"Singular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as it were to the policy of Peter the Great, labored for popular reform, and for the introduction into his dominions of the ideas and civilization of Western Europe. The reform which will ever give his name a place in the list of those rulers who have conferred singular benefits upon their subjects, was the emancipation, by a series of imperial edicts, of the Russian serfs, who made up more than 45,000,000 of the population of the empire. More than half of these serfs belonged to the Crown, and were known as ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... singular feature this in ancient battles. Is it simply and solely Oriental, or general, and Hellenic also? Has it any analogue nowadays anywhere? Probably with Egyptian troops in the Soudan ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart, which contained, besides two trunks, buckets, brushes, boxes of singular shape, and an infinity of packages and utensils which the youngest of the new-comers, who had climbed into the imperial, stowed away with such celerity that Oscar, who happened to be smiling at his mother, now standing on the other side of the street, saw none ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... verse 17, comes again into the next poem, addressed to Jerusalem as appears from the singular form of the verbs and pronouns preserved throughout by the Greek (but only in 20b by the Hebrew) which to the disturbance of the metre adds the name of the city—probably a marginal note that by the hand of some copyist has been drawn into the text. In verse 21 the people, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of men,—or rather, a class of singular men. I choose the latter phrase, because I think that the singularities do not arise from the employment, but characterize the men who are most likely to gravitate toward it. A great philosopher, whom nobody knows, once stated the Problem of Humanity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... domestic habits and manners of the Americans, because they have been treated of by Captain Hall and others; and as the Americans always allowed me to act as I thought proper, and even to laugh at such of their habits as I thought singular, I am by no means inclined to take exception ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... (viloyatlar, singular - viloyat), 1 autonomous republic* (respublika), and 1 city** (shahar); Andijon Viloyati, Buxoro Viloyati, Farg'ona Viloyati, Jizzax Viloyati, Namangan Viloyati, Navoiy Viloyati, Qashqadaryo Viloyati (Qarshi), Qaraqalpog'iston Respublikasi* (Nukus), Samarqand Viloyati, Sirdaryo Viloyati (Guliston), ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... around, facile to all external impressions, and struck with the singular and majestic beauty of the man who knew their language as a native, whose voice often cheered them in their humble sorrows, and whose hand was never closed to their wants, long after he had left their shore preserved his memory by grateful traditions, and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... they had captured of the Moslems twenty cavaliers, and when Sharrken saw this, it was grievous to him and he mustered his men and said to them, "What is this thing that hath befallen us? To- morrow, I myself will go forth to the field and offer singular combat to their chief and learn what is the cause of his entering our land and warn him against doing battle with our band. If he persist, we will punish him with death, and if he prove peaceable we will make peace with him." They righted on this wise till Allah Almighty caused the morn to dawn, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... towards her. She wore a large shady hat that completely hid her face, but there was no mistaking that graceful figure. Mrs. Blake had a peculiar walk: it was rapid, decided, and had a light skimming movement, that reminded Audrey of some bird flying very near the ground; and she had a singular habit as she walked of turning her head from side to side, as though scanning distant ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... this story as a romantic and untruthlike fable, some believe themselves to have discovered, in divers documents of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, circumstances almost equally singular as regards the cause of the obstacles met with at first by Duke William in his pretensions to the hand of Princess Matilda, and as regards the motive for the first refusal on the part of Matilda herself. According to some, the Flemish princess had conceived a strong passion for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... we four stood on the brink of a precipice, looking abroad upon one of nature's most singular caprices. Conceive if you can a segment of the table-land, in shape like a broad-bilged man o' war, sunk to a depth of, mayhap, six or seven hundred feet below the general level of the plateau. Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... make quite so successful a summer's work as did Francisco the honest. No extraordinary events happened, no singular instance of bad or good luck occurred; but he felt, as persons usually do, the natural consequences of his own actions. He pursued his scheme of imposing, as far as he could, upon every person he dealt with; and the consequence was, that ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... autobiography—and, as the public like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the whole of it, will be the greatest novelty yet offered to its fastidiousness. As many of the events which will be my province to record, are singular and even startling, I may be permitted to sport a little moral philosophy, drawn from the kennel in Lower Thames Street, which may teach my readers to hesitate ere they condemn as invention mere matters of absolute, though ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... be done? what can be done?' he cried out. 'When I wrote that passage, which now seems so wicked, certainly I meant something very good; or, if I didn't, at any rate I meant to mean it.' The case was singular; if no friend of the author's could offer a decent account of its meaning, to a certainty the author could not. Luckily, however, there are two ways of filling up chasms; and Warburton, who had reasons best known to himself for cultivating Pope's favor, besides ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... called Regent Bridge, has been thrown over the hollow, which makes the descent from the hill into this street easy and agreeable. Thus, in place of being carried, as formerly, through long and narrow streets, the great road from the east into Edinburgh sweeps along the side of the steep and singular elevation of the Calton Hill; whence the traveller has first a view of the Old Town, with its elevated buildings crowning the summit of the adjacent ridges, and rising upon the eye in imposing masses; and, afterwards, of the New ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... dreadful question was given us by Dr. Moses when he visited school today. He is a School Committee; not a whole one but I do not know the singular number of him. He told us we could ask our families what they thought, though he would rather we wouldn't, but we must write our own words and he would hear them ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... character. He can no longer be himself. The stigmata of ordination are as immutable as those of the soldier are. And it is the same in other callings which are strongly in opposition, strong contrasts with civilization. These violent, eccentric, singular signs—sui generis—are what make the harlot, the robber, the murderer, the ticket-of-leave man, so easily recognizable by their foes, the spy and the police, to whom they are as game to the sportsman: they have a gait, a manner, a complexion, a look, a color, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... name as authors of sagas. These warriors, so pitiless and ferocious in battle, show themselves full of devotion to their families. They were good sons, tender husbands and kind fathers. The Eddas contain pieces of singular delicacy of sentiment." Their songs, when compared with those of other races, are more musical, the sentiment is richer and more profound, and the rhythms have more variety. The melodic intervals, also, indicate a more delicate sense of harmony than we find in other parts of Europe at so ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... which indicates the possession of the characters peculiar to the ametabola. Where there is an English and a Latin ending, the former is usually given with the word and the other is added: e.g. aequilate -us, instead of aequilatus, there being no difference in the application. Usually the singular form of the word is first given, and the ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... squadrons usually go south, having during the summer in Japan avoided the debilitating damp heat which those months entail in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the Chinese ports generally. The Iroquois, however, had soon to separate from the flag-ship, owing to news received of a singular occurrence, savoring more of two hundred years ago, or of to-day's dime novel—"shilling shocker," as our British brethren have it—than of the prosaic nineteenth century. There had arrived at Hakodate, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... which was fairly good in every way, and very good in the singing and some of the acting. The play was "Anno 66," but I could only catch a few words here and there, so have very little idea of the plot. One of the characters was a correspondent of an English newspaper. This singular being came on in the midst of a soldiers' bivouac before Sadowa, dressed very nearly in white—a very long frock-coat, and a tall hat on the back of his head, both nearly white. He said "Morning" as a general remark, when he first came on, but afterwards talked what I suppose was broken German. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Nice, unless I am mistaken, that I saw a singular occurrence, of which I have only an imperfect remembrance. There was a port there with many vessels in it; and near this port stood a house with a high tower, in which I saw a pagan whose office ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Ford had a singular situation, though, considering the wonderful nature of that desert country, it was not exceptional. It lay under the protecting red bluff that only Lucy Bostil cared to climb. A hard-trodden road wound down through ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... lines—in short, whatever the passage required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... scattered through the hills of County Wicklow I have met with many people who show in a singular way the influence of a particular locality. These people live for the most part beside old roads and pathways where hardly one man passes in the day, and look out all the year on unbroken barriers of heath. At every season heavy rains fall for often a week at a time, till the thatch drips with ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... fish and a ring on the arms of the city of Glasgow memorializes a legend in which we find the same singular combination of circumstances. A certain queen of the district one day gave her paramour a golden ring which the king her husband had committed to her charge as a keepsake. By some means or other the king got to know of ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... intellectual palate, and still as he read he warmed. He delivered the haughty speech of Caius Marcius to the starving citizens with unction; he did not say he thought his irrational pride right, but he seemed to feel it so. Caroline looked up at him with a singular smile. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... political partisan, and who may be a strong theological sectary into the bargain. And I am informed by members of Parliament who watched the progress of the Act, that the responsibility for this unusual state of things rests, not with the Government, but with the Legislature, which exhibited a singular disposition to accumulate power in the hands of the future Minister of Education, and to evade the more troublesome difficulties of the education question by leaving them to be settled between that Minister and ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his pleasure to read to her, even poetry and the great epics. That he should be fond of the cruel Scotch ballads she was not surprised; but his familiarity with the book of Job, and his love for it, astonished her. It was a singular library that he had put on board ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sadness in George Eliot's novels. She deals with ordinary, everyday people, and describes their joys and sorrows. In "Adam Bede," as in most of her work, the novelist drew from the ample stores of her early life in the Midlands, while the plot is unfolded with singular ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the river, looking like a big village half depopulated and occupied for the most part by dogs and cats, old women and small children; these last, in general, remarkably pretty, in the manner of the children of Provence. You pass through the place, which seems in a singular degree vague and unconscious, and come to the rounded hill on which the ruined abbey lifts its yellow walls—the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Andre, at once a church, a monastery, and a fortress. A large part of the crumbling ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... somewhat singular, Capt, Spike," he said, "if a vessel belonging to any nation should be seized as a pirate. The fact that she is national in character would ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... provinces (do, singular and plural) and 4 municipalities (si, singular and plural) : provinces: Chagang-do (Chagang), Hamgyong-bukto (North Hamgyong), Hamgyong-namdo (South Hamgyong), Hwanghae-bukto (North Hwanghae), Hwanghae-namdo ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... treasons by the death of Edward IV. (April 9, 1483), after which a full Parliament (July 7, 1483) condemned him and forfeited him in his absence. On July 22, 1484, he invaded Scotland with his ally, Douglas; they were routed at Lochmaben, Douglas was taken, and, by singular clemency, was merely placed in seclusion in the Monastery of Lindores, while Albany, escaping to France, perished in a tournament, leaving a descendant, who later, in the minority of James V., makes a ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... the watch for their return. It had seemed to her—though how be sure in that mingled light?—both at the moment of their reappearance and afterward, that Harry was somewhat unusually pale and quiet, while the girl's look had struck her as singular—exaltee—the eyes shining—yet the manner composed and sweet as usual. She already divined the theorist in Lydia, the speculator with life and conduct. "But not with my Harry!" thought the ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fire burnt noisily in the thin-ribbed stove. Lil made occasional excursions to the open doorway, looking out upon the passers-by with a keen alertness. She had some time returned from one of these inspections, and had curled herself at her master's feet, when I heard a singular and persistent tapping upon the unclothed floor, and looking round caught sight of my friend Schwartz, who was making a crouching and timid progress toward us, and was wagging his cropped tail with such ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... therefore, alike require that the Government should use all the means authorized by the Constitution to promote the interests and welfare of that important class of our fellow-citizens. And yet it is a singular fact that whilst the manufacturing and commercial interests have engaged the attention of Congress during a large portion of every session and our statutes abound in provisions for their protection and encouragement, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... anecdote of the count de Tendilla, which is a key to the subsequent conduct of the vizier Aben Comixa, and had a singular influence on the fortunes of Boabdil and his kingdom, is originally given in a manuscript history of the counts of Tendilla, written about the middle of the sixteenth century by Gabriel Rodriguez de Ardila, a ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... my left. The butler, my father's servant and mine, stood as of old behind my chair, and I noticed that each time he supplied me with wine he eyed me with a certain timid curiosity—but I knew I had a singular and conspicuous appearance, which easily accounted for his inquisitiveness. Opposite to where I sat, hung my father's portrait—the character I personated permitted me to look at it fixedly and give full vent to the deep sigh which in very earnest broke from my heart. The ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Horn gives a singular reason for the preposterous airs which Goethe had lately put on. Goethe, wrote Horn, had fallen in love with a girl "beneath him in rank," and his antics were assumed to disguise the fact from his friends who might report it to his father. Goethe's relations ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... provinces (provincias, singular - provincia) and 1 district* (distrito); Azua, Baoruco, Barahona, Dajabon, Distrito Nacional*, Duarte, Elias Pina, El Seibo, Espaillat, Hato Mayor, Independencia, La Altagracia, La Romana, La Vega, Maria Trinidad Sanchez, Monsenor Nouel, Monte Cristi, Monte Plata, Pedernales, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... bared the ground to their feet; it belonged to the great division of sedimentary earth, and the result of the action of the water, which is so common on the surface of the globe. Still a few erratic blocks were seen of a singular nature, foreign to the soil where they were found, and whose presence it was hard to explain. Schists and different productions of limestone were found in abundance, as was also a sort of strange, transparent, ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Whole is used also with the Nominative or Accusative Singular Neuter of Pronouns, or of Adjectives used substantively; also with the Adverbs parum, satis, and partim ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... about The Eye of Apollo is the staging. In order to provide the essentials, Mr. Chesterton has to place "the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth," who is blind, in a typist's office! The collocation is somewhat too singular. One might go right through the Father Brown stories in this manner. But, if the reader wishes to draw the maximum of enjoyment out of them, he will do nothing of the sort. He will believe, as fervently as Alfred de Vigny, that L'Idee ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... had his battery box open, McCarthy left them, puzzling over the singular failure of the electrical apparatus, which is the nervous ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... party had seized the temple of Diana and had made hasty preparations for fortifying it against attack. But Gracchus, impressed with the helplessness or the horror of the situation, persuaded him to make an effort at accommodation, and the younger son of Flaccus, a boy of singular beauty, was despatched to the Curia on the mission of peace.[726] With modest mien and tears streaming from his eyes he gave his message to the consul. Many—perhaps most—of those who listened were not averse to accept a compromise which would relieve the intolerable ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... devil," observed Claiborne, as they drove away. "A solemn customer, and not cheerful enough to make a good drummer. By what singular chance did he find you in ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... house of commons began to look upon Harley as a lukewarm tory, because he would not enter precipitately into all their factious measures; they even began to suspect his principles, when his credit was re-established by a very singular accident. Guiscard, the French partisan, of whom mention hath already been made, thought himself very ill rewarded for his services, with a precarious pension of four hundred pounds, which he enjoyed from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the scene to a classic concert of quite another kind. In a quiet West-end street, we are in a room of singular construction. It is in the form of a right-angled triangle; and at the right angle, upon a small dais, is placed the pianoforte and the desks, and so forth, for the performers. The latter are thus visible ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... l. 8. The Swayembara. The self-election. The princesses in India enjoyed this singular privilege. The festival was proclaimed, and from the assembled suitors the lady selected her future husband. The Swayembara is not among the eight kinds of marriages mentioned in the third book of Menu, as customary among the higher castes, in which the parents in general arrange ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... "A singular conveyance, is it not, Poynter?" inquired the older man, his careful articulation blurred by a pronounced foreign accent. Staring intently at the sunlit road, he added: "Is it a common mode ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Mrs. Worse, with her arms akimbo, "you think yourself very clever, but I tell you you are as stupid as an owl, a barn-door owl, when it is anything to do with women. You ought to see it must all come right some day. I dare say Miss Rachel is a little bit singular, but she is not quite cracked. You see, it will all get straight in the end; it will still all ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... had closed in upon the singular pair, and the queen's anxiety doubtless stimulated the king's action. Shaking from his rein the woman's hand, he cried, "Forward!" and in a few moments the party had left the stormy land for ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... neighbourhood; that the terms of Sir Ralph's will were perplexing; and that Meynell was Hester's guardian in a special sense, a fact for which there was no obvious explanation. It was true also that there emerged at times a singular likeness in Hester's beauty—a likeness of expression and gesture—to the blunt and ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Figure, again, furnishes in Darapti and Felapton, the most natural forms of stating arguments in which the middle term is singular: ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the 1st of May, was formally sealed. To General Merrill, his officers and men, for their uncomplaining and devoted service and for their gallantry in action, the nation is sincerely grateful. Their long voyage was made with singular success, and the soldierly conduct of the men, most of whom were without previous experience in the military service, deserves ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... eccentric stream whose habit of diving into the bowels of the earth at unexpected turns and disappearing from sight entirely, only to come up surging and boiling some miles farther down the valley, had suggested its singular name. "It was half land, half water," explained the topographer of the first expedition that had located and named the streams in these jealously-guarded haunts of the red men. Over on Amphibious Creek we were joined by a motley gang of recruits just enlisted in the distant cities of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... and peculiarly attired, all in black, occupied a seat at the back. The objects on view were apparently ornaments to be hung up, as we hang plaques on the wall. They were of both gold and silver, and in some the two metals were intermixed, with pleasing effects. What seemed singular was the fact that the motif of the ornaments was always the same, although greatly varied in details of execution. As near as I could make it out, the intention appeared to be to represent a sunburst. There ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... The most singular of these, perhaps immortal, fallacies, which live on, Tithonus-like, when sense and force have long deserted them, is that which charges Mr. Darwin with having attempted to reinstate the old pagan goddess, Chance. It is said that he supposes variations to come about ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... a singular look. It seemed as if they carried something of approval, and at the same time a longing to test the question of physical superiority. And then, abruptly, he laughed. Astonished by this strange, complex character, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of these coast-guards who affected a complete scepticism in regard to smuggling—he even went so far as to deny that it had ever existed! He was distinguished among his companions by a singular habit—that of always going to sleep upon his post; and this habit, whether feigned or real, had won for him the name of the Sleeper. On this account it may be supposed, that he was never placed upon guard where the post was one ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... accustomed to good society. He was neither talkative nor reserved, but natural and free; speaking our language with uncommon propriety, French and German still better, and Italian like a native, and often expressing himself with singular strength and picturesqueness,—reminding me of the Italian poet and critic, Ugo Foscolo,—whom I saw at the time he was furnishing the papers translated by Mrs. Sarah Austin for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... wore mail, admired it amazingly; but to mix in the gay world, with their rigid morality, would be as singular as stalking into a drawing-room in their armour:—for dissipation is now the fashionable habit, with which, like a brown coat, a man goes into company, to ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... uninfluenced by what Mr. Thorpe had said below stairs, conjured up an appalling vision of Zack before his father's looking-glass, with his chin well lathered, and a bare razor at his naked throat. The child had indeed a singular aptitude for amusing himself with purely adult occupations. Having once been incautiously taken into church by his nurse, to see a female friend of hers married, Zack had, the very next day, insisted on solemnizing the nuptial ceremony from recollection, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... coincidence, the year that brought a slave ship to Jamestown, Virginia, brought the Mayflower and the Pilgrim fathers to Plymouth Rock. It is a singular fact that the star of hope and the orb of night rose at one and the same hour upon the horizon. At first the rich men of London counted the Virginia tobacco a luxury, but the weed soon became a necessity, and the captain of the African ship ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... view of the situation still satisfy you?" I asked, when he had told me of this singular experience; I liked his apparently not coloring ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was fair—his features were admirable—his expression and manner had actually no other fault than that of being too still and languid. Maurice had brown hair, now a little tossed and disordered (for he had been busy all morning on board the boat), a pair of brown eyes of singular beauty, clear and true, and a tolerable set of features, which, like his manner, varied considerably, according to the humour he happened to be in. Percy was a man of the world, understood and respected "les convenances," and never shocked anybody. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish, slimy skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus composed of plates joined by vertical lamellae, and acted on by nerves of considerable power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical properties, and is apt to produce very formidable results. Some of these gymnotuses are about the length of a common snake, others are about ten feet long, while others, which, however, are rare, even reach fifteen or twenty feet, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... her fingers to the distaff or the loom, but had learned to endure the toils of war, and in speed to outstrip the wind. It seemed as if she might run over the standing corn without crushing it, or over the surface of the water without dipping her feet. Camilla's history had been singular from the beginning. Her father, Metabus, driven from his city by civil discord, carried with him in his flight his infant daughter. As he fled through the woods, his enemies in hot pursuit, he reached the bank of the river Amazenus, which, swelled ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of yours," says the critic, "is a singular production. It is ill-written, deficient in grammar, and often in English; and yet it interests and even amuses. Now, the subjects of it are all, I suppose, gone ad plures; otherwise it would be intolerable. The writer richly deserves a licking or a cudgelling to every page, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... in "The Old Curiosity Shop,"—unless Mr. Richard Swiveller, "perpetual grand-master of the Glorious Apollos," be the questionable hero; and the heroine is Little Nell, a child. Of Dickens' singular feeling for the pathos and humour of childhood, I have already spoken. Many novelists, perhaps one might even say, most novelists, have no freedom of utterance when they come to speak about children, do not know what ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... unique feature of this church is its west front. It is one of singular beauty, but its beauty does not depend on any enrichment of decoration, for a simpler front it would be impossible to find: there is not a single carved stone about it. Its beauty is due to the exquisite proportions of the various parts. The nave ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... singular good fortune that this, the greatest of all the epic tales of the Irish, has been handed down to our day in the two most ancient and, for that reason, most precious of the great Middle Irish collections of miscellaneous contents ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... lady got down a fresh supply of the lozenges from London because those she had by her might perhaps be a little stale. And then there was another sign which after a while became plain to Emily. No one in either family ever mentioned her name. It was not singular that none of them should call her Mrs. Lopez, as she was Emily to all of them. But they never so described her even in speaking to the servants. And the servants themselves, as far as was possible, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... so peculiarly dignified and so exquisitely lady-like she almost seemed to be a stranger. This, added to her romantic estrangement from me and to the clandestine nature of our tryst, produced a singular ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... with you. Lydia is, as you say, an exceptional case. She has lived much abroad; and her father was a very singular man. Even the clearest heads, when removed from the direct influence of English life and thought, contract extraordinary prejudices. Her father at one time actually attempted to leave a large farm to the government in trust ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... interested in the Nautical Museum of the Italian Admiralty, just within the dockyard gates. Here there is a very fine collection of models, from the historic gondola "Bucentoro," on board which the Doges performed the singular ceremony of "wedding the Adriatic," and the ancient war-ships which had met and defeated the Turks, Greeks, and Genoese in many a tough encounter,—down to the great ironclads of the Italy of to-day. We also saw a variety of armour such as was worn in the ancient days of Venice, and a ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... usual on the bank of a brook, at the entrance of a little prairie, a place which he thought favorable for his night's encampment. As he was preparing his lodging, he perceived at the other end of the prairie three very wide and well-beaten paths; he thought this somewhat singular; he, however, continued to prepare his wigwam, that he might shelter himself from the weather. He also lighted a fire. While cooking, he found that, the darker it grew, the more distinct were those paths. ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... insisted on; and one Goodman, a Jesuit, who was found in prison, was condemned to a capital punishment. Charles, however, agreeably to his usual principles, scrupled to sign the warrant for his execution; and the commons expressed great resentment on the occasion.[**] There remains a singular petition of Goodman, begging to be hanged, rather than prove a source of contention between the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... material and hue, with an edging of gold embroidery, hung at the windows. But the lads' eyes could not take in all these matters at once, being fixed upon the lady who rose from her chair to meet them. She was some thirty-five years old, and of singular sweetness of face. There was but little about her of the stiffness that they had expected to find in the wife of a London citizen. She was dressed in a loose robe of purple silk, with costly lace at the neck and sleeves. ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... pithy phrases, and apt illustrations, which he not unfrequently seasoned with his native idiom, the broad Barnsley dialect. His north-country pronunciation, indeed, never entirely forsook him; and the singular graft of German which he made upon it during his residence abroad, caused it to be commonly supposed, by those who were strangers to his history, that he was ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... to endure a prolonged sojourn in the wretched hostelries of the town itself. The electric tram and the rail-road have in fact killed Pozzuoli as a winter resort, more's the pity, for it is not only a spot of singular interest in itself but its climate is certainly superior to that of Naples, for the great headland which shuts off the city from the Phlegrean Fields serves also to act as a buffer against the icy tramontana that sweeps along ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... admitted into the room which was so jealously guarded. At first sight, it possessed a somewhat singular appearance. The windows had every one of them been boarded up, and the electric lights consequently fully turned on. A long table stood in the middle of the apartment, serving as support for a long glass showcase, open at the top. Within this, from ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... names in the myth before us, for confirmation of this. Ioskeha is in the Oneida dialect of the Iroquois an impersonal verbal form of the third person singular, and means literally, "it is about to grow white," that is, to become light, to dawn. Ataensic is from the root aouen, water, and means literally, "she who is in the water."[1] Plainly expressed, the sense ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... and places perfect joy in the pure and serene region of the perfecting of oneself; that sublime simplicity which so easily puts in their true place the miracle-worker and the scholar, these are perhaps not entirely new;[31] but St. Francis must have had singular moral strength to impose upon his contemporaries ideas in such absolute contradiction to their habits and their hopes; for the intellectual aristocracy of the thirteenth century with one accord found the perfect joy in knowledge, while the people found ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... impression that his framework all ran straight up and down, like the wires in a bird cage, with barely enough perches extending across from side to side to keep him from caving in and crushing the canaries to death. On second thought I judge I had better make this comparison in the singular number —there would not have been room in him for more ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... ambition." He had taken to literature, as so many others have done, merely as a last resource. And if it is true that literature at first treated Goldsmith harshly, made him work hard, and gave him comparatively little for what he did, at least it must be said that his experience was not a singular one. Mr. Forster says that literature was at that time in a transition state: "The patron was gone, and the public had not come." But when Goldsmith began to do better than hack-work, he found a public speedily enough. If, as ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... son's friendship, or even his son's toleration, on he went up the great, bare staircase of his duty, uncheered and undepressed. There might have been more pleasure in his relations with Archie, so much he may have recognised at moments; but pleasure was a by-product of the singular chemistry of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said Ashton-Kirk, "how things seem to fall into place." Scanlon saw the light of speculation in the singular eyes, but made no comment. A little later the investigator went on: "That you should have this rather extraordinary experience of yours ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... Besides, her singular Wit, Liamil had a Serenity of Temper which excited Love, though she was in her thirty sixth Year. The Minister before this, was under no Apprehension that she would fail in her Aim at Zeokinizul's Heart. The artificial Charms with which she concealed the ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... indebted to Spinoza for an obligation which he ought to have acknowledged, or else, which is extremely improbable, that having read Spinoza and forgotten him, he afterwards re-originated for himself one of the most singular and peculiar notions which was ever offered to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... is, that French literature has, to a singular degree, lived an independent life of its own. It has found copious springs of health and growth within ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... unusually elated with his return to home and expected honors. If the admiral had captured a fleet, he had taken an island;—and hand in hand they had co-operated in unusual harmony through the difficulties of an arduous campaign. This rather singular circumstance was owing to their personal friendship. From their youth they had been companions, and although of very different characters and habits, chance had cemented their intimacy in more advanced life. While in subordinate stations, they had been associated ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... eastward. We resumed our course. The vast belt of smoke at last arched over the strait, here about twenty miles wide, and sank towards the distant Calabrian shore. As we drove under it, for some miles of our way, the sun was totally obscured, and the sky presented the singular spectacle of two hemispheres of clear blue, with a broad belt of darkness drawn between them. There was a hot, sulphureous vapor in the air, and showers of white ashes fell, from time to time. We were distant about twelve miles, in a straight line, from ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... account of Hotspur's rebellion is quite inconsistent with facts, and altogether, in other respects, as improbable as it is singular. The MS. says that Hotspur,[320] about Candlemas, was commissioned to go against the Welsh rebels; but when he reached the country with his forces, and found it to be mountainous, and fit neither for horse nor infantry, he made a truce with Owyn, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... One or two of the judges act upon such occasions as prompters and assessors to their own doorkeepers. But you know what Cujacius says, 'Multa sunt in moribus dissentanea, multa sine ratione.' [*The singular inconsistency hinted at is now, in a great degree, removed] However, this Saturnalian court has done our business; and a glorious batch of claret we had afterwards at Walker's. Mac-Morlan will stare ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... preiudice, hurt, or damage of it. You shal minister iustice to all men vnder your charge, without respect of person, or any affection, that might moue you to decline from the true ministration of iustice. And further, you shal obserue, and cause to be obserued, as much as in you lieth, all and singular rules, articles, prouisions hitherto made, or heereafter to be made for the preseruation or safeconduct of the fleete and voyage, and benefit of the company. You shall not permit nor suffer the stocke or goods of the company to be wasted, imbezeled, or consumed, but shall ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... 289; Dumont, Corps diplomatique, v., 211-215. It cannot but be regarded as a singular instance of Elizabeth's irresolution and of that perversity with which she was wont to try the patience of her council almost beyond endurance, that she gravely proposed to include in the treaty an article providing for the protection of the King of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... naturally disinclined to initiative, the Germans before the era of modern Germany had far less of the martial instinct than the French. German army makers, including the master one of all, von Moltke, set out to use German docility and obedience in the creation of a machine of singular industry and rigidity and ruthless discipline. Similar methods would mean revolt in democratic France and individualistic England where every man carries Magna Charta, talisman of his own ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... brim, and a strap resting on the chin, a coat with funny little tales about two inches long, and a brass chain across the breast; and for pantaloons they had a sort of a petticoat reaching to the knees, and sewed together down the middle. They were just as singular otherwise as in their looks, speech and uniform. On one occasion the whole mob of us went over in a mass to their squad to see them cook and eat a large water snake, which two of them had succeeded in ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... to terms of the not worth knowing. What it cannot explain away with ready formulae, as in the later Winston Churchill, it snickers over as scarcely worth explaining at all, as in the later Howells. Such a brave and tragic book as "Ethan Frome" is so rare as to be almost singular, even with Mrs. Wharton. There is, I daresay, not much market for that sort of thing. In the arts, as in the concerns of everyday, the American seeks escape from the insoluble by pretending that it is solved. A comfortable ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... go home—but only subsequently. What took place before his departure had the singular solidity and completeness of systematic violence; also, it bore the moral beauty of all actions that lead to peace and friendship, for, when it was over, and the final vocalizations of Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, were growing faint with increasing distance, Sam and Penrod ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... before further exploration to the north could be undertaken. The course was now set for Samgoonoodha Harbour, but they did not arrive there till 3rd October, having met with very heavy weather, in which the Resolution again began to leak badly. On 8th September an Indian brought a singular present in the form of a pie made like a loaf, containing some highly seasoned salmon, accompanied by a letter in Russian. In return Corporal Ledyard of the Marines, "an intelligent man," was sent with a few bottles of rum, wine, and porter, to obtain further information, and with orders, ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the "fast" youth that he has been generally drawn. He had neither the good nor the bad qualities that belong to young gentlemen who do not live on terms with their papas. He was of a grave and sad temperament, and much more of a Puritan than a Cavalier. It is a little singular that Shakspeare should have given portraits so utterly false of the most unpopular of the kings of the York family, and of the most popular of the kings of the rival house,—of Richard III., that is, and of the fifth Henry of Lancaster. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... inclosed in the intimacy of their blended cigar-smoke when the door opened and Varick walked into the room. Waythorn rose abruptly. It was the first time that Varick had come to the house, and the surprise of seeing him, combined with the singular inopportuneness of his arrival, gave a new edge to Waythorn's blunted sensibilities. He stared at his ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... provinces (velayat, singular - velayat); Badakhshan, Badghis, Baghlan, Balkh, Bamyan, Daykundi, Farah, Faryab, Ghazni, Ghor, Helmand, Herat, Jowzjan, Kabul, Kandahar, Kapisa, Khost, Kunar, Kunduz, Laghman, Logar, Nangarhar, Nimroz, Nuristan, Paktika, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... price of a quart of the best ale, Mr Gibbons pocketed the penny with satisfaction, and forbore to remark censoriously on what he deemed the very singular taste of Mr Percy's man. He shambled awkwardly off with his waggon, meaning first to put up his horses, and then go and expend his penny in the beverage wherein his soul delighted. His companion gave a low laugh as he turned the key in the door ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... themselves had broken their arms or legs. In another corner of this house there sat around a fire, forming another household, a party whose faces were entirely blackened, who observed a gloomy silence and looked very singular. They were in mourning for a deceased friend. The Indian, having made himself ready, took both our sacks together and tied them on his back for the purpose of carrying them, which did not suit us badly, as we were very tired. He did that without our asking him, and conducted us ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... the half-obscurity of the storm she could not help turning her mischievous eyes on his. But she was perhaps surprised to find them luminous, soft, and, as it seemed to her at that moment, grave beyond the occasion. An embarrassment utterly new and singular seized upon her; and when, as she half feared yet half expected, he bent down and pressed his lips to hers, she was for a moment powerless. But in the next instant she boxed his ears sharply, and vanished in the darkness. When Mr. ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... there is no need to do singular things," she would often repeat, after St. Francis de Sales; "what is needed is to do common things singularly well!" She carried the same zeal from convent to convent, from Port-Royal des Champs to Port-Royal de Paris; from Maubuisson, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... intelligence to the advanced post of the Donegals; but they, so far from being disheartened, marched immediately against the rebel army, enormous as was the disproportion, with the purpose of recapturing the artillery. A singular contrast this to the conduct of General Fawcet, who retreated hastily to Duncannon upon the first intelligence of this disaster. Such a regressive movement was so little anticipated by the gallant Donegals, that they continued to advance against the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... nature have left it. The third wonder is at Staffa, in Scotland, where the rocks have been thrown into such a position as to justify the name of Fingal's Cave, which they bear, and which was bestowed on them in the olden times before Scottish history began to be written. It is singular how many of the names which dignify, or designate, favorite spots of the Giant's Causeway have been duplicated in the Palisades. Among the Hudson rocks are several 'Lady's Chairs,' 'Lover's Leaps,' 'Devil's Toothpicks,' 'Devil's Pulpits,' and, in many spots on the water's edge, ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... wanted a familiar illustration, and could not be satisfied till the soldier, by a happy inspiration, said the only thing to which he could compare a locomotive was a great cannon on a timber-carriage. To us who are so accustomed to railways it seems a singular idea; but, upon reflection, it was not so inapt, considering that the audience had seen or heard something of cannons, and were well acquainted with timber-carriages. The soldier wished to convey the notion of a barrel or boiler mounted ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... up his position in the centre of the Aubusson carpet. Finally he selected an ornate chair, rather more solid-looking than the rest, which he drew up to a small table on the far side of the room. There he sat down, his large red hands spread out upon his knees in an attitude of singular embarrassment. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... nation; so turn us out of office, and seat yourself in our place." Nevertheless, they might have hoped to preserve their tottering authority through his support. Be this as it may, there it something so singular in the good fortune which has attended BONAPARTE from the period of his quitting Alexandria, that, were it not known for truth, it might well be taken for fiction. Sailing from the road of Aboukir on the 24th of August, 1799, he eludes the vigilance of the English cruisers, and lands ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... dreams,—a wonderful faculty to superstitious people like the Egyptians, and in which he exceeds even their magicians and priests. The fame of his rare gifts, the most prized in Egypt, reaches at last the ears of Pharaoh, who is troubled by a singular dream which no one of his learned men can interpret. The Hebrew slave interprets it, and is magnificently rewarded, becoming the prime minister of an absolute monarch. The King gives him his signet ring, emblem of power, and a collar or chain of gold, the emblem ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... very singular shrub, which grows abundantly in the west, and is to be found in all parts of Texas. It is no less than the "mosquito tree." It is a very slim, and willowy looking shrub, and would seem to be of little use for any industrial purposes; but is has extraordinary roots ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... that no man is fit for a profession till he has thoroughly mastered its possibilities,—yet it is not too much to declare that in the profession of Sovereignty the few who practise it, have mastered it to so little purpose, that they are almost entirely blind to the singular advantages which they might obtain, not only for themselves, but for the entire world, if they chose to put forth their own individuality, and, instead of wasting their time on the scheming and self-seeking sections of Society, elected to try their powers on the working and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the customary irregularity of these old English towns, so that it is quite impossible to go directly to any given point, or for a stranger to find his way to a place which he wishes to reach, though, by what seems a singular good fortune, the sought-for place is always offering itself when least expected. On this account I never knew such pleasant walking as in old streets like those of Shrewsbury. And there are passages opening ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nature of their occupation booksellers are broad-minded; their association with every class of humanity and their constant companionship with books give them a liberality that enables them to view with singular clearness and dispassionateness every phase of life and every dispensation of Providence. They are not always practical, for the development of the spiritual and intellectual natures in man does not at the same time promote dexterity in the use of the baser organs ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... there with the boy's cap? Yes; that's the same woman. I wonder whether you could guess who she was. A singular being, is she not? The most marvellous creature, quite, that I have ever met: a wonderful elegance, exotic, far-fetched, poignant; an artificial perverse sort of grace and research in every outline and movement and arrangement of head and neck, and hands and fingers. Here are a ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... who, during the era of speculation had accumulated wealth rapidly, thought in these years of decreasing prosperity of something else than joining such an undertaking, and declared that they had to economize. And yet the annual dues were but 15 marks! Very singular was the answer of some whose rank or learning gave them prominence. They said that it was not even known whether the project had any real standing and they might therefore disgrace themselves by lending their names. Yes, ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... of Dr Johnson, in reference to sacred poetry, has long ago fallen into disrepute. It seems singular indeed, how it ever obtained credence, even although supported by one of the most powerful pens that ever wrote in Britain, when we remember that, previous to that author's day, the best poetry in the world 'had' been sacred. The Holy Scriptures ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... 'is a low, a very low and a very false estimate of woman's condition.' He was amused on my showing him the (almost) contemporary notice of Milton by Wycherly, and, after reading it, spoke a good deal of the obscurity of men of genius in or near their own times. 'But the most singular thing,' he continued, 'is, that in all the writings of Bacon there is not one allusion ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... its author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines of "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say the least, singular. In "Alastor" ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Chalcedon, the Prince's Islands, the Golden Horn, the continual bustle on the sea, the immense fleet, besides the numerous ships of other nations, the crowds of people in Pera, Galata, and Topana—all unite to form a panorama of singular beauty. The richest fancy would fail in the attempt to portray such a scene; the most practised pen would be unequal to the task of adequately describing it. But the gorgeous picture will be ever present to my memory, though I lack the power of presenting ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... stand beside the painting and everyone recognized the likeness. Du Roy was embarrassed. Walter thought it very singular; Madeleine, with a smile, remarked that Jesus looked more manly. Mme. Walter stood by motionless, staring fixedly at her lover's face, her cheeks ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... acceptable, and perfect will of Thine: yea, Thou teachest him, now made capable, to discern the Trinity of the Unity, and the Unity of the Trinity. Wherefore to that said in the plural. Let us make man, is yet subjoined in the singular, And God made man: and to that said in the plural. After our likeness, is subjoined in the singular, After the image of God. Thus is man renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him: and being made spiritual, he judgeth all things (all things which are to be ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the Queen to send for that most incompetent and baneful statesman! We who are conversant with our own methods of politics, see nothing odd in this, because we are used to it; but surely in the eyes of strangers our practice must be very singular. There is nothing like it in any other country,—nothing as yet. Nowhere else is there the same good-humoured, affectionate, prize-fighting ferocity in politics. The leaders of our two great parties ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the descendant of Labdacus, and representing the illustrious house of the Labdacidae, about the time when his wife, Jocasta, promised to present him with a child, had learned from various prophetic voices that this unborn child was destined to be his murderer. It is singular that in all such cases, which are many, spread through classical literature, the parties menaced by fate believe the menace; else why do they seek to evade it? and yet believe it not; else why do they fancy themselves able to evade it? This fatal ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Eleians had driven a creagh of cattle from the Pylians, who pursued, and Nestor killed the Eleian leader, Itymoneus. The speech is an Achaean parallel to the Border ballad of "Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead," in editing which Scott has been accused of making a singular and most obvious and puzzling blunder in the topography of his own sheriffdom of the Forest. On Scott's showing the scene of the raid is in upper Ettrickdale, not, as critics aver, in upper Teviotdale; thus the narrative ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... of his being an only child, Lord Byron, in one of his journals, mentions some curious coincidences in his family, which, to a mind disposed as his was to regard every thing connected with himself as out of the ordinary course of events, would naturally appear even more strange and singular than they are. "I have been thinking," he says, "of an odd circumstance. My daughter (1), my wife (2), my half-sister (3), my mother (4), my sister's mother (5), my natural daughter (6), and myself (7), are, or were, all ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... edition of this strange performance was published in 8vo. at London in 1727, by Mr Le Neve, from a MS. in the Cotton Library. This old English version is said to have been made by the author from his own original composition in Latin. It is a singular mixture of real or fictitious travels, and compilation from the works of others without acknowledgement, containing many things copied from the travels of Oderic, and much of it is culled, in a similar manner, from the writings of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... 'Twas very singular and sad, but as if in answer to Sir Deakin's cry, we heard the brave fellow's voice; and a famous shout it must have been to reach us over the roaring ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... being now within the city, excepting Hector, the field is cleared for the most important and decisive action in the poem; that is, the battle between Achilles and Hector, and the death of the latter. This part of the story is managed with singular skill. It seems as if the poet, feeling the importance of the catastrophe, wished to withdraw from view the personages of less consequence, and to concentrate our attention upon those two alone. The poetic action and description ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... said that Tom Peregrine's name did not bely him. Not only were the keen brown eye and the handsome aquiline beak marked characteristics of his classic features, but in temperament and habit he bore a singular resemblance to the king of all the falcons. Who more delighted in striking down the partridge or the wild duck? What more assiduous destroyer of ground game and vermin ever existed than Tom Peregrine? There never was a man so happily ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... This singular poem, the authorship of which is, in some manuscripts, assigned to Saemund himself, may be termed a Voice from the Dead, given under the form of a dream, in which a deceased father is supposed to address his son from another world. The first 7 strophes seem hardly connected with the ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... of the Women's Relief Association are pre-eminently due to our President, Mrs. J. S. T. Stranahan, for the singular ability, wisdom, and patience with which she has discharged the duties of her office, at all times arduous, and not unfrequently requiring sacrifices to which nothing short of the deepest love of country could have been ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... know the name of a person of so much taste, I shall tell you it is Fox, a nephew of the late Charles James Fox. That you may not be too much elated at this morsel of praise, I shall add that he did not appear to like Mansfield Park so well as the two first, in which, however, I believe he is singular.[345] ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... the exhibition at the Trocadero, one of these stilts, extremely well made and carved, was exhibited; and M. Hamy, whose thorough knowledge of everything relating to Oceania is well known, has written an essay upon this singular object. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... personality is given by a writer in the Sydney Bulletin: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His face was a remarkable one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... with pendent manacles or handcuffs that jangled unmusically as he moved. A grotesque, almost ridiculous figure this priest of the Doomsmen, but with the first look into the man's face one forgot about the fantastic garb. A singular contradiction it presented, for the large, square jaw was indicative of a mind keenly rationalistic, while the high, narrow forehead assuredly proclaimed the partisan and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... 24 departments (departamentos, singular - departamento) and 1 constitutional province* (provincia constitucional); Amazonas, Ancash, Apurimac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cajamarca, Callao*, Cusco, Huancavelica, Huanuco, Ica, Junin, La Libertad, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Witch of Prague' is so remarkable a book as to be certain of as wide a popularity as any of its predecessors. The keenest interest for most readers will lie in its demonstration of the latest revelations of hypnotic science. . . . It is a romance of singular daring and power."—London Academy. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... a sweet little girl, to unite them further if it were possible, Elizabeth would not send it to a creche, as the custom was, but insisted on nursing it at home. The rent of their apartments was raised on account of this singular proceeding, but that they did not mind. It only ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... both to right and to left and he strengthened his soul. He knew that he must be calm, but alert and quick with the right answer. With his singular capacity for meeting a crisis he advanced into the thick of danger with a smiling face, even as his great ancestor, Paul ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the aboriginal American race, who, in the course of the ditty, is multiplied from "one little Injun" into "ten little Injuns," and who, in a succeeding stanza, by an ingenious amphisbaenic process, is again reduced to the singular number. As far as we are aware, the author of this "genuine autobiography" claims no relationship with the famous owner of tender redskins. The multiplicity of adventures of which he has been the hero demands for him, however, the same notice that a multiplicity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... elephant than to anything else I can imagine, occupying what I supposed to be the upper parts of the body, and my feeling of astonishment almost became one of disgust, from the peculiar character of the organs of these singular beings; and it was with a species of terror that I saw one of them mounting upwards, apparently flying towards those opaque clouds which I have before mentioned. "I know what your feelings are," said the Genius; "you want analogies and all the elements of knowledge ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... of the later and lesser poets, the romantic method finally loses almost all sense of personality, and becomes a picture and analysis of abstract emotion. It is to these abstractions that Guillaume de Lorris gave a new life and a singular grace in the personifications of the Romance of the Rose, and the charm and grace of his art carried Europe off its feet, so that for nearly three hundred years it tended to dominate European poetry. Even the greatest ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... even a way in which the very definiteness of Turner's knowledge adds to the mystery of his pictures. In the course of the first volume I had several times occasion to insist on the singular importance of cast shadows, and the chances of their sometimes gaining supremacy in visibility over even the things that cast them. Now a cast shadow is a much more curious thing than we usually suppose. The strange shapes it gets into—the manner in which it stumbles over everything ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin |
