"Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stealers), a set of marauders who made use of it" (Lilly's Dramatic Works, ed. Fairholt, II., 272). "Tarrier" must mean "a person that causes delay": cf. a passage from Sir Thomas Overbury's character of "a meene Petty fogger":—"He cannot erre before judgment, and then you see it, only writs of error are the tariers that keepe his client undoing somewhat the longer" (quoted in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... part of all, you are grateful for receiving your own. They, cooping you in the city, lead you to your pleasures, and make you tame and submissive to their hands. It is impossible, I say, to have a high and noble spirit, while you are engaged in petty and mean employments: whatever be the pursuits of men, their characters must be similar. By Ceres, I should not wonder, if I, for mentioning these things, suffered more from your resentment than the men who have brought them to pass. For even liberty of speech you allow not on ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... nor condition, nor honour, nor wealth which its possessor can refer to any but to him. And he must take example from Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander, who by means such as these, from being a petty prince became monarch of all Greece; and of whom it was written that he shifted men from province to province as a shepherd moves his flocks from one pasture ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... any violence of thought or emotion at Upper Farm, even the sulks of Primrose were petty in nature, her jealousies made her voice shrill but did not take her by the throat with that intolerable aching stormier women know too well, while her graceless husband was irritated on the surface of his mind as ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful, and the more embittering ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... successively crumbled to decay. At a time when the kings of Egypt had never ventured beyond their borders, unless it were for a foray in Ethiopia, and when in Asia no monarch had held dominion over more than a few petty tribes, and a few hundred miles of territory, he conceived the magnificent notion of binding into one the manifold nations inhabiting the vast tract which lies between the Zagros mountain-range and the Mediterranean. Lord ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... strong enough to balance this opposition by its support. He began in Scotland that struggle which for some time had been going on in England against the power of the nobles, who were still in the north something like a number of petty kings ruling in their own right, making little account of national laws, and regarding the King with defiance as almost a hostile power. One of the greatest risks of such a struggle is that it raises now and then a fiery spirit stung by the sense of injury and the rage ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... sentiments, and passions, and decisively determining their reciprocal relations and circumstances. The art of the poet accordingly consists in separating from the fable whatever does not essentially belong to it, whatever, in the daily necessities of real life, and the petty occupations to which they give rise, interrupts the progress of important actions, and concentrating within a narrow space a number of events calculated to attract the minds of the hearers and to fill them with attention and expectation. In this manner he gives us a renovated ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... successful execution of so bold a scheme. But the money got him into trouble. He had too much, he spent it too freely, and, as a consequence, he is serving a short term of imprisonment in the Alleghany county jail for some petty offence." ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the potency of the bottle, was to carry off the whistle as a trophy of victory. The Dane produced credentials of his victories, without a single defeat, at the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, Warsaw, and several of the petty courts in Germany; and challenged the Scotch Bacchanalians to the alternative of trying his prowess, or else of acknowledging their inferiority. After man overthrows on the part of the Scots, the Dane was encountered by Sir Robert Lawrie, of Maxwelton, ancestor ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... sight of a powerful millionaire standing meekly at the door of a hotel dining-room until the consequential head-waiter (very possibly a coloured gentleman) condescends to point out to him the seat he may occupy. So, too, such petty officials as policemen and railway conductors are generally treated rather as the masters than as the servants of the public. The ordinary American citizen accepts a long delay on the railway or an interminable "wait" ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Very poor? you're a very ass. Lord, how my stomach wambles at the same word very poor! Father, if you love your son William, never name that same word, very poor; for, I'll stand to it, that it's petty larceny to name very poor to a man that's o' the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Criminal Court, the aldermen are called upon to exercise various other magisterial functions, including the inspection and management of prisons. They have likewise to attend at the London Quarter Sessions; the special sessions for hearing appeals; the special sessions for licenses; the petty sessions; the special sessions; the Southwark Quarter Sessions, and the annual meetings and adjournments. Even this enumeration of duties, however, is no equivalent indication of the work to be gone through, the whole of which is done gratuitously and without expectation of reward. ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... France. The difficulties of statesmanship here are enormous. I do not accuse even M. Thiers of want of public virtue. What he has wanted, has been length and breadth of view—purely an intellectual defect—and his petty, puny tracasseries destroyed the Republican Assembly just as it destroyed the throne of Louis Philippe, in spite ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the most exquisite contradiction; in one moment the guilelessness of a child, in another, the worldly-wise woman. Had she been all of the one or all of the other, he would not have been touched so deeply. If she loved a man, there would be no silly doddering; the voice of the petty laws that strove to hedge her in would be in her ears as a summer breeze. For one so young—and twenty-five was young—she possessed a disconcerting directness in her logic. So far he observed that she retained but one illusion, that somewhere in the world ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... sailed for Cornwall, and there was taken to the court of King Alef, a petty British chief, who, on true patriarchal lines, disposed of his children as he would, and had betrothed his fair daughter to a terrible Pictish giant, breaking off, in order to do it, her troth-plight with Prince Sigtryg of Waterford, son of a Danish king in Ireland. Hereward was ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... given to Ella, and the deference shown her by the renegade and his allies—who appeared to treat her with the same respect they would have done the wife of their chief—were in striking contrast with their manners toward Algernon, on whom they seemed disposed to vent their scorn by petty insults. Believing that his doom was sealed, he became apparently resigned to his fate, nor seemed to notice, save with stoical indifference, any thing that took place around him. This quiet, inoffensive ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... Andrew Bruce of Earlshall, one of his lieutenants, was nominated with him. This step gave great offence to Queensberry, who, as Sheriff of the shires of Dumfries and Annandale, by law held all such patronage in his own hand, and marks the beginning of the petty jealousy which from this time forward he seems to have shown to Claverhouse whenever he dared, and which rose afterwards, as we shall see, to a serious height. But Queensberry was no match for Lauderdale; and Claverhouse was duly settled ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... eyes, her swelling bosom, her shapely legs, said something quite different. It seemed to him that she understood how petty were all things he had said, but that she was superior to such considerations. It seemed to him she had long known all he wished and was not able to tell her, but wanted to hear how he would say it. 'And how can she help knowing,' he thought, 'since I only want to tell her all that ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... of it all is the lazy, aimless, aristocratic, insular life that a god must lead; he has no one to go with. If I am not to sit still for all time and eternity, if I let myself down as well as I can and make myself finite, that I may have something in the way of society, still I have, like petty princes, only my own creatures to echo my words. . . . Every being, even the highest Being, wishes something to love and to honor. But the Fichtean doctrine that I am my own body-maker leaves me with nothing whatever—with not so much as the beggar's dog or the prisoner's spider. . . . Truly ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... and such men are willing to free women from the ecclesiastical bondage that makes her responsible for all the ills of life, for all the pains of deed and creed, while it allows her no choice in their formation, no property in their fruition. Such men are outgrowing the petty jealousies and musty superstitions of narrow-minded dogmatists sufficiently to look upon the question not as one of personal preference, but as one of human justice. They do not ask, "Would I ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... in the light of a romance, and himself and his friends as so many personages acting in it, all meeting with marvellous adventures at every turn, and all endowed with admirable qualities, to which their petty frailties served only as foils. It is impossible in reading his memoirs to avoid smiling at the importance he attaches to very ordinary occurrences. I am not sure whether it was not this propensity that led him to magnify his own distresses in living with his first ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... in which he can still accommodate passing events and the world's trivialities, begins to receive impressions of the facts of the case. The great river called Sally flows steadily on, on its own account, and makes and meddles not. It despises other folk's petty affairs. Dr. Conrad masters the position, and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... river, the Antelope, it will be remembered, had been close on the Westwood's heels. So Gilmore reminded his wife. So Hugh needlessly reminded Ramsey. From the mate it was further learned that the pursuer had overhauled the pursued between Petit Goufre—which he and the whole company called Petty Gulf—and Grand Gulf; places named before the days of steam for their dangerous eddies. Yet, he went on to tell Ramsey, the swifter boat, with more freight to put ashore and with a larger appetite for ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the Sacred Isle and also the Isle of Destiny, may find a destiny worthy of fulfilment: not to be a petty peasant republic, nor a miniature duplicate in life and aims of great material empires, but that its children out of their faith, which has never failed may realise this imemorial truth of man's inmost divinity, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation; the majority of children are trafficked within Chad for involuntary domestic servitude, forced cattle herding, forced begging, forced labor in petty commerce or the fishing industry, or for commercial sexual exploitation; to a lesser extent, Chadian children are also trafficked to Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria for cattle herding; children may also be ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... replied the Bishop, a grave, earnest-looking man. "Would that His Majesty himself could stand on these walls and see with his own eyes, as you do, this splendid patrimony of the crown of France. He would not dream of bartering it away in exchange for petty ends and corners of Germany and Flanders, as is ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and would that I could reproduce that life, the unforgettable, the unrememberable. The memory, which shows so wise a backwardness in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended pleasures; and a long-continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its mass) our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of our life's map there lies a roseate, undecipherable ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the treasures of the nation, the talent of its individual men is the most important. It realizes that its first duty is to waste none of this. It cannot afford to leave its Miltons mute and inglorious nor to let its village Hampdens waste their strength on petty obstacles while it has great tasks for them to accomplish. In a democracy, when work is to be done men rise to do it. No matter what the origin of our Washingtons and Lincolns, our Grants and our ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... picturesque in its mountain basin, with the wild, unfenced land coming down to its very dooryards—was slowly awakening after the last mad night of its celebration. The tents of the tawdry shows that had tempted the crowds with vulgar indecencies, and the booths that had sheltered the petty games of chance where loud-voiced criers had persuaded the multitude with the hope of winning a worthless bauble or a tinsel toy, were being cleared away from the borders of the plaza, the beauty of which their presence had marred. In the plaza itself—which ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... with the aggressive spirit of his section, he voiced a growing sense of humiliation that his country should be buffeted by every British ministry. The people of Kentucky and Tennessee had little patience with half measures in defense of national rights. The petty diplomacy of closet statesmen did not appeal to the soul of the frontiersman who was accustomed to hew his way to his goal. The people of this section, imperial in its dimensions, were prepared for large tasks done in a bold way. Their ideas ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... was engrossing him. When we were together I felt tongue-tied. He had tried to be gentle with me; but I was strange in this world of his, and lonely and sensitive. I had dreamed so much of this world, and now that I was in it, it was false and petty. I longed for the United States, for my Northwest, for my hills and wide, far plains. I wanted to meet somebody from Madison ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... nine equal votes each but only four votes can be given to any one candidate; members serve three-year terms) elections: last held 29 November 2001 (next to be held by December 2004) election results: Judicial branch: Supreme Court; Court of Petty Sessions ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... distinctly remember that it meant to pilfer. Such, at least, is my earliest recollection, and of hearing school boys ask one another in jest, of their acquisitions or gifts, "Where did you loaf that from?" A petty pilferer was a loafer, but in a very short time all of the tribe of loungers in the sun, and disreputable pickers up of unconsidered trifles, now known as bummers, were called loafers. On this point my memory is positive, and I call attention to it, since the word in question ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... liked either of the Kitson girls; they had nothing in common, and everything Lettice and Maude did jarred on her. They seemed to her silly and vulgar, and they did little petty, mean things, and laughed and sneered at people in a way that hurt Kitty's feelings. Yet now, so great was her nervous dread of the school and all the strangers she would have to meet, she felt quite pleased that there would be at least those two familiar faces ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... them every moment, that Monsieur the Viscount remembered the toad, and that he would without doubt be swept away with the rest in the general clearance. At first he thought that he would beg them to leave it, but some knowledge of the petty insults which that class of men heaped upon their prisoners made him feel that this would probably be only an additional reason for their taking the animal away. There was no place to hide it in, for they would go all ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... be dealt with wisely and generously, and the harvest will exceed even the expectations of those who are working most hopefully upon the problem. Withhold the funds on some niggardly and mistaken principle of petty economy, and the present progress will be discouraged and the educational tree become stunted in its growth. From an administrative point of view, nothing, finance apart, would contribute more to the efficiency ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... plant a colony by the mouth of a petty Texan river? The Mississippi was the life of the enterprise, the condition of its growth and of its existence. Without it, all was futile and meaningless; a folly and a ruin. Cost what it might, the Mississippi must be found. But the demands of the hour were imperative. The ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of living if you are going to make yourself a slave to all sorts of petty rules?" asked ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... with mid-day heat. And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed, 880 I'd bubble up the water through a reed; So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips, With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily, When love-lorn hours had left me less a child, I sat contemplating the figures wild Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through. Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew A cloudy ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... her down from the stern of his vessel when he had made the use of her he wished, and she had cut the curls of Nisias. A great love does not of necessity imply a great intelligence, but it must spring out of a great nature, that is certain; and where the heart has spent itself in much base petty commerce, it has no deep treasury of gold on which to draw; it is bankrupt from its very over-trading. A noble passion is very rare; believe me; as rare as any ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... side. Three men, great both in character and in intellect, were concerned in pressing its claims—Young, Fresnel, and Arago—and the relations of these men form a picture unmarred by any of those petty jealousies that so often dim the lustre of great names. Fresnel freely acknowledged Young's priority so soon as his attention was called to it; and Young applauded the work of the Frenchman, and aided ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... held. Then there was the added satisfaction of a minute's chat with some one of the teachers, for they all had praise, and never a word of censure. Enjoyment enough this dear man got from these irregular trips to town to lighten for weeks the, to him, unnatural farm-labor; while petty offenders appearing before his tribunal were dealt with almost gently after one of these ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... wet to the skin, and even on a scorching day in August that is anything but a pleasant sensation. Then, too, the way was rough, and the briers and brambles along the path scratched their hands and tore at their clothing. Ordinarily all these petty annoyances would have tended toward making them irritable and cross, but on this day all such trifles passed over their heads unnoticed. For had they not between them done a marvelous thing? To save one life—to have brought back from eternity one little soul—was ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... gave away 150 beautiful horses, and his kinsman, Bernabo, jewels and golden coins to a large amount, the whole sum disbursed on this occasion would appear so enormous as to make one doubt whether a petty sovereign could really afford such ostentatious prodigality. But when we consider that the flourishing state of the commerce of Italy attracted thither all the wealth of Europe, we are no longer surprised ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... him off with a heavy ransom. Venice inscribed his name in the illustrious record of its nobility. None could tell where his ambition or his resources would end, how his inventive genius would employ the rivalry of the invaders, what uses he would devise for the Emperor and the Turk. The era of petty tyranny was closed by the apparition of one superior national tyrant, who could be no worse than twenty, for though his crimes would be as theirs, they would not be useless to the nation, but were thoughtfully ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... are men of rule and place, Who court it from the mean and base! These cannot bear an equal nigh, But from superior merit fly. They love the cellar's vulgar joke, And lose their hours in ale and smoke. There o'er some petty club preside; So poor, so paltry, is their pride! Nay, even with fools whole nights will sit, In hopes to be supreme in wit. If these can read, to these I write, To set their ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... of custom-house officers go round the port for the purpose of preventing smuggling. In this, however, they only partially succeed; for they detect only petty smugglers, whilst those who carry on contraband trade on a large scale elude their vigilance. The captains of French vessels are notorious for this kind of traffic, and they frequently succeed in landing vast quantities of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Eyes The Child in the Orchard The Source The Mountain Chapel First known when lost The Word These things that Poets said Home Aspens An Old Song There was a Time Ambition No one cares less than I Roads This is no case of petty Right or Wrong The Chalk-Pit Health Beauty Snow The New Year The Brook The Other House and Man The Gypsy Man and Dog A ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... other respects, the uniform rule of hermits and anchorites, he divided his day into the seven offices, ignoring the petty accidents of light and dark, creations both of Him to whom he prayed so unceasingly. He learned the psalter by heart, and in all the intervals of devotion, not occupied by broken slumbers, he worked hard ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of Pensylvania, told me, that he went with his mother on a visit to Admiral Dean's wife, who lived then in Petty- France; the Admiral was then at sea. She told them, that, the night before, she had a perfect dream of her husband, whom she saw walking on the deck, and giving directions, and that a cannon bullet struck his arm into his side. This ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... others. There were the petty tradesmen who in former years had prospered through George Henry's patronage, whose large bills had been paid with unquestioning promptness until came the slip of his cog in the money-distributing ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... diplomatists, Irish Counts, Irish Barons, Irish Knights of Saint Lewis and of Saint Leopold, of the White Eagle and of the Golden Fleece, who, if they had remained in the house of bondage, could not have been ensigns of marching regiments or freemen of petty corporations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race, having been withdrawn, what remained was utterly helpless and passive. A rising of the Irishry against the Englishry was no more to be apprehended than a rising of the women and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... projected for their own safety. Instead of hazarding a general engagement against regular troops, in which they could have no prospect of success, they resolved to weary them out by maintaining a kind of petty war in separate parties, to alarm and harass the English with hard duty in a sultry climate, where they were but indifferently supplied with provisions and refreshments. Nor were their hopes in this particular disappointed. Both the army and the navy were invaded with fevers, and other ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... all; when Vaudemont had been at the house somewhat more than two weeks, Lilburne, petulant and impatient, whether at his refusals to join the card-table, or at the moderation with which, when he did, he confined his ill-luck to petty losses, one day limped up to him, as he stood at the embrasure of the window, gazing on the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a walk through the town with Sheikh Hadj Farakh. There are eight or nine hundred houses, which daily increase, by fugitives from the oppressions of the Pashas of Damascus and of the neighbouring petty tyrants. Twenty-five years ago there were only two hundred houses at Zahle: it is now one of the principal towns in the territory of the Emir Beshir. It has its markets, which are supplied from Damascus and Beirout, and are visited by the neighbouring ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... danger, for nothing breaks down a woman's health like idleness and its resulting ennui. More people, I am sure, are broken down nervously because they are bored, than because they are overworked; and more still go to pieces through fussiness, unwholesome living, worry over petty details, and the daily disappointments which result from small and superficial training. And then, besides the danger to health, there is the danger to character. I need not dwell on the undermining influence which men also feel when occupation is ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... other. The dinner, as it progresses, assumes the air of a big family party of good bohemians. The French do not bring their misery with them to the table. To dine is to enjoy oneself to the utmost; in fact the French people cover their disappointment, sadness, annoyances, great or petty troubles, under a masque of "blague," and have such an innate dislike of sympathy or ridicule that they avoid it by turning everything ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... by that means lives much cheaper than those who have not so good an estate as himself. He would be a good neighbour if he did not destroy so many partridges: In short, he is a very sensible man; shoots flying; and has been several times foreman of the petty-jury. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... and receiving Custom for outlandish ware, that I wond'red to see, Yet durst not complain of: the reason was, They were countenanced with men of great wealth, Richer than I a great deal, but not honester. Then I went into the markets, where I saw petty knavery In false-measuring corn, and in scales, That wanted no less than two ounces in the pound. But all this was nothing, scant worth the talking of; But when I came to the Exchange, I espied in a corner of an aisle An ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... when it is our lot to share in doing large tasks, the children help us. What of the days which bring with them only a "petty round of irritating concerns and duties?" Do they not help ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... transcripts of his own experience and meditations, and teem with facts and observations such as might be expected from the clear insight of a man who has mingled with his fellow-men, and who is curiously critical of the non-romantic phenomena of their daily life. The essays on the Art of Putting Things, on Petty Malignity and Petty Trickery, on Tidiness, on Nervous Fears, on Hurry and Leisure, on Work and Play, on Dulness, and on Growing Old, are full of fresh and delicate perceptions of the ordinary facts of human experience. His best and brightest remarks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... walked slowly along she appreciated what Ann had said of the town's being walled in by nothingness—the people walled in by nothingness. Her two blocks on "Main Street" showed her Centralia as a place of petty righteousness and petty vice. There was nothing so large and flexible as the real joys ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... inferior, writers it is most fortunate that our design has taken so wide a scope. These can go on with their perennial wrangle over the petty question of penal and educational flagellation, while we grapple with the higher problem, and unfold the broader philosophy of an universal walloping. Reflections upon the Beneficent Influence of ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... razed my roof, I loved thee; but the vengeance of my verse, The hate of injuries which every year Makes greater, and accumulates my curse, Shall live, outliving all thou holdest dear— Thy pride, thy wealth, thy freedom, and even that, The most infernal of all evils here, The sway of petty tyrants in a state; For such sway is not limited to Kings, And Demagogues yield to them but in date, 120 As swept off sooner; in all deadly things, Which make men hate themselves, and one another, In discord, cowardice, cruelty, all that springs From Death the Sin-born's incest with his mother,[326] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... you stand like that?' I heard her say in a tone of great irritation. 'And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I tell you that I would rot above ground rather than enter ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... company with rabbits. The petty orthodoxy can by no means keep pace with the elephantine stride of Zen. No wonder that Bodhidharma left not only the palace of the Emperor Wu, but also the State of Liang, and went to the State of Northern Wei.[FN25] There he spent ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the United States navy, nominally second in command to the Chinese captain of the "Chen-yuen," but practically acting as her commander. On some of the other ships there were a few British-born engineer or gunnery officers, and some of the latter had been petty officers in the English navy. By the advice of these non-Chinese officers Ting had done something to remedy ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... could do what I liked with him;" and then she added, that if I did not know what was good for me, she, my mother, did, and she would take care my interests did not suffer. It was her duty to look after them as my mother, and she would. Oh! that little word "duty"! It seems to me all sorts of petty cruelties are committed in the name of "duty." And after that Dick Stanton never came to the house, but I, more unwilling than ever, was sent for to entertain him. Even now I don't know whether he really cared, or whether it was simply that he wanted ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... Yankee skulls, scalps and bones, for ornaments, betrayed innocent men to death, engaged in intrigues and schemes of all kinds to obtain information of the movements of Union troops, to convey it to the enemy, and in every manifestation of malice, petty spite and diabolical hatred against the flag under which they had been reared, and its defenders, they attained a bad pre-eminence over the evil spirits of their sex since the world began. It is true that these were not the characteristics of all Southern, disloyal women, but they were sufficiently ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... ostensibly his relations were of the most affectionate description—"Wilberforce is really a low fellow. Again and again the committee of the Athenaeum Club have been obliged to reprove him for his vulgar selfishness." This is dreadful! No wonder that petty cynics snarl and rejoice; they say, "Look at your great men, and see what mean backbiters ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... regrets—my doubts—whether I did not dismiss that man's pretensions too curtly, too unkindly. But I am convinced now that we did exactly right, and that she was wise never to bestow another thought upon him. A man capable of contriving a petty persecution of this sort—of pursuing a young girl who had rejected him in this shameless fashion,—is ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... process of at least six thousand years into its present form. Milton's Satan is a debased intellect who in his boundless ambition is still a supernatural being. Mephistopheles is the incarnation of our complicated modern social evils, full of petty tricks and learned quotations; he piously turns up his eyes, he lies, doubts, calumniates, seduces, philosophizes, sneers, but all in a polite and highly educated way; he is a scholar, a divine, a politician, a diplomatist. Satan is capable of wild enthusiasm, he sometimes remembers ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to prove the illustrious descent of his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the account published, remarking, "I had rather be the descendant of an honest man than of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence with myself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolph of Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Petty Officer fell flat upon the deck; They bore him to the Sick Bay just a weak and worthless wreck; But an A.B. who was standing by had caught the wicked word And told the Duty Officer exactly what occurred:— "Boy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... "corporal," meaning a petty officer, is not derived from corpus: it comes from the French caporal, of which it ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... servants.[145] Petri then broke out into a tirade against his opponent's view. What right, he asked, had Galle to set up Gregory against Christ and Paul? "What authority has he to expound the Word of God according to the deeds of petty men? Rather, I conceive, are the deeds of men to be judged according to the Word of God."[146] To an assertion by Galle that the Church had held temporal power for the last twelve centuries, Petri ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of Christ, the brides of another life: but small eating cares, daily prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the littleness and all the inglorious annoyances of every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and grandeur of their calling even from themselves; they walked unknown even to their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... 1613, Ralegh had to endure this man's petty spite and disciplinary pedantry. Then Waad retired, to the great contentment of his prisoners, though, as it happened, from a cause which did him honour. Lady Arabella Stuart's chief pleasure during her iniquitous imprisonment ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... petty thieves, versatile rascals ripe for any mischief, and sweated factory workers; here sallow-faced anarchists boldly denounce the existing order of things to their fellows and scheme the millennium. Slatternly women quarrel at the doors, and horse-flesh ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... human life; where we find that it is not the heavy blow of sudden misfortune tripping the ladder of our ambition and laying us prostrate, which constitutes life's intermittent "fitful fever," but the thousand petty vexations of hourly occurrence.——We return to Mrs Beazely, who continued—"Why, it's nine o'clock, Mr Forster, and a nice fresh morning it is too, after last night's tempest. And pray what did you hear and see, sir?" continued the old woman, opening the shutters and admitting a blaze of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... which were invariably successful, she then had by her side to stimulate her ambition and her love, a friend of her own sex, more eager, more ambitious, than herself—a friend who had loved her, a rare circumstance at court, and whom some petty considerations had removed from her forever. But for many years past—except Madame de Motteville, and except La Molena, her Spanish nurse, a confidante in her character of countrywoman and woman too—who could boast of having given good ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... close in his den. Hawks and owls and weasels and martens hunt him continually; yet he more than holds his own in the big woods, which would lose some of their charm if their vast silences were not sometimes broken by his petty scoldings. ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... riding-habit brushed Isabelle's as she passed her. She was furiously angry, and sorely tempted to address some cutting words to the "Bohemienne" she had once so cruelly insulted; but Isabelle, who had a soul above such petty malice, and had long ago forgiven Yolande for her unprovoked insolence, felt how much her own triumph must wound the other's proud spirit, and with perfect dignity and grace bowed to Mlle. de Foix, who could ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... nowadays considered the rightful symbol of every Christian Monarch however limited the area over which his power is felt, should also be borne in mind; though not of much value as evidence, as even petty rulers have been known to boast that they held the ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... the Administration will attend to that. The Cabinet is adjourned. Will it please Your Highness to lay aside his official attire and return to private life, with its petty diversions. The Chamberlain is ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... own recollections during my journey I may note that I found great pleasure in my companion's conversation, as well as in her mode of managing all her little concerns on the road. I am apt to judge of character by good-humour and alacrity in these petty concerns. I think the inconveniences of a journey seem greater to me than formerly; while, on the other hand, the pleasures it affords are rather less. The ascent of Stainmore seemed duller and longer than usual, and Bowes, which used to strike me as a distinguished feature, seemed an ill-formed ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... severely analysed. But let it be understood that with it all, besides having very great charm of look and manner, wit and high spirits, in certain ways he was quite a good fellow: he had no sneers for the more fortunate, no envy, nothing petty: he was warm-hearted, generous even—when it did not cross some desire of his; lavish with money, both on himself and on anyone who aided his pleasure, and quite kind and tender-hearted in that he couldn't bear to see anyone suffer—even Mary, with whom, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... paths,—thy fields, Are not a spoil for him,—thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction, thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray, And howling to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth; there ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... with which the artist materialises the private conceptions of his mind. It would hardly be possible to find a more sympathetic series of illustrations than those which Frank Reynolds drew for Keble Howard's idyll of Suburbia, entitled "The Smiths of Surbiton." The author constructed out of the petty doings and humdrum habits of suburban life a charming little story of simple people, and with equal cleverness the artist built up, out of these slight materials, a series of exquisitely natural pictures, which revealed the almost incredible fact that semi-detached ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... by sets of petty chieftains belonging to different tribes, which are generally at enmity with each other, can be populous; it is therefore with considerable surprise that I find it stated that the number of houses in the north and eastern sides of the valley ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Charles in this negotiation is the same who collected antiquities in Greece for the Earl of Arundel. He was Vicar of Thorley, in the Isle of Wight, and is believed to have been the uncle of the celebrated Sir William Petty, ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne. It would be curious to learn the particulars of the "bargayne" made by him, and how the pictures were disposed of after their arrival in England. Were the Warrant and Privy ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... Squire was in the habit of settling petty disputes, administering affidavits at a quarter of a dollar each, and arranging other small civic matters. But oftener was his magisterial function employed in sentencing the mutinous "darkie" to his due the sheriff— ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... as Dutocq and Cerizet," he said to himself; "enough of the nauseating atmosphere of the Minards and Phellions and Collevilles and Barniols and all the rest of them. I'll shake off this province 'intra muros,' a thousand times more absurd and petty than the true provinces; they at least, side by side with their pettiness, have habits and customs that are characteristic, a 'sui generis' dignity; they are frankly what they are, the antipodes ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... back. He promptly dismounted and helped the man unload the water-barrel where it was, and sent him bumping swiftly over the burned sod to where the Little Doctor waited. So Fate was kinder to the Little Doctor than were those who would wring anew the mother heart of her that their own petty schemes might succeed. She went away with the sick woman laughing crazily because all the little black shacks were burned and now everything was black so everything matched nicely—nicely, thank you. She was terribly worried over the woman's condition, ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... he, very gravely. "To do anything really brilliant, the adventurer must have been a gentleman at one time or other: the common fellow stops short at petty larcenies; the man of good blood always goes in for ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... which we were a part. He has made himself dictator, and, because our authorities have protested against the change, they have been driven from office by a military force. I tell you, sir, the petty outrages everywhere perpetrated by petty officials have filled the cup of endurance. It is boiling over. Now, doctor, what are you going to do? Are you ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... varied. We have been several times into the town and spent an hour in the Petty Sessions Court with Mr. Colquhoun, who sits on the bench. Each time we have come home laden with stories 'as good as any in the books,' so says Francesca. Have we not with our own eyes seen the settlement of an assault and battery case between two of the most notorious ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lioness in his defense later on, when he had given way to that first irresistible impulse to dip his fingers in the till and get away with what he thought would be unnoticed petty cash. It had been her fault that the thing had happened, of course. She could have given him a decent amount of spending money, instead of doling it out to him from his own wages as if she were giving money for candy to a schoolboy. She could have treated him more like the ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... not contented with such a petty triumph as that of sweeping the island of Tortuga free from the obnoxious strangers; down upon Hispaniola they came, flushed with their easy victory, and determined to root out every Frenchman, until not one single buccaneer remained. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... co-ordinator of the whole project and Lieutenant Governor Vidac is my immediate executive officer. We all have to work together. Let's see if we can't do it a little more smoothly, eh?" Hardy smiled and turned back to his chair. "But one thing more, Sykes. If there are any more petty disagreements, please settle them with Vidac. Don't come up here again, unless I ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... is drawn upward, in rain to descend, Your thoughts drift away and in destiny blend. You cannot escape them; or petty, or great, Or evil, or noble, ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... rapid, and the Englishman made many strides in a few months. Jealousy was so rife among the Spanish leaders, Christinos distrusted so thoroughly the reformed Carlists, that one who was outside these petty considerations received from both sides many honours on the sole ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... become tedious to her. "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!" and there is much vexation of spirit, as well as weariness of the flesh, in the making of many books. She had made enemies who were spiteful, and friends who were exacting; she, who felt equally the irksomeness of petty enmities and of small friendships, which, like gnats buzzing monotonously about her, were now and then ready to sting. The sting itself might be trivial, but ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... have had the product of eight times the period of his writing life that was; and an added quality born of riper experience, more momentous themes, more leisure for deliberate composition. We should have heard the man who against petty politicians and occasional pugilists, out-thundered Carlyle, turn his roaring guns against the blood-guilty heads that bade wholesale rape and gaunt hunger stalk rampant ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... resting-place. Uncles and aunts always found a welcome there; cousins wintered and summered with us. Thus hospitality was an element in our education. It elicited our faculties of doing and suffering. It smothered the love and habit of minor comforts and petty physical indulgences that belong to a higher state of civilization and generate selfishness, and it made regard for others, and small sacrifices ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach |
