Wherefore Gregory says (Pastoral. i) of Moses that "perchance he would have been proud, had he undertaken the leadership of a numerous people without misgiving: and again he would have been proud, had he refused to obey the command of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Yet if, perchance, a slender beam Of feeling's glow or fancy's gleam Still lingers in the lines we lay At Alma Mater's feet today, The touch of Nature may redeem ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... knew the Falls in their pristine solitude have gladly welcomed there the advent of twentieth-century developments, of sign-posts, of advertisements, of seats, of daily posts and papers; but others, some of the older pioneers, still, perchance, give a passing sigh for the days when they paddled about the river in a leaky canoe, and letters and telegrams were ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... told on the grade teachers, who went to see the children when they were absent; nor was it long before a custom grew up in the school, by virtue of which a teacher who wished to visit one absent child, might pick her own time to make her visit. If perchance the psychological moment was during school hours, she went then, while another teacher or the principal ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... gospel, friend, "To all but lovers who most truly love; "For them, their gold-wrought scripture glibly reads "All else is mortal but immortal—Love!" "Fools! fools!" his friend said, "most immortal fools!— "But pardon, pardon, for, perchance, you love?" "Yes," said Max, proudly smiling, "thus do I "Possess the world and feel eternity!" Dark laughter blacken'd in the other's eyes: "Eternity! why, did such Iris arch "Ent'ring our worm-bored ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... thousand impurities as soon as they unfold. I heard Brigham Young in the Tabernacle the other day warning his people that if they did not mend their manners angels would not come into their houses, though perchance they might be sauntering by with little else to do than chat with them. Possibly there may be Salt Lake families sufficiently pure for angel society, but I was not pleased with the reception they gave the small snow angels that God sent among them the other night. Only ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... sleighs. But there was no woman in any of the sleighs. At times even Zbyszko labored with the spade till his brow was covered with perspiration, and at others he looked with palpitating heart into the eyes of the corpses, perchance to discover the face of his beloved. But all in vain. The faces which the torchlight revealed were those of whiskered soldiers of Spychow. Neither Danusia nor ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... gale howling over our heads with ever-increasing fury, while the sheets of salt spray lashed us relentlessly like whips of steel. So utterly miserable did we become that at length we even ceased to rise occasionally to take a look round, to see whether, perchance, another sail might have hove in sight. I believe that some of my companions in suffering found a temporary refuge from their wretchedness in short snatches of fitful sleep; at all events I caught at intervals the sound of low mutterings, as of sleeping ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... Bedropped with early morning's freshening dew; 'Twere doubtful if the blossoms of the rose Had robbed the morning, or the morning those: In dew, in tint the same, the star and flower, For both confess the Queen of Beauty's power. Perchance their sweets the same; but this more nigh Exhales its breath, while that embalms the sky: Of flower and star the goddess is the same, And both she tinged with ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... furtively to see if Sylvia had a light in her best room, and if Richard Alger's head was visible through the window, if Barney Thayer had gone home and yielded to his mother's commands, if any more work had been done on the new house, and if he perchance had ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Love's arms are grief—his arrows sighs and tears; And every moan thou mak'st, an altar rears, To which his worshippers devoutly come. Then rather, lyre, I pray thee, try thy skill, In varied measure, on a sprightlier key: Perchance thy gayer tones' light minstrelsy May heal the poison that thy plaints distil. But much I fear that joy is danger still; And joy, like woe, love's ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... pity on me, thou green mother Earth, And hide that urn full soon in thy cool breast. In air it crumbles, moulders; earth's deep woe Has in the earth, I ween, at last an end; And Time's poor foundling, here in school constrained, Finds then, perchance, beyond ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... then, perchance lie in ourselves? Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed?... Can you, sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Passau, but the news was false. Learning the truth, he turned again and recrossed the Inn; thence he continued to withdraw, stopping an instant at the Traun to avail himself of a strong position and hold the line if Charles were perchance coming thither to join him. At Ebelsberg, on May third, he made a splendid and momentarily successful resistance, but was overwhelmed by superior numbers. Hearing of his leader's slow advance, and being himself in despair, on the seventh he led his army at Mautern ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... small way, by playing tricks upon the frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or squibs in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while they sat nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance a worthy burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until dark over his potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would slip a briar under his horse's tail, as he mounted, and send him clattering along ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... in the nature of the thing enquired, the reflective inquirer will perchance find himself led on to add two furnished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the code of the observatory to bear immediately on the vagaries of the untameable world, and suffer the pedant's disaster. A martyr to the good that is to be, he has voluntarily maimed himself "for the kingdom of Heaven's sake"—if, perchance, the kingdom of Heaven might come by observation. The enthusiasm of his self-denial shows itself in his unavailing struggle to chain language also to the bare rock of ascertained fact. Metaphor, the poet's right-hand weapon, he despises; all that is tentative, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... in upon by various diverting sights and sounds. His attention was attracted by some picturesque hunter, dressed in buckskin pantaloons, fringed jacket, broad yellow belt, and wolfskin cap, and carrying a long rifle; or, perchance, he exchanged good-humored remarks with a wayfaring rustic who proposed to swap horses. He wended his way through the Blue Grass region, through Lexington and Frankfort, and southward into Tennessee. Arlington found keen enjoyment in what he saw and heard, though never quite losing from consciousness ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... I watch those Gates, in truth or in dream, before my time? Oh! You can guess. That perchance I may behold those for whom my heart burns with a quenchless, eating fire. And once I beheld—not the mother but the child, my child, changed indeed, mysterious, wonderful, gleaming like a star, with eyes so deep that ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... that years ago. You dreamt of a white man dressed as I. Well, I belong to a regiment of white men who dress alike, and for many lives it has been the custom of that regiment to dress so. Doubtless as a boy you had seen one of my brethren, or perchance a picture of one, and your spirit saw him again in a dream. If I am right, and your home is on that great river which we white men call the Zambesi, then it is not unlikely that such a thing happened. Perhaps you have forgotten. Now in me you see ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable
... generously, and give up his broken sword to Fate the Conqueror with a manly and humble heart! Are you not awestricken, you, friendly reader, who, taking the page up for a moment's light reading, lay it down, perchance, for a graver reflection,—to think how you, who have consummated your success or your disaster, may be holding marked station, or a hopeless and nameless place, in the crowd—who have passed through how many struggles of defeat, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hard law; but it is not so hard as it would be if it allowed you to hire ignorant, wilful, and incompetent servants to go upon the road and injure the lives and property of innocent people without redress save against the servants, who perchance might be financially irresponsible. It should however be stated in this connection that if your team should get away from you or your servant, without any fault on your or his part, and should run away and do great damage, by colliding with other teams, or by running ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... how the mind of an essayist, be it never so stricken, roves and ranges! I remember pausing before a wide door-step and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford Street, the "stony-hearted stepmother" of them both, and came back bearing that "glass of port ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... go to heaven must run for it; because perchance the gates of heaven may be shut shortly. Sometimes sinners have not heaven-gates open to them so long as they suppose; and if they be once shut against a man, they are so heavy, that all the men in the world, nor all the angels in heaven, are not able to open ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pause to reflect a moment. How is this thing possible? Can I love to members of the Other Sex? And if such is the Case, how can I go on with my Life? Better far to end it now, than to perchance marry one, and find the other still in my heart. The terrable thought has come to me that ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... high-souled, and generous-hearted bird thus uninfluenced by misery or happiness and possessing extraordinary resolution. Then the thought arose in Sakra's mind,—How could this bird come to possess humane and generous feelings which are impossible in one belonging to the world of lower animals? Perchance, there is nothing wonderful in the matter, for all creatures are seen to evince kindly and generous feelings towards others.—Assuming then the shape of a Brahmana, Sakra descended on the Earth and addressing the bird, said,—O Suka, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Church—the only Christian body which presents a solid phalanx—one must not be too iconoclastic, remembering that, in the monastic houses and great ecclesiastical libraries we have had conserved for us, although, perchance by accident, the records of all the philosophy, all the jurisprudence, all the polity, all the literature, and all the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, that remained from the Alexandrian library and pre-Christian times—the mediaeval ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... now Perchance succeeded by some other class Of imitated imitators:—how Irreparably soon decline, alas! The demagogues of fashion: all below Is frail; how easily the world is lost By love, or war, and now and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... heathen country over which he has reigned so long. Then, again, the seashore is infested by pirates, the scum of all nations: they land, and plunder, and ravage, and burn, and destroy. Folk get affrighted of the real dangers, and in their fright imagine, perchance, dangers that are not. But who knows? Holy Scripture speaks of witches and wizards, and of the power of the Evil One in desert places; and even in the old country we have heard tell of those who have sold their ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates for our imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... haughty Marmion, Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight, Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight, The gibbet or the field prepared to grace; A mighty mixture of the great and base. And think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... not Thy love, I reject it, and love Thee not, myself. Why should I conceal the truth from Thee? I know but too well with whom I am now talking! What I had to say was known to Thee before, I read it in Thine eye. How should I conceal from Thee our secret? If perchance Thou wouldst hear it from my own lips, then listen: We are not with Thee, but with him, and that is our secret! For centuries have we abandoned Thee to follow him, yes—eight centuries. Eight hundred years now since we accepted from ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky |
