"Premature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sickness, and crying out, "I shall soon follow poor Charles," was carried to a bed, whence he was never to rise. Churchill's favourite sister, Patty, who had been engaged to Lloyd, soon afterwards sank under the double blow. The premature death of this most popular of the poets of the time, excited a great sensation. His furniture and books sold excessively high; a steel pen, for instance, for five pounds, and a pair of plated spurs for sixteen guineas. Wilkes talked much about his "dear Churchill," but, with the exception of burning ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... certain amount of energy is consumed in any act and, as in our present age we need a great deal of energy to carry on our everyday business, in the majority of cases fresh vitality cannot be spared for an expenditure under several days or a week. Excess in anything tends to bring on premature old age, for the nervous force is expended faster than it ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... the school made upon Butler's time. Nor did he dare to make them even altogether so frequent as these avocations would permit. Deans received him with civility indeed, and even with kindness; but Reuben, as is usual in such cases, imagined that he read his purpose in his eyes, and was afraid too premature an explanation on the subject would draw down his positive disapproval. Upon the whole, therefore, he judged it prudent to call at Saint Leonard's just so frequently as old acquaintance and neighbourhood seemed to authorise, and no oftener. There was ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... deepest sadness, as though in that girl he saw happiness, his own youth, soberness, purity, wife, children; as though he were repenting and feeling in his whole being that that girl was not his, and that for him, with his premature old age, his uncouthness, and his beefy face, the ordinary happiness of a man and a passenger was as far away ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Brown, after the arrest, he sent notices to most houses in Concord, that he would speak in a public hall on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was premature and not advisable. He replied,—"I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak." The hall was filled at an early hour by people of all parties, and his earnest eulogy of the hero was heard by all respectfully, by many with ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... men sooner or later return, were wanting. There were mere sketches of great poets, like Mathurin Regnier, like Rabelais, without any ideal, without the depth of emotion and the seriousness which canonises. Montaigne was a kind of premature classic, of the family of Horace, but for want of worthy surroundings, like a spoiled child, he gave himself up to the unbridled fancies of his style and humour. Hence it happened that France, less than ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... over desert sand, not the least glide in the world. If this goes on we shall have a bad time, but I sincerely trust it is only the result of this windless area close to the coast and that, as we are making steadily outwards, we shall shortly escape it. It is perhaps premature to be anxious about covering distance. In all other respects things are improving. We have our sleeping-bags spread on the sledge and they are drying, but, above all, we have our full measure of food again. To-night we had a sort of stew fry of pemmican ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... by the ice as completely to block up the passage. This, too, occurred at times when the larger bay was nearly free, and the cove, which went by the name of the "Deacon's Bight," among the men, was entirely so. In order to prevent a premature panic among the victims of this intended foray, then, Gardiner allowed no one to go out to "kill" but the experienced hands, and no more to be slain each day than could be skinned or cut up at that particular time. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of These States (as, with reverential capitals, he loves to call them), made the war a period of great trial to his soul. The new virtue, Unionism, of which he is the sole inventor, seemed to have fallen into premature unpopularity. All that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the balance. And the game of war was not only momentous to him in its issues; it sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... succeeded ended in the establishment of Robert Bruce upon the throne, that great victor and statesman destroyed the Castle of Edinburgh with other strongholds, that it might not afford a point of vantage to the English invader or other enemies of the country's peace—a step which would seem to have been premature, though probably, in the great triumph and ascendency in Scotland which his noble character and work had gained, he might have hoped that at least the unanimity of the nation and its internal peace were secured, and that only an enemy would attempt to dominate the reconciled and united country. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... than with personalities. Often it has a financial aspect; and the natural expression on learning of a revolution is, "Somebody is out of money." The party in feathers its nest as fast as possible; there is scarcely a public officer who is not open to bribery. The party out plots a premature resurrection to power by the ladders of corruption, slander, and revolution.[31] Revolution has so rapidly followed revolution that history has ceased to count them; and it may be said of them what Milton wrote of the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, "that they are not more worthy of being recorded ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... as we stopped to change horses at Koppf: and a sort of premature darkness came on:—which, however, was relieved for a short time by a sky of partial but unusual clearness of tint. The whole had a strange and magical effect. As the horses were being put to, I stepped across the road to examine the interior of a small ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... I have endeavoured to avoid over-legislation and premature legislation. I have considered that free-trade principles are especially in place in a colony situated as this is. The ad valorem duty, and that on wines, spirits, and a few other articles, has been raised ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... They had a hard life enough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labor and drudgery and ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a short wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless sons, premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. But what matter? To-night there was hot liquor in the glass and hot blood in the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival—for which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads together—but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact, they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... fundamental disharmonies in his constitution, does not develop normally. The earlier phases of his development are passed through with little trouble; but after maturity greater or lesser abnormality begins, and ends in old age and death that are premature and pathological. Is not the goal of existence the accomplishment of a complete and physiological cycle in which occurs a normal old age, ending in the loss of the instinct of life and the appearance of the instinct of death? But before ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... quality, or duration of the milk, since it is affected by so many chance circumstances, which cannot always be known or estimated by even the most skillful judges; such, for example, as the food, the treatment, the temperament, accidental diseases, inflammation of the udder, premature calving, the climate and season, the manner in which she has been milked, and a thousand other things which interrupt or influence the flow of milk, without materially changing the size or shape of the milk-mirror. It has, indeed, been very justly observed that we often see cows equally ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... chaplets; but now the practical closeness of the nobility did away with the benefit of competition, and left only its disadvantages. With few exceptions the young men belonging to the ruling families crowded into the political career, and hasty and premature ambition soon caught at means more effective than was useful action for the common good. The first requisite for a public career came to be powerful connections; and therefore that career began, not as formerly in the camp, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... now—Pullman as the result of a premature explosion, and Robbins, executed by the Mercutians. But ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... dumb deaf tomb can aught or grateful or pleasing (Calvus!) ever accrue rising from out of our dule, Wherewith yearning desire renews our loves in the bygone, And for long friendships lost many a tear must be shed; Certes, never so much for doom of premature death-day 5 Must thy Quintilia mourn as she is ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... The most adequate knowledge of which any generation of men is capable, will always be that which is conceived by the most synthetic and vigorously metaphysical minds; but every individual philosophy will nevertheless be a premature synthesis. The effort to complete knowledge is the indispensable test of the adequacy of prevailing conceptions, but the completed knowledge of any individual mind will shortly become an historical monument. It will belong primarily to the personal life of its creator, as the articulation of his ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... by others more severe. But the Faith of the Church teaches the invaluable lesson that God designs, by the ordeal of the earthly crucible, to prepare her for higher honor and perfect service. She does not desire a premature termination of the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Thorndyke; "we mustn't be premature." He took the stout ash staff from the officer, and, having examined the formidable spike through a lens, drew from his pocket a steel calliper-gauge, with which he carefully measured the diameter of the spike, and the staff to which it was fixed. "And now," he said, when he ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... But I was premature in judging him, for all at once he darted back, armed with a stout bamboo, and came cautiously toward where I lay now nearly freed from my burden; for, at the sight of the men who came swiftly in, the serpent's coils began to pass one over the other till it was all in motion; and it was ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Cat The Fall of the House of Usher Silence—a Fable The Masque of the Red Death The Cask of Amontillado The Imp of the Perverse The Island of the Fay The Assignation The Pit and the Pendulum The Premature Burial The Domain of Arnheim Landor's Cottage William Wilson The ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was not nearly over, you were surprised, dear Mother, at such a premature request, and, evidently guided by God, you replied that Carmelites should save souls by prayer rather than by letters. When I heard your decision I said to the little Sister: "We must set to work and pray hard; if our prayers ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... of you," answered Mugford, brightening up. "I'll tell you what I should like to keep, and that's my clasp-knife and the book; they're such jolly stories. 'The Pit and the Pendulum' always gives me bad dreams, and 'The Premature Burial' makes you feel certain you'll be ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... ruined health—the frequent premature deaths—the failing of ministers in the Presbyterian and Congregational connexions from these causes all over the country, almost as soon as they have begun to work—all which is too manifest not to be seen, which everybody feels ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... coolness, but he consistently refused to put himself at a disadvantage. When, on at least one occasion, he was challenged to fight with swords, with which he was only moderately skillful, he demanded pistols. Fame was Jones's end, and he knew that premature death ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... being near that point and seeing that the enemy was giving way everywhere else, I gathered up a couple of regiments, or parts of regiments, from troops near by, formed them in line of battle and marched them forward, going in front myself to prevent premature or long-range firing. At this point there was a clearing between us and the enemy favorable for charging, although exposed. I knew the enemy were ready to break and only wanted a little encouragement from us to go quickly and join their friends who had started earlier. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... exercise of the powers of the understanding; but it is certain that, in several instances, individuals, who have exhibited the most striking examples of female pre-eminence, have not reached the full maturity of their intellectual growth, but have been lost to the world in a premature grave: to the names of Felicia Hemans and Laetitia E. Landon, besides others, is now added that of Emma Roberts, who, although in respect of poetical genius she cannot be placed upon a level with the two writers just named, yet in the vigour of her faculties, and in the variety of her talents, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... case to Mr. and Mrs. Yatman. That accomplished and charming woman found it difficult at first to follow the close chain of my reasoning. I am free to confess that she shook her head, and shed tears, and joined her husband in premature lamentation over the loss of the two hundred pounds. But a little careful explanation on my part, and a little attentive listening on hers, ultimately changed her opinion. She now agrees with me that there is nothing in this unexpected ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... magnificent. That's the one you sing best of all, Beta. How often you've sung it to me! Remember, at the bungalow, how I used to lay my head in your lap while you played with my Samsonesque locks and sang me to sleep? Let's see—Brahms's 'Wiegenlied.' Cradle-song, eh? A little premature; that's coming later. Eh? Found it, by Jove! Here we are, the March itself, so help me! Shall I play ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... cleavage of the mob, and behold a chase at the heels of the fellow to rival the very captain himself for fleetness. He escaped, leaving his pole with the sheet nailed to it, by way of flag, in proof of foul play; or a proof, as the other side declared, of an innocently premature signalizing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Strand, on the twenty-second of January 1561. The health of Francis was very delicate; and to this circumstance may be partly attributed that gravity of carriage, and that love of sedentary pursuits which distinguished him from other boys. Everybody knows how much sobriety of deportment and his premature readiness of wit amused the Queen, and how she used to call him her young Lord Keeper. We are told that, while still a mere child, he stole away from his playfellows to a vault in St. James's Fields, for the purpose of investigating the cause of a singular echo which he had observed there. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... likeness to nature be carried. We shall do this, because until we come to some understanding on that point, a right choice of subject becomes practically impossible, consequently the consideration of its arrangement would be premature. ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... blow by enclosing in discharge of all liabilities a bill on the Caisse d'Escompte for a hundred louis. Nevertheless it almost crushed the unfortunate and it enabled her father when he recovered to enrage her by pointing out that she owed this turn of events to the premature surrender she had made in defiance of his sound worldly advice. Father and daughter alike were left to assign the Marquis' desertion, naturally enough, to the riot at the Feydau. They laid that with the rest to the account of Scaramouche, and were forced in bitterness ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the fashion; she was a wit as well as a beauty; a fascinating droll; dazzling and bewitching, the idol of every youth. Eugene de Vere was roused from his premature exhaustion, and at last found excitement again. He threw himself at her feet; she laughed at him. He asked leave to follow her footsteps; she consented. He was only one of a band of slaves. Lord Beaumanoir, still a bachelor, always hovered about ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Besides; such premature knowledge would probably detach our interest and attention from the duties that press upon us now. We are here with certain duties and interests; and when these are duly apprehended they are quite sufficient to engage our time and thought, without being concerned with the ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... not thought it best to occupy much of the time of the Convention in discussing the propositions presented for its decision. I have indeed been impressed with an idea that a decision upon these propositions just now may be premature. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... night. Still I could only be sorry. Another paragraph had now appeared, she told me, contradicting the first, and saying, "The resignation of Miss Burney is premature; it only arose from an idea of the service the education of the princesses might reap from her virtues and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... first volley of missiles, and while others were gleefully making off with jars of asafoetida and decanters of distilled water, lifted in his arms and bore away unharmed "Louisiana" firmly refusing to the last to enter the Union. It may not be premature to add that about four weeks later Honore Grandissime, upon Raoul's announcement that he was "betrothed," purchased this painting and presented it to a club of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... from being vocal in such company. It is a pity. The plain common-sense man should believe in himself a little more. The result would perhaps startle his modesty. And he should begin instantly on the resumption of Parliament. He will of course be told that he is premature. But no matter. When he gets up and makes a row he will be told that he is premature, until Sir Edward Grey is in a position to announce in the icy cold and impressive tones of omniscience and omnipotence and perfect wisdom that the deed is irrevocably done and only ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was premature. Evil habit dies not in a day. A few weeks, and lo! it was upon him again: his coward self, with all its black legion of habit, laziness, love of ease, gluttony, and petty vice. Thenceforth his spirit ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the Washington convention, in favor of a petition to Congress, asking that body to submit to the several States a Sixteenth Amendment securing suffrage for all, irrespective of sex. On fully considering the subject, I must decline doing so, because such a petition I deem to be quite premature. If its request were complied with by the present Congress—a supposition simply preposterous—the proposed amendment would be rejected by every State in the Union, and in nearly every instance by ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Quarter, represented to the said Robert Jasper van der Capellen de Marsch, that "Although he must agree to the justice of all that he had laid down, besides several other reasons, equally strong, which occurred to his mind, the deliberation upon the point in question appeared to him premature, considering that the Lords the States of Holland and West Friesland, and of Zealand, as the principal commercial Provinces, who are directly interested, had not nevertheless as yet explained themselves in this regard; ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... then, the first wound in my infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola [4] in token of thy premature intellectual grandeur,—thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the astonishment of science, [5]—thou next, but after an interval of happy years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery; ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... It is premature to say much of an institution which has existed for so short a time; but if the principle on which it is founded be as correct and sound as it appears, it must prosper and do good. There is, however, one great practical difficulty, which can ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... publicity so unjust to the weak and unformed animal. The child repays this consideration by a gratifying silence. It cannot be expected to understand our thoughts, speech, or actions; it cannot participate in our pleasures. Why should it be forced into premature contact with them, merely to feed our vanity or selfishness? Why should we assume our particular parental accident as superior to the common lot? If we do not give our offspring that prominence before our visitors so common to the young wife and husband, it is for that ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... this man and the whole gang to-night," explained Craig, rapidly sketching over his plan and concealing just enough to make sure that no matter how anxious the lieutenant was to get the credit he could not spoil the affair by premature interference. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of the Alcazar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered from patio to patio, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called "the house of Caesar." Many a rude shock ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... premature sacerdotal education which I had received prevented me from being on any intimate terms with young people of the other sex, I had several little girl-friends one of whom more particularly has left a profound impression ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... to a great extent, be determined by their mineral characters alone; syenite, for instance, or granite with hornblende, being more modern than common or micaceous granite. But modern investigations have proved these generalisations to have been premature. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Another was made in 1826, and a third in 1828. In 1848 a conspiracy was formed at Cienfuegos and Trinidad to establish Cuban independence, under the leadership of General Narciso Lopez; but finding that his plans were premature, he escaped to this country, and here arranged a descent upon the island, which he led in person: this was in 1850. General Lopez, however, was not seconded by the timid natives, though they had freely pledged themselves to do so, and his expedition, after ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... since. His mad, wild hopes—half the result of intoxication, as he now knew—all dead and gone; the career then freshly opening shut up against him now; his youthful strength and health changed into premature infirmity, and the home and the love that should have opened wide its doors to console him for all, why in two years Death might have been busy, and taken away from him his last feeble chance of the faint happiness of seeing his beloved without being ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... time slower in passing. Each minute seemed as long as the dying speech of a tragedian who fancies himself in a death scene. I wanted to use some of these minutes in writing to Robert, but it would be premature to tell him that I was going to look after his cousin and her sister on the trip, as the ladies might abandon it, rather than put up with ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... exception of a brief interval, he received instruction at home, either directly from his father or from tutors under his superintendence. Thus he missed both the steady drill of school life and the influence of companions of his own age which might have made him more of a boy and less of a premature man.[9] It is Goethe's own expressed opinion that the object of education should be to foster tastes rather than to communicate knowledge. In this object, at least, his own education was perfectly successful; for the tastes which he acquired under ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... disillusion, and bitterness. Despairing, she writes a letter to her old parents who live in a distant town, and then commits suicide. And hardly is Niyu buried, when the poet, although sadly affected by the premature loss of his companion, again begins to charm and entrance by his beautiful words other ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... fifty-pounds' burden with the strength of bull hide, and the loading and unloading of miscellaneous baggage was performed with systematic despatch. In brief, there was nothing to regret—the success of the journey proved our departure to be anything but premature. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... bottom of her sentiments, which were, however, so lively as to have chased the rose from her cheek in the endeavor to forget them, and to have led her sensitive father to apprehend that she was suffering under that premature decay which had already robbed him of his other children. There was in truth no serious ground for this apprehension, so natural to one in the place of the Baron de Willading; for, until thought, and reflection paled her cheek, a ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... enthusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial in hours of defeat to the depths of despondency, he held on with unmovable patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution, that it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of his people as ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... come on the twentieth. He was not detained by business, nor did he get left behind nor snowed up, as frequently happens in stories, and in real life too, I am afraid. The snow-storm came also; and the turkey nearly died a natural and premature death from over-eating. Donald came, too; Donald, with a line of down upon his upper lip, and Greek and Latin on his tongue, and stores of knowledge in his handsome head, and stories—bless me, you couldn't turn over a ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... getting possession of this rich inheritance, with a prospect of holding it so many years, was very probably the principal end which William had in view in contracting for a matrimonial union so very premature. ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... premature presentation of a plan by the National Executive consists in the danger of committals on points which could be more safely left to further developments. Care has been taken to so shape the document as to avoid embarrassment from this source. Saying that, on certain terms, certain ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... I would have him prove some little of that great esteem,—but we live in a jealous city, Donna Florinda, and one in which prudence is a virtue of the highest price. If the youth is less urgent than I could wish, believe me, it is from the apprehension of giving premature alarm to those who interest themselves in the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him with gentle humour—a very delicate high-bred figure, in her characteristic black-and-white. Fontenoy's whole aspect changed as he caught the reference to their own relation. The look of premature old age, of harsh fatigue, was for the moment effaced by something young and ardent as ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... holds true of them all. And any conscientious psychologist ought, it seems to me, to see that, since these multiple modifications of personality are only beginning to be reported and observed with care, it is obvious that a dogmatically negative treatment of them must be premature and that the problem of Myers still awaits us as the problem of far the deepest moment for our actual psychology, whether his own tentative solutions of certain parts of it be ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... mind; his face had grown hollow, his hair was streaked with silver threads. But notwithstanding, she found in him still, with his delicately handsome head, a languid grace, like that of a girl, even in his premature decrepitude. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... is, on this frontier, Corny," he said; "it is premature to think of introducing Christianity. Christianity is essentially a civilized religion, and can only be of use among civilized beings. It is true, my young friend, that many of the early apostles were not learned, after the fashion of this world, but they were ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... hour after the surrender in that little cove under the high hills was a general Fourth of July celebration, though a little premature. Our ships cheered one another, the captains indulged in compliments through the megaphones, and the 'Oregon' got out its band, and the strains of the 'Star-Spangled Banner' echoed over the lines of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... France in 1870, and apparently would prefer that his planet should never be seen again rather than that a German astronomer should have seen it. But the joy of the rest and Lescarbault's sorrow were alike premature. It was found that the spot seen by Weber had not only been observed at the Madrid observatory, where careful watch is kept upon the sun, but had been photographed at Greenwich; and when the description of its appearance, as seen in a powerful telescope at one station, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Vertrees resumed her obliqueness. "Of course," she murmured, "it all seems very premature, speculating about such things, but I had a queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested in this—" She had almost said "in this one," but checked herself. "In this young man. It's natural, of course; she is always so ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... qu'apres avoir, en ce meme genre, epuise toutes les sottises imaginables. Que de sottises ne dirions-nous pas maintenant, si les anciens ne les avaient pas deja dites avant nous, et ne nous les avaient, pour ainsi dire, enlevees!—FONTENELLE. Without premature generalisations the true generalisation would never be arrived at.—H. SPENCER, Essays, ii. 57. The more important the subject of difference, the greater, not the less, will be the indulgence of him ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... alliance with me, and could now form, without excess of presumption, the most brilliant hopes of the splendor of his house. His son, the vicomte Adolphe, was destined to high fortune; and I assure you that I deeply regretted when a violent and premature death took him away from his family. My presentation permitted his father to realize the chimera which he had pursued with so much perseverance. He flattered himself in taking part with me. I did not forget him in the distribution of my rewards; and the king's purse was to him a ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were successful in displacing the preexistent and probably more primitive peoples of the Mississippi valley. While the time is not yet ripe for making final answer to these inquiries, it is not premature to suggest a relation between a peculiar development of the aboriginal stocks and a peculiar geographic conformation: In general the coastward stocks are small, indicating a provincial shoreland habit, yet their population and area commonly increase toward those ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... momentous results. But this acknowledgment of the Kaiser to the Lord of Hosts, "our old ally of Rossbach"—which must surely have inspired Hindenburg himself with a feeling of jealousy and sense of soreness—turned out to have been altogether premature, and of the nature of shouting before they were ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... Spaniard than an Oriental, he had, by his gifts, his address and personal appearance, won the good-will of the Duchess of Middlesex, and had had that success all too flattering to the soul of a libertine. It had, however, been the means of his premature retirement from England, for his chief at the Embassy had a preference for an Oriental entourage. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hardly be said that in all tramp life plaintive and tragic elements are common, even on the surface. Some are peculiar to Wicklow. In these hills the summer passes in a few weeks from a late spring, full of odour and colour, to an autumn that is premature and filled with the desolate splendour of decay; and it often happens that, in moments when one is most aware of this ceaseless fading of beauty, some incident of tramp life gives a local human intensity to the shadow of ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... is a great deal of it, no doubt, here, Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn, blandly; "but we shall grow out of it in time; it is only the premature wisdom of ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... stood there, waiting—it came to him: the note of danger. Swiftly he looked to right and left, trying to penetrate the premature dusk. The whole complexion of the matter changed. Some menace intangible now, but which at any moment might become evident—lay near him. It was sheer intuition, no doubt, but it ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... was to stand in the background and watch the nightmare play from afar. He fought for his place in the forefront of the battle with a great fervor of bitterness, and the possibility of defeat weighed upon his glowering soul like a premature day of judgment. He knew himself to be the one man for the opportunity, and could his true feelings have found utterance, they would have said, "Damn us everlastingly in hell, but don't shelve ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... knew that they were one of the chief causes of ulcers and premature gray hair at the League capital on Luna. I'd done a little reading on pre-spaceflight Terran history; I had been impressed by the parallel between the present situation and one which had culminated, two and a half centuries before, on the morning of ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... melancholy mingled in her smile. It was not the thoughtless levity of a girl—it was not the restrained simper of premature womanhood—it was something which the poet Young might have remembered, when ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Boulton and Watt was renewed in the union of the sons. Gregory Watt's premature death four years later was such a blow to his father that some think he never was quite himself again. Gregory had displayed brilliant talents in the higher pursuits of science and literature, in which he took delight, and great things had been ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... by that taking phrase. We were to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church, reform the Irish system of land-tenure, and reconstruct the Irish Universities. Robert Lowe, who was a conspicuous member of the new Cabinet, burst into rather premature dithyrambics, crying, "The Liberal Ministry resolved to knit the hearts of the Empire into one harmonious concord, and knitted they were accordingly." And we, of the rank and file, believed this claptrap; ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... "Too premature a sanctuary for a Vaufontaine!" retorted the Duke, fighting down growing admiration for a kinsman whose family he would gladly root out, if it lay ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "It's premature," she said, "and I love every one of them." And she stooped to kiss him on the hair. "And those are nothing but troubles. I'm going to smooth every one ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... to put one finger to his mouth before he had completed the work he was about, the atua (divinity) would certainly punish his impious contempt, by getting into his stomach before his time, and eating him out of the world. Of this premature destiny he seemed so apprehensive that he kept his hands as though they were never made for touching any article of diet; nor did he suffer them by even a single motion to show the least sympathy for his mouth, while ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... Fremont and suffer the thoughtless abuse of the abolitionists who even talked of impeachment. They saw only the immediate and moral issue of slavery rather than the ultimate political issue of Union—in their premature haste to free a few slaves they would have lost the whole cause both of freedom and of Union. Lincoln loved freedom as much as they but was more wise; nevertheless the patient President suffered much from the misunderstanding. His patience was never exhausted though terribly tried by the unjust criticism ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... made under the action of the inevitable lunge, or whether he lapsed into mere dabbling with the artistic side of his profession only, it would be premature to say; but at any rate it was his contrite return to architecture as a calling that sent him on the sketching excursion under notice. Feeling that something still was wanting to round off his knowledge before he could take his professional line with confidence, he was led to remember ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... not dead, after all! Mr. Lewes's rather handsome resolutions, of which copies have been forwarded to the friends of the supposed deceased, turn out to be premature; Dr. Mansel's pious obituary is an impertinence; Comte and Buckle, Mill and Spencer, are not the spendthrift heirs of her homestead estate in Dreamland. The Positive Mrs. Gamp may continue to assure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... curse of age to be thus miserably disenchanted; to outlive all our illusions, all our hopes. That may be my doom in age, but, in youth, the high spring-time of existence, I will not be cursed with such a premature ossification of the heart. Oh! rather, ten thousand times rather, would I ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... of character seemed to have deserted her, and she looked more like a child than Amabel. She actually put both her little fists to her eyes. After all, the girl was very young, a child forced by the stress of circumstances to premature development, but she could relapse before ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... who now, though still entitled to be called young, was disfigured by the premature defeatures of a vicious life, mistrusted it all the more, when, on visiting the old hall, he was forced to recognize the improvements effected in the neighbouring property (that he should be forced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... twenty years' absence, and a long endurance on either side of alarms and misfortunes, I again met with a cherished wife, whom I had almost given over every hope of seeing again. In her embraces I forgot the loss of the fruits of our union, nay, I even congratulated myself on their premature death, as it saved them from the dreadful fate which befel their uncle in the wood of Canelos beneath their mother's eye, who certainly could never have survived the sight. We anchored at Oyapok the 22d July 1770. I found in M. Murtel an officer as much distinguished by his acquirements as by his ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... the disappointment of his youthful passion,—the lassitude and remorse of premature excess,—the lone friendlessness of his entrance into life, and the ruthless assault upon his first literary efforts,—all links in that chain of trials, errors, and sufferings, by which his great mind was gradually and painfully drawn out;—all ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... premature designation. The earldom of Huntly was first conferred on Alexander Seaton, who married the grand-daughter of the hero of Otterbourne, and assumed his title from Huntly, in the north. Besides his eldest son Adam, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... older stages, it is much nearer to the facts to speak, not of a disturbance in lymphatic leukaemia, but of an absolute hinderance to the ripening process. It is easy to conceive any particular stimulus or injury bringing about an acceleration of the normal process, that is, a premature old age, but it is equally difficult to represent clearly to oneself conditions which retard or completely prevent the normal ageing of the elements. The discovery of such conditions would be really epoch-making, both for general ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... Pond, the Superintendent of our Chinese Missions, makes a dollar go as far as any man in our service. He is one of the most careful men in making ends meet. But he has been caught in the cyclone and writes thus about the premature closing ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... through the twisted branches of the tree beneath which he was standing, at the gray, heavy, wet, indifferent, blind sky; he gaped, shrugged his shoulders, and said to himself, 'After all there is nothing else I can do. I cannot return to Petersburg, to prison.' He threw down his cap, and with the premature feeling of a kind of agonizing, not wholly unpleasant yet powerful tension of the nerves, he put the mouth of the revolver against his breast and pulled ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... of more interest to the young couple themselves than it would prove to the reader, though it might not have been wholly without the latter, but which it would be premature to relate, now followed, when Ghita left Raoul on the hill, insisting that she knew the town too well to have any apprehensions about threading its narrow and steep streets, at any hour, by herself. This much, in sooth, must ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... whole of West Africa, in one week, there is not one-quarter the amount of drunkenness you can see any Saturday night you choose in a couple of hours in the Vauxhall Road; and you will not find in a whole year's investigation on the Coast, one- seventieth part of the evil, degradation, and premature decay you can see any afternoon you choose to take a walk in the more densely- populated parts of any of our own towns. I own the whole affair is no business of mine; for I have no financial interest in the liquor ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... big Secretariat buildings that raised themselves here and there out of the huddling bazaar looked trivial, childish enterprises in the simple revelation of the morning. A cold silence was abroad, which a crow now and then vainly tried to disturb with a note of tentative enterprise, forced, premature. It announced that the sun would probably rise, but nothing more. In the little dark shops of the wood-carvers an occasional indefinite figure moved, groping among last night's tools, or an old woman in a red sari washed a brass dish over the shallow ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... slow processes of evolution by which Nature commonly attains her ends, and to impose at once, by convention, the methods that commended themselves to the sanguine. Fruit is not best ripened by premature plucking, nor can the goal be reached by such short cuts. Step by step, in the past, man has ascended by means of the sword, and his more recent gains, as well as present conditions, show that the time has not yet come to kick down the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... you are not interested. You would only be interested through me. That would not help me. I should just be dealing out my premature ideas to you. If you cared as I care, if you wanted to know as I want to know, it would be different. But you don't. It isn't your fault that you don't. It happens so. And there is no good in forced interest, in ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... who used To praise me so-perhaps induced More than one early step of mine— Are turning wise: while some opine "Freedom grows license," some suspect "Haste breeds delay," and recollect 140 They always said, such premature Beginnings never could endure! So, with a sullen "All's for best," The land seems settling to its rest. I think then, I should wish to stand This evening in that dear, lost land, Over the sea the thousand ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... species, known as African mahogany, is brought from Sierra Leone. It is hard and durable, and used for purposes requiring these properties in an eminent degree. If, however, the heart of the tree be exposed or crossed in cutting or trimming the timber, it is very liable to premature ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... fountain of its boundless love, For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring, 45 But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand Scatter their withering curses, and unfold The doors of premature and violent death, To pining famine and full-fed disease, To all that shares the lot of human life, 50 Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain, That lengthens as it goes and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... which is still unapproachable, adding, "I feel like a sailor who puts forth into an abyss, the extent of which he cannot see;" and, again, "I must enter my decided protest against the attempt to make a premature extension of our doctrine in this manner—never ceasing to repeat a hundred-fold a hundred times, 'Do not take this ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... Call to your mind what I did standing at the cupboard at Alnwick; in very deed I thought that no creature had been tempted as I was"—not by the charms of Mrs. Bowes, of course: he found that Satan troubled the lady with "the very same words that he troubles me with." Mrs. Bowes, in truth, with premature scepticism, was tempted to think that "the Scriptures of God are but a tale, and no credit to be given to them." The Devil, she is reminded by Knox, has induced "some philosophers to affirm that the world never had a beginning," ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... as the prisoner does for the hour of his release; but like him she knew that a premature attempt to escape from her dungeon would bring her only ruin and death, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... and I consider it's premature, but rational, and it has a future, just like Christianity ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... assisted at the terrible interview between Eve and the erring daughter who had inveigled her own betrothed into a premature marriage. Sissie at any rate had pluck, and she must also have had an enormous moral domination over Ozzie to have succeeded in forcing him to join her in a tragic scene. What a honeymoon! To what a pass had society come! Mr. Prohack drove straight to the Monument, and paid more money for ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Joffre warns troops against premature attacks in mass; siege awaited calmly; 1915 recruits called out; neutral diplomats want Ambassador [Transcriber: original 'Ambasador'] Herrick to ask United States to protest against possible ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... (the Viscount said) this scheme Too rash and premature should seem— If thus discounting heroes, on tick— This glory, by anticipation, Was too much in the genre romantique For such a highly classic nation, He begged to say, the Abyssinians A practice ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... history of Amalfi's early splendour reads like a brilliant legend, the story of its premature extinction has the interest of a tragedy. The republic had grown and flourished on the decay of the Greek Empire. When the hard-handed race of Hauteville absorbed the heritage of Greeks and Lombards and Saracens in Southern Italy, these adventurers succeeded in annexing Amalfi. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... into the newspapers concerning what Mr. Edison had already accomplished with the aid of his model electrical balloon. His laboratory was carefully guarded against the invasion of the curious, because he rightly felt that a premature announcement, which should promise more than could actually be fulfilled, would, at this critical juncture, plunge mankind back again into the gulf of despair, out of which it had just begun ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... noted. Until the Russian war of 1904-05 had demonstrated the utter valuelessness of Tsarism as an international military factor, Japan had been almost willing to resign herself to a subordinate role in the Far East. Having eaten bitter bread as the result of her premature attempt in 1895 (after the Korean war) to become a continental power—an attempt which had resulted in the forced retrocession of the Liaotung Peninsula—she had been placed on her good behaviour, an attitude which was ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... had never entertained a doubt of Tiberge's readiness to grant my request, yet I was surprised at having obtained it on such easy terms, that is to say, without a word of reprimand for my impenitence; but I was premature in fancying myself safe from his reproaches, for when he had counted out the money, and I was on the point of going away, he begged of me to take a walk with him in the garden. I had not mentioned Manon's name; he knew nothing of her escape; so that ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... advantage work a reformation in her education. What is her education even now, and in our own country? Instead of being educated for health and long life, they are trained in many instances for disease and a premature death. The history of woman, as woman, is not in our reach; at least I am not prepared to say it has been written. I wish it had, for I am persuaded that woman has been the great redeeming element upon the human side of bliss, without ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... a light laugh. "No, no. It is something far more than that which I want. When I have succeeded in my search I will tell you. To tell it now would be premature. But ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... 21st of February, having made our voyage in the short space of ninety-nine days, and the land within a quarter of an hour of the captain's reckoning. The events of the passage may be given paucis verbis. We had nine accouchements in the steerage amongst the emigrants, some of them premature from violent sea-sickness, and seven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Ridge. The Labyrinth was a perfect maze of trenches, built by the Germans, and taken from them by the French, at the time of the British attack at Loos. The gun crew we relieved was carried out in sandbags, having been blown to pieces by a premature shell—that is, a shell exploding in the gun. This made us pretty nervous, and we didn't fire any more till all our stock of ammunition had been inspected. After our second trip in on this line, we went out and commenced our training for the Battle of Vimy Ridge. We were taken back to a piece ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... delightfully irresponsible, and I felt a pang of disappointment when he disappeared from the scene, although, considering that he became increasingly lazy and comatose as he grew older, his decease, perhaps, was not premature. Apart from his affability, Cuddy's only claim to distinction lay in the fact that he was the father of his daughter. Violet's lot fell in rather stony places; as a child she was practically the guardian of her own father, and after his death she was governess to the child of a woman as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various |
