"Rarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... having been painted in imitation of living nature. The string-course, which runs immediately above their heads, is placed in a very uncommon situation. It is composed of the nail-head ornament, in itself a sufficient proof of its antiquity; and also, as is observed by Mr. Cotman, of such rarity in Normandy, that he does not recollect to have met ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... patient devotion—tenacious, inviolable—every day displayed by women of the lower classes, whose natures, if gross, retain their primitive sincerity. Even with women of the world, depraved though they be by the temptations that assail them, nature asserts herself; and it is no rarity to see them devote an entire life to one idea, one thought, or one affection! Their lives do not know the thousand distractions which at once disturb and console men; and any idea that takes hold upon them easily becomes fixed. They dwell upon it in the crowd and in solitude; when they ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... a stick. The situation in syphilis, for which there is a specific, as compared with tuberculosis, for which there is no specific, is incomparably in favor of the former. If we had as powerful weapons against tuberculosis as we have against syphilis, the disease would now be a rarity instead of the disastrous plague it is. Comparing the situation in two diseases for which we have specifics, such as syphilis and malaria, malaria has lost most of its seriousness as a problem in any part of the world, while ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... and you see how little I know about it and how anxious I am to learn. Well, midgets, as a class are attractive and a rarity too. Except for yourself, I do not know of another. People want to see them. They go to circuses and theaters just to see little people. I have no doubt, that in many cases, people are ill-mannered—stare and giggle—and say uncalled for things, but that's to be expected ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... to the suture; where, that it might the better remain firm, it was sewed to a ribbon, to be tied under the chin. A foppery cousin-german to this of which I am speaking was Jacques Pelletier who lived in the house, presented to me for a singular rarity and a thing of sovereign virtue. I had a fancy to make some use of this quack, and therefore privately told the count that he might probably run the same fortune other bridegrooms had sometimes done, especially some persons being in the house who, no doubt, would be glad to do ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... intarsiatori were often, like other craftsmen, content to do the work without caring about the reputation of doing it; but the cases in which facts of the lives or work of these men have been preserved are so much the more interesting from their rarity, and certainly do not show them to any disadvantage compared with other artists, or those among whom their lives ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... she meant to remain all summer. And as any foliage or anything whatever that she touched, or that touched her, was thenceforth suitable for William's museum, there appeared to be some probability that autumn might see it so enlarged as to lack that rarity in the component items which is the ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... cried Roberts. "Yes, sir—antics. I said antics," cried the officer sharply, "so don't repeat my words and force me to do the same. A boy's a boy, sir, and a man's a man. A good boy is a rarity on shipboard, but very valuable when you get him; and a good man—a really good man at sea is worth his weight in gold; but I detest a hobbledehoy who apes the man, and I generally look upon him as worthless. Don't grunt, Mr Roberts. It's disrespectful to your ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... the Grammar school, chap. 8.'" Notwithstanding a title so pretentious, it contains a translation of no more than the first 567 lines of the first Book, executed in a fanciful and pedantic manner; and its rarity is now the only merit of the volume. A literal interlinear translation of the first Book "on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke," was published in 1839, which had been already preceded by "a selection ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the metallic vapours, that are swept Athwart the sun, in his light intercept The very hues Which THEIR conflagrant elements effuse. But, my love, my heart, my fair, That only I should see thee rare, Or tent to the hid core thy rarity, - This were a mournfulness more piercing far Than that those other loves my own must bar, Or thine for others leave thee ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... strong, simple life of the past, and the rapid, complex life of the present. Thus the squire opposed to the indifference of the time a rigidity of habits, which, to even small events, gave that exceptional character which rarity once imparted. He felt every thing deeply, because every thing retained its importance to him. He had great reverence. He loved, and he hated. All his convictions ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... is a rarity, though Association, being essentially the game of the rank-and-file, flourishes in every green field. But an Inverleith or Queen's Club crowd would have recognised more than one old friend among the thirty who took the field that day. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... for such a creature, so may these creatures have been added when media suitable for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take place any day, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the rarity of the rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems to have already undergone the principal ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... was not slow to recognise the value and extreme rarity of the prints. Rembrandt, Whistler, Hayden, Merryon, Cameron, Muirhead Bone and Zorn were represented by their most notable creations; two startling subjects by Brangwyn hung alone in one corner of the room, isolated, it would ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... pity that functions of formal magnificence were affairs of such rarity in the Gregoriev palace; for no private dwelling in Russia was better adapted to the purpose. The grand entrance opened into a hall of royal dimensions, at the back of which rose a massive staircase, which, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... a lady to see the doctor; she was just possessed to see him. I told her he was down at the beach, and she was that upset," Mary said, smiling, "you'd 'a' thought there wasn't another doctor in Philadelphia!" Patients were still enough of a rarity to interest ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... Thurston Square, of the bookcases, the bronzes, the triptych with its saints in glory, and of how Fanny sat enthroned among these things that reflected completely her cultured individuality. Fanny had counted. Her rarity had been appreciated by the man who married her; her tastes had been studied, consulted, exquisitely indulged. Anne did not want more books, nor bronzes, nor a triptych in her drawing-room. But such things were symbols. Their absence ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... economy, that generally wages, salaries, remunerations of all kinds, are in pretty exact relation to the value of the services performed—this value being of course determined, in a great degree, by the easiness or difficulty of the work, the commonness or rarity of the faculties and skill required for it, the risk of non-success in the profession, and so forth. Many a good fellow who feels that his income is inconveniently small, and wonders why it is not greater, might have the mystery solved if he would take a clear, unprejudiced ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... peculiarities, Captain Ready was generally liked by his brother captains, and by all who knew him. When he did speak, his words (perhaps the more prized on account of their rarity) were always listened to with attention. There was a benevolence and mildness in the tones of his voice that rendered it quite musical, and never failed to prepossess in his favour all those who heard him, and to make them forget the usual sullenness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... sheltered yet sunny, of a moderate rent, but in a good position; it must have, as well as a sitting-room, a room on the ground floor that Mrs. Pike could turn into a bedroom, and it must have a garden with no steps—a rarity in ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... brow, are not of the Roman type, there is a commingling of just that loveliness and melancholy which must have come to Psyche when she lost her god. In the corners of the mouth, in the droop of the eyelids, in the moulding of the chin, you may see that rarity—beauty and intellect in one—and with it the heightening shadow of an eternal regret. Before her Marcus Aurelius, her husband, stands, decked with the purple, with all the splendor of the imperator, his beard in overlapping curls, his questioning ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Viola cucullata from its place in the boscage and, after it has been suitably pressed, I mean to add it to my collection of the fauna indigenous to the soil of Western New Jersey, not because of its rarity, for it is, poor thing, but a common enough growth, but because of its having been the first tender harbinger of the budding year which has come directly to my attention. I shall botanize extensively this year. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... John Forster was a rarity: he never had been known to make one before: and Newton asserts that he never heard him guilty of it afterwards. It deserves, therefore, bad as ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... whose beauty he had heard highly extolled. But their ungraceful obesity displeased him, and they were immediately dismissed. A few days after he fell violently in love with Madame Foures, the wife of a lieutenant of infantry. She was very pretty, and her charms were enhanced by the rarity of seeing a woman in Egypt who was calculated to please the eye of a European. Bonaparte engaged for her a house adjoining the palace of Elfy Bey, which we occupied. He frequently ordered dinner to be prepared there, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was offered for the best address on the rebuilding of Drury Lane, Sheridan proposed an additional reward for one without a phoenix. Equally acceptable for its rarity would be a squib on Mrs. Piozzi without a reference to ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... would always let Julie tell us the "Windmill Story" over again, when her imagination was at a loss for a new one. Windmills, I suppose from their picturesqueness, had a very strong attraction for her. There were none near our Yorkshire home, so, perhaps, their rarity added to their value in her eyes; certain it is that she was never tired of sketching them, and one of her latest note-books is full of the old mill at Frimley, Hants, taken under various aspects of sunset and storm. Then Holland, with its low horizons and rows of windmills, was ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... other tribe. On the other hand, polyandry occurs, generally in cases in which a woman married to an elderly man has no children by him. They desire many children, and large families are the rule; a family with as many as eight or nine children is no rarity. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... yere reason,' expounds Boggs, once when he ondertakes to explain the public attitoode towards water to some inquirin' tenderfoot—'an' for this partic'lar reason: Arizona is a dry an' arid clime; an' water drinkers bein' a cur'ous rarity, we admires to keep a spec'men or two buck-jumpin' about, so's to study ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... synthetic of literary productions, is no longer in fashion, because, perhaps, of the growing rarity of heroes. On the contrary, simplisme is now deforming the greatest germs in the drama and romance. The weakness often lies in the morality of the production, or rather in its lack of morality, often so lacking that the author sinks to the level ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... its value partly from its purchasing power, partly from those properties which make it serviceable in the arts, and partly from its beauty. The high esteem in which gold money is held is as much the result of its comparative rarity as of its physical properties. Among nearly all the nations of the world it has been agreed upon as a standard of exchange. Gold has one disadvantage as a medium of exchange; it is rather too soft to wear ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... spoils of Peru. Although these specimens of antique jewelry set with emeralds may be numbered by the score or more in the museums and "reliquaries" of Europe, but very few engraved emeralds have descended to us from ancient times: This rarity is not due to the hardness of the stone, for the ancient lapidaries cut the difficult and still harder sapphire: therefore we must believe the statement of the early gem-writers that the emerald was exempted from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the relation of such institutions to human powers, balancing advantages and injuries, and studying the past for the laws of the future? What inquiry has been made as to the condition of exceptional men, who, by some fatal chance, knew human sciences before their time? Has the rarity of such cases been reckoned—the result examined? Has any enquiry been made as to the means by which such men were enabled to endure the perpetual strain of thought? How many, like Pascal, died prematurely, worn-out by knowledge? Have statistics ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Trajan, spent one hundred millions of sesterces in debauchery and gluttony; having only ten millions left, he ended his life with poison, thinking he might die of hunger. Things were valued for their cost and rarity rather than their real value. Enormous prices were paid for carp, the favorite dish of the Romans as of the Chinese. Drusillus, a freedman of Claudius, caused a dish to be made of five hundred pounds weight of silver. Vitellius had one made ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... and scanty; but it had the grace of a royal banquet. At the last, the mother produced with much glee three apples and an orange, of which the children had not known. All eyes fastened on the orange. It was evidently a great rarity. I watched to see if this test would bring out selfishness. There was a little silence; just the shade of a cloud. The mother said, "How shall I divide this? There is one for each of you; and I shall be best off of all, for I expect ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... directly to the progress of her times or the betterment of social conditions, it is usually because she has sufficient wealth to employ trained nurses, governesses, and others who perform the duties necessary to child rearing. She is a rarity and ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... (Empire State). It began with my entrance into public life, and terminates with my exit from it. The figures in the tableau will not be of the largest size, but the ascendancy of honest men, for such I think them to have been (Ilium fuit), will be interesting on account of great rarity." But, to the same friend, a few weeks later, he took a desponding view, expressing the fear that the power which had passed from the Democratic party would not return to as honest hands. His financial condition, too, caused him much uneasiness. He had given eighteen ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... comitis De Traditionibus Apostolicis et earum necessitate Responsio Alexandri Alesii D. Lip. 1556. [For the rarity of this tract see supra, p. 255 n. In his Introduction to Gau, Dr Mitchell gives as the alternate title: "Apostolicae institutiones a Ludovico Nogarola Com. in parvum libellum collectae et ab Alexandro Alesio in Disputationem propositae ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... struggle for life, or more difficult—at least I have found it so—than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet, unless it be thoroughly ingrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of Nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of Nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... S. magna together in many portions of the Mississippi Valley, each in its typical style (the ranges of the two overlapping, in fact, for a distance of several hundred miles), taken together with the excessive rarity of intermediate specimens and the universally attested radical difference in their notes, are facts wholly incompatible with the theory of their being merely geographical races ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... doubt that," said Agelastes; "and to suppose that in Hereward, the son of Waltheoff, I see an extraordinary man, although he himself may be ignorant, owing to his modesty, of the rarity of his ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the rarity of real criticism of the novel anywhere. As Henry James, one of the few great critics who have been willing to take the novel seriously, remarked in a now famous essay, the most notable thing about the modern novel in English is its appearance of never having been ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... of the confusion between perceptions and the inferences drawn from them, and the rarity of the power to discriminate the one from the other, ceases to surprise us when we consider that in the far greater number of instances the actual perceptions of our senses are of no importance or interest to us except as marks from which we infer something beyond ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to be held in the church—a not uncommon usage in country boroughs, but which from its rarity struck great awe into the Kingswell folk. The churchwarden was placed in the clerk's desk to receive votes. Not far off, the sheriff sat in his family-pew, bare-headed; by his grave and reverent manner imposing due decorum, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... to ascertain her mental status, but on the contrary persistently maintained a silence which they interpreted as a phase of insane cunning characteristic of a type of abnormality not often encountered, but in their opinion the more sinister and significant because of its rarity. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... her goodliest. You have seen Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears Were like, a better day: those happy smilets That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.—In brief, sorrow Would be a rarity most belov'd, if all Could ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... submissively into the gathering dusk, shrinking close as if to efface herself whenever they passed anyone. The streets were full of men now, mostly bound from hotels, lodging houses and tents to the Eldorado and kindred resorts. Many of them ogled her curiously, for a female figure was a rarity in ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... think, Mr. Mordacks, on the whole," said the rector, who studied this man gently, "that sometimes you are rapid in your conclusions. Possibly of the two extremes it is the more desirable; especially in these parts, because of its great rarity. Still the mere fact of some caves existing, in or out of my parish, whichever it may be, scarcely seems to prove that all the people of Flamborough live in them. And even if we did, it was the manner of the ancient ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... case we are not now considering—any provision for the slinging of hammocks, or the spreading of bedding they did not possess, came to be looked upon as a superfluous and uncalled-for proceeding. Even the press-room was a rarity, save in tenders that had been long in the service. Down in the hold of the vessel, whither the men were turned like so many sheep as soon as they arrived on board, they perhaps found a rough platform of deal planks provided for them to lie on, and from this they were ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... going back to weave my basket. There is nothing to surpass the orchids in rarity and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... art who has listened to most of the famous singers of the past twenty or twenty-five years. Operatic performance has been improved in every other respect, but pure singing, the perfection of the vocal art, has become almost a rarity. This is true not only of coloratura singing; it applies with almost equal force to the use of the singing voice for the purpose of dramatic and ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... part of the sublime, for pity ought to elevate us; but there is nothing to elevate us in the noisome wounds, even of a mythical hero; our human nature is too much forced back into itself—and a proof that in this the ancient art did not differ from the modern, is in the exceeding rarity with which bodily pain is made the instrument of compassion with the Greek tragedians. The Philoctetes and the Hercules are among the exceptions that prove the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exchange is great, because their beauty, which consists in their luster and their sonorous ring,(722) gives them great value in use; and because, at the same time, their rarity in nature makes the supply of them relatively small,(723) and not susceptible of increase at pleasure.(724) As they contain so large a value in so small a volume, they are adapted to transportation from one place to another, with but little difficulty—a matter of the greatest importance ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... spirit, religious zeal.... There are not more than two or three lycees in which this may be seen. Hence the removal of the children by the parents which is attributed to political prejudices; hence the rarity of paying pupils; hence the discredit of the lycees. In this ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... for I call God to witness how much, as a father, I regard you, with what singular devotion I have always followed you in thought, and how I feared to trouble you with my writings. In sooth, I make it my first care, that since there is nothing else to commend my letters, that their rarity may commend them. Next, as out of that most vehement desire after you which I feel, I always fancy you with me, and speak to you, and beheld you as if you were present, and so, as always happens in love, soothe my grief by a certain vain imagination of your presence, it is, in truth, my fear, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... sometimes happened that I was enveloped in a cloud which, intercepting light and sound, cut me off from the rest of the world. A sojourn in one of these clouds gives to the surprised traveller, by reason of its rarity, a series of curious impressions. But twenty-seven months in a cloud is a long time! A very long time! Three times each day, with a noise of falling iron, the door of my cell opened, and on the threshold appeared two men ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... parallel this land-rarity, and teach mankind moral faithfulness, and to condemn those that talk of religion, and yet come short of the moral faith of fish and fowl, men that violate the law affirmed by St. Paul to be writ in their hearts, and which, he says, shall at the Last Day condemn and leave them ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... people, or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before discoursed or written of, argues first a singular goodwill, contentedness and confidence in your prudent foresight and safe government, Lords and Commons; and from thence derives itself to a gallant bravery and well-grounded ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... narrative, that the worst novel ever written will find some gentle reader content to yawn over it, rather than to open the page of the historian, moralist, or poet. We have heard, indeed, of one work of fiction so unutterably stupid, that the proprietor, diverted by the rarity of the incident, offered the book, which consisted of two volumes in duodecimo, handsomely bound, to any person who would declare, upon his honour, that he had read the whole from beginning to end. But although this offer was made to the passengers ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... spent the most of her life in various garrisons, which afford few opportunities for gardening. None the less, she was, for a soldier's wife, a first-rate housekeeper; and, supposing these bulbs to be onions of peculiar rarity, she forthwith issued invitations to the elite of the Island, and ordered over a leg of Welsh mutton from the mainland. I will not attempt to tell of the dinner that ensued: for Miss Gabriel made the story her own, and everyone who heard her relate it after one of Garland ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... broad foundation of the Pyramid of Cheops. For the Marquesans are perishing, and, to judge from conditions at Taiohae, the one thing that retards their destruction is the infusion of fresh blood. A pure Marquesan is a rarity. They seem to be all half-breeds and strange conglomerations of dozens of different races. Nineteen able labourers are all the trader at Taiohae can muster for the loading of copra on shipboard, and in their veins runs the blood of English, American, Dane, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... say on," the minister answered, with his most genial smile; "your real thoughts are just what I want to get at. A man's real thoughts are a great rarity. If I don't agree with you, I shall like to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... abhorrent to the most primitive instincts of justice is that it will be seldom invoked and therefore cannot do very much harm. I leave you to characterize as it deserves a law whose chief merit must lie in the rarity of its enforcement. ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... modest home except for the parish church, the steeple of which could be seen at the summit of the hill, whither she was always accompanied by her grandmother, her nurse, and her father's valet. She had reached the age of seventeen in that sweet ignorance which the rarity of books allowed a girl to retain without appearing extraordinary at a period when educated women were thought phenomenal. The house had been to her a convent, but with more freedom, less enforced prayer,—a retreat ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... we found anyone at home when we called in the neighbourhood, and when we did, it was evident that afternoon visits were a rarity. We did get in one cold November afternoon, and our visit was a sample of many ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... found a tuft of lichen growing on the only rock which pierced through the ice on the summit of the Jungfrau. The absolute solitude, the intense stillness of the upper Alps is most impressive; no cattle, no pasturage, no bird, nor any sound of life,—and, indeed, even if there were, the rarity of the air in these high regions is such that sound is hardly transmissible. The deep repose, the purity of aspect of every object, the snow, broken only by ridges of angular rocks, produce an effect no less beautiful than solemn. Sometimes, in the midst of the wide expanse, one comes upon a patch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... carpet, wondrously darned and skilfully patched, with all its colours faded into a sweet faint ghost-like harmony. Several spider-legged, inlaid tables stood about the room, but most of the chairs were of a sturdier make, one or two of rich carved work of India, no doubt a great rarity when first brought to Glenwarlock. The walls had once had colour, but it was so retiring and indistinct in the little light that came through the one small deep-set window whose shutter had been opened, that you could not have said what it was. There were three or four ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... a vast amount of interesting information, on almost all subjects, which many people, especially the young, cannot attain to because of the expense, and, in some instances, the rarity of the books in which ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... prided myself on the rarity of my name. I don't go so far as to claim that it came over with the Conqueror, but it is an old name and an uncommon one, and hitherto I had been the only owner of it in the district. To have it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... proportion; his fears keep pace with the extent of the disorder which these objects produce in him; they are measured by their rarity, that is to say, by the inexperience he has of them; by the natural sensibility of the soul; and by the ardour of his imagination. The wore ignorant man is, the less experience he has, the more he is susceptible of fear; solitude, the obscurity of a forest, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... that were cause alone, One single virtue then would be in all, Alike distributed, or more, or less. Different virtues needs must be the fruits Of formal principles, and these, save one, Will by thy reasoning be destroy'd. Beside, If rarity were of that dusk the cause, Which thou inquirest, either in some part That planet must throughout be void, nor fed With its own matter; or, as bodies share Their fat and leanness, in like manner this Must in its volume change the leaves. The first, If it were true, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... The inherent faculty of children for losing and destroying books, coupled with the perishable nature of these toy volumes, has rendered the children's treasures of seventeen hundred and sixty-two a great rarity. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is the fortunate possessor of one much prized story-book printed in that year; but though it is at present in the Quaker City, a printer of Boston was responsible for ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... the most privileged, after all, of the group. Wasn't it he who had in a manner invented the wonderful creature—through having seen her first, caught her in her native jungle? Hadn't he more or less paved the way for her by his prompt recognition of her rarity, by preceding her, in a friendly spirit—as he had the "ear" of society—with ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... conduces to bodily pleasures and conveniences, without directly tending to sustain life; perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to destroy it. All dainty (as distinguished from nourishing) food, and means of producing it; all scents not needed for health; substances valued only for their appearance and rarity (as gold and jewels); flowers of difficult culture; animals used for delight (as horses for racing), and such like, form property of this class; to which the term 'luxury,' or 'luxuries,' ought exclusively ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... heads for disagreeable behaviour at his table. In spite of the paucity of the visitors executed, the example operated as a considerable impediment to conversation; and the intensity of the punishment was found to be a full compensation for its rarity." ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the race from ruin through passion is the rarity of those by nature or by art expert in using it. Norman felt that he was paying the penalty for his persistent search for this rarity; one of the basest tricks of destiny upon man is to give him what he wants—wealth, or fame, or power, or the woman who enslaves. Norman felt that destiny had suddenly ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... those who transgress the laws does not render indispensable, and none more than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial impulses of men. It is almost a proverbial remark, that those nations in which the penal code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished from all others by the rarity of crime. But the example is to be admitted to be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by a consideration of the universal connexion of ferocity of manners, and a contempt of social ties, with the contempt of human life. Governments which derive their institutions ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... arises, What is the reason for this rarity of cases of malingering? Is it because man has reached a state of civilization where he no longer resorts to deception? Decidedly not. The reason lies almost wholly in our changed attitude of today towards this question. As we acquire more real insight into the ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... wear his thoughts upon his face. Indeed I actually showed this small fish, which you call a sea-hare, to many who stood by. I do not yet know what name to call it[14] without closer research, since in spite of its rarity and most remarkable characteristics I do not find it described by any of the ancient philosophers. This fish is, as far as my knowledge extends, unique in one respect, for it contains twelve bones resembling the knuckle-bones of a sucking-pig, linked together like a chain in its belly. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... for. It must be remembered, that the population of England was then hardly a third of what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the habit of reading, was probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in literature, was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose country seat did not contain ten books, receipt books and books on farriery included. In these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as indicating a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis, Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity, He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. Now he may overcharge his American pictures, But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth in his strictures; And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... raised his head at these words. "Oh! sire," said he, "that puts me a little more at my ease. To a question put so frankly, I will reply frankly. To tell the truth is a good thing, as much from the pleasure one feels in relieving one's heart, as on account of the rarity of the fact. I will speak the truth, then, to my king, at the same time imploring him to excuse the frankness of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... imagination. For example, go to a friend whose sense of humour is notoriously imperfect, and say gently to him: "Your sense of humour is imperfect, my friend," and see how he will receive the information! So much for the rarity ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... The rarity of the air as he mounts upward in life will weight his wings at last. The limitations of Nature and of affairs will in themselves be all the chastisement he needs to correct abnormal hope, courage, faith, or honor—yes, even more ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the whole sum and substance of communication between the two sexes, if we may except the rare instances which history has made much of, because of their rarity—women of the French salons, who have become famous for their wit and beauty, in neither of which attributes did they outstrip the average self-supporting woman ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... "crazy" about operas, reads everything that comes to his hand—particularly novels—and is an inveterate patron of picture shows. "Under no strain trying to hear 'em talk," he confidences. While such occasions really are very rare, once in an age he becomes depressed—a peculiar fact (their rarity) in one so temperamental. After the fifth call within a month to act as pall-bearer at a funeral, he was in the depths. A friend ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... thou know The rarity Of Charity? Thyself forego! Then will the field, To God inviting, To man requiting, Sweet ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... matter with him. It was just this: "You haven't given me what I want; now I'll kill you." For months after each presidential inauguration the hotels of Washington are roosts for these buzzards. They are the crawling vermin of this nation. Guiteau was no rarity. There were hundreds of Guiteaus in Washington after the inauguration, except that they had not the courage to shoot. I saw them some two months or six weeks after. They were mad enough to do it. I ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the title lucrum cessans as a ground for remuneration clearly implies the recognition of the legitimacy of the owner of money deriving a profit from its use; and the slowness of the scholastics to admit this title was precisely because of the rarity of opportunities for so employing money in the earlier Middle Ages. The nature of capital was clearly understood; but the possibility of money constituting capital arose only with the extension of commerce and the growth of profitable investments. ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... is common at the extreme limits of its range, and so this warbler has a reputation for rarity among the New England ornithologists that would surprise people in the middle South and Southwest. After all that may be said in the books, a bird is either common or rare to the individual who may or may not have happened to become acquainted with ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... round, and lifted his hand to request silence; and, ascending the chair, rose in full view of all. Every one felt that the Squire was about to make a speech, and the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings), only thrice before had the Squire made what could fairly be called 'a speech' to the villagers of Hazeldean—once on a kindred festive occasion, when he had presented to them his bride—once ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... I was givin' you a bit o' fun!" said Cai, scratching his head. "It can't be often a man finds hisself in your position; and in the old days when you got hold of a rarity you liked to make ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this view is to the dignity of such situations in other countries, their comparative rarity is by no means the most striking difference in the circumstances of men of science. If we look at the station in society occupied by the SAVANS of other countries, in several of them we shall find it high, and their situations profitable. ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... did save the corn, and sell it too at a good price, the hotels in the neighborhood being glad to get possession of the rarity. Hope was radiant at the result of her determination: the Pessimist smiled a grim approval when she counted up and displayed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... want upon things meerly of Ornament. There is yet, methinks, no difference betwixt the Folly of such Learned Women, and that of Learned Men, who do the same thing, except that the one is the greater Rarity. ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... which he lives or the sunset which he has just seen. If he seriously tries to comply with your request, you will probably be surprised both by the difficulty he has in his attempt, and the little that he really can say upon these familiar subjects. The interesting story teller is a rarity, which is only another way of saying that the ability to narrate and describe needs cultivation. There is no better opportunity possible than that of the ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... luxurious hangings, Bajazet had none, for the looms of his country had not the craft to make tapestries of personages. Cloth of gold and of silver, considered an extreme elegance in France, they argued was no rarity to the terrible Turk, for it was from Damascus in his part of the world that this precious fabric came most plentifully. So de Helly took Arras tapestries into Turkey, a suite representing the history of Alexander the Great, and the avaricious ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see! Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity, Nose that turns up without any vulgarity, Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty— Whoop, you're a rarity, Barney McGee! Mellow as Tarragon, Prouder than Aragon— Hardly a paragon, You will agree— Here's all that's fine to you! Books and old wine to you! Girls be divine ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... linen; in fact, things so magnificent that no queen in Christendom could say she was so well furnished with jewels and household goods; and that he had for his part received from her three hundred thousand pounds for the rarity of the purchases in which he had been employed, such as Indian flowers, poppingjays, birds' feathers, spices, Greek wines, and diamonds. Requested by us, the judge, to say if he had furnished certain ingredients of magical conjuration, the blood of new-born children, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... were independent. We got jobs in offices, at forty kroner a month. Because now there was no longer anything in the least extraordinary about us students—we were no rarity, there were hundreds of us—forty kroner was the most they gave us. Thirty went to Father and Mother for our keep, and ten for ourselves. It wasn't enough. We had to have pretty clothes for the office, and we were young, ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... without entering into full details, that some plants of Caltha palustris produce only male flowers, and that these live mingled with the hermaphrodites. (Introduction/20. 'Geographie Botanique' tome 4 page 488.) The rarity of such cases as this last one is remarkable, as the presence of hermaphrodite and male flowers on the same individual is not an unusual occurrence; it would appear as if nature did not think it worth while to devote a distinct individual to the production ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... Hearsay passed through Bareilly, and followed Webb's route as far as Djosimath, which place they left on the 26th of May, 1812. They soon had to cross the last chain of the Himalayas, with increasing difficulties, owing to the rarity of the villages, which caused a scarcity of provisions and service, and the bad roads, at so great a height above ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... In nature we see it make the most splendid appearance in the upper and thinner regions of the atmosphere, just as it does in a glass tube nearly exhausted; but if it could expand itself beyond that degree of rarity, it would necessarily be diffused into the surrounding vacuum, and continue and be condensed there, at least in a greater proportion than in or near any solid body, as Newton ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... it is, that the rarity of any particular article enhances its value amazingly. In some part of the valley—I know not where, but probably in the neighbourhood of the sea—the girls were sometimes in the habit of procuring ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... stevedores and engineers while in France. The majority were from the South, where there is a friendly, warm sun many months of the year. When I talked with them no sun of any kind had greeted them for weeks. It was the rainy season when a clear sky is a rarity and a downpour of rain is a daily occurrence. Yet, there was not one word of complaint heard, for they were 'doing their bit' as expected of real soldiers. Naturally they expressed a desire to get home soon, but this was a wish I often ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney |
