"Sober" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... repeat my former words. It is a marvel to me how the Athenians came to be persuaded that Socrates fell short of sober-mindedness as touching the gods. A man who never ventured one impious word or deed against the gods we worship, but whose whole language concerning them, and his every act, closely coincided, word for word, and deed for deed, with all we ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... brutal coachman; and if you see a helpless woman—perhaps your own sister—set upon by a drunken lord, a drunken coachman, or a drunken coalheaver, or a brute of any description, either drunk or sober, it is not only lawful, but laudable, to give them, if you can, a good drubbing: but it is not lawful, because you have a strong pair of fists, and know how to use them, to go swaggering through a fair, jostling ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... farmer; must be sober and steady. Good wages to the right person. Apply to George ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... one atelier cannot find enough weavers to devote their lives to sober, leisurely production; it is that the stimulating effect is gone, of a craft eagerly pursued in various centres, where guilds may be formed, where healthy rivalry spurs to excellence, where the world of the fine ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... all so-fast at Windsor. We are all invited. God grant that Miss Mansfield may be as happy a Lady W——, as we all conclude she will be! But I never was fond of matches between sober young women, and battered old rakes. Much good may do the adventurers, drawn in by gewgaw and title!—Poor things!—But convenience, when that's the motive, whatever foolish girls think, will hold out its comforts, while a ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... (he wrote) that our labourers are for the most part in the position of persons who live habitually within their incomes. They are generally sober and frugal, and accustomed to a low standard of living. Their gardens supply them in great measure with the necessaries of life. The chief part, therefore, of what they receive in money, whether as wages or as the price of the surplus ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... in most sober sadness," he said. "Life is impossible to me here, and under my circumstances; and I wish to live a few years longer for Sophy's sake, and my boy's. New Zealand is the ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... for his "Diary," was a friend and contemporary of Samuel Pepys. Both were conscientious public servants who had held minor offices in the government. But, while Pepys' diary is sparkling and redolent of the free manners of the Restoration, Evelyn's is the record of a sober, scholarly man. His mind turned to gardens, to sculpture and architecture, rather than to the gaieties of contemporary social life. Pepys was an urban figure and Evelyn was "county." He represents the combination of public servant and country gentleman which has been the supreme ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... heart's blood warms in stronger flow, My cheeks are tinged with redder glow, When sober matron, Evening slow, Bids me ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... stone, And a peaceful place in Pere-La-Chaise where she'll be well alone. She cost a king his crown, they say; oh, wouldn't she be proud If she could see the wreaths to-day, the coaches and the crowd! So follow, follow, follow on with slow and sober tread, For Marie Toro, gutter waif and ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... in Philadelphia before Sir William came," her voice lowered, yet earnest, "and they are not playing at war; grim, silent, sober-faced men, dressed in odds and ends, not pretty to look at; some tattered and hungry, but they fight hard. Mr. Conway was telling us yesterday of how they suffered all winter long, while we danced and feasted ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... time, may think so. I dare say, if Bernard could have proved one overt-act of rebellion or treason, after the many things he pretended had been said, and he or his tools could have had any influence, the words if provd, would have been adjudgd to have been said in sober earnest, and would have been considered as material to have shown the malignancy ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... turban out of sight, and assumed a Greek cap in its stead, he requited the Norman minstrel's music with a drinking song from the Persian, and quaffed a hearty flagon of Cyprus wine, to show that his practice matched his principles. On the next day, grave and sober as the water-drinker Mirglip, he bent his brow to the ground before Saladin's footstool, and rendered to the Soldan an account of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... When he becomes sober again, he'll have forgotten all about his adventure ... he'll kick up a row at the Royal ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... monarchs, are sowing the seeds of eternal disagreements, confusions, {269} and bloody wars throughout the world (for the influence of evil principles hath no bounds, but, like infectious air, spreads everywhere), the peaceable, sober, truly Christian, and Church-of-England doctrine contained in this book, so directly contrary to their furious, mad, unchristian, and fanatical maxims, it cannot otherwise be expected but that they will soon be alarmed, and betake themselves to their usual ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... or Court of Associates, was composed of the whole body of freemen. It was not until 1639 that they established a House of Representatives. The qualifications of a freeman were, that he "should be twenty-one years of age, of sober, peaceable conversation, orthodox in religion [which included belief in God and the Holy Scriptures, but did not include any form of Church government], and possess rateable estate to the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... friend added that as he heard nothing of any great winnings at the wheel that night, and Mr. N. looked rather quiet and sober the next day, he is afraid the luck did not last. Needless to say that except to me, and then only in my capacity as a writer, the story has ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... any of the family from Oakwood had come to make inquiries after the convalescent at Portchester, when Dr. Woodford mounted his sleek, sober-paced pad, and accompanied by a groom, rode over to make his report and tender his counsel to Major Oakshott. He arrived just as the great bell was clanging to summon the family to the mid-day meal, since he had reckoned on the Squire being more amenable as a 'full man,' especially towards ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the Senate and House, by Republicans. But for these crimes the boast attributed to you, that one hundred and thirty-eight solid southern votes would be cast for the Democratic ticket, would be but idle vaporing; but now we feel that it is a sober truth. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the point of being surprised at nothing. It was lucky the carpet was so faded and shabby, for of late the General had worn a path in it with his restless movements; and now here was his nephew behaving as though he were an untamed creature in a cage and not a sober, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... in sober earnest a disgrace to all concerned; and such talk as it indulges in is the sort of thing I had in view when I said at our first meeting that the teachers were suffering at the present day from a ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Abraham's time, no doubt. It was in a desert place. It was walled three feet above ground with squared and heavy blocks of stone, after the manner of Bible pictures. Around it some camels stood, and others knelt. There was a group of sober little donkeys with naked, dusky children clambering about them, or sitting astride their rumps, or pulling their tails. Tawny, black-eyed, barefooted maids, arrayed in rags and adorned with brazen armlets and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to shoot them if they interfered—dragged him out, beating him over the head with a mace. The poor fellow continued to scream for help until his voice was stifled by his groans; they forced him into their carriage and drove off, before any effectual assistance could be offered." He was a sober and industrious man, and much respected. His wife was left heartbroken, with one child.—Norristown ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... school-days than to the politeness of the friendship now existing between them. Mrs. Hazeldean's hand hung affectionately over Carry's shoulder, and both those fair English faces were bent over the same book. It was pretty to see these sober matrons, so different from each other in character and aspect, thus unconsciously restored to the intimacy of happy maiden youth by the golden link of some Magician from the still land of Truth or Fancy, brought together in heart, as each eye rested on the same thought; closer ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Esquire; for whom no further introduction should be required, after mention of the fact that he was, and remains, the identical gentleman of means and position in the social and financial worlds, whose somewhat sober but sincere and whole-hearted participation in the wildest of conceivable escapades had earned him the affectionate regard of the younger set, together with the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Alan, to be sure, was there, seated in a room lighted by noisy gas-jets, beside a dirty table-cloth, engaged on a coarse meal, and in the company of several tipsy members of the junior bar. But Alan was not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds upon a horse- race, had received the news at dinner-time, and was now, in default of any possible means of extrication, drowning the memory of his predicament. He to help John! The thing was impossible; he ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the nursery—and the sex of the child had been something of a disappointment to him. He was rich enough even then to desire an heir to his wealth. During the few remaining years of his first wife's life, he had hoped for the coming of a son; but no son had been given to him. It was now, in his sober middle age, that the thing he had longed for was granted to him, and it seemed all the more precious because of the delay. So Daniel Granger was wont to sit and stare at the infant as if it had been something above the common clay of which infancy is made. He would gaze ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... to most, That whatsoever thing is lost, We seek it, ere it come to light, In every cranny but the right. Forth skipped the cat, not now replete As erst with airy self-conceit, Nor in her own fond comprehension, A theme for all the world's attention, But modest, sober, cured of all Her notions hyperbolical, And wishing for a place of rest, Any thing rather than a chest. Then stepped the poet into bed With this ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... resulting in the barking of some shins and the demolition of sundry panels of rail. Joe Keating, the wildest rider I ever knew, had emptied his tumbler too often, and insisted on running his horse home through the woods. An hour after he was overtaken trudging along the road, perfectly sober, with the saddle on his shoulders and the bridle over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... in his turn taking the knife, gave a third blow. In this manner did these two rascals continue to murder the old woman, as long as there was any life in her. The boy escaped into Langlois' house, and was kept hid until they were all sober. Next morning a hole was dug in the ground, and all three were buried together. This affair kept the Indians from hunting, as Gros Bras was nearly related to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... whole voyage. The evil spirits seemed to make no impression upon the iron fibres of his stubborn brain and heart. He judged his morality by the toughness of his constitution, and congratulated himself on being a sober man, while he complained of his second mate, and stigmatised him as a drunken, worthless fellow, because one glass of punch made him intoxicated. This is by no means an uncommon thing both at home and abroad; and men condemn others more ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Nora eyed him in sober speculation. She would have liked to inquire into the nature of his excitement. Courtesy forbidding her to do so, she indulged only in commonplaces to which Tom replied almost absently. It was evident that something remarkable must have ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... they were sober enough. I did not see it, so I do not quite know exactly how it was, but I understand that they committed themselves most absurdly, absolutely took hold of his coat and tore it, and—; but they did such ridiculous things that I cannot tell you." And yet Don ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... kinds of these most beautiful creatures, which he daily supplied with fresh flowers. Another cage, apart from all the rest, held an inmate that; so far as appearance went, you would have said had no right to be thus distinguished in having a house all to himself. He was of a sober grey colour, somewhat of the wagtail shape, with long black legs, and claws of a dirty hue; and was altogether an ill-favoured bird, not any better-looking than a common house-sparrow. Had you known nothing more about him than his outward ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... company. Away they walked together westward, then turned southward. Mrs. Sclater and Gibbie led, and Ginevra followed with Donal. And they had not walked far, before something of the delight of old times on Glashruach began to revive in the bosom of the too sober girl. In vain she reminded herself that her father sat miserable at home, thinking of her probably as the most heartless of girls; the sun, and the bright air like wine in her veins, were too much for her, Donal had soon made her cheerful, and now and then she answered his talk ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... never fallen under the sway of Rudyard Kipling. Whenever I read his stories I feel myself for the time in the grip of a strong mind, and it becomes a species of intoxication. But I am naturally sober by inclination, and though I can unreservedly admire the strength, the vigour, the splendid imaginativeness of his conceptions, yet the whole note of character is distasteful to me. I don't like ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Canadians themselves desired it. This, it was argued, would directly benefit England herself by cutting down military expenditures[74]. The London Press indulged in similar speculation, though from the angle of a Canadian annexation of the Northern States, whose more sober citizens must by now be weary of the sham of American democracy, and disgusted with the rowdyism of political elections, which "combine the morals of a horse race, the manners of a dog fight, the passions of a tap-room, and the emotions of a gambling house[75]." Probably such suggestions had ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... seen to play the last, and doubtless the hardest act of his part, because there may be disguise and dissimulation in all the rest, where these fine philosophical discourses are only put on; and where accidents do not touch us to the quick, they give us leisure to maintain the same sober gravity; but in this last scene of death, there is no more counterfeiting; we must speak plain, and must discover what there is of pure and clean ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... fruits of their labour, whether of mind or body, at a comparatively small personal sacrifice; but no laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy, and self-denial; by better habits, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... fellow made the sign of the cross and hurried home. He became quite a new man, courageous, sober, and industrious; bought a grove and some cattle; remodeled the izba, and even started a trade. And very successful he was, too. Within a year he earned much money, and in place of the old hut built a ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... the exiled Stuarts, and to have been "out" in '45 with the Young Pretender was a popular thing in parts of Scotland. To this purely poetic loyalty may be attributed such Jacobite ballads of Burns as Over the Water to Charlie. But his sober convictions were on the side of liberty and human brotherhood, and are expressed in the Twa Dogs, the First Epistle to Davie, and A Man's a Man for a' that. His sympathy with the Revolution led him to ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... and unexpected. 'Does the devil mingle in the dance, to avenge himself for our trifling with an art said to be of magical origin? Or is it possible, as Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne admit, that there is some truth in a sober and regulated astrology, and that the influence of the stars is not to be denied, though the due application of it by the knaves who pretend to practise the art is greatly to be suspected?' A moment's consideration of the subject induced him ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Carroll added "of Carrollton" to his name, so that, if the Declaration he was setting it to should bring forfeiture and confiscation, there might be no mistake about the victim. Nor was it without a touch of sober earnestness that Harrison, bulky and fat, said to the lean and shadowy Gerry, as he laid down his pen,—"When hanging-time comes, I shall have the advantage of you. I shall be dead in a second, while you will be kicking in the air half an hour after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Landy made his contributions. As a young cowboy, Landy had had his fling. He came into the game as the cattle-sheep wars were at their peak and he played it strenuously. But with it all, Landy Spencer kept his moral slate fairly clean. Then as the sober days of manhood came, and Landy witnessed the finish of the improvident and foolish, he began to save and skimp. "Hit's the pore house fer a cow hand," was his terse aphorism on the subject, and Landy had never seen a "fitten" ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... Seamstress and their Cook. Unmask them well; their Honours and Estate, As well as Conscience, are Sophisticate. Shrive but their Titles, and their Money poise; A Laird and Twenty Pence,[27] pronounc'd with Noise, When constru'd, but for a plain Yeoman go, And a good sober Two-pence, and well so. Hence then,'you Proud Imposters, get you gone, You Picts in Gentry and Devotion, You Scandal to the Stock of Verse, a Race Able to bring the Gibbet in Disgrace. Hyperbolus by ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... and every heathen land furnishes abundant proofs, that whenever the gracious promises of the Bible are gratefully received, the proud become humble, the disobedient dutiful, the drunkard sober, the dishonest, honorable; the profligate, prudent; and the miserable become happy. Nothing else has ever done this, but the gospel of Christ always ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... away for awhile," he said after a minute spent in sober thinking. "But I never dodged yet, and I never ran. I'm going to stay and see the thing through, now. I don't know—" he hesitated and then went on. "It may not last; I may have to suffer after awhile, but standing out there, that day, listening to her carrying ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... 1730. "... Of one or two noteworthy points I have to apprise your Lordship. So soon as his Majesty was sober, he found that he had gone too far at that grand dinner of Monday 3d; and was in very bad humor in consequence. Crown-Prince has written from Potsdam to his Sister, 'No doubt I am left here lest the English wind get at me ( de peur que le vent anglais ne me touchat ).' Saw ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... points, for we wrastle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkenesse of this world, against spirituall wickednesses in high places, Ephes. 6. 11.12. And 1. Pet. 5. 8.9. be sober and vigilant, because your aduersary the diuell as a roaring Lyon walketh about, seeking whom he may deuoure. He [h]is no weake assaylant, and therefore heere by the Apostle are noted in him foure things: First, his power (a Lyon): Second, his hatred, and wrath in the word (roaring): Third, his ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... sisters were well enough—excellent girls; but they were so gay, so light-hearted, so full of fun and laughter, that he could not talk to them of his sorrows. They were never pensive, nor given to that sober sadness which is prone to sympathy. If, indeed, Adela Gauntlet had been his sister—! And so he walked along the river ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... along the platform, glimpsing the faces in the long procession of windows, and then the flowers and napery in the two restaurant-cars: wistful all alike, I thought—flowers and faces! How fanciful, girlishly fanciful, I was! Opposite the door of the first car stood a gigantic negro in the sober blue and crimson livery of the International Sleeping Car Company. He wore white gloves, like all the servants on the train: it was to foster the illusion; it was part of ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... public performer, and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced as the most desperate of buffos,—one who was obliged to restrain himself in the full exercise of his powers, from prudential considerations. I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... upright, steady, and universal practice of virtue." "To preach up chiefly what Christ himself laid the stress upon (and whether this was not moral virtue let every one judge from his discourses) must certainly, in the opinion of all sober men, be called truly and properly, and in the best sense, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... 47 And now, my son, see that ye take care of these sacred things, yea, see that ye look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober. My ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... have had that wad sober me or ony ane,' said the matron. 'Aweel, Tib, a lass like me wasna to lack wooers, for I wasna sae ill-favoured that the tikes wad bark ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... the strong Flanders breed, were in a few hours engulfed in a black pool; his coach, or rather his travelling mansion, was inextricably sunk in the same slimy hollow; and the merchant himself, whose journeys had hitherto been made on the sober back of a Lusitanian mule, was ignominiously dragged by two cowherds through his coach-windows,—and mounted on one of the wheelers, he was brought back, drenched and weary, to the place whence he set out. In high dudgeon, the purveyor of Bacchus returned to London, ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... with wrath over what he had lost and to have plunged headlong into the maddest sort of dissipation. It is known, positively known, and can be sworn to by reputable witnesses, that for the next three days he did not draw one sober breath. On the fourth, a note from him—a note which he was seen to write in a public house—was carried to Zuilika. In that note he cursed her with every conceivable term; told her that when she got it he would be at the bottom of the river, driven there by her conduct, and that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... can't you see I'm as sober as you are, and much less excited? Can't you send for the key of the mortuary and call the doctor? The poor chap ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... uselessness of his scheme, even if successful, and the little prospect of any benefit accruing from it, unless to the leading adventurers, had disposed all the more sober minded to regard it with distrust. And when it became apparent that it had been concocted for the gratification of one man's ambition, the very people whom it had been part of the plan to flatter with hopes of the most brilliant ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... saith he, essaying to look sober—which he managed but ill. "The Annals of Cicely, likewise; and the imaginings ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... she laughed. Then, suddenly, grew sober. "By all means, let us have a frank talk," she said. "It was for that I asked you here to-night—But, first, light me a cigarette, and then go and sit down in ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... inverted V of the tent through the scrub. He hesitated whether to begin operations immediately or wait until after they had discovered the flight and were further intoxicated. Yet the excitement of the loss of the prisoner might sober them a little, Birnier reflected. No, it did not matter even if they were completely sober. The spirits of the night would be perhaps more real to them then than when they were drugged by alcohol. Yet he would ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... subject so broad and so closely connected with "The City Beautiful" one can hardly find a starting point, but we might begin with the one word—civic—which has drawn to itself many minds, much sober thought and from some ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... females, the middle one an elderly, grave-looking lady; the other a beautiful young girl, with smiling lips, glowing black eyes, and rosy cheeks. The elegant and graceful attire of these ladies was very different from the grave and sober costume of the women of Berlin. Their dresses were of lively colors, with wide sleeves bordered with lace, and with long waists, the low cut of which in front displayed in the one the beauty and freshness ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... all friends of slavery, as also the ultra Abolitionists, but correspondingly disheartened the sober friends of human liberty. How, it was asked, is the cause of freedom to be advanced when the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the highest tribunal existing for that purpose, virtually establishes slavery in New England itself, provided ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... indeed almost incredible to relate what mirth, what sport, what diversion, the grovelling inhabitants here on earth give to the above-seated gods in heaven: for these exalted deities spend their fasting sober hours in listening to those petitions that are offered up, and in succouring such as they are appealed to by for redress; but when they are a little entered at a glass of nectar, they then throw off all serious concerns, and go and place themselves on the ascent of some ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Dame Gourlay, "can a' the dainties they could gie us be half sae sweet as this hour's vengeance? There they are that were capering on their prancing nags four days since, and they are now ganging as dreigh and sober as oursells the day. They were a' glistening wi' gowd and silver; they're now as black as the crook. And Miss Lucy Ashton, that grudged when an honest woman came near her—a taid may sit on her coffin that day, and she can never scunner when he croaks. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... in respect to the language he selects to cover his poverty of thought. Hence there are doubtless good and sufficient reasons for every specimen of "English as she is wrote," which it is the object of this little book to rescue from oblivion, and which have, one and all, been written with the sober conviction, upon the part of the writers, that they accurately conveyed the meaning they desired. Intentionally humorous efforts have been carefully excluded, and the interest of the collection consists in the spontaneity of expression and in the fact that it offers ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... jesting," said the novelist. "In sober earnest, I conjecture that you are married to her, like Athos to Miladi. As you stand there, with that grave air, you ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... collected his warriors to drive the bold robber from the conquered castle. The temerity of the count and his superior forces dismayed Adalbert, giving him grounds for sober reflections. But the good bishop was a clever man and, not believing himself sufficiently strong to resist the count, he sought refuge ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... fulness of worldly savoir—an absurd rabble of youths, miserable flint-heads indeed for such a steel! We were the most unpromising of all material for the scholar's eye; comfortable, untroubled middle-class lads most of us, to whom study was neither a privilege nor a passion, but only a sober and decent way of growing old ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... enter into search, and others when they have been entered either to give over or to seek a more compendious course than can stand with the nature of true search. That of those that have refused and prejudged inquiry, the more sober and grave sort of wits have depended upon authors and traditions, and the more vain and credulous resorted to revelation and intelligence with spirits and higher natures. That of those that have entered into search, some having fallen upon some conceits which they after ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... made by these things upon the minds of the Northern people can easily be imagined. Men of sober ways of thinking, not accessible to sensational appeals, asked themselves quite seriously whether there was not real danger that the legitimate results of the war, for the achievement of which they had sacrificed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... after the New Jersey job was finished, these materials arrived in Philadelphia, and Franklin immediately opened his own printing office. His partner "was, however, no compositor, a poor pressman, and seldom sober." The office prospered, and in July, 1730, when Franklin was twenty-four years old, the partnership was dissolved, and Franklin was at the head of a well-established and profitable printing business. ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... will and sober reason, dear Ella, I must own I have. Perchance, however, the feeling was only called up by a train of melancholy meditations. While sitting there to-night, gazing upon the many bounding forms—some full of beauty and grace, and some of strength—noting their joyous ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... chance. As a specimen of free and easy—rather too easy—wit, let me mention the remarks of Mr. Smart (Act I.) on the way he passed the night, and in what manner. "Nine persons are kept handsomely out of the sober income of one hundred pounds a year." I also observe the name of an old acquaintance in this play. Thackeray's hero in the Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush is "the Honourable Algernon Percy Deuceace, youngest and fifth son of the Earl of Crabs," and in The Masquerade (Act III. Sc. ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... the opportunity of his pause for reflection to order him to leave the room and present himself in the morning when he was sober. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... ones, perhaps destitute of every domestic comfort, is at that very moment anxiously awaiting the return of her husband. Hour after hour may pass away, until the very depths of night appear to grow sad with the dreary sorrow of her heart, and at length he returns—but not as a loving and sober husband; not as a tender and home-providing father; not as a man, with all the noble attributes of the human nature; not as a Christian, with the spiritual Balm of Gilead, with which to soothe the cankering ills of his household;—no, not as either he returns, but rather ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... fairy legend should be combined with the characters and manners of familiar life. In the little tale which follows, a subdued tinge of the wild and wonderful is thrown over a sketch of New England personages and scenery, yet, it is hoped, without entirely obliterating the sober hues of nature. Rather than a story of events claiming to be real, it may be considered as an allegory, such as the writers of the last century would have expressed in the shape of an Eastern tale, but to which I have endeavored to give a more life-like warmth than could be infused ...
— The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hear, and now I'll away and use 'em awhile. And here," said he, rising as a knock sounded on the door, "should be an old friend o' yours that got himself something scorched on your account." And opening the door he disclosed a squat, broad-shouldered fellow of a sober habit, his head swathed in a bandage, but the eyes of him very round and bright and his wide ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... and as he did so he automatically drew out a match and a cigar, and lit the one with the other. Instantly the applause dwindled, died; there was a moment of astonished silence, then a roar of execration. The bulk of the audience, as Pinchas, sober, had been shrewd enough to see, was still orthodox. This public desecration of the Sabbath by smoking was intolerable. How should the God of Israel aid the spread of Socialism and the shorter hours movement and the rise of prices a penny on a coat, if such devil's ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Sober and law abiding, they only asked to be permitted to live in their own way as they had always lived. But the interlopers objected. The Yankees interfered in private and public affairs, legislation was distorted, and still more aggravating, the descendants of the Puritans demanded that at all ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... it to be true," said Andrews, solemnly. "Nearly every workman of good character and sober habits in New York belongs to it; and so it is in all our great cities; while the blacks of the South are members of it to a man. Their former masters have kept them in a state of savagery, instead of civilizing and elevating them; ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... now," Hawkins said as the boy rancher rode toward them. There was a sober look on ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... Lexington I fell in with an English chap named Randall, who used to live in this neighborhood. I hired him to buy horses for me. He was with me about three months, an' if I could only 'a' kept him sober he'd been with me yet, for he was about as keen a judge of a horse as ever I came across in my born days, and knew mighty well how to make a bargain. Well, we hadn't been together a week afore he begun to tell me ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... and the heart of man as they now are in all men, even Butler becomes as outspoken, and as eloquent, and as full of passion and pathos as if he were an evangelical Puritan. Self-love, Butler startles his sober-minded reader as he bursts out—self-love rends and distorts the mind of man! Now, you are a man. Well, then, do you feel and confess that rending and distorting to have taken place in you? Butler is a philosopher, and Goodwin is a preacher, but you are more: you are a man. You ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... with the cheerfulness which is perhaps one of the chief elements of courage, and, like all people who have nothing, he made very few debts. As sober as a camel and active as a stag, he was steadfast in his ideas ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... of water to the sink and set it on its shelf. And when she had worked off her surplus energy in this way she felt sober enough to tell her story clearly, and she did so, snuggled in her mother's arms in the hammock on the ...
— Every Girl's Book • George F. Butler
... with Gregory, with whom the general had kept his word, and who had received the same day one thousand roubles and his liberty. Fortunately, the revellers were only beginning their rejoicings, and Ivan in consequence was sober enough for his sister to entrust her secret ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of my eyes, I could see a portion of the circle of white faces about us, but they made no sound, and what their expression was I could not tell. The night air and the fast work were doing much to sober my opponent, and I felt his wrist grow stronger as he held down my point for an instant. It was his turn to smile, and I felt my cheeks redden at the expression of his face. Again he got inside my guard, but again I was out of reach ere he could touch ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... was a philosopher in his way, pleaded guilty to the first charge. From his cradle he had carefully avoided scenes of strife and violence, and had been a quiet, industrious boy at school, a sober plodding student at college, minding his own business, and troubling himself very little with the affairs of others. The sight of blood made him sick; he hated the smell of gunpowder, and would make any sacrifice of time and trouble rather than come to blows. He ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... steady or durable war, even on their frontiers; much less could they find regular means for the support of distant expeditions like those into Palestine, which were more the result of popular frenzy than of sober reason or deliberate policy. Richard, therefore, knew that he must carry with him all the treasure necessary for his enterprise, and that both the remoteness of his own country and its poverty made it unable to furnish him with those continued supplies, which ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... relatives. On leaving the church Francis handed his bride into his own carriage, which conveyed them to their new residence, amidst the good wishes of his parishioners, and the prayers of their relatives and friends. Dr. and Mrs. Ives retired to the rectory, to the sober enjoyment of the felicity of their only child; while the baronet and his lady felt a gloom that belied all the wishes of the latter for the establishment of her daughters. Jane and Emily acted as bridesmaids to their sister, and as both the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... young friend, whose shining wit Sets all the room ablaze, Don't think yourself "a happy dog," For all your merry ways; But learn to wear a sober phiz, Be stupid, if you can, It's such a very serious thing To be a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... on the night of February 10, 1917, after heavy artillery and trench mortar preparations, the Austrians in considerable forces attacked the Italian positions on the western slopes of Santa Caterina, northwest of San Marco, and east of Vertoibizza, between Sober and the Goritz-Dornberg railway. After heavy fighting the Austrians were repulsed nearly everywhere. However, the Austrians succeeded in entering several portions of Italian trenches, inflicted heavy losses upon the Italians and captured fifteen ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... him from drinking aguardiente with suspicious characters at the bar. It is true he 'kisses my hand' in his speech, even when it is thickest, and offers his back to me for a horse-block, but I think I prefer the sober and honest familiarity of even that Pike County landlord who is satisfied to say, 'Jump, girl, and ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... have been the thought of the Neuk Hydropathic, or more likely the thin clean scent of the daffodils with which Tibby had decked the table, but long ere breakfast was finished the Great Plan had ceased to be an airy vision and become a sober well-masoned structure. Mr. McCunn—I may confess it at the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... involuntarily smacked his lips. The fiery liquid percolated through him down to his very toes. He felt better at once, more ambitious, less conscious of his constitution. And simultaneously, he lost something of that indolent good-nature which was the badge of all his sober hours. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... colours which the same persons show in different conditions, when young and when old, when sick and when healthy, when sober and when drunken, are brought forward to prove how little of permanence there is even in the least fleeting of the ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... horse thief in Oakland. A larger affair threatened in the following summer, when thirty-six Mexicans were arrested for killing a party of Americans. For a time it was proposed to hang all thirty-six, but sober counsel prevailed and only three were hanged; this after formal jury trial. Unknown bandits waylaid and killed Isaac B. Wall and T. S. Williamson of Monterey, and, that same month U. S. Marshal William H. Richardson was shot by Charles Cora in the streets of San Francisco. The people grumbled. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... expression. The monumental work continued as nobly as it had begun. The facts had been slowly, quietly gathered, one by one, like pebbles from the empty channel of a brook. The style was fluent, impetuous, abundant, impatient, as it were, at times, and leaping the sober boundaries prescribed to it, like the torrent which rushes through the same channel when the rains have filled it. Thus there was matter for criticism in his use of language. He was not always careful in the construction ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... looking at him wistfully. Then her sober little face melted in smiles. With childish impulsiveness she clambered into his lap, and twining her arms about his neck, impressed a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... is a good-humoured, rosy little fellow, who desires no better than to see me laugh and he happy. But to every man his own Cupid. If you cannot believe in love without sacrifices, you must have them, to be sure. And now, in sober sadness, what do you think your heroine would sacrifice for you? Her reputation? that, pardon me, is out of her power. Her virtue? I have no doubt she would. But before I can estimate the value of this sacrifice, I must know whether she makes it to you or to her pleasure. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... him that he was thoroughly endowed with the qualities essential to a good locomotive engineer, except that the organ of color was slightly deficient. I remarked, "You will never experience the slightest inconvenience in distinguishing switch-lights and signals when you are in good health and sober, but a slight indigestion, or a glass of liquor, decreasing the power of your brain, would render your vision of colors unreliable and might cause a wreck, hence I advise you to keep out of the business." The man was a railroad engineer, and admitted that he could generally ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... for something more than might be expected from a girl brought up under the severe thraldom of Madame Charlotte Staubach,—creating a hope, or perhaps it might be a fear. And Linda's face in this respect was the true reflex of her character. She lived with her aunt a quiet, industrious, sober life, striving to be obedient, striving to be religious with the religion of her aunt. She had almost brought herself to believe that it was good for her heart to be crushed. She had quite brought herself to wish to believe it. She had within her heart no desire for open ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... for very shame. The man was mad. Mad and drunk—and there was no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.... Mad or drunk, he had devised his ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... he could not have the companion of his choice, coaxed little Gracie and Ruth Gurney to go with him, and they willingly consented. But Gussie looked with angry eyes on the fine turnout, "just wasted on those little torments," as the light buggy flew past the more sober-going horses that ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... striking that children taken to the Capitol for the first time would shout with glee when he was pointed out to them. Rural visitors went home satisfied that the country was safe—they had seen Uncle Sam on hand, sober, and 'tending to business!' A friend once said to him, "Manysnifters, you look so much like Uncle Sam that whenever I see you on a jag I feel like this great nation of ours is going ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... scheme. In the first place, the Bill was indisputably inconsistent with the spirit of his revered Constitution. For the legislature to assume the power of naming the members of an executive body was an extraordinary and mischievous innovation. Then, to put patronage, which has been estimated by a sober authority at about three hundred thousand pounds a year, into the hands of the House of Commons, was still more mischievous and still less justifiable. Worst of all, from the point of view of the projectors ...
— Burke • John Morley
... be a sober-minded man, who will go link by link along the chain of an argument, follow him at first, till he grows so intent that he does not perceive whether you follow him or not; then slide back to your own station; and when with perverse patience he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... he realised that he had never yet been under her roof, never yet seen her at home. It was his own fault. She had asked him in her gracious way, on the first night of Elvira, to come and see her. But, instead of doing so, he had buried himself in his Surrey lodging, striving to bring the sober and austere influences of the country to bear upon the feverish indecision of his mood. Perhaps his disappearance and silence had wounded her; after all, he knew that he had some place in ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fifty. Man of affairs sufficiently to seek the law-courts on the smallest provocation, idealist to the extent of preferring a simple country life to all the glamour of London, a man seemingly endowed with all the ambitions of the most sober and unimaginative middle class—truly he presents ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... morality: For there is a certain quantum belongs to every man, of which there is nothing to spare. This is clear from the common practice of all our priests, they never once preach to you to love your neighbour, to be just in your dealings, or to be sober and temperate. The streets of London are full of common whores, publicly tolerated in their wickedness; yet the priests make no complaints against this enormity, either from the pulpit or the press: I can affirm, that neither you nor I, sir, have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift |
