"Proverbially" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room in the house. It was the day of small things for Methodism in the capital of Upper Canada. But of the religious zeal of the little company of believers, we may judge from the fact that several of the members of the society came from two to eight miles, through the proverbially wretched roads of "Muddy York," to the class meeting. [Footnote: Carroll's "Case and his Cotemporaries," ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... has been proverbially said to lead to as much evil as any impulse that agitates the human bosom, must be held responsible for only too many of those crimes which from time to time outrage society, for, as the authors of "Guesses at Truth" ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... lining the road on a pouring wet night, outside a town already full to overflowing with like unhappy sufferers; the while Belgian soldiers, with fixed bayonets, have prohibited any further entrance to that which promised a lodging place. Soldiers are not proverbially given to overmuch sensitiveness where human suffering is concerned, for a daily intercourse with terrible scenes cannot fail to harden a man, but I declare that I have seen strong men burst into ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... and the post were cleared away and uprooted respectively by that evening. Late summer weather is proverbially treacherous, and during dinner-time Mrs Collins sent up to ask for a little brandy, because her husband had took a nasty chill and she was afraid he would not be able to ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... That may possibly be true. But we have to remember that the Korean peninsula lies almost within sight of the shores of Japan, whereas to reach China direct by water involves a voyage of several hundred miles over seas proverbially tempestuous and dangerous. Even in modern times, when maritime transport has been so greatly developed, a general might well hesitate between the choice of the Korean and the ocean routes to China from Japan, were he required ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... untrue, faithless, lacking even that honor which proverbially obtains in the society of criminals—a consideration of such a possibility was intolerable, as much so as the suspense of ignorance. He could not, would not, believe her capable of ingratitude so rank; and fought fiercely, unreasoningly, against ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... here add, has been well served by its Curates. "Comparisons are (proverbially) odious," we will not therefore refer to any of these in recent years; but we may take three typical cases of men whose memory is still green and redolent ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... by way of introducing the succeeding admonitions. Leaven is a common figure with the apostle, one he uses frequently, almost proverbially; employing it, too, in his epistle to the Galatians (ch. 5, 9). Christ, also, gives us a Scripture parable of the leaven. Mt 13, 33. It is the nature of leaven that a small quantity mixed with a lump of dough will pervade and fill the whole lump until its own acid ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... transference of British troops and ships from the continent to the Leeward Islands. Reinforcements had given the British fleet in America a numerical superiority, which for the time imposed a check upon d'Estaing; but Byron, proverbially unlucky in weather, was driven crippled to Newport, leaving the French free to quit Boston. The difficulty of provisioning so large a force as twelve ships of the line at first threatened to prevent the withdrawal, supplies being then extremely ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... yesterday was "a pic-nic party of pleasure," a l'Anglaise. Now a party of pleasure is proverbially a bore: and our expedition was in the beginning so unpromising, so mismanaged—our party so numerous, and composed of such a heterogeneous mixture of opposite tempers, tastes, and characters, that I ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... possessed rare talents, but they were totally dissimilar in mental traits and political methods. Both were statesmen of scrupulous honesty, who despised jobbery. Marcy was wily and loved intrigue. Wright was proverbially open and frank. Marcy never trained himself to be a public speaker, and did not shine in the hand-to-hand conflicts of a body that was lustrous with forensic talents. A man's status in the United States Senate is determined ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... earlier times, formed one of the thirteen states of Yemen; and prodigious tales are told of its opulence, its mosques and minarets, its baths of jasper, and its crescents and colonnades. But Arabia is proverbially a land of fable, and the glories of Aden exhibit Arabian imagination in its highest stage. Possibly, while it continued a port for the Indian trade, it may have shared the wealth which India has always lavished on commerce. But a spot without a tree, without a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... long as there seemed any possibility of his father's return to sanity and his office, he felt that he could never regard his position as wholly satisfactory; on the other hand, though a sick lion may possibly be compared with a live dog, a defunct lion is proverbially out of ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... sentiment on bribery at elections, on smuggling, on evasion of taxation, on fraudulent business transactions, on duelling, on prize-fighting, or on gambling. At the same time it must be confessed that, as laws sometimes become antiquated, and the leanings of lawyers are proverbially conservative, it occasionally happens that, on some points, the average moral sentiment is in advance of the law. I may select as examples, from comparatively recent legal history, the continuance of religious disabilities and the excessive punishment of ordinary or even trivial ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... establishment were visible in the decent and orderly habits, and in the superior information of the whole population; presenting a moral picture exactly the reverse of that which too often characterises the now liberated ascripti glebae who are usually engaged in such occupations, and who are proverbially the most barbarous and ignorant class of the community of Scotland—thus furnishing an example, which is now become pretty general, of supplying an interesting and improving employment of the hours of relaxation from labour, instead of misspending the precious ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... a proverbially dangerous beast; yet even under such conditions different grislies act in directly opposite ways. Some she-grislies, when their cubs are young, but are able to follow them about, seem always worked up to the highest pitch of anxious and jealous rage, so ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... unhinge his stomach. Then to the head-carver he said: "What you had best do is to serve me with what they call ollas podridas—and the rottener they are the better they smell!" The others he addressed proverbially thus: "But let nobody play pranks on me, for either we are or we are not. Let us live and eat in peace and good fellowship, for when God sends the dawn, he sends it for all. I mean to govern this island without ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Israel whose wisdom is greatly extolled, and whose writings are widely read, urged the importance of the early training of children about three thousand years ago; but the progress of truth in the world is proverbially slow. When parents and teachers, legislators and lawgivers, are at last heartily convinced of the inestimable importance of the first six years of childhood, then the plays and occupations of that formative period of life will ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... account of inaccuracy in the detail of the phthisical symptoms, is a mere fetch, as the Cockneys have it, in order to make a very few little children believe that it, the Post, is not quite so stupid as a post proverbially is. It knows nearly as much about pathology as it does about English grammar—and I really hope it will not feel called upon to blush at the compliment. I represented the symptoms of M. Valdemar as "severe," to be sure. I put an extreme case; for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... skill; and here, with a happy tact peculiarly his own, he secured the warm friendship of men whose professional acts he found himself called upon in the exercise of his high trust in many cases to condemn. The Russians are proverbially jealous of strangers, and no higher evidence of their appreciation of the sterling honesty of Major Whistler, and of his sound, discriminating judgment, could be afforded than the fact that all his recommendations on the great questions of internal improvement, opposed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... my own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is proverbially elaborate," I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, "but in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the really excessively select (in which must ever be included the one whom I am now addressing), ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... afterwards to make of the knowledge he was gaining, but the motives which influenced him were those of the man whose interest in literature and history makes scholarly work seem the most natural way of earning money. "These are studies, indeed, proverbially dull," he once wrote, speaking of Horace Walpole's antiquarian researches, "but it is only when they are pursued by those whose fancies nothing ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... towering above all, like an enthroned spirit, rises AEtna. His giant form can be seen from elevated grounds in the most remote parts of the island, and the mariner can discern his snowy crown more than a hundred miles. But Sicily abounds in luxuriant plains and charming valleys, and its soil is proverbially rich: it once bore the appellation of the Granary of Rome; and it is now said that if properly tilled it would produce more grain than any country of its size in the world. Its beauty and fertility were often celebrated by ancient bards, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... forgotten that a certain supply exists at the fountain head, within practicable distance, which might be stored and led from the mountains to the lower lands for the purposes of irrigation. When we reflect that in the proverbially wet climate of England there is a considerable difficulty in assuring a supply of wholesome water, and that the various water companies have made enormous profits, it is not surprising that in a neglected island like Cyprus there should be distress in the absence of abundant ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... manifests any resentment, against the persecutor. He was "in the isle that is called Patmos:"—but he does not say who sent him there. Historians tell us that he was banished by Domitian, the Roman emperor; others say, by Nero; but the former is more probable. This island is proverbially barren. It is situated among a number of islands in the Aegean sea, a point of the Mediterranean running northward between Europe and Asia, and not very remote from most of the churches ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... 1820 it was subject to Bokhara, but in that year Mahmud Khan besieged it for four months, took it by storm and left it a heap of ruins. To preserve himself from utter destruction the khan threw himself into the arms of the Afghans. The tract in which Andkhui stands is fertile, but proverbially unhealthy; the Persians account it "a hell upon earth'' by reason of its scorching sands, brackish water, flies and scorpions. The population, estimated at 15,000, consists principally of Turkmans with a mixture of Uzbegs and a few Tajiks. The district was allotted to Afghanistan by the Russo- ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... shows in his daily acts the early education of his home. The impressions there made upon him in his young and growing life are proverbially deep and abiding. The circumstances which develop the character of the good farmer in one town, are the circumstances which develop the good farmer wheresoever he may be; but the circumstances which make so many of our farmers at this day, coarse ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a marked improvement With a mighty clout Lawson knocked a home run, and, as there was a man on third, that two. From then on the Cardinals seemed to find themselves. They began coming back in earnest, and everyone "got the habit." Even Joe, proverbially poor hitters as pitchers are supposed to be, did his share, and, by placing a neat little drive, that eluded the shortstop, he brought ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... of a hundred thousand pounds; and beginning, as usual, at Manchester, have raised there alone, within a few days' time, upwards of L.20,000! The fact (if true) is at once ludicrous and disgusting: ludicrous for its transparency of humbug—disgusting for its palpable selfishness. Will these proverbially hard-hearted men put down their L.100, L.200, L.300, L.400, L.500, for nothing? Alas, the great sums they have expended in this crusade against the Corn-laws, will have to be wrung out of their wretched and exhausted factory slaves! For how ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... of David Hume, Esq., might, as bookmakers know now, be driven out to a handsome quarto. Line 1st admits of a descant upon eggs roasted, boiled or poached; 2d, a history of Carlisle Cathedral with some reasons why the choir there has been proverbially execrable; 3d, the whole history of 1745 with minute memoirs of such as mounted guard on the Scotch gate. I remember the spikes the heads stood upon; lastly, a description of Corby Castle with a plan, and the genealogy ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... house to house, and the pain of being observed by the whole street, while the footman is examining him from the area. Some few may be seen in England about the inns of court, where the locality is favorable (where, however, the owners of the chambers are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the harvest must be poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,—fat, smooth-tongued, and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who would be insulted almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as their ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chance to use it. It was in my pocket. Fifteen minutes after the fracas, Mrs. Pinkerton came to my room, completely dressed, and insisted upon coming in to hear all about it and to overwhelm me with thanks and admiration. I was as modest as heroes proverbially are, and then and there told her never to refer to the subject again unless she addressed me ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... chronicle facts as they happened on board the Titanic, it must be recorded that there were among the passengers and such of the crew as were heard to speak on the matter, the direst misgivings at the incident we had just witnessed. Sailors are proverbially superstitious; far too many people are prone to follow their lead, or, indeed, the lead of any one who asserts a statement with an air of conviction and the opportunity of constant repetition; the sense of mystery that shrouds a prophetic utterance, particularly if it be ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... the officers of reserve, are quite excellent. The spirit of good comradeship which prevails in the army is most admirable, and the corps of officers reminds me of a large family which is proverbially a happy one. Those foreign observers who have seen much of the Italian officers under fire tell me that they have always led their men with superb valor and determination, while, though Italy has not such ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Nash was, proverbially more generous than just. He would not pay a debt if he could help it, but would give the very amount to the first friend that begged it. There was much ostentation in this, but then my friend Nash was ostentatious. One friend bothered him day and night for L20 that was owing to him, and he could ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... given some account of my daily baths, and on reading over what I have written, I feel quite ashamed of the coldness of the recital of all my delight, the recollection of which makes my mouth water. The reader will observe that I am a Scotchman (proverbially a matter-of-fact race), an old fellow, my enemy would say a slow coach. I might enlarge on my ecstatic delight in my baths, my healthy glow, my light-heartedness, my feelings of elasticity, which made me fancy I could trip along the sward like a patent Vestris. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... coal-field represents would be 25,000 x 240 6,000,000 years. As affording a definite chronology, of course such calculations as these are of no value; but they have much use in fixing one's attention upon a possible minimum. A man may be puzzled if he is asked how long Rome took a-building; but he is proverbially safe if he affirms it not to have been built in a day; and our geological calculations are all, at present, pretty much ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... business, then time was a burthen; existence a weariness; and the hungry soul, which craves some outward satisfaction, was found fallen back upon itself and preying upon its own vitality. Are not the idlest of men proverbially the most miserable? And is not the young woman often to be seen passing restless from place to place, because exempt from the necessity of industry, till vanity and envy, growing rank in her vacant mind, makes her far more an object of compassion than those who work hardest ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while those female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter; excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... fire, with which we left the alarmed Elwood and his wife contending, was, indeed, easily overcome by dashing pails of water over the roof. But scarcely had they achieved this temporary triumph in one place over an element proverbially terrible when it becomes master, before it was seen kindling into flickering blazes on the roof of the barn and the locks of hay protruding from its windows and the crevices between the logs of which it was built. Here, also, they soon succeeded in extinguishing the fire ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... more completely the poet. For it is well known that his was a divided nature, so variously endowed that complete integration was difficult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented that steady concentration of powers which poetry demands. She is proverbially the most jealous of mistresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance. At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as primarily a poet: but in the next fifteen years he had become a professor, had devoted long periods to study in Europe, had published ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... and was a fashionable watering-place in the eighteenth century, when it was known as the "Irish Bath." Croker says that the young men of that fashionable water-drinking town were proverbially called "the rakes of Mallow," and he adds: "A set of pretty pickles they were, if the song descriptive of their mode of life, here recorded after the most delicate oral testimony, is not ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... material and civilizing rather than its spiritual aspects. They do not, as officials, feel that the salvation of men from sin and the command of Christ to evangelize all nations are within their sphere. Moreover, diplomacy is proverbially and necessarily cautious. Its business is to avoid risks, and, of course, to advise others to avoid them. The political situation, too, was undeniably uncertain and delicate. The future was big with possibility of peril. In such circumstances, we ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... lasted so long. Mr. Hutchinson concludes that all the evidence tends to show that the disease had probably been communicated from the blood of an infected person through the bite of the insect. It thus appears that even the proverbially trivial fleabite may at times prove ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of life are proverbially very uncertain; and it may happen that you may be obliged to do without me; in which case, would it not be well for you to be prepared for such ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... turns, they have more respect for one another than that given by mere position in the service, and hence that position is less taken advantage of. They are brought more into contact, and hence those engaged in the surveying service almost proverbially stick by one another. To me, whose interest in the service is almost all to be made, this is a matter of no ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... had been disposed of and Shafto's room inspected and criticised, his companion still lingered talking. To Salter, the proverbially eccentric, this new-comer appeared to be an intelligent young fellow whom he would like and take to. There was no superior "just out from London to the back of God-speed" air about him. On the contrary, he appeared ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... to bed, fair mistress," rejoined Sue gayly. She was too happy, too sure of herself and of her lover to view this sudden discovery of her secret with either annoyance or alarm. She would be free in three months, and he would be faithful to her. Love proverbially laughs at bars and bolts, and even if her stern guardian, apprised of her evening wanderings, prevented her from seeing her prince for the next three months, pshaw! a hundred days at most, and nothing could keep her ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and, on the night of the 29th, the French were within the city walls. St Peter's day is the great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter's was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during the night; the French shells flew in all directions; the fight raged fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of the Vascello, which had been bombarded for a week; the heroic Manara fell fighting at Villa Spada; Garibaldi, descending ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... proverbially dangerous, but everyone runs into them sooner or later, and the world has done me the kindness so often to inquire after my first crude attempt, that after it has lain for many years 'out of print,' I have ventured to launch it once more—imperfections ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hard names. If they have not an uneasy subconsciousness that their cause is weak, they would, at least, do well in eschewing the violence to which, for want of something better, the advocates of weak causes proverbially resort. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... dependent, for her subsistence, on her manual exertions, or an inmate in the house of a relative or friend, she may do great good by an habitual watchfulness that nothing be wasted. Servants are proverbially lavish and careless in this matter. The head of the family may be deficient in economy, or what is by no means uncommon, so engrossed with other inevitable cares, as to have little time to look after the savings, which might daily be made. But here is an individual, whose habits prompt ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,—through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor thus describes the trip down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... nominated on the first of May, with Theodore Frelinghuysen as the candidate for Vice President. The party issues were not very sharply defined, but this was scarcely necessary with a candidate who was proverbially regarded as himself "the embodiment of Whig principles." On the subject of annexation, he clearly defined his position in his letter of the 17th of April to the "National Intelligencer." He declared that annexation and war ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Proverbially, money is the cause of the bitterest disputes in families. Abstractly it might seem remarkable that this should be so, but the peculiar nature of property of all sorts is that it becomes the inmost shrine of its possessor's being, and when the shrine ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... is the Breton pig, as tall as a donkey; a lean, long-necked, ragged, bristly, savage-looking beast, as ill kept as its master, and it runs like a greyhound when approached. The Breton cow is very small, small as the Kerry cows of Ireland, very pretty and very productive. The Breton butter is proverbially good, and is given out most liberally, in lumps as big as loaves, at the tables-d'hote. It is brought to market in jars which the women carry upon their heads. It is to the Queen-Duchess that Brittany, and indeed all France, owes the privilege of eating butter in Lent. It was forbidden ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... with five Indians, even although unarmed and asleep. He could not hope to deal a blow with his knife so silently and fatally as to destroy each one of his enemies in turn without awakening the rest. Their slumbers were proverbially light and restless; and, if he failed with a single one, he must instantly be overpowered by the survivors. The knife, therefore, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... stratagem," said Simon Orts; "unconventional, I must confess, but it is proverbially known that all's ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... reflected. The invasion has proved more expensive than he had foreseen. The English are proverbially a nation of shopkeepers, and they had put up their prices in all the shops for his special benefit. And he was expected to do such a lot of tipping. Four hundred and fifty a week would come in ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... at all!" I said testily. I felt testy, as if from a personal injury. "Only when one has a friend, it is agreeable to believe that out of sight is not immediately out of mind. But, of course, I am a woman. Women's memories are proverbially longer than men's." ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... small black children are proverbially brighter and more forward than white ones of the same age. Repartees, by no means indicative of stupidity, have sometimes been made by negroes. A slave was suddenly roused with the exclamation, "Why don't you wake, when your master calls!" ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... visit shortly; but in case you should unexpectedly have any communication with him, don't mention having seen me; for, to tell you the truth, I am just returned from India, where I should have scraped up a little money, but that I spent it as fast as I got it. However, you know that I was always proverbially the luckiest fellow in the world—(and so, Sir, your father was!)—and while I was in India, I saved an old Colonel's life at a tiger-hunt; he went home shortly afterwards, and settled in Yorkshire; and the other day on my ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an ambition of my own to which no one was privy except Spotswoode, a gray-headed, and proverbially taciturn field-hand, without whose knowledge and cooperation the purpose could not have been ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Donkeys are proverbially obstinate animals, and Mrs. Henchman's this afternoon proved no exception to the rule. He had evidently made up his mind that the road to the Landslip was not a congenial one. In vain the boy who drove him cheered him onwards, in vain Denys tugged at his bridle, in ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... our friend, and tells us that love is proverbially blind. Not so: it is only love that sees, and thus can "win the secret of a weed's plain heart." We only see what dull eyes never see at all. If we wonder what another man sees in his friend, it should be the wonder of humility, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... himself with the point of a dagger. But this punishment he believed to be still too lenient. A general massacre of the men was commanded, and no less than 20,000 women and children were made into slaves. To this day the proverbially easy morals of the Kerman women are attributed to the Afghan invasion, when the women became the concubines of soldiers and lost all respect for themselves; and so is the importation of the dreadful disease which in its most virulent ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the outward superficies. At this sad stirring is the sleeper's rest and ease disturbed and broken, whereof the first feeling and stinging smart admonisheth that he must patiently endure great pain and trouble, and thereunto provide some remedy; as when we say proverbially, to incense hornets, to move a stinking puddle, and to awake a sleeping lion, instead of these more usual expressions, and of a more familiar and plain meaning, to provoke angry persons, to make a thing the worse by meddling with it, and to irritate a testy ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Cecil, son of the Marquis of Salisbury, and one of the most active and energetic champions of the slave-mongers of the South. The young lord, it is well known, stepped down from the lofty pedestal of a bad pedigree to marry the fair, but portionless daughter of an English judge; his father is proverbially mean and stingy, and the young lord himself proportionately poor; and in the intervals of his strenuous advocacy of the claims of the Rebels to European recognition he laudably ekes out his very narrow income by writing articles for the London newspapers and reviews; and rumor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in April, and this is his own vivid description of what he saw there: "This place is indeed a missionary wonder! Twelve years ago there was not a Protestant here, and the people were proverbially ignorant, barbarous, and fanatical. Six years ago the evangelical Armenian church was organized with sixteen members, the congregation at that time consisting of one hundred and twenty. On the last Sabbath I preached ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... it arises—the thing is proverbially spoken; but may be applied to him—as if we should say in general terms, he only is secret who never was trusted; a satirical proverb upon our sex. There's another upon yours—as she is chaste, who was never ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... you say to this threat?—why, entre nous, I like to give way to a sprightly vein when writing to you. 'The devil,' you know, is proverbially said to 'be in a good humor when ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... was to overhaul the pirate schooner and bring her to action before nightfall; for, with bad weather threatening, unless we could succeed in doing this, there was every likelihood of her giving us the slip during the hours of darkness. A stern-chase is proverbially a long chase, and a chase to windward is apt to be even longer, while a start of some ten miles, under such circumstances, must necessarily prove a heavy handicap to the pursuing vessel; nevertheless ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... possible,' I said, 'but not probable. In the course of nature, I ought to die many years before you; and sailors are proverbially short-lived.' ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... are proverbially silent, preferring deeds to words. So, for nearly ten minutes, the handshaking proceeded. At last Douglass, with a warning nod and several gestures, brought the temporary chairman ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... attack on the following morning. The command of the expedition was given to the first lieutenant, who accepted of it with cheerfulness, and retired to his bed in high spirits, with the anticipation of the honour and profit which the dawn of day would heap upon him. He was proverbially brave and cool in action, so that the seamen followed him with confidence as to certain victory. Whether any ill-omened dreams had disturbed his rest, or whether any reflections on the difficult and dangerous nature of the service had alarmed him, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... proverbially uncertain, Mr Thompson. That is principally the reason why I was so bent on making him confess if he had anything to confess. I can't expel a boy and ruin his whole career on mere suspicion. The matter must be proved, doubly proved, and even then I should ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... not for a moment insult the intelligence of my readers by supposing them to share so foolish a delusion. I beg to state from the outset that I write this article entirely for the benefit of Other People. You and I, O proverbially Candid and Intelligent One, it need hardly be said, are better informed. But Other People fall into such ridiculous blunders that it is just as well to put them on their guard beforehand against the insidious advance of false opinions. I have known otherwise good and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... weeks; it may be months; for the Divorce Courts are proverbially slow. But the time will come at length; for I have taken every measure ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Frank Kennedy," said he to himself (at least we presume so, for there was no one else within earshot to whom he could have said it, except the door-post, which every one knows is proverbially a deaf subject). "No man in the settlement drives so furiously. I shouldn't wonder if he ran against the corner of the new fence now. Ha! ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... about not liking it. Of course some people won't like it. Some people never like any new way of doing things. Food habits are proverbially ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... proverbially rapid wing; the summer advanced, and still Mackenzie and his men continued to descend the mighty river of the far north, encountering dangers and vicissitudes enough undoubtedly, but happily escaping those terrified monsters of the forest and the flood, ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... perfectly acquainted with all the secrets of the land, and that there was scarcely a nook or retired corner within Spain, from which the smoke of their fires had not arisen, or where their cattle had not grazed. People, however, so acute as they have always proverbially been, would scarcely be slow in distinguishing the provinces most adapted to their manner of life, and most calculated to afford them opportunities of practising those arts to which they were mainly indebted for their subsistence; the savage hills of Biscay, of Galicia, and the Asturias, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Linsenbarth has it], who grasped with both hands at my rejected offer, experience before long," continues Linsenbarth. "For the loose thing of court-tatters led him such a life that, within three years, age yet only thirty, he had to bite the dust" (BITE AT THE GRASS, says Linsenbarth, proverbially), which was an INCONVENIENTIA including all others. "And I had LEGITIMAM CAUSAM to refuse the vocation CUM ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... litigants; to which I responded by pointing out that I was a typical Indian in the matter of legal subtlety and ready-made wit, and that, if not capable of conducting my own case, how, then, could I be fit to undertake a logomachy for any third parties? finally, that it is proverbially unnecessary to keep a dog when you are equally proficient in the practice of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... were proverbially infamous as informers, are represented by Juvenal as dreading a still ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... called "Xivaro." He is the proud possessor of a sweet-heart, a gamecock, a horse, a hammock, a guitar and a large supply of tobacco. He is quick tempered but not revengeful, and he is proverbially lazy. ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... under a just sense of its responsibility, must judge for itself; and if it think proper, it may revise, or amend, or absolutely undo the work of any predecessor. The laws of the Medes and Persians are said proverbially to have been unalterable; but they stand forth in history as a single example where the true principles of all law have been so ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... trotline. In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... doors. I will send the children away, for I hate to be bothered with them, and it would be a great relief to have them out of my sight. I will make speedy arrangements to that effect. Of course nothing further will be heard of this girl. Men are proverbially inconstant, and Wilfred will soon forget all about this Miss Graystone. It was but a passing fancy, and I have taken the wisest course to get rid of her. I dare say she will get along well enough, and marry somebody in her own sphere in life. She was pretty and dignified with that reserved ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... were seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the case of a book, what one read was not always intelligible, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... strength from their decay and decease, as at the outset it owed its existence to the success of their previous efforts, and which, in spite of constant opposition and bitterest attack, flourishes still, as though possessed of that longevity which is proverbially the attribute of the threatened. 'The Academy,' said Haydon, 'originated in the very basest intrigue.' Undoubtedly there was intrigue in connexion with its origin, but not necessarily of the 'very basest' character. Some ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... he was exactly like a man riding on horseback; but as he was obviously too well-dressed to be a beggar, I have no reason to believe that the direction in which he was riding was the one which beggars on horseback are proverbially expected to take." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... ourselves, few have been able to transfuse it into their daily consciousness. We never looked to England for the encouragement of a popular enthusiasm,—hardly, perhaps, for a cold acquiescence. John Bull, we said, is proverbially a grumbler, proverbially indifferent to all affairs but his own; he will be annoyed by tariffs, and plagued by scarcity of cotton;—what wonder, if we are a little misunderstood? The minor contributors to his daily press will not be able to think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... jealousy, but that is a misleading statement. Othello, as Coleridge pointed out, is not a constitutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in The Winter's Tale. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because, as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Othello feels ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the necessary personages of comedy. That loquacious pedant, the Dottore, was taken from the lawyers and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned Bologna. Scapin was a livery servant, who spoke the dialect of Bergamo, a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like the slaves in Plautus and Terence, were always on the watch to further any wickedness; while Calabria furnished the booby Giangurgello with his grotesque nose. Moliere, it has been ascertained, discovered in the Italian theatre ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... without great labour. It was surrounded by a considerable extent of bog and marshy ground, in which, in the course of their progress, they were frequently plunged up to the waist. On this lake they first observed a black swan, which species, though proverbially rare in other parts of the world, is here by no means uncommon, being found on most of the lakes. This was a very noble bird, larger than the common swan, and equally beautiful in form. On being shot at, it rose and discovered ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... and as the stranger gradually edged away, the Vincejo got more and more into her wake. A stern chase is proverbially a long chase; and though it was apparent from the first that the British, though much smaller, was the faster vessel, it was many hours before she was enabled to get within range. About dusk, however, this was effected, and the first shot from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... unblushing manner in which he will hold forth concerning the antiquity of some article which he has made with his own hands, and the entire absence of all mauvaise honte which he displays when detected in the fraud, have earned for him the reputation he proverbially bears of being the best liar in the Peninsula. The Pahang boy grows up amid talk of war and rumours of war, which makes him long to be a man that he may use his weapons, almost before he has learned to stand upon his feet. Not so the young idea of Trengganu. Men go about ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... allowed," he said, "to take their course. You know, Mrs. Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... singer in the world. The admiral thought they showed very poor taste, for her music was simply horrid and couldn't compare with the warblings of the woods birds. It is well, however, to make allowance for the admiral's opinion, for musicians are proverbially jealous of each other. ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... papers of great value, showing the owner, one Henry Paterson, to be a man of large dealings in Wall-street, were entrusted to my care. My companion expressed his inability to trust himself with so large an amount of property, especially as the servants at his hotel were proverbially inclined to take liberties with other people's goods. At my request, he said he thought two hundred and fifty dollars would be a moderate consideration, since the owner would no doubt value the restoration of his property at twice that sum. I was not possessed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... proverbially frail; and they are so, because they rest not on a mind consolidated by principles, and a heart glowing like a furnace with corresponding feelings. When resting on such a mind and heart, resolutions are not frail; but ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... false witnesses and informers who ever disgraced courts of justice by their presence; and the slightest reflection will convince us that this shallow sophism contains even less practical truth than the general mass of proverbs and maxims, proverbially false though they be. For not only is the chance of falsehood, on the part of the witness who details the circumstances, greater,—since a false impression can be conveyed with far less risk of detection by distortion and exaggeration of a fact than by the invention of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... action gaining brief eminence by their repeated statements of what they had witnessed and their varied surmises. The role of commentator, if mysterious human action be the text, is always popular, and as this explanatory class are proverbially gifted in conjecture, there were many theories of explanation. Some of the guests had already the good taste to prepare for departure, and when Dr. Mark appeared from the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... If comparisons are proverbially odious, they must be specially so if drawn out upon insufficient data. I must not, therefore, on such a flying inspection, go very deeply into my comparative analysis. And yet, under all the circumstances, the subject is one for which I feel not altogether incompetent. ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... If all this be a truthful picture, and really we see no reason for doubt, it does but add another to the many proofs of the springing elasticity of that element of light-hearted short-sightedness which is so proverbially characteristic of the French. But we will say no more, for our paper has already exceeded the limits we had assigned to it; and the things that are must ever prevail in our pages over those that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... relieve me from the anxiety which I must have otherwise felt, as one upon the precarious tenure of whose own life rested the principal prospects of his family, and especially as one who had necessarily some dependence upon the favour of the public, which is proverbially capricious; though it is but justice to add, that, in my own case, I have not found it so. Mr. Pitt had expressed a wish to my personal friend, the Right Hon. William Dundas, now Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, that some fitting ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... and the ancient tragedians felt so little the want of communications between a hero and his confidant, to make us acquainted with the hero's state of mind and views, that they even introduce as a mute personage so important and proverbially famous a friend as a Pylades. But whatever ridicule was cast on the confidants, and however great the reproach of being reduced to make use of them, no attempt was ever made till the time of Alfieri to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in New England villages is proverbially old, so the doctor in small Colorado towns twenty-five years ago was generally young. Dr. Archie was barely thirty. He was tall, with massive shoulders which he held stiffly, and a large, well-shaped head. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the forenoon occupation. Miss Flora does not like being criticized, I find. One must not presume to set her right in the smallest particular. Singers are proverbially irritable! I am not certain I could belong to a glee-club, and never get cross or unreasonable. I hate to be corrected; but I hate more to be incorrect. I could give Canary a hint or two now and then that would be serviceable, if she would permit ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... mighty hunter, and his luck was proverbially marvellous. But as everything goes by contrary in Brittany, to wish a Breton hunter good luck was the very worst thing you could do him. Bad luck was certain to follow—if not that very ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... banks of the Camel between Cornwall and Somerset, where Arthur received the wounds of which he died. The combatants being relatives and former friends, it was characterised with unwonted ferocity, and has consequently come to be used proverbially for any fray or scene of more than ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... which proverbially attends the bold never deserted him. To the Boer forces at large he was what the pirate adventurers and buccaneers of the Elizabethan period, and the privateersmen of the eighteenth century, were to the National Navy. He sailed where he would under letters of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... wounds, a prison, and death in the sight of Monsieur, who remained motionless with his army. In the rapidity of the Queen's enunciation he had not time to examine whether she had employed this expression proverbially or with a direct reference; but at all events, he decided not to notice it, and was indeed prevented from doing so by the Queen, who continued, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... assembled: near a hundred people I should think. Our party made a large addition to the usual congregation. The Bishop's family is proverbially numerous: the consul, and the gentlemen of the mission, have wives, and children, and English establishments. These, and the strangers, occupied places down the room, to the right and left of the desk and communion-table. The converts, and the members of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Of course there is always the lady's point of view. The sex is proverbially fickle, you know. 'Woman, thy vows are traced in sand,' Lord ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... medal was given to Sir Joseph in 1854.) I heard that it was decidedly the best speech of the evening, given "with perfect fluency, distinctness, and command of language," and that you showed great self-possession: was the latter the proverbially desperate courage of a coward? But you are a pretty fellow to be so desperately afraid and then to make the crack speech. Many such an ordeal may you have to go through! I do not know whether Sir William [Hooker] would be contented with Lord ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... piece of Ellwood's, entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among the proverbially sober ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Lady Swettenham being in white, Lady Lathom in pale mauve. Presently "Flags" reappeared bearing white and mauve ribbons (of the exact shade of her dress) for Lady Lathom, and pale pink and blue ones for Lady Swettenham, each about four yards long. Proverbially gallant as are British naval officers, the idea of first studying the ladies' dresses would not have occurred to them; that little touch requires a Frenchman. We wished to take our leave, but the Admiral begged us to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... are, utilised in enabling the great pyramid to stand on the very utmost verge of its commanding hill, within the limits of the two required latitudes, as well as over the centre of the land's physical and radial formation, and at the same time on the sure and proverbially wise foundation of rock.' ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Bread has been proverbially styled the "staff of life." In nearly all ancient languages the entomology of the word "bread" signifies all, indicating; that the bread of earlier periods was in truth what it should be at the present time,—a ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Bob tranquilly in the eye with the limpid gaze of innocence before which Bob's scrutiny fell abashed. For a while his suspicions of anything unusual were almost lulled; the countryside was proverbially curious of anything out of the course of events. Then, from a point midway up the steep trail, he just happened to look back, and just happened through an extraordinary combination of openings to catch a glimpse of a rider on the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... The situation of Venice renders it impossible to bring horses into the town; accordingly, the Venetians are proverbially bad riders. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... most deeply his utterances are the most commonplace, and an Englishman is proverbially incapable of expressing his feelings. In the supreme moments of their lives, it is true, a few men, and those not always the most sincere, may speak eloquently; but for the most part a proposal of marriage from an Englishman is—as it should be—a clumsy thing. Peter Ogilvie could only speak in such ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... can, for example, improve his muscles by athletics, and his brain by education. The use of organs enlarges and strengthens them; the disuse of parts or faculties weakens them. And so great is the power of habit that it is proverbially spoken of as "second nature." It is thus certain that we can modify the individual. We can strengthen (or weaken) his body; we can improve (or deteriorate) his intellect, his habits, his morals. But there remains the still more important question which ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... exuberant imagination, his descriptions partake of the inflated and bombastic; but we have reason to know, that the information which he gives is deduced from authentic sources, without the usual exaggeration proverbially ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... had landed in Sicily, and visited Etna; his ascent up whose side, to the crater, he graphically described, with some striking features; but as this is a subject proverbially enlarged upon by all travellers, I waive further notice, and proceed to state, that Mr. C. after leaving Sicily passed over to the south of Italy, and journeyed on ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the soil is proverbially fertile. The chief products are best exhibited in connection with the four botanical zones into which Junghuhn has divided the island ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... moon was the principal deity. There were also towns such as Larsa and Sippara, where the sun was the chief god; and many of the great gods of later times were originally sun-gods. The Chaldeans, moreover, were proverbially star-watchers, and a "zigurrath" or observatory, a building of seven spheres corresponding to those of the planets as they pass through the signs of the zodiac, and like them rising up to the seat of God at the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With good intentions, hell proverbially is paved. This is an obvious consequence of the principles I have laid down. A 'character,' as J.S. Mill says, 'is a completely fashioned will'; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... plant, which fits context. What then is a 'tater-marrer' (potato-marrow?). Any help? bowyangs: ties (cord, rope, cloth) put around trouser legs below knee bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed. bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions ('mulga' and 'mallee'), and hence equivalent to "outback". Now used generally for remote rural areas ("the bush") and scrubby forest. bushfire: wild fires: whether ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... of interest, or without demanding far more than an adequate security. Count Timascheff, a Russian nobleman, was evidently rich; to him perhaps, for a proper consideration, a loan might be made: Captain Servadac was a Gascon, and Gascons are proverbially poor; it would never do to lend any money to him; but here was a professor, a mere man of science, with circumscribed means; did he expect to borrow? Certainly Isaac would as soon think of flying, as of lending money to him. Such were the thoughts that made ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... has got thoroughly into a woman's mind in this manner, is half way to her heart; the distance between those two stations is proverbially short. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... tigers are proverbially fond of music. Professional trainers tell us that these animals, when tamed, will not do their stunts without the accompaniment of music. The story is told of a group of tigers which recently refused to perform, because the musicians, while ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency, nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the social standing of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think we accepted it at Rattlers ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... more remarkable, if we examine biographies of musicians carefully we find that, even before Wagner, not a few composers assisted in the preparation of their operatic texts; and this remark applies even to some of the Italian composers, who were proverbially careless regarding their librettos. Rossini was, perhaps, too indolent to devote much attention to his texts, and he was apt to postpone even the musical work to the last moment, so that he sometimes had to be locked up in his room by his friends, to enable him ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... misunderstood. And now that experience, dearly bought, has modified visionary and moulded practical theories, how much of the normal interest of the French character has evaporated! Even the love of beauty and the love of glory, proverbially its distinctions, are eclipsed by the sullen orb of Imperialism; the Bourse is more attractive than the battle-field, material ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a rare spectacle, and every child ran to the window to gaze at the passing glitter. Whence should come our fighting men if the bugle should blow? You must have men before you have soldiers. Our institutions raised men. Proverbially the Yankee can turn his hand to anything. He likes to do well what he undertakes. He has a pride in showing himself equal to his position. Above all, he has force of personal character. When a Northern regiment makes ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of very mean creatures, who are physicians to themselves. The hart that is pursued and wounded, they say, knows an herb, which being eaten throws off the arrow: a strange kind of vomit. The dog that pursues it, though he be subject to sickness, even proverbially, knows his grass that recovers him. And it may be true, that the drugger is as near to man as to other creatures; it may be that obvious and present simples, easy to be had, would cure him; but the apothecary is not so near him, nor the physician so ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... naturally accurate in their observations, should submit their results to the criticism of learned societies, for, after all it was in such centres that information from various quarters could be best collected, sifted, and compared. The task of a pioneer is proverbially ungrateful, but he is sufficiently rewarded if he collects facts for the examination of scholars, and if some of these facts stand that test. On the other hand, it was essential that, as a rule, no one should be sent out on a geographical, anthropological, or ethnographical mission ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... any remedy to be found merely in the forgiveness of man or of woman. Women are proverbially, and perhaps divinely, willing to forgive. But a woman's forgiveness does not necessarily make a man able to forgive himself. Nor does it always cleanse an unclean inner life. To many a man it has been just the fact that ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... The Indians are proverbially famous for the facility with which they attract animals towards them. Bates and Wallace also mention having seen, on several occasions, jaguars perfectly tame, roaming in and out of the huts, as their smaller feline relatives would ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... how bold and vivid are their conceptions of the imaginative. The war-song—the death-song—the song of victory—the cradle-chant—the lament for the slain—these are the overflowings of the essential poetry of their untaught souls. Their eloquence is proverbially soaring and figurative; and in spite of all that renders gross and mechanical their ordinary mode of marrying and giving in marriage, instances are not rare among them of love as true, as fiery, and as fatal, as that ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... her, but all her pleadings came to this,—that she should send a neighbour to watch for Tamar on the side of the moat, the young girl having assured her kind protectress, that she had nothing to fear for her, and that as the Laird was proverbially a procrastinator, he might let half the day pass, before he had settled what was to ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... combination may be very romantic, I confess, notwithstanding that I was an unrecognised author, I was not living in a garret, nor writing my MSS. by the proverbially flaring candle, nor going without my dinner in order to ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... the causes of small-pox be removed (generally some impurity in the air or in the food), those causes will work mischief somehow. throw an eruptive disease back into the system is proverbially dangerous.... Moreover, what right has any physician to neglect the cures of small-pox, by which herbalists, hydropaths, and Turkish-bath keepers find it a most ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... his young master frequenting the tables, and though he kept the purse, with the exception of a few pounds, and would certainly have stood between him and ruin, he could not prevent his winning. Richard had the luck, and more, that proverbially attends young people—he had the luck of the devil; his few napoleons swelling to a great many on the very first day, and he was in the seventh heaven of happiness. The next day and the next he won largely, immensely; in vain Maitland threatened to write ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... he hope to make head against him for any time in the field. The Prince's territories were small; his vassals proverbially lazy and peaceable; his treasury empty. The dismallest prospects were before him: and he passed a sleepless night writing to his friends for succor, and calculating with his secretary the small amount of the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... But men are proverbially chary of their confidence, except when they are in love, and being in love is supposed to put even book women out of a man's head. Perhaps in the new Schools of Journalism which are to be inaugurated, there will be supplementary courses in ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... they generally see. When northerners go to the south to reside, they prove very apt scholars. They soon imbibe the sentiments and disposition of their neighbors, and generally go beyond their teachers. Of the two, they are proverbially the hardest masters. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... phratry names Cockatoo, three names of unknown meaning, and the doubtful Kiraru—Kirarawa. Now if a racial conflict is indicated by the names eaglehawk and crow, this must be either because the contending races were already known by these names, or because the two birds in question are proverbially hostile to each other. In either case we are left without any explanation of the two cockatoo phratries. It may indeed be argued that the locality in which the eaglehawk-crow phratry names are found tells strongly in favour of the racial conflict hypothesis; ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... that we have never in our lives seen anything like the French in this season of their anguish. They are treading the winepress as no other modern nation has trodden it, pressing their hearts' blood into the bitter wine of war. They grumble, of course, as they do their hard stint. The French proverbially are a nation of grumblers. Napoleon took them grumbling for fifteen years to glory. He took them grumbling to Moscow, and brought them grumbling back. They grumbled under the Second Empire and into the Republic. In 1916 they all but grumbled themselves into revolution. One heard revolt ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... lamps and wilting humanity; and of this beggarly handful two-thirds were women. Shelby assumed a cheerful front, declaring that a small audience so assembled was deserving of his best, but hewing to this line was another matter. Womankind are proverbially indifferent to politics; and a stouter resolution than his would have flagged in the presence of that preoccupied feminine two-thirds, whose eyes were centred on Mrs. Hilliard's tailor-made gown and Ruth Temple's fall hat. Used as he was to easy victory, this first disappointment of his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the work doing by the Republicans who have gone south, and am especially proud of the acknowledged honorable conduct of those from Ohio. The Democrats make a mistake in sending so many ex-Republicans. New converts are proverbially bitter and unfair towards those ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman |
