"Modicum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... husband, with the perversity characteristic of gout and middle age, combined, no doubt, with a not unnatural modicum of jealousy, maintained that one such fete should be sufficient amusement for one night. She might take her choice of one; he would on no account permit her to attend all three. Much to his surprise and delight Madame Mildau made no scene, but graciously submitted ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... years at Wimblehurst were years of pretty active growth. Most of my leisure and much of my time in the shop I spent in study. I speedily mastered the modicum of Latin necessary for my qualifying examinations, and—a little assisted by the Government Science and Art Department classes that were held in the Grammar School—went on with my mathematics. There were classes ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... of the poem must have been possessed either of an extraordinary modicum of modesty or of a bitter misanthropy; or possibly he had been guilty of a misdemeanor, and was cornered to expiate the punishment justly due; yet conjecture is at once made certainty in the second line, by which all doubts as to the reasons for his being in ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... deerat unde id dissolvi posset. Haec 75 nequaquam loquor ad gratiam. Amavi vivum nec minus amo mortuum; quod enim in illo amabam non periit. Si supputem quicquid ille dare mihi paratus erat, immensa fuit eius in me liberalitas; si ad calculum vocemus quod accepi, sane modicum est. 80 Unicum modo sacerdotium in me contulit, immo non dedit sed obtrusit constanter recusanti, quod esset eius generis ut grex pastorem requireret, quem ego linguae ignarus praestare non poteram. ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... of his countrymen, puts the remark into the mouth of one of his characters, that, "if you wish to make an Englishman respect you, you must treat him with insolence." The language is somewhat too strong, and it would not be altogether safe to act upon the suggestion; but the witticism embodies a modicum ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... ladies' tee box squarely and came back and stunned my caddie, causing me to lose stroke and distance. Nevertheless, I hold that the advantages outnumber the drawbacks. Golf humanizes women, humbles their haughty natures, tends, in short, to knock out of their systems a certain modicum of that superciliousness, that swank, which makes wooing a tough proposition for the diffident male. You may have ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... motto of Etienne Dolet, "Scabra et impolita ad amussim dolo, atque perfolio." Among the mottoes of early English printers, the most notable, partly for its dual source, and as one of our earliest examples, is that of William Faques; one sentence, "Melius est modicum justo super divitias peccatorum multas," is taken from Psalm xxxvii. verse 16; and the second, "Melior est patiens viro forti, et qui dominat," comes from Proverbs xvi., verse 32. The motto of Richard Grafton has already been quoted; that of John Reynes was "Redemptoris mundi ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... the hope of supplying this modicum of book-learning that the Introductions and notes in this and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... it; what kind of thing was it, is it? ALTUM SILENTIUM, from Busching and mankind. Belonged to the Spaens, fifty years ago;—some shadow of our poor banished friend the Lieutenant resting on it? Dim enough old Mansion, with "court" to it, with modicum of equipment; lying there in the moonlight;—did not look sublime to Voltaire on stepping out. So that all our knowledge reduces itself to this one point: of finding Moyland in the Map, with DATE, with REMINISCENCE to us, hanging by it henceforth! Good. [Stieler's Deutschland (excellent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... completely abandoned the early-Christian eschatology, appealed to 1 Cor. XV. 50. The idea of a kind of purgatory—a notion which does not originate with the realistic but with the philosophical eschatology—is quite plainly found in Tertullian, e.g., in de anima 57 and 58 ("modicum delictum illuc luendum"). He speaks in several passages of stages and different places of bliss; and this was a universally diffused idea ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... not allowed to pass. At this moment a Government official presents himself, and exacts a duty of the manufacturer for the production of the malt, the authorities shrewdly judging that they are entitled to levy off so valuable an article a modicum of tax. The grain thus prepared is now in a state for further manufacture, and it passes into the hands of the brewer or distiller, to be converted into a more or less ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... thinking of turning in, old thing," he observed. "Even newly-engaged people require a modicum of sleep, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... them, to the consideration of the special effects that it brings about. It was said just now that heredity is the stiffening in human nature, a stiffening bound up with a more or less considerable offset of plasticity. Now clearly it is in some sense true that the child's whole nature, its modicum of plasticity included, is handed on from its parents. Our business in this chapter, however, is on the whole to put out of our thoughts this plastic side of the inherited life-force. The more or less rigid, definite, systematized characters—these form the hereditary factor, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... dreamers, their career must have been an exceedingly short one, since in the struggle for existence they would surely succumb to adversaries who tempered and directed the blind fury of combat with at least a modicum of reason and sense. The myth of the illogical or prelogical savage may safely be relegated to that museum of learned absurdities and abortions which speculative anthropology is constantly enriching with fresh specimens of misapplied ingenuity ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... prepared the young adventurer was for life in Australia,—notwithstanding letters of introduction and means of obtaining money if required—after remaining only a few days in Melbourne, and disbursing but a small modicum of the limited supply of cash he had taken with him, anxious to see the interior of the Island Continent, he obtained employment for himself and brother, a lad only fifteen years of age, at a large sheep station ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the world, but it also doubtless reflects the tendencies of the Syrian branch of the school from which he sprang; for the Syrian group had had to cast off some of its traditional fanaticism and acquire a few social graces and a modicum of worldly wisdom in its long contact with the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... three we are not represented in the House of Commons by a number of members greater than that to which our population at the present moment would, taking the three kingdoms as whole, entitle us, but one must point out that the system of electing representative peers robs us of even that modicum of democratic peers of Parliament which Great Britain is able to secure, and we repeat the argument of Mr. Gladstone that the distance of Dublin from Westminster and the consequent deafness of the House of Commons to Irish opinion ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... much understanding of its primitive spirit, but appreciating it as a setting for the ideal society dreamed of but not realised in his own day. Add to this literary perspicacity, a good foundation in classic fable, a modicum of ecclesiastical doctrine, a remarkable facility in phrase, figure, and rhyme and we have the foundations for Chretien's art as we shall find ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... man puts a high appraisal upon his attainments and ability no one else is likely to do so, and that the public takes one, nine times out of ten, at his own valuation. Coming on the clay itself: I wore my hair rather long, with an appreciable modicum of bear's grease well rubbed in, side whiskers and white beaver, and carried a carpet bag on which was embroidered a stag's head in yellow on a background of green worsted. And the principal fact to be observed in this connection is that, instead of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... "My friend," said he, "I have always insisted that I possessed but a modicum of brains; but I am a gambler. My god is chance. With ordinary judgment and horse-sense, I take risks that no so-called sane man would consider. The curse of the world is fear—the chief instrument that you employ to hold the masses to your churchly system. I was born without ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... you now by what arguments Dr. Voss, at first merely my benefactor, sparing me a portion of his small modicum, at length persuaded me to become his wife. His wife he called it, I called it; for we went through the religious ceremony too much slighted at the time, and as we were both Lutherans, and M. de la Tourelle had pretended to be of the reformed religion, a divorce from the latter ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... buzz of confusion, till I reached General Crude's study, and found him walking up and down the room. He had left his table with his gold snuff-box in one hand, his pinched-together finger and thumb of the other holding a tiny modicum of snuff, which he applied to his nose as I entered, and he stopped ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... gives the Disagreeable Girl her opportunity. In the paper-box factory she would have to make good; Cluett, Coon and Company ask for results; the stage demands a modicum at least of intellect, in addition to shape; but society asks for nothing but pretense, and the palm ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... her a liar." Rejoined they, "Thou sayst sooth, but we desire thine advantage, and even wert thou to take service with the folk, 'twere a means of thy continuance." Then each and every of them brought out to him money and gave him a modicum and clad him and fed him and fared on with him the length of a parasang, till they brought him far from the city, and letting him know that he was safe, departed from him, whilst he journeyed till ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... riches. Perhaps from Tacit. Ann. ii. 33: Neque in familia et argento quaeque ad usum parantur nimium aliquid aut modicum, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... said, "I am not reasoner enough to persuade you that all women have souls. Very likely in Persia and India they have not. I only want you to believe that there may be women so fortunate as to possess a modicum of immortality. Well, pardon my interruption, 'if you looked abroad,' as you ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... admit Munster, gintlemen—glorious Kerry!—yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it. I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system: like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude" (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—"from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person. Gintlemen, I have the honor of being able to write 'Philomath' after my name—which is ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... isti officiarii per hoc non modicum damnificare civitatem Lundoniae, sed potius hoc multo majora damna intulerunt regi et hominibus regni quam jam dictae ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... optimis terrenorum bonorum, in quam nauigio intrauimus in octo vel circa diaetis per aquam satis tenuem, haud profundam. Ibi, sicut et in alijs multis Insulis, rex non nascitur sed eligitur per partes terrae: et est haec vna de quindecim nominatis Regionibus conquisitionis Ogeri. Ista, cum modicum declinet a circulo terrae sub AEquatore, patitur in anno duas aestates, et duas hyemes, si tamen hyems aliqua dici debeat, et non magis aestas, quia nullus hic dies anni caret fructu, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... discharging their political duty. They subscribed to the campaign fund, but had too delicate a sense of propriety to ask how their money was spent. A few of them—and these seemed to be endowed with a special modicum of patriotism—even attended the party primaries in which candidates were named. The majority went to the polls and cast their vote on election day, if it did not rain or snow. For a young man of Roosevelt's position to desire to take up politics seemed to his ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... ordinary circumstances to seek his fortune, but my circumstances were peculiar—it was not so much fortune that I sought—in short, I had my reasons—and a large practice would have greatly interfered with my more serious occupation. Still, I do not deny that a slight modicum of professional business, just to fill up the intervening time and save appearances, would not have been amiss, and I had been in fact rather anxiously looking for some symptoms of the sort for a considerable time, without any result at all. The inhabitants all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... gradually to weaken. Here and there a doorway broke into what might have been a solid section; in one or two cases arches crumbled; in many others inside walls or beams or stairways, falling, carried down with them another modicum of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... methods of avoiding failure was to be rigorous in the care of his daily existence. A preponderance of frivolous interruption to a modicum of thorough labor at thinking was a system utterly foreign to him. He would not talk with a fool; as a usual thing he would not entertain a bore. If thrown with these common pests, he tried, I think, to study them. And they report ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... even hearthstones are wrenched from place with light-hearted abandon. What they don't make away with, they generally ruin. One visit from such a relic hunter may leave an old house a shambles. How otherwise upright people with a modicum of interest in antiques will glory in looting old houses is truly remarkable. We knew one whose pride was a collection of fireplace cranes ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... essemus apud ordam (sic enim stationes imperatoris apud eos et principum appellantur) iacebamus in terra pra magnitudine venti prostrati, et propter pulueris multitudinem videre minime poteramus. In ea etiam in hyeme nusquam pluit, sed in astate: et tam modicum, quod vix potest aliquando puluerem et radices graminum madidare. [Sidenote: Grando maxima.] Grando etiam ibi sape maxiina cadit. [Sidenote: Maxima inundatio exubita grandinis resolutione.] Vnde eo tempore quando fuit electus, et in sede regni poni debuit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... toward the true road, and went through an after process of sloughing them one by one. Perhaps that process ended in making him over-timid. It was otherwise with Isaac Hecker. He, too, had stopped to consider many doctrines which purported to be true; more than that, he had recognized in each the modicum of truth which it possessed. But the falsity with which this was overloaded was powerful enough to repel him, in spite of the truth he knew to be contained in it. He carried in himself the touchstone to which all that was akin to it beyond ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... usually found such stories correspond to the least modicum of fact. Thus I was warned, I remember, against the roadside inns of the Cevennes, and that by a learned professor; and when I reached Pradelles the warning was explained—it was but the far- away rumour and reduplication of a single terrifying story already half a century old, and ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... primitive even as that of the Balkan mountains, needs some effort and work and capacity for administration, or even rudimentary economic life cannot be carried on. And the Turkish system, founded on the sword and nothing else ("the finest soldier in Europe"), cannot give that small modicum, of energy or administrative capacity. The one thing he knows is brute force; but it is not by the strength of his muscles that an engineer runs a machine, but by knowing how. The Turk cannot build a road, or make a bridge, or administer a post office, or found ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Professor Sidney Willard concerning Harvard College in 1794, in his late work, entitled, "Memories of Youth and Manhood." "The students who boarded in commons were obliged to go to the kitchen-door with their bowls or pitchers for their suppers, when they received their modicum of milk or chocolate in their vessel, held in one hand, and their piece of bread in the other, and repaired to their rooms to take their solitary repast. There were suspicions at times that the milk was diluted by a mixture of a very common tasteless fluid, which led a sagacious Yankee ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... I saw no profit in wasting that modicum of spleen, when I might double it by deliberately reading her effusion and knowingly casting it into the dust. One always can make excuses to oneself, for curiosity. Consequently I halted, around a corner in this exhausted Benton; tore the envelope open ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... debate, the matter ended thus,—with by no means a sufficiency of romance for his taste. Isa had agreed to become his betrothed if certain pecuniary conditions should or could be fulfilled. It appeared now that Herbert's father had promised that some small modicum of capital should be forthcoming after a term of years, and that Heine Brothers had agreed that the Englishman should have a proportionate share in the bank when that promise should be brought to bear. Let it not be supposed that Herbert would thus become a millionaire. If all went well, the best ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... your preconceived notions and employ a modicum of practical logic," suggested Scholar Phelps. "Observe your position from a slightly different reign of vantage. Be convinced that no matter what you do or say, we intend to make use of you to the best of our ability. You are not entertaining any doubts ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... time when I too was foolishly intent to divert the leisure hours of posterity. But reflection assured me that posterity had, thus far, done very little to place me under that or any other obligation. Ah, no! Youth, health and—though I say it—a modicum of intelligence are loaned to most of us for a while, and for a terribly brief while. They are but loans, and Time is waiting greedily to snatch them from us. For the perturbed usurer knows that he is ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... The adventurers were a bourgeois, his wife, sister, and child. Honest Pierre, the waterman, had conditioned to take the whole party to the island opposite and to return them safe to the main for the modicum of five sous. The old fox invariably charged me a franc for the same service. There was much demurring, and many doubts about encountering the risk; and more than once the women would have receded, had not the man treated the matter as a trifle. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... earners, into a co-operation for production so well arranged that it requires little but his own elimination to make it a foundation for communal life: in the teeth also of the experience of past ages, he has been compelled to allow a modicum of education to the propertyless, and has not even been able to deprive them wholly of political rights; his own advance in wealth and power has bred for him the very enemy who is doomed to make an ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... in perhaps any other in the world to the religious teaching of the minister, there was so little importance attached to the religious teaching of the schoolmaster, that, when weighed against even a slight modicum of secular qualification, it was found to have no sensible weight. And with this great practical fact some of our leading men seemed to be so little acquainted, that they were going on with the machinery of their educational scheme, on a scale at least co-extensive ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Selling expensive articles on the installment plan now seems a commonplace of business, but in those days it was practically unknown. McCormick was the first to see its possibilities. He established an agent, usually the general storekeeper, in every agricultural center. Any farmer who had a modicum of cash and who bore a reputation for thrift and honesty could purchase a reaper. In payment he gave a series of notes, so timed that they fell due at the end of harvesting seasons. Thus, as the money came in from successive harvests, the pioneer paid off the notes, taking two, three, or four years ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... poured out their vials of vituperation upon Lord Dunraven and the Irish Reform Association, were now eager to accept an infinitely lesser instalment of Home Rule from their own Liberal friends. And it also demonstrates that for a very meagre modicum of the Irish birth-right they were willing to sacrifice the position of Parliamentary independence, which was one of the greatest assets of the Party, and to enter into a formal alliance with the Liberals on a mere contingent ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... who keeps up excitement by the same means through the day. The third is the hygienic sciolist, who drinks on principle poor "Gladstone" and thin French wines, cheap and nasty; and the survivor is the man who enjoys a quantum suff. of humming Scotch and Burton ales, sherry, Madeira, and port, with a modicum of cognac. This has been my plan in the tropics from the beginning, when it was suggested to me by the simplest exercise of the reasoning faculties. "A dozen of good port will soon set you up!" said the surgeon to me after fever. Then why not drink ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of words in Truc. 858 ff. is egregiously tiresome in the reading, but in action could have been made to produce a modicum of amusement if presented in the broad burlesque spirit that we believe was almost invariably employed. This gives us a clue to the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... great position, and begin to assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power, intelligence, and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... the berries had ripened, and a carpet of rosy redness blushed upwards to the waning sun! Yet 1858 (the even year) was a bad season for cranberries,—the yield was only sufficient to pay for the land and fencing, with a modicum over to begin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... we waked up Mr. Mark to tell him and he said—" Stonie paused in the rapid fire of his announcement of the morning news and then added in judicial tone of voice, as if giving the aroused sleeper his modicum of fair play: "Well, he didn't quite say it before he swallowed, but he throwed a pillow at Tobe and pulled the sheet over his head and groaned awful. Aunt Viney was saying her prayers when I went to ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... such good eating as the English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best way to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and a modicum of ham or bacon ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... chasing is dull work," exclaimed Rhymer. "I'll bet anything that we don't make a single capture; and if we do, what is the good of it, except the modicum of prize money we might chance to pocket? The blacks won't be a bit the better off, and the Arabs will be ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of manhood. The result of the experiment shows the ease with which this may be done, and places in a strong light the wretched waste of so many precious years as are spent in acquiring the modicum of Latin and Greek commonly taught to schoolboys; a waste which has led so many educational reformers to entertain the ill-judged proposal of discarding these languages altogether from general education. ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... mental development of women continues to be so little studied, it is not surprising that the intellectual influence of the sex should be almost nil, or that such a modicum of it as they possess should be exerted within a very narrow sphere. It is the fault, no doubt, of our systems of female education that the mental power of the cleverest women really comes in England to very little. In its highest form it amounts to a capacity for ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of the present work to show how philosophy became a positive science; to indicate by what methods the human mind was enabled to conquer its present modicum of certain knowledge. The boldest and the grandest speculations came first. Man needed the stimulus of some higher reward than that of merely tracing the laws of phenomena. Nothing but a solution of the mystery ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the door, and stood struggling with the feminine rage which impelled her to undignified altercation. To withdraw in silence would be like a shamed confession of the charge brought against her, and she suffered not a little from her consciousness of the modicum of truth therein. ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... The apple obtained from Media was known as the Modicum malum, and was credited with the property of being a powerful antidote to poison: it was supposed that it would not grow ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... like the chaff. As an illustration that the power of Analysis is entirely wanting in many cases, I may mention that I once received a letter in which the writer had literally copied one of my column advertisements, and then added, "Please send me what relates to the above!" A modicum of mental training would have led him to say, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and even now in New-Jersey servants are "bought" as really as in Virginia. And the different senses in which the same word is used in the two states, puts no man in a quandary, whose common sense amounts to a modicum. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... either purpose. He did not think, he said, that his brother Tippit was able to assist the judgment of the court a great deal; as for judgment, the article was so scarce with a certain gentleman, he advised him to keep the modicum he had for his own use. So far as mitigation of punishment was concerned, he thought the greater the respectability of the offender, the greater should be the punishment, both because his education and opportunities should have taught him better, and by way of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... figure. Every one has heard of the Swedish chancellor's remark to his son: "Go, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed." If the earl had not great wisdom, he had a strong will; and a strong will, backed by rank and wealth, will go a very long way even when accompanied by a small modicum of intellect. He was a Tory of the Tories—not of course, however, for the family had never stuck to one line of politics—and he held that most men need to be governed, and that only a few are fit to govern the rest, of which few he himself was an illustrious example. But since his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... self-respecting, middle-aged man (to be polite to myself) stand for hours in a crowded shed, or lean against a dirty post, or sit on the sharp edge of his open trunk, waiting for a Superior Being with a gilt band around his hat, without losing some modicum of dignity? And how, when this Superior Being calls his number and kicks his trunk, is he to know that he is a free-born American citizen and a lineal descendant of Roger Williams? The evidence is entirely from within. How is he to support ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... state past our power of managing; and Ganymede, the greengrocer, though we admire the skill of his necktie and the whiteness of his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us going in sherry. Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without a small modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good digestion, I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I bowed my head at her, she looked at me with all her eyes, struck with amazement. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... notice:—"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose philanthropic efforts on behalf of 'our canal-boat population' are well known, has lately turned his attention to the wandering Gipsy tribes who infest the roadside, with the view to procuring at least a modicum of education for their children. He says that the Gipsies are lamentably ignorant, few of them being able even to write their names. By certain proceedings which took place at Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost seem ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... dedicated to his own peculiar imperial use, wholly exhausted or left behind, but, to use the language of Horace, not the vilest Sabine vintage could be procured; so that his Imperial Highness was glad to accept the offer of a rude Varangian, who proffered his modicum of decocted barley, which these barbarians prefer to the juice of the grape. The Emperor, nevertheless, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... bard of Twickenham was egregiously mistaken when he pronounced "a little learning" to be "a dangerous thing." Had it not been for the modicum of letters, small as it was, acquired by Mr. Wheelwright, at the school of which I had occasion to speak early in the present history, to say nothing, as seems most meet, of the university, his family would now have been rather short of bread and butter. They had great possessions, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... in it was leg of beef, with sliced potato, bits of onion chopped down, and a modicum of white pepper and salt, With just enough of water to cover "the elements." When stewed slowly the meat became very tender; and the whole yielded a capital dish, such as a very Soyer might envy. It was partaken of with a zest that, no doubt, was a very important element ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... through the war, Where I might have observed, more than I did, Patience and wholesome passion. I was there, And for such honor I gave nothing worse Than some advice at which he may have smiled. I must have given a modicum besides, Or the rough interval between those days And these would never have made for me my friends, Or enemies. I should be something somewhere — I say not what — but I should not be here If he had not been there. Possibly, too, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... later, when the almost perished man had regained consciousness and a modicum of strength, the girls were told the rest of his story, which I will ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... obvenit, emi proxime Corinthium signum, modicum quidem, sed festivum et expressum, quantum ego sapio, qui fortasse in omni re, in hac certe perquam exiguum sapio: hoc tamen signum ego quoque intellego. Est enim nudum, nec aut vitia, si qua sunt, celat, aut laudes parum ostentat. Effingit senem stantem: ossa, musculi, nervi, venae, rugae ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... every year or two. He is richly clad and is followed by a sweeper carrying an umbrella. Other Hindus say that his teaching is that no one who is not a Lalbegi can go to heaven, but those on whom the dust raised by a Lalbegi sweeping settles acquire some modicum of virtue. Similarly Mr. Greeven remarks: [239] "Sweepers by no means endorse the humble opinion entertained with respect to them; for they allude to castes such as Kunbis and Chamars as petty (chhota), while a common anecdote is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... in rambling through the beautiful scenery of Auteuil, taking sketches while his friend fished. The extent of their innocent dissipation consisted in dining at some rural hostelry on the produce of the morning's sport, washed down with a temperate modicum of wine. Thus pleasantly and profitably passed two years, at the end of which Raoul was recalled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... constipated. To-morrow the master offers congratulations at the castle. Kage is stuffed beyond measure to-day, that he be able to fast to-morrow. Show no discontent. For the passage of the sun there is to be no eating, and but a modicum of drinking. Halt not the procession for unseemly purposes." He stroked the horse, and the pleased animal purred and whinnied with the contentment of a cat at being petted. Then harshly said a voice in the ear of the bending Kakunai—"For this feed of the year's end thanks ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... prisoners, on an average crank marked 10 lb., had to exert an aggregate of force equal to one horse; and this exertion was prolonged, day after day, far beyond a horse's power of endurance, and in many cases on a modicum of food so scanty that no horse ever foaled, so fed, could have drawn ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... in various parts of the inner and outer ring; now depositing a few cool hundreds in the pockets of a sporting Priestley bookseller, or the brother of a Westminster Abbott; now contributing a small modicum to brighten the humbler speculations of the Dean-street casemen, or ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... our spare clothing piled upon the breaker, to shield it from the sun. At last, Jarl enlarged the vent, carefully keeping it exposed. To this precaution, doubtless, we owed more than we then thought. It was now deemed wise to reduce our allowance of water to the smallest modicum consistent with the present preservation of life; strangling all ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... retain her place among the associates of her better days, and you know how bitter this fact has always made Elise. Your sister has the physical beauty and the overwhelming love of money and power which characterized your father. She has a modicum of your mother's sense of honour, but has been reared in a way not calculated to develop much strength of character. Your mother has been a slave to your sister. Elise is incapable of a deep, intense love for any man, and your mother's pessimistic ideas of love and ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... little documents; he had signed them whenever told to do so, and had even been so preposterously foolish as to sign them in blank. All he knew was that at the beginning of every quarter Mr. M'Ruen got nearly the half of his little modicum of salary, and that towards the middle of it he usually contrived to obtain an advance of some small, some very small sum, and that when doing so he always put his hand to a ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... his class, went off to Pratt's, where, we will hope, he was amused, though he did not look it. A cigar on a close evening leads to soda-water, with a slice of lemon, and, I had almost forgotten to add, a small modicum of gin. This entails another cigar, and it is wonderful how soon one o'clock in the morning comes round again. When Lord Bearwarden turned out of St. James's Street it was too late to think of anything but immediate bed. Her ladyship's confessions, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... watch. It was one o'clock. I had slept seven hours! And she had been steering seven hours! When I took the steering-oar I had first to unbend her cramped fingers. Her modicum of strength had been exhausted, and she was unable even to move from her position. I was compelled to let go the sheet while I helped her to the nest of blankets and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... for introducing religious instruction into the State schools which will satisfy the demands of the Catholics. The Protestant denominations might without difficulty agree upon a common platform, and it is on the cards that they may, in spite of the Catholic opposition, succeed in introducing a modicum of religious instruction into the State schools. The Catholics maintain that false religious teaching is worse than no religious teaching, and will be satisfied with nothing less than a subsidy ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... however, because of its modicum of red earth swamped by a huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at cultivation: I am told that vines once grew here. And, in fact, when we dig the ground before planting a few trees, we turn up, here and there, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... little for poetry, and seldom understood the images of fancy, she was not averse to a modicum of scandal in moments of relaxation: for the faults of others were the illustrations of her prudent maxims, and the thoughtlessness of a sister was the best possible text for a moral homily. The tense rigidity ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... happy arguing with his good friend the doctor, that the socialist argument boiled down amounts to about this—that one should do without boiled eggs for breakfast now, in order that the proletariat may have baked hen for dinner in the millennium; which is lunacy; anybody with a modicum of brains— ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... head cashier the next morning when I opened my little modicum of an account. He had received orders to pay my drafts without reference to my balance. My checks, when I had overdrawn, were to be privately shown to Mr. Fauntleroy. Do many young men who start in business find their prosperous superiors ready to ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... trust?" No; they believe him to be, not omniscient, but competent and trustworthy, and a great burden is lifted from their hearts when they see him take command of the ship. On all other subjects besides religion, people are able to exercise their common sense; why can they not use a modicum of the same common sense when they come to deal with ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... to the market for which the wine is destined: thus the high-class English buyer demands a dry champagne, the Russian a wine sweet and strong as "ladies' grog," and the Frenchman and German a sweet light wine. To the extra-dry champagnes a modicum dose is added, while the so-called "brut" wines receive no more than from one to three per cent. ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... suspected that his modicum of liberty was due to Timmendiquas, or rather the fear of de Peyster that he would offend Timmendiquas, and weaken the league, if he ill treated ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... expression which seemed to say that at that moment he had taken leave of his senses; "hang the young Knight of Harden, when I have three ill-favoured daughters to marry off my hands! I wonder at ye, Juden! I aye thought ye had a modicum of common sense, and could look a long way in front of ye, but at this moment I am sorely inclined to doubt it. Mark my words, ye'll never again have such a chance as this. For, besides Harden, he is heir to some of the finest lands in Ettrick Forest.[9] There is Kirkhope, and Oakwood, and ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... secret horror. When I withdraw, I gather together and lock up my scattered treasure, but I put away my ideas sorely handled, like fruits fallen from the tree upon stones.' No, no; in seclusion I find the only modicum of peace that earth can ever yield me, and can readily understand why Chateaubriand avoided those crowds which he denominated, 'The vast ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the changed economic conditions which now prevail, it can no longer be asserted that the imparting of the mere elements of knowledge is adequate either to secure the future social efficiency of the children of the lower classes of society or that such a modicum of instruction as is provided by our Elementary Schools is sufficient to protect the community from the ignorance of its ill educated and badly trained members. The "hooliganism" of many of our large cities is due to our system of ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... displays of temper was the conduct of Jesus before Pilate. A modicum of common sense would have saved him. He was not required to tell a lie or renounce a conviction. All that was necessary to his release was to plead not guilty and defend himself against the charge of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... flushed to her sleek hair and some flicker of a girlhood that had its modicum of grace, flared up in the swift curtsy with ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... for a salary all his days, and after passing the thirty mark he had lost the courage to leap into the commercial fray and be his own man. He wished he might have been endowed at birth with a modicum of Matt Peasley's courage and reckless ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... double-barrelled field glasses glued over them, and Frenchmen with impudent eyes and elegant gloves, and a general filling in of Italians, with the glitter here and there of nobility, and still oftener of bright uniforms. Finally there was a modicum of true gentry, and these not of any particular nation or class. It is pleasant to name our party immediately after referring to these goodly folks. They had a fine box, and although their ranks were thinned by the loss of two cavaliers, nobody seemed to care. Albert and ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... puzzle an Englishman to read the lines beginning with 'Modicum', so as to give the metre. The secret is, to draw out et into a disyllable, et-te, as the Italians do, who pronounce Latin verse, if possible, worse than we, adding a syllable to such as end with ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... mean variations for units (if we may call them such) of more than four beats only a modicum of material has been worked up, since the types of relation already discovered are of too definite a character to leave any doubt as to their significance in the expression of rhythm. The results of these further experiments confirm ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... some modicum of reason penetrated into the numbed blankness of his brain. The dark arch of the entrance-way was somehow familiar. Still legible under the verdigris of the bronze plate on the lintel he read, "Transportation Substation—District L2ZX." Now he understood why he had not seen the ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... old cottages, lop-sided as they were—liked the crooked staircase squeezed into a corner of the living room below, the stuffy little dens above, with casement windows which only opened on one side, letting in the smallest modicum of air, and were not often opened at all. Cottages on the Now Arden model meant stone floors below and open rafters above, thorough draughts everywhere, and, worst of all, they meant weekly inspection by Miss Granger. The free sons ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... which were served out raw, to be immediately afterwards handed over to a black cook who answered to the name of "Snowball," and who had good-naturedly constituted himself the cook of the party. The rations, which included a portion for us newcomers, consisted of a small modicum of meat, a few vegetables, a tolerably liberal allowance of coarse black bread, and water ad libitum. The little incident of the serving out of rations having come to an end, and the sergeant having ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... by ordinary combustion, nor yet on the steam engine and dynamo principle, is that easy light produced. Very little waste radiation is there from phosphorescent things in general. Light of the kind able to affect the retina is directly emitted; and for this, for even a large supply of this, a modicum ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... personage, when opportunity of so doing occurred. Now, learning on credible authority that Sir Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever modicum of advantage—in the matter of advice and introductions—might be derivable from so ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the cook-maid would despise. She was aware that it was her duty to be snubbed by her mother, and to encounter her father's ill-temper, and to submit to her brother's indifference, and to have, so to say, the slightest possible modicum of personal individuality. She knew that she had never attracted a man's love, and might hardly hope to make friends for the comfort of her coming age. But still she was contented, and felt that she had consolation for it all in the fact that she was am. Aylmer. ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... as well and as happy as I can be anywhere away from you. That to be sure is but a modicum of happiness and good condition — very far from the full perfection which I have known is possible; but you will all be contented, will you not, to hear that I have so much, and that I have no more? I don't know — I think of your dear circle ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... more important ones. It was his custom to take what he called a stroll before breakfast—a matter of a mere eight or ten miles, maybe—and he found to his hand a young man with walking legs, seeing eyes, and but a modicum of tongue. He showed Peter that country-side with the thoroughness of a boy birds'-nesting, as Peter had once showed the Carolina country-side to Claribel Spring. They went over the venerable house with the same thoroughness, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... been the case. Some years before he had been the head of a grammar-school, with a comfortable income; but a habit of drinking had been his ruin, and he was now the preceptor of the village of Grassford, and gained his livelihood by instructing the children of the cottagers for the small modicum of twopence a head per week. This unfortunate propensity to liquor remained with him and he no sooner received his weekly stipend than he hastened to drown his cares, and the recollection of his former ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... the cup and poured the tea into a saucer. At the bottom was a modicum of white powder, undissolved. I poured the tea into the cup again—then a second time into the saucer. This time nothing remained—and I proceeded to pour cream into the saucer, until it was filled. Madam watched me with distended eyes, and trembling from head to foot. Then suddenly she uttered ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... will suffice. They evidence the general statement, i. e. that the American mind has refused to foster and to cultivate the Negro intellect. Join to this a kindred fact, of which there is the fullest evidence. Impelled, at times, by pity, a modicum of schooling and training has been given the Negro; but even this, almost universally, with reluctance, with cold criticism, with microscopic scrutiny, with icy reservation, and ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... discovery before her that some trifle is wanted. The man is called in, and succeeds in disposing of some of his wares, ribbons, laces, or silks; and the ayah, besides having obliged the lady and the pedler, enjoys a small modicum of satisfaction herself—who would grudge it?—in pocketing the dustooree—a discount of two pice, or half an ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... only the boor who demands a savoury and a roast of equal bulk; it is only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal prize-fights or vapid "personals" as by important political information or literary criticism. There is undoubtedly a modicum of truth in Matthew Arnold's sneer that American journals certainly supply news enough—but it is the news of the servants' hall. It is as if the helm were held rather by the active reporter than by the able editor. It is said that while there are eight editors to one reporter in Denmark, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... institution never lost its patriarchal aspect. Although it was both unlawful and in some parts of West Virginia unpopular to instruct Negroes, these masters, a law unto themselves, undertook to impart to these bondmen some modicum of knowledge. Upon the actual emancipation in 1865, when all restraint in this respect was abrogated, benevolent white persons, moved with compassion because of the benighted condition of Negroes, volunteered to offer them instruction. The first teachers ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... interest, but seldom furnishes the smallest hint to the seeker after origins. The famous "Hieroglyphics of Horapollo" occasionally contains a reminiscence of true hieroglyphics, but may well be a composition of the Middle Ages, embodying a tiny modicum of half-genuine tradition that had ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... modicum on "Chimney-Sweepers," which your last paper contained, with pleasure. It appears to be the production of that sort of mind which you justly denominate "gifted;" but which is greatly undervalued by the majority of men, because they have no sympathies ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... smallness &c. adj.; littleness &c. (small size) 193; tenuity; paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight[obs3], whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... inspected the stores, fancied that a fortnight was the very longest that could be counted on, though they ate no more than would keep a modicum of strength in them. From their kind and quality he surmised that they had been intended for the officials ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... broke up, Plutarch's guests were entertained with wine, fruit, syrups, sweet cakes, oyster pasties, and other delicacies. The steward had fallen with good will on the noble drink and excellent food, and when he was replete, he was wont to be in a better humor, and after a modicum of wine, in a more cheerful mood than usual. Just now he was content and kind, for although he had done all that lay in his power, the entertainment had not lasted long enough, for him to arrive at a state of intoxication ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... order the culprit to be well flogged and dismissed to his expectant family. But thanks to Her Majesty's well-meaning Secretaries of State for the Colonies, who have all successively judged alike on this point, it is declared most unadvisable to allow a local magistrate the smallest modicum of discretion. He has only one course to pursue, and that is, to commit the offender for trial at the next Quarter Sessions, to be held in the capital of the colony. Accordingly the poor native, who would rather have ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... those of the public. Economy in the matter of railway servants—in other words, their reduction in numbers—necessitates increase of working hours, which, beyond a certain point, implies inefficiency and danger. But the general public are not free from a modicum of this shame, and have to thank themselves if they are maimed and killed, because they descend on railways for compensation with a ruthless hand; (shame to Government here, for allowing it!) and still further, impoverish their already over-taxed ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... no priestcraft in the Church of England? There is certainly, or rather there was, a modicum of priestcraft in the Church of England, but I have generally found that those who are most vehement against the Church of England are chiefly dissatisfied with her because there is only a modicum of that article in her—were she stuffed to the very ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... or a life-size 'Infant Samuel' for a religious nursery. Mr Pitman had studied in Paris, and he had studied in Rome, supplied with funds by a fond parent who went subsequently bankrupt in consequence of a fall in corsets; and though he was never thought to have the smallest modicum of talent, it was at one time supposed that he had learned his business. Eighteen years of what is called 'tuition' had relieved him of the dangerous knowledge. His artist lodgers would sometimes reason with him; they would point ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... villain Homopoulo doctored my tea! I woke in this damnable cell, the secret of which has been lost for generations!" He turned blazing blue eyes upon Kennedy. "How did you come to be trapped?" he demanded unreasonably. "I credited you with a modicum of brains!" ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... seen hobnobbing and on the best of possible terms with the guardians of public immorality. We all feel, as indeed has been said in other nations, that the poor abuses of the time want countenance, and this moreover in the interests of the uses themselves, for the presence of a small modicum of sincerity acts as a wholesome stimulant and irritant to the prevailing spirit of academicism; moreover, we hold it useful to have a certain number of melancholy examples whose notorious failure ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... therefore, not an easy task, and the conflict of interests often necessitates compromise, so that a history of legislation over a series of years shows that national progress is generally accomplished by liberalism wresting a modicum of power from conservatism, then giving way for a little to a period of reaction, and then pushing forward a step further as public opinion becomes ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... always craved, and found their greatest happiness and chief welfare in, a strong paternal government. The ordinary Hindu seeks for himself nothing higher than a government which, while not asking for his opinion concerning its policy and acts, will at least dispense a fair modicum of justice to ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... is the struggle past, and to the earth, To the eternal sun, I render back These atoms, joined in me for pain and pleasure. And of the mighty Talbot, who the world Filled with his martial glory, there remains Naught save a modicum of senseless dust. Such is the end of man—the only spoil We carry with us from life's battle-field, Is but an insight into nothingness, And utter scorn of all which once appeared To us exalted ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sister-in-law, and he knew there was a shadow of reason in what she said, though even perfect reason could not have sweetened the mode in which she said it. Nothing could make up for the total absence of sympathy in her utterance of any modicum of truth she was capable of uttering. She was a very dusty woman, and never more dusty than when she fought against dust as in a warfare worthy of all a woman's energies—one who, because she had not a spark of Mary in her, imagined ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... me, Mr Sharnall," said the Rector, "if I remark that an hereditary peerage is so important an institution, that we should be very careful how we criticise any members of it. At the same time," he went on, turning apologetically to Westray, "there is perhaps a modicum of reason in our friend's remarks. I had hoped that Lord Blandamer would have contributed handsomely to the restoration fund, but he has not hitherto done so, though I dare say that his continued absence abroad accounts for some delay. He only succeeded his grandfather last year, and the late lord ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... and indeed, this seems only a compulsory limitation, external to and even contravening freedom in the abstract—the constitution should be at least so framed that the citizens may obey as little as possible and the smallest modicum of free volition be left to the commands of the superiors; that the substance of that for which subordination is necessary, even in its most important bearings, should be decided and resolved on by the people, by the will of many or of all the citizens; though it is supposed to be thereby provided ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... stories comprising the seven in this little collection of Stories of the Old Missions, all but one have, as a basis, some modicum, larger or smaller, of historical fact, the tale of Juana alone being wholly fanciful, although with an historical background. The first story of the series may be considered as introductory to the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time. My own exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I provided myself. I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I came back at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support myself ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... side of the Government with ready fervour. Their social proclivities were equally removed from the rude boorishness of the ordinary settler as from the pretence and ceremonial of the clique of self-constituted aristocrats. They generally preserved a modicum of state in the regulation of their household affairs, though they kept aloof from the Compact and its practices, and devoted themselves to various branches of industry—among others, to the education of youth; to the practice of the learned ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the foregone definition, which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity of digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sweats No larger ration than his fellows gets. What matters it to reasonable men Whether they plough a hundred fields or ten? "But there's a pleasure, spite of all you say, In a large heap from which to take away." If both contain the modicum we lack, Why should your barn be better than my sack? You want a draught of water: a mere urn, Perchance a goblet, well would serve your turn: You say, "The stream looks scanty at its head; I'll take my quantum where 'tis broad instead." But what befalls the wight who yearns ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Miss Conway, that you three are brothers and sister to me, and that if you had been so, I could not love you better. I have so many cousins, and uncles and aunts, and bloods that grow in Norfolk, that if I had portioned out my affections to them, as they say I should, what a modicum would have fallen to each!-So, to avoid fractions, I love my family in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... disdainful tension of the nostril and the drooping corners of the mouth, gave his face the injured expression of a spoiled child. The lips were of similar fullness and the chin retreated. There was refinement in his face, but no force nor modicum ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... from a glass or two of vin ordinaire; and nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative, and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of excitement after two rounds of a bottle—jostling the peasants, and talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... I have done. Greek and Latin are going or gone, but a modicum of Mathematics seems to be indispensable to the modern curriculum. The domestic pig has on many occasions shown a capacity for mastering simple arithmetical processes, and we know that the pupil always ends by bettering his master. Under a more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... Bennie, who longed to push it to a most thrilling climax. It was not pleasant to Firmstone; but the cause was none of his creating, he was of no mind to interfere with the event. He was only human after all, and that it annoyed and irritated Hartwell afforded him a modicum of legitimate solace. Besides, Zephyr and Bennie were his stanch friends; the recovery of the safe and the putting it in evidence at the most effective moment was their work. The manner of bringing it into play, though distasteful to him, suited their ideas of ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... such as Canada and the United States and Australia, the development of latent natural assets could absorb the labor of generations. There are still unredeemed empires in the west. Clearly enough a certain modicum of public honesty and integrity is essential for such a task; more, undoubtedly, than we have hitherto been able to enlist in the service of the commonwealth. But without it we perish. Social betterment must depend at every stage ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... Haquino Dei gratia regi Norwegi illustri amico suo charissimo Edwardus eadem Dei gratia rex Angli, Dom. Hiberni, & dux Aquitani salutem cum dilectione sincera. Miramur non modicum & in intimis conturbamur de grauaminibus & oppressionibus qu subditis nostris infra regnum vestrum causa negociandi venientibus his diebus plus solito absque causa rationabili, sicut ex graui querela ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... a hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... stationes imperatoris apud eos et principum appellantur) iacebamus in terra pr magnitudine venti prostrati, et propter pulueris multitudinem videre minime poteramus. In ea etiam in hyeme nusquam pluit, sed in state: et tam modicum, quod vix potest aliquando puluerem et radices graminum madidare. [Sidenote: Grando maxima.] Grando etiam ibi spe maxiina cadit. [Sidenote: Maxima inundatio exubita grandinis resolutione.] Vnde eo tempore quando fuit electus, et in sede regni ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... planned as to the cows and calves. He bought purebred cows from the B-line folks, and sold them the big, weaned calves. And in view of the fact that the calf sale in 1931 was larger than Alice's big turkey sale to the dealers in Laramie by fully two hundred dollars, Landy had a modicum of peace on finances. The Gillis menage was well managed. It made money in ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... last of the flour was made into large loaves of bread; a ham and several dozen eggs were boiled; the few chickens that have survived the overflow were fried; the last of the coffee was parched and ground; and the modicum of the tea was well corked up. Our friends across the lake added a jar of butter and two of preserves. H. rode off to X. after dinner to conclude some business there, and I sat down before a table to tie bundles ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... things Hamilton Burton was thinking as he left his door for the car that awaited him. From the start he had never deviated from his well-laid course of determination. Power was his goal and by power he meant no mean modicum, but limitless strength. He had picked finance as his field of endeavor because in this day the scepter that sways affairs must be the scepter of gold. But Hamilton Burton knew that he was only starting and his plans ran to the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... certainty of moderate success. It was not, when one considered it, the life which one would have chosen, but who, since the world began, had ever lived exactly the life of his choice? Many women, she reflected stoically, were far worse off than she, since she started not only with a modicum of business experience (for surely the three months with Brandywine & Plummer might weigh as that) but with a knowledge of the world and a social position which she had found to be fairly marketable. That Madame Dinard would have accepted an unknown and undistinguished applicant ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... which weigh so heavily upon my time and strength, I shall be able to complete what I have undertaken and long prosecuted, namely, contribute something to settle many unsettled and disputed facts of American and Canadian history, and to do, at least, a modicum of justice to a Canadian ancestry whose heroic deeds and unswerving Christian patriotism form a patent of nobility more to be valued by their descendants than the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... be unable to do the things you have been accustomed to doing, and your attitude will be that of a man who has to deny himself things he thinks he wants. You will then cut down the rate of expenditure to within your income, as you have a certain modicum of sense in regard to matters of this kind,—not acquired, but inherited,—and permit yourself to spend freely up to your ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... 19th, Commodore Martin, who had arrived overnight, appears in the Bay, with due modicum of seventy-fours, 'dursley galleys,' bomb-vessels, on an errand from his Admiral [one Matthews] and the Britannic Majesty, much to the astonishment of Naples. Commodore Martin hovers about, all morning, and at 4 P.M. drops anchor,—within ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the girls who could be content with the narrow, humdrum routine at Harding. But she concealed her scorn perfectly. And she no longer neglected her work; she attended her classes regularly and managed with a modicum of preparation to recite far better than the average student. Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness. She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate, and ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... of hunger being assuaged, I craved tea. Tea is the one stimulant in which I indulge. A cup of moderately strong Oolong, slightly weakened by the addition of a modicum of cream or hot milk, with three lumps of sugar in it, is to me a most refreshing drink and one to which I am strongly drawn. So I set about brewing ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... I must admit that there was a modicum of truth in what she said. I had been feeling pretty austere about the man all day, and I'll tell ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... had for the last seven years been trying to recover those arrears of sleep incurred during his Eastern career. He had been active enough under a tropical sky, when his mind was kept alive by a modicum of hard work and a very wide margin of sport—pig-sticking, peacock-shooting, paper-chases, all the delights of an Indian life. But now, vegetating on a slender pittance in the semi-slumberous idleness of Les Fontaines, he had nothing to do and nothing to think about; and he was glad to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... sold two hundred acres, including the point, the harbour, and a good deal of the sedges, for the moderate modicum of one hundred and ten thousand, cash. A tolerable ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper |
