"Precious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not a few books in the Bodleian itself were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a foundation has doubtless purged the original offence. In the National Library in Paris is at least one precious manuscript which was stolen from the Escurial. There are volumes in the British Museum on which the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and vice versa. But let sleeping dogs lie. Bodley would not give the divines who were engaged upon ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... mistress? More was surely not for me—and to seek more were surely a madness that must earn me less. And so, I was content to let things be, and keep my heart in check, thanking God for the mercy of her company at times, and for the precious confidences she made me, and praying Heaven—for of my love was I grown devout—that her life might run a smooth and happy course, and ready, in the furtherance of such an object, to lay down my own should the need arise. Indeed there were times ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... precious wretch had not been stopped he would have declared half the women in the north country to be witches. But the magistrates and the people got tired of him at last, and his imposture being discovered, he was hanged in Scotland. At the gallows ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... our Winky any longer," she objected, with a touch of obstinacy that was very seductive. "We shall all be different. Perhaps we shall be too wonderful to need each other any more.... Oh, Spinny, you precious thing my life needs, think of that! We may be too wonderful even ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... very grateful. To hear her say "It is your right," sent a thrill of purely unselfish pride through his breast. He admitted an equal right, on her part; the moments were precious, and he hastened to answer her declaration by one as frank ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... hands at the proper moment secured the consent of the official in charge of the freight sheds to the delivery of the boxes containing the precious Grey Eagle. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... at what each other said. The country looked very different to what it had done ten days before. Everything was white, the boughs hung down with the weight of snow, and where in some places it had melted and frozen again, the trees looked as if they were covered with diamonds and rubies and other precious stones. The horse went well, and they got on famously all day. Before it was dark they reached the spot where ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... self-knowledge, is a life not worth living by man.' In doing so it revealed a self deeper than the physical being of man and an environment wider and more real—more stable and permanent—than the physical cosmos, finding in the one and the other something more enduring, substantial, and precious than shows itself either to Science or the economic and political prudence, yet which alone gives meaning and worth to the one and the other. Thus for the first time arose before the mind of man the conception of a life not sunk in nature and practice, but superior to them and ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... "we must take this basket along. — I don't know if there is anything very precious ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... No. 1.—Your precious mother sewing by the west window in our shadowed sitting-room, her head haloed by ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... thing was at its hottest, I bolted. Tom, like the darling he is—(Yes, you are, old fellow, you're as precious to me as—as you are to the police—if they could only get their hands on you)—well, Tom drew off the crowd, having passed the old gentleman's watch to me, and I made ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... manufacture of sulphuric acid, and the latter serves in the manufacture of sulphate of soda, chloridic acid, carbonate of soda, azodic acid, ether, stearine candles, purification of oils in connection with precious metals and electric batteries. Nordhausen's sulphuric acid is employed in the manufacture of indigo. Sulphate of soda is employed in the manufacture of artificial soda, glassware, cold mixtures, and medicines. Carbonate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... for her health's sake; and these had an object now. As her dead mother's legends came back to her memory and knit Nature to her new Saviour, so the weather-beaten stones brought Him likewise nearer, marked the goal of precious daily pilgrimages, and filled a sad ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... means," I retorted. "Maxwell plainly says, 'Where the "control" is insisting upon something which I do not like, I politely resist, and end by getting my own way.' Note the 'politely.' In short, he recognizes that a genuine medium is a very precious instrument, and he does not begin by clubbing him—or her—into submission. For all their wondrous powers, the people who possess these powers are very weak. They are not allowed to make anything more than a living out of the practise of the magic, and they live under the threat ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... justly made people suspicious. Could it be possible that that same Nature who so sparingly distributed her rarest and most precious production—genius—should suddenly take the notion of lavishing her gifts in one sole direction? And here the thorny question again made its appearance: Could we not get along with one genius only, and explain the present ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Both thought instinctively of the hollow and the concealed entrance to the tunnel, and both knew that to attempt to use that now would not save them, and would give away a secret that might be supremely important at some future time, either to them or to someone else among those who shared the precious secret. The grounds were flashing with light in all directions; soldiers called to one another; men ran all around, looking ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... men had looked closely at them and read the magic letters which were cut upon their edge, they said that the millstones were precious indeed, since they would grind out of nothing anything that the miller ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... time that you have ever seen diamonds, pearls and other precious gems?" he asked when they remained long at the windows of a large ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... see? Verree good. But suppose now, I, or any one of the Department, come to you dressed quite different. You would not know me at all unless I choose, I bet you. Some day I will prove it. I come as Ladakhi trader—oh, anything—and I say to you: "You want to buy precious stones?" You say: "Do I look like a man who buys precious stones?" Then I say: "Even verree poor man can ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... would eat half of the sandwich that day and reserve the rest for the second one. His cigars were precious luxuries to be indulged in once every twenty-four hours after ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... exclusion of that worthy but unlucky personage altogether. He had scarce stepped from the tent-door before there arose on the sudden, and at no great distance from the square over which he was hurrying his precious burden, a horrible din,—a stamping, snorting, galloping and neighing of horses, as if a dozen famished bears or wolves had suddenly made their way into the Indian pinfold, carrying death and distraction into the whole herd. And this alarming ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... fairly representative, the collection does not pretend to be systematic. I have cast no sweeping drag-net, but have simply dipped almost at random into the wide ocean of German thought. Some of my most precious "finds" I have come upon by pure chance; and by pure chance, too, I have no doubt missed many others. Some books that I should have liked to examine have not been accessible to me; and there must be many of which I have never heard. On the ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... off. Asa looked curiously. It was hollow and was neatly packed with papers like the one in the Wolf's hand. The Wolf turned out the precious packets, and looked them over carefully. Ledermann looked from the Wolf intent on his papers, to Asa, bound in the chair. He looked at the Wolf again. He swayed a little; the drinks had gone to his head just enough to make him unsteady and reckless. He had not intended to take so ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... had gone on Stuart's route; he succeeded in travelling about 210 miles, the first 100 of which he followed up a running stream, but after leaving its source he lost much time from the scarcity of water; for this reason, and the precious loss of time caused by the wreck of the Firefly, he deemed it prudent to return to the depot; this course was adopted with much regret, as the wet season had commenced, a continuance of which for two or three weeks would probably have enabled him to have pursued the route originally intended in ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... precious portfolio down on the table in her room, carefully, as if its contents were fine gold, and proceeded to unpin and take off her second-best hat. When she had gone over to the Whittaker place that afternoon, she had wanted to wear her best hat, but ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... large double coffin, in which, according to tradition, lies a chain of gold of incalculable value. Some twenty years ago, the owner of Mellenthin, whose unequalled extravagance had reduced him to the verge of beggary, attempted to open the coffin in order to take out this precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and it has remained unopened down to the present time. May it remain so until the last awful day, and may the impious hand ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... I don't!" and Patty broke into a flood of tears. "My little flower! My precious own baby! How could I ever let Azalea touch her? But, Elise, Zaly loves her as much ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... grand old mariner, Captain Cook, belongs the honour of the discovery of the island. The names that he bestowed—judicious and expressive—are among the most precious historic possessions of Australia. They remind us that Cook formed the official bond between Britain and this great Southern land, and bear witness to the splendid feats of quiet heroism that he performed, the privations that he and his ship's company endured, and the patience ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the precious things our grave Parents still chuse out to make us happy with, and all for a filthy Jointure, the undeniable argument ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... 50,000 inhabitants in 1870, and in 1890 it had 412,198, an increase of nearly ten fold in twenty years. But this marvelous growth does not spring from the invigorating air and flowing springs of Colorado, but from the precious metals stored in untold quantities in her mountains. From Denver General Sherman had to continue his inspection to the southern posts, and I was called home to take part in the pending canvass. I started in a coach peculiar to the country, with three or four passengers, over a distance ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the means of transport, and the chance along the road of obtaining food and fodder vary so greatly that it is not possible to map out an outfit which would serve equally well for each of them. What on one journey was your most precious possession on the next is a useless nuisance. On two trips I have packed a tent weighing, with the stakes, fifty pounds, which, as we slept in huts, I never once had occasion to open; while on other trips in countries ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... wife, when I was obliged, in order to secure the precious remains of our ship, to venture with our eldest sons on a float of tubs, leaving you exposed, alone with a child of seven, to the chance of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... willing to worship us. The best we can do for the present is to set ourselves up as idols. I think I can be a very clever idol with precious little practice. You can be one without an effort. Shall we set up a worship shop ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... 'New Sources of English History' the learned author has given us a startling account of the deplorable condition into which some of the most precious of our national manuscripts had been allowed to fall—of the utterly chaotic state of our depositories—of the hopelessness, the despair which must needs have come upon one student after another who might be fortunate enough to be turned loose into the various prison-houses ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... this lovely island seems to me, like a miniature paradise, wherein I could always wish to live as long as the precious boon of life should be granted ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... contrary to reason. Is this reasonable, to strip us first of our armour of proof, and then to send us to the sharpest of encounters? To summon us to the severest labours, but first to rob us of the precious cordials which should brace our sinews ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... be a mark of progress to call God a superstitious idol and to endeavor by the guillotine to enforce political rights, then the precious French key to the Door of Destiny for this human race should be duplicated and placed in the possession of nations, far and wide, as the final expression of man's best idea of himself, his wife, his ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... father to give up the son than it does for the son to die. Is a father on earth a true father that would not rather suffer than to see his child suffer? Do you think that it did not cost God something to redeem this world? It cost God the most precious possession He ever had. When God gave His Son, He gave all, and yet He gave Him freely for ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... extravagance as even alarmed the king. All ordinary richness of dress, of satin, and velvet, and embroidery of gold, was discarded for fabrics of unprecedented costliness, for bouquets of diamonds, and wreaths of the most precious gems. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... bedroom, Asako had unrolled the precious obi. An unmounted photograph came fluttering out of the parcel. It was a portrait of her father alone taken a short time before his death. At the back of the photograph was ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... yet more, no doubt, of that awful, patient struggle of man with fire and darkness, of the grim courage of those unknown lives; and he would see what they toil for, women with little children in their arms; and he would notice the blue sky beyond the smoke, doubly precious for such horrible environment. But the second traveller has journeyed through the night; neither squalor nor ugliness, neither sky nor children, has he seen, only a vast stretch of blackness shot through with flaming ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the making of such an experiment. The motion was ably opposed by Mr. Herries, who said, that the proposal to introduce the silver standard was almost impracticable and unjust. The proposal was, in point of fact, to have the two precious metals in circulation at certain fixed proportions; a condition which rendered the execution of the scheme impossible. It was well known that the proportion in which these two metals interchanged now was different from the proportion which they held in 1798. The mover himself had admitted, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... slaves toiling in them. Imagine fleets of ships going continually along the shores of the Mediterranean, from country to country, cruising back and forth to Tyre, to Cyprus, to Egypt, to Sicily, to Spain, carrying corn, and flax, and purple dyes, and spices, and perfumes, and precious stones, and ropes and sails for ships, and gold and silver, and then periodically returning to Carthage, to add the profits they had made to the vast treasures of wealth already accumulated there. Let the reader imagine all this with the map before him, so as ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... man never behaved quite as his wife expected. To begin with, he allowed her to take the five precious acres now wasted in pleasure grounds round La Baudraye, and paid, almost with generosity, the seven or eight thousand francs required by Dinah for improvements in the house, enabling her to buy the furniture at the Rougets' sale at Issoudun, and to redecorate her rooms in various styles—Mediaeval, ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... like black shoe-buttons, with their lives almost finished. They seemed the least affected by the misery and change. They occupied the most comfortable places, and held the bright-colored ikons in their arms—the most precious possession of a Russian home. Perhaps a dog was tied under the wagon, or a young colt trotted ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... line at the end of her letter to him was a High School girlish thing to have done; it presupposed something between them which wasn't there at all. She had flung it in without weighing it; she had honestly meant at the moment, that his approval of her new and serious story was more precious to her even than the editor's, but ... would Michael Daragh understand ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... gold and pearls is now open, and plenty of everything—precious stones, spices, and a thousand other things—may be surely expected, and never could a worse misfortune befall me; for by the name of our Lord the first voyage would yield them just as much as would the traffic of Arabia Felix as far as Mecca, as I ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... Indian, Chinese, and Metis. The newest and most elegant houses are built upon the banks of the river Pasig. Simple in exterior, they contain the most costly inventions of English and Indian luxury. Precious vases from China, Japan ware, gold, silver, and rich silks, dazzle the eyes on entering these unpretending habitations. Each house has a landing-place from the river, and little bamboo palaces, serving as ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... a half-mile from her father's farm, to hide her precious book. This she did by pinning her petticoat into a bag and concealing the book in it. It was in this way that she always carried home her "li-bries" from Sunday-school, for all story-book reading was prohibited by her father. It was uncomfortable ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... I thank you for your generosity to me! for the watch you are sending me, which I have not yet received. I cannot value it more than I did that precious chain, the loss of which, happening at a time when I was every way most unhappy, really ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... MSS. are contained in a wooden box; the wood is, I believe, yew. It cannot be pronounced, I think, with any certainty, whether the wooden box was originally part of the shrine of the precious MSS. It is very rude in its construction, and has not a top or lid. Indeed it appears to me to have been a coarse botched-up thing to receive the MSS. after the original box, which was made of brass, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... observed to himself: "The old blowen kens of that, 'od rat her! but, howsomever, I'll take this: who knows but it may be of sarvice. Tannies to-day may be smash to-morrow!" [Meaning, what is of no value now may be precious hereafter.] and he laid his coarse hand on the golden and silky tresses we have described. "'T is a rum business, and puzzles I; but mum's the word for ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... delivery out of this natural state of death. "No other name is given under heaven whereby we can be saved," Acts iv. 12; and angels can make no help here, nor can one of us deliver another; the redemption of the soul is more precious than so, Psalm xlix. 7, 8. Nor is there any thing we can do for ourselves that will avail here; all our prayers, tears, whippings, fastings, vows, alms-deeds, purposes, promises, resolutions, abstinence from some evils, outward amendments, good morality and civility, outward ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... guess this one, general, I will herald you king of Thebes! But, with all my follies, I forgot that your time is precious and that I am detaining you needlessly with ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... bit; but I say, you don't mind waitin' a minute, while I go to the house over the way. There's only one or two places that keep open after twelve, because of our wanting tea, and ham, and rolls, and coffee, and all sorts o' things, to keep us going. It makes you precious faint to keep up night work without anything to eat, I can tell ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... that she had a right to accept his loving attentions and terms of endearment, precious as they were to her, while there was any possibility that another had a claim ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... building is humbly dedicated to our Heavenly Father with the hope and prayer that He may always be first in everything in this institution; that His word may be faithfully taught here; and that He will use it as a means of leading precious souls ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... unwillingly conferred, was accepted as a precious boon by the slaves—they were grateful to God, and ready to work for their ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... place in their sanctuaries, like the Holy of Holies in the temple. The archimagus, or high-priest, wears, in resemblance to the ancient breast-plate, a white conch-shell ornamented so as to resemble the precious stones on the Urim, and instead of the golden plate worn by the Levite on his forehead, bearing the inscription Kodish Ladonaye, the Indian binds his brows with a wreath of swan's feathers, and wears a tuft of white feathers, which he ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... with you, pay them wages, if not let them leave you. Should they remain teach them, and have them taught the common branches of an English education; they have minds and those minds, ought to be improved. So precious a talent as intellect, never was given to be wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth. It is the duty of all, as far as they can, to improve their own mental faculties, because we are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... my lady, I would rather be what God chose to make me, than the most glorious creature that I could think of. For to have been thought about — born in God's thoughts — and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking. Is ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... takes all blur and opacity out of him; condenses, intensifies; lifts his nerves nearer the surface, sharpens his senses, and brings his whole organization to an edge. Sufficient filtration would convert charcoal into diamonds; and we shall everywhere find that the purest, most precious substances are the result of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... rather than that she or her infant shall want anything. Oh how I wish I were near to love and comfort her. If her dear infant is spared all well and boy or girl I shall be quite as pleased if my idol be well. Let all give way if need be for my precious wife's sake, and on no account let her life be endangered, even for the sake of the child, if such crisis should ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... her with all his power: but she found him not, and no human being appeared in sight to listen to her appeal for succor. The sun was setting, and all had returned to the village. What then could Helen do? To retrace her steps, and seek her friends and neighbors in their homes, would be to lose precious moments, on which the life and liberty of her Henrich might depend. To strike into the depths of the forest, and cross the belt of wood that divided the settlement from Mooanam's encampment would be the quickest plan, and probably ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... thronged with gay crowds, I noticed something like dread and foreboding in the manner of the mother bird; and from her still, quiet ways, and habit of sitting long and silently within a few feet of the precious charge, it seemed as if the dear creature had resolved, if ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... it! Of course he will. And break his precious neck! Oh, get a blanket! Some of you run for the fire ladders! How ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... the davenport was opened, desk, drawers, and all. Caroline was once more in possession of her papers. She turned them over in haste, and saw no book of Magnum Bonum. Again, more carefully she looked. The white slate, where those precious last words had been written, was there, proving to her that her memory had not deceived her, but that she had really kept ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lloyd, puzzling over the verse again, when they had given up the search in the conservatory and gone back to the drawing-room. "It might mean a savings-bank, but there hasn't been one in the house since that little red tin one of mine that you dropped into the well with my three precious dimes in it. I've felt all these yeahs that you ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... know ... It seems cruel of me to speak of it just when you've had such a bad time, but it's kindness really. If I don't force you to think it all out and face it properly you'll be burying it in some precious spot and always digging it up to look at it. You face it, my girl. You say to yourself—well, he wasn't such a wonderful young man after all. I can lead my life all right without him—of course I can. I'm not going to ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... T.T. Cooper crossed it further north, by Ta-t'sien lu, Lithang and Bathang; Baron v. Richthofen in 1872 had penetrated several marches towards the heart of the mystery, when an unfortunate mishap compelled his return, but he brought back with him much precious information. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Statira,(1049) a lady formerly known in your history by the name of Artemisia, from her cutting off her hair in your absence, were so afflicted and SO inseparable, that they made a party together to Mr. graham'S(1050) (you may read lapis if you please) to be blooded. It was settled that this was a more precious way of expressing Concern than shaving the head, which has been known to be attended with false ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... to have little to say, now in this precious doldrums where we were becalmed, between the distant past and the unlogged future. We had not a particle of shade, not a trace of coolness: the sun was high, all our rocky recess was a furnace, fairly reverberant with the heat; the flies (and I ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... are like those precious Vessels whose soundness is destroyed by the least flaw and whose use is lost by the ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... materials; (10) soap, paint and colours, including articles exclusively used in their manufacture, and varnish; (11) bleaching powder, soda ash, caustic soda, salt cake, ammonia, sulphate of ammonia and sulphate of copper; (12) agricultural, mining, textile and printing machinery; (13) precious and semiprecious stones, pearls, mother-of-pearl and coral; (14) clocks and watches, other than chronometers; (15) fashion and fancy goods; (16) feathers of all kinds, hairs and bristles; (17) articles of household furniture and decoration; office ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... mouth of that valise yawned, the two men leaped forward so that their heads came together resoundingly and absurdly, but not before the bag had exposed its surface articles: a pair of tortoise-shell military brushes, a packet of documents, and a precious silver and lapis-lazuli box about the dimensions of a playing card, the kind usually dedicated to such elusive addenda as stamps, collar buttons, or sewing box in a lady's ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... manner. He had an aversion to sports, games, and other diversions, not from any moroseness, or melancholy of temper, being rather of an affable, cheerful and debonair disposition, but thinking that time was too precious to be lavished away in these things. Religion and religious exercises were his choice, and the time he had to spare from his studies he spent that way. He began to have sweet familiarity with God, and to live in near communion with him, before others ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the Renaissance should in time make its influence felt in the arts of the Iberian peninsula, largely through the employment of Flemish artists. In jewelry and silverwork, arts which received a great impulse from the importation of the precious metals from the New World, the forms of the Renaissance found special acceptance, so that the new style received the name of the Plateresque (from platero, silversmith). This was a not inept name for the minutely detailed and ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... in moved tones, gazing through a mist of tears upon the quiet face of the young sleeper. "Ah, darling, our precious lamb is safely folded at last. He has gathered her in his arms and is carrying her ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... of war that we, the bearers of men's bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour and ardour of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have its food, a food more precious to us than our heart's blood; it is we especially, who in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no man can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of war and to labour there till in the course of generations we ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... of men is too noble a sacrifice to be offered up to vainglory, fond pleasure, or ill-humour; it is a good far more dear and precious, than to be prostituted for idle sport and divertisement. It becometh us not to trifle with that which in common estimation is of so great moment—to play rudely with a thing so very brittle, yet of so vast price; which being once broken ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... his dust so precious Makes the soil a hallowed spot; Buried where by Christian patriot, He ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... discipline and devotion, one of the chief glories of human nature, and the necessary pledge of the honour as of the safety of nations, had been powerfully fomented and developed in France by the great wars of the Revolution and the Empire. It was a precious inheritance of those rough times which have bequeathed to us so many burdens. There was danger of its being lost or enfeebled in the bosom of peaceful inaction, and during endless debates on liberty. It has been ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mirrored theirs and his own so oft, he fondly imagined would beam on him as of old. I can well believe that, in that all but springless country in which he had cast his lot, the vision, the remembrance, of the fountain that flowed by his father's doorway, so prodigal of its precious gifts, had awakened in him the keenest longings ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... all the stern pages of life's account-book there is none on which a more terrible price is exacted for every precious endowment. Her rank and reign only made her powerless to do good, and exposed her to danger; her talents only served to irritate her foes and disappoint her friends. This most charming of women was ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... maintained a great establishment, more for the purpose of doing honor to his office than from any desire to shine himself. His life and that of his wife were so frugal, so tranquil, that their modest fortune sufficed for all their wants. To them, their daughter Ginevra was more precious than the wealth of the whole world. When, therefore, in May, 1814, the Baron di Piombo resigned his office, dismissed his crowd of servants, and closed his stable door, Ginevra, quiet, simple and unpretending like her parents, saw nothing to regret in the change. Like all great souls, she found her ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... on my hand as she spoke. Child as I was, I thought that tear more holy and precious than the dew of heaven. Flowers nurtured by ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... cockney child after a day at the seaside or in the country, is not greatly different from some of the verbatim passages of this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too, for it gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the enchanted world to which ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... and all shone brilliantly; but lo and behold, when her ladyship threw herself gracefully on her mimic throne, she found that she might as well be sitting in her robe de chambre on a pebbly pavement, or a heap of flints just prepared for Macadamization. Stones, though precious, are still stones, and the jump the Marchioness gave when she first felt the full effect of her jewels, is described as something prodigious. So handsome a person, however, might easily dispense with such ornaments. A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... thing for your great nation to boast of before all the nations of the earth. From your great land a most precious seed was brought to the land of darkness. It was planted here, not by means of guns and men-of-war and threatenings. It was planted by means of the ignorant, the neglected, the despised. Such was the introduction of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any evangelistic work yields equal visible returns. There is only one thing to do—for Christ's sake, for our country's sake, for the sake of the uncounted millions beyond the sea—we must, and we will, claim and conquer these precious souls for their Redeemer ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... you were so interested in our old history as to be wasting precious time out here in the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... fine gentleman of a supercargo. He is just like any mortal: he has taken a drink of their Lethe up there, and forgotten to come back to us. He'll be wrestling with the lads, or playing on his lyre, or giving his precious gift of the gab a good airing; or he's off after plunder, the rascal, for what I know: 'tis all in the day's work with him. He is getting too independent: he ought to remember that he belongs to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Mr. Walker's party brought some in and we were not a little glad to get it, although we heard that it had been collected by suction from small holes in the rock and then spitting it into the keg. I laid up in store this precious draught, and those who had been otherwise employed now accompanied me, in order that each might suck from the holes in the rock his own supply of water. The point on which we had landed was a flat piece of land covered with sandy dunes which appeared to have been recently gained ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... cold fierceness in the Tall Master's face. He now staked his precious bundle against the one thing Pierre prized—the gold watch received years ago for a deed of heroism on the Chaudiere. The half-breed had always spoken of it as amusing, but Shon at least knew that to Pierre it was worth ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... explicit, is the possible future of measures dealing with divorce, with war, with political corruption, with prostitution, with superstition? Enthusiastic idealism is too precious an energy to be wasted if we can spare it false efforts by recognizing those permanent ingredients of our being indicated by the words pugnacity, greed, sex, fear. Machiavelli was not inclined to make little of what an unhampered ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Uncle Charles had known Italian Wilson, and had bought a picture out of his studio. A Hobbema or a Poussin would scarcely have pleased them as much, for the worst of an old Master is that your friends look suspiciously upon it as a copy; whereas Wilson is scarcely old enough or precious enough to be copied. They were showing their picture and telling the story to the millionnaire with an agreeable sense that, though they were not so rich, they must, at least, have the advantage ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... wonderful hours of communing during these three months! The peace of the hills of Judah is all about them and the peace of God is in their souls. What ecstatic joy, what ineffable love was theirs in these moments as they thought of the children who were God's precious gift to them. I fancy that there were many hours when they ceased to think of the mystery that hung over these children's destiny, and became just mothers lost in love ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... intensified by their experiences in it, and these are to make more vivid the hopes that yearn towards the true home, and to develop the 'wrestling thews that throw the world.' The discipline of life is too precious to be tampered with even by a Saviour's prayer, and He loves His people too wisely to seek to shelter them from its roughness, and to procure for them exemption ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... trust it, so will she again. But don't you trust it. That precious goodness of yours is your rival. A bad, dangerous rival. You've got to beat it out of the field. Show that you're jealous of it. A little judicious jealousy won't hurt." Edith's eyes were still and profound with wisdom. "I don't believe you've ever yet made love to Anne properly. That's ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... I," said Mary, eagerly; "of course I do. I am not going to make any pretence with you. Of course I want them at once. But I have learned to know that they are precious enough to be worth the waiting for. I made a fool of myself once; but I shall not do it again, let Sir Gregory make himself ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... point of material well-being. Not a race of cannibals, as the credulous Diodorus Siculus, on the strength of some vague tradition, was pleased to delineate; but a people acquainted with the use of the precious metals, with the manufacture of fine tissues, fond of music and of song, enjoying its literature and its books; often disturbed, it is true, by feuds and contentions, but, on the whole, living happily under the patriarchal ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud |
