"Seldom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea-coast citie as his right, And strikes the rockes with his three-forked mace; Whenceforth issues a warlike steed in sight, 316 The signe by which he chalengeth the place; That all the gods which saw his wondrous might Did surely deeme the victorie his due: But seldom ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... obstruct the circulation of them, should, upon due conviction, "be deemed, published, and treated as an enemy of his country, and be precluded from all trade or intercourse with the inhabitants of these Colonies." And to enforce it there were Committees of Inspection, whose power seldom lay idle in their hands, whose eyes were never sealed in slumber. In this work, which seemed good in their eyes, the State Assemblies and Conventions and Committees of Safety joined heart and hand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... 'E done it, sir. That's true. The big bay 'orse in the further stall—the one wot's next to you. I've seen some better 'orses; I've seldom seen a wuss, But 'e 'olds the bloomin' record, an' that's good ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... down upon the Twenty-eighth, Forty-second, Forty-fourth, and First Royals. The Twenty-eighth and the Royals did not indeed wait to be attacked, but led by Picton and Kempt in person resolutely advanced to charge the French cavalry. This feat, seldom exampled in military history, was rendered necessary in order to cover the flank of the Forty-second and Forty-fourth, now, by the flight of the Brunswickers, Dutch, and Belgians, open to the attacks of the French cavalry. The fields ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... from that of England. As a rule, we seldom have enough rain, from the time corn is planted until it is harvested, to more than saturate the ground on our upland soils. This year is an exception. On Sunday night, May 20, 1883, we had a northeast storm which continued three days. During ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... of all. The liberty especially which has to purchase itself by social isolation, and each man standing separate from the other, having 'no business with him' but a cash-account: this is such a liberty as the Earth seldom saw;—as the Earth will not long put up with, recommend it how you may. This liberty turns out, before it have long continued in action, with all men flinging up their caps round it, to be, for the Working Millions a liberty to die by ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... possessed a MS. Account of the Glorious Achievements of Louis XIV. with illustrative drawings, and did it the honour of attaching his autograph—an operation seldom ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... if communing with himself, was heard to murmur unrepentantly that indeed women seldom knew how they had "done it," to which Mrs. Travers in a weary tone returned the remark that no two men were dense in the same way. To this Mr. d'Alcacer assented without difficulty. "Yes, our brand presents more varieties. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... acquaintance with the Classics is what may be called the Good Breeding of Poetry, as it gives a certain gracefulness which never forsakes a mind that contracted it in youth; but is seldom, or never, hit by those who ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... money upon things which at first thought seem to give an inadequate return. There is an old adage, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," which if true means that the apple is a real economy, a kind of health insurance, for an apple costs seldom over five cents—often only one—and a doctor's visit may easily cost a hundred times as much. There is a certain amount of truth in the saying, though the apple does not have a monopoly of the supposed virtue. It is more accurate, ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... the handling of not the highest order of controversialists, who battered and defaced what they bandied about in argument, which was often ingenious and acute, and often mere verbal sophistry, but which, in any case, seldom rose to the true height of the question. Used either as instruments of proof or as fair game for attack, they suffered in the common and popular feeling about them. Taken in a lump, and with little realising of all that they were and implied, they furnished a cheap and tempting material for "short ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... conjoins good to the truths which a man receives, because he cannot take good as of himself, it being no object of his sight, as it does not relate to light, but to heat, which is felt and not seen; therefore when a man sees truth in his thought, he seldom reflects upon the good which flows into it from the love of the will, and which gives it life: neither does a wife reflect upon the good belonging to her, but upon the husband's inclination towards her, which is according to the assent of his understanding to wisdom: the good ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... life, a spirit titanic and in clash with its material, and produced in the mastery of this every-day material, commonly called sordid, a phantasmagoria intense with beauty. A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic's observation about Gogol: "Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life." But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol's work his "free Cossack soul" trying ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... We can seldom, if ever, be quite sure what will be the result of our conduct. Meaning to cure, we may only too probably kill; meaning to kill, we may not impossibly cure. Until a thing is done, we cannot determine as to its utility; ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... that he was certain his death was near, appeared to be perfectly resigned, was seldom or never fretful or out of temper, and often said to his faithful servant, who gave me this account, 'Attend, Francis, to the salvation of your soul, which is the object of greatest importance:' he also explained to him passages in ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... disease; they moreover excite fevers in persons predisposed to them from other causes. This has been remarked in all the yellow-fevers which have visited the cities of the United States. Hard-drinkers seldom escape, and rarely recover from them. The following diseases are the usual consequences of the habitual ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... they found Mrs. Bernard Temple and Nora. Nora was lying on a sofa looking tired and pale, and Mrs. Bernard Temple was moving about the room in a bustling sort of fashion arranging flowers. The drawing-room was small and crowded with knick-knacks. Antonia seldom swept across this room without knocking a table over or flicking a paper on to ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... "The Midnight Hunter of the Moor," seldom varies, although stories of the Wish Hounds differ from time ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... to a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from old master's, and, being a field hand, she seldom had leisure, by day, for the performance of the journey. The nights and the distance were both obstacles to her visits. She was obliged to walk, unless chance flung into her way an opportunity to ride; and the latter was sometimes ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... very seldom any three men, except three sailors, have ever thought so much of a rope at the same moment; and before Green could finish his tour round the room and rejoin Wilton, those to whom he had spoken were all hastening up St. James's Street as fast as they could go. Green returned to the table where ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... which are necessary to maintain life; and constitutes a complete diet for infants. It will sustain life in an adult for several months. Although milk furnishes a useful food, it is not essential to a diet required for active bodily exercise. It is seldom given to athletes while in active training. Adults who are able to eat any kind of food are kept in better health by abstaining from milk, except as used for cooking purposes. An occasional glass of hot milk taken as a stimulant for tired brain and ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... listening. Her uncle's bedroom door lay straight ahead. To her right and left narrow corridors led to the wings. Her room and Bobby's and a spare room were in the right-hand wing. The opposite corridor was seldom used, for the left-hand wing was the oldest portion of the house, and in the march of years too many legends had gathered about it. The large bedroom was there with its private hall beyond, and a narrow, enclosed staircase, ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... any hope of communicating with Bootle until the present deadlock in the operations of the two armies was a thing of the past. Completely mystified now by Carmela's glib reference to the two men whose names were so often in her thoughts though seldom on her lips, she could only gaze at the Senhora De Sylva in ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... is not as desirable as roasting on the spit, universally practised during the middle ages. The spit seems to have been unknown to the Romans. It is seldom used today, although we have improved it by turning it ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... business It was with special pleasure that I learned that he was turning his thoughts to the subject of religion. During the services in the little Pine-street church he would sit with thoughtful face, and not seldom with moistened eyes. He read the Bible and prayed in secret. I was not surprised when he came to me one day and opened his heart. The great crisis in his life had come. God was speaking to his soul, and he was listening to his voice. The uplifted cross drew him, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... still bore witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of music encumbered the music-stand in the lower room and on his shelves stood two volumes by Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay Science. He wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk. One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... finished his account of what were his intentions towards his guest, he gave him to understand that the interview was at an end, at the same time intimating how seldom it was that he dealt so generously with a young writer. Borrow then rose from the table and passed out of the house, leaving his host to muse, as was his custom on Sunday afternoons, "on the magnificence of nature and the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... contributed to their growth, and neither the Guano nor Loam Island having been forgotten, many of them were now thirty feet high. As he approached the crater, on that occasion, he looked at those promising fruits of his early and provident care for the future with great satisfaction, for seldom was the labour of man better rewarded. Mark well knew the value of this tree, which was of use in a variety of ways, in addition to the delicious and healthful fruit it bears; delicious and healthful when eaten shortly after it is separated from the tree. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... was to pour cans of water from the houses on the heads of people in the streets.[488] In Provence the midsummer fires are still popular. Children go from door to door begging for fuel, and they are seldom sent empty away. Formerly the priest, the mayor, and the aldermen used to walk in procession to the bonfire, and even deigned to light it; after which the assembly marched thrice round the burning pile, while the church bells pealed and rockets ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... juice. And, O king, Vyushitaswa had for his dear wife, Bhadra, the daughter of Kakshivat, unrivalled for beauty on earth. And it hath been heard by us that the couple loved each other deeply. King Vyushitaswa was seldom separated from his wife. Sexual excess, however, brought on an attack of phthisis and the king died within a few days, sinking like the Sun in his glory. Then Bhadra, his beautiful queen, was plunged into woe, and as she was sonless, O tiger among men, she wept in great ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the pines behind it; the sweet little village church; even the appearance of the rustics;—it is all impressively old English. I suppose you are very seldom there?' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... often visited a landscape painter, who had a very beautiful wife, but he always met with the husband. "Zounds," said he, one day to him, "for a painter of landscapes, you are very seldom ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... usual course of an epidemic, the poison creeping from house to house, along one side of a street, seldom, crossing the road, spreading sometimes around the whole block of houses before appearing in another neighborhood, unless distinctly carried there by a visitor to the infected zone who himself became stricken, all this series of peculiar ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... seldom shows his feelings, I know he has grieved over his son. There can be no question that Cyril should have returned; I've told him ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... Miss Rosemary Allen seldom let him get beyond that point, and she interrupted him now by wrinkling her nose at him in a manner that made Andy Green forget altogether that he had begun a sentence upon a subject forbidden. Later she went back to her worries; she was a ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the Song-Sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and the snow. So different are the habits of birds in different localities. Even the Crow does not winter here, and is seldom seen after December or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... surroundings make them. Others only partially absorb tastes and sentiments that form the influence about them. They maintain a decided individuality; yet they are most always noticeably marked with the general character of their surroundings. It is very, very seldom that a nature is fixed from ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... the tidings of Harold's accession to the throne was a man named Tostig, Harold's brother. Though he was Harold's brother, he was still his bitterest enemy. Brothers are seldom friends in families where there is a crown to be contended for. There were, of course, no public modes of communicating intelligence in those days, and Tostig had learned the facts of Edward's death ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... reverse, being a quiet routine plodding sort of people, particularly as regards the provincials; and even amongst the Parisians there are thousands that reside in one quarter of the city, which they seldom quit, never approaching what they consider the gay portion of Paris, but live amongst each other, visiting only within their own circle, consisting almost entirely of their relations and family connexions. This feeling is certainly exemplified still farther at Boulogne, as I knew ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... mayde, though her hands and body be good, and nature very good, I think. Back with Captain Erwin, discoursing about the East Indys, where he hath often been. And among other things he tells me how the King of Syam seldom goes out without thirty or forty thousand people with him, and not a word spoke, nor a hum or cough in the whole company to be heard. He tells me the punishment frequently there for malefactors is cutting off the crowne of their head, which ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Bathurst's may be mentioned, which Johnson repeated, appearing to acknowledge it to be well founded, namely, it was somewhat remarkable how seldom, on occasion of coming into the company of any new person, one felt any wish or ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... "Such men seldom have leisure to sit quietly in a chair," said Grandfather. "We must make the best of such ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was all that their leader could do to pacify them. And then one of those strokes of fortune which will always come to a favoured few was vouchsafed; as the terrified Romans delved in the earth where rain had seldom fallen, lo! on the very first night of their toil fresh water bubbled up, and all the danger was at ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... but a name, Unless to one you stint the flame, The child whom many fathers share, Hath seldom known a father's care; 'Tis thus in friendship; who depend On many, rarely find a friend. A hare, who, in a civil way, Complied with ev'ry thing, like Gay, Was known by all the bestial train Who haunt the wood, or graze the ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... fighting planes had mixed in with the Allied fighters, interrupting their assault upon the bombers. And such an exhibition of diving, darting, nose dipping, looping, and what not had seldom been seen along that ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... of a libertine before he arrived at an age to be really one. My father tried what effect placing him with a master would produce, but he still persisted in the same ill conduct. Though I saw him so seldom that it could hardly be said we were acquainted. I loved him tenderly, and believe he had as strong an affection for me as a youth of his dissipated turn of mind could be supposed capable of. One day, I remember, when my father was correcting him severely, I threw myself between ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... traveler Waterton to declare that they were such as might have had their origin in the infernal regions. The howlers are large and stout bodied monkeys, with bearded faces, and very strong and powerfully grasping tails. They inhabit the wildest forests; they are very shy, and are seldom taken captive, though they are less active ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... Were I to remain here long, doing nothing, I should be lost. In this great Babylon one reputation displaces another. Let me be seen but three times at the theatre and I shall no longer excite attention; so I shall go there but seldom." When he went he occupied a box shaded with curtains. The manager of the opera wished to get up a special performance in his honour; but he declined the offer. When I observed that it must be agreeable to him to see his fellow-citizens so eagerly running after him, he replied, "Bah! the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that he said he often had trouble to make both ends of his philosophy meet. Any man who seeks to compass any of the fundamental problems with the little span of his finite mind, is bound at times to have trouble to make both ends meet. The man of science seldom has any such trouble with his problems; he usually knows what is the matter and forthwith seeks to remedy it. But the philosopher works with a much more intangible and elusive material, and is lucky if he is ever aware when both ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... sailed on towards the east before a steady breeze. Often for days together not a sheet nor tack was started; the crew had seldom to go aloft, except to serve some of the rigging, or to keep the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... mental word, of the idea. Ideas themselves he considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative, and exempt from time. In this sense the word Idea became the property of the Platonic school; and it seldom occurs in Aristotle, without some such phrase annexed to it, as according to Plato, or as Plato says. Our English writers to the end of the reign of Charles II or somewhat later, employed it either in the original sense, or Platonically, or in a sense nearly correspondent to our present ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the throat in these days seldom forwards any object,—unless the taken one be known to the police. I think Lord Fawn is behaving very badly, and I have told him so. No doubt he is under the influence of others,—mother and sisters,—who are ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... troubled to think deeply on matters outside his material interests. Of religion, he had none, and he seldom stopped to consider the ethical side of a question. But all at once, as by a miracle, the scales fell from his eyes. In a sudden flash of illuminating reason he saw himself as he was—selfish, cynical, inconsiderate, brutal. He was ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... country of my choice, With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare. Seldom in these acres is heard any voice But voice of cold water that runs here and there Through rocks and lank heather growing without care. No mice in the heath run nor no birds cry For fear of the dark speck that floats ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... while Nell took her place beside the invalid's chair. Five minutes later, Vernon had revised his judgment and decided that Nell was far the handsomer—she had the air, somehow, which one associates with duchesses, but which, alas! is, in reality, so seldom theirs. She was just a little regal, just a little awe-inspiring, so that to win a smile impressed one as, in a way, an achievement. Vernon had won several before they had been long together, and felt his heart growing strangely, ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... doors opened. A second door, at one side (marked B on the plan), led to Mr. Macallan's sleeping-room. A third door, on the opposite side (marked C on the plan), communicated with a little study, or book-room, used, as I was told, by Mr. Macallan's mother when she was staying at Gleninch, but seldom or never entered by any one else. Mr. Macallan's mother was not at Gleninch while I was there. The door between the bedroom and this study was locked, and the key was taken out. I don't know who had the key, or whether there ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... rather frequent, but as they generally came on at night, and were over before morning, so that they did not specially interfere with her work, they were not alarming to the rest of the household. Indeed, they seldom heard of them till they were over; for the considerate Mrs Tilman was wont to insist to Sarah, that the ladies should not be disturbed on her account. But Sarah had become a little uncomfortable, and had confessed as much to Graeme, and Graeme ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... without a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky; though, I say, this falsity is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it seems to be partly and practically so in much of the doing and teaching even of holy men, who in the recommending of the love of God to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly and immediately shown; though they insist much on his giving of bread, and raiment, and health, (which he gives to all inferior creatures,) they require us not to ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the march, and led them through the jungle into deeper and darker shades. Here the forest was quite free from underwood, and the leafy canopy overhead was so dense that the sky could seldom be seen. Everything appeared to be steeped in a soft mellow shade of yellowish green, which was delightfully cool and refreshing in a land lying so very near to the equator. The howling and hoarse barking of wild beasts was now heard to an extent that fully satisfied Larry O'Hale and ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... not: Yet, if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much; He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music: Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit That could be moved to smile at any thing. Such men as he be never at heart's ease Whiles they behold a greater than themselves; And therefore are they ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... people to learn that in 1915 this little play was a recruiting poster in disguise. The British officer seldom likes Irish soldiers; but he always tries to have a certain proportion of them in his battalion, because, partly from a want of common sense which leads them to value their lives less than Englishmen do [lives are really ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... seek to analyze his feelings. He felt for these two women an equal affection; he was perfectly happy, perfectly tranquil. Then he was not in love, for love and tranquillity seldom dwell at peace in ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... of dramatic interest from beginning to end, and crowded with the experiences and vicissitudes of a most eventful nature. What he promised he fulfilled; what he attempted, he seldom, or never failed to accomplish; what he believed, he dared to proclaim upon the housetop; what he ardently desired, and incessantly labored for, was the reign of universal freedom, peace, and righteousness. He was among the manliest of men, and the gentlest of spirits. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... which are provided with efficient cutting or tearing teeth for the ordinary purposes of life, such as the carnivora, insectivora, and rodents, are seldom furnished with weapons especially adapted for fighting with their rivals. The case is very different with the males of many other animals. We see this in the horns of stags and of certain kinds of antelopes in which the females are hornless. With many animals the canine ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... be among my readers—alas for such!—to whom the word Father brings no cheer, no dawn, in whose heart it rouses no tremble of even a vanished emotion. It is hardly likely to be their fault. For though as children we seldom love up to the mark of reason; though we often offend; and although the conduct of some children is inexplicable to the parent who loves them; yet, if the parent has been but ordinarily kind, even the son who has grown up a worthless man, will ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... of the bright "handsome," rather nude rooms—they were like women dressed for a ball—where the displaced chairs, at awkward angles to each other, seemed to retain the attitudes of bored talkers. Her heart beat as she had seldom known it, but she continued to make a pretence of looking at the pictures on the walls and the ornaments on the tables, while she hoped that, as she preferred it, it would be also the course her father would like best. She hoped "awfully," as she would have said, that he wouldn't think ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... were naturally somewhat aristocratic, I think. Also, as I have said, our talk was in the 'sixties. He was sensitive, very proud, inclined, perhaps, to scornfulness, certainly to fastidiousness, and one who seldom suffered fools either gladly or with much show of tolerance. It was a somewhat unfortunate temperament, probably, for a man situated as he was, possessed of no private means and dependent entirely upon his earnings. In my mother, I believe he had married a lady of ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... whether open or covert, hardly restrained by the formalities of modern civilization, which seldom succeeds in masking the painful reality, has created the singular spectacle witnessed at the present time,—that is, the undefined aggravation of a military situation which absorbs the greater part of the resources of nations, wrung ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... the name of this sea?" he had said, and Jimmy had snapped his fingers and waved his arm about in his anxiety to catch the master's eye. You see, it was so seldom, so very seldom, that Jimmy felt he knew the right answer to any question, and the new experience was intoxicating. The master too seemed to find it unusual, and he at once turned to Jimmy and said, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... men's love begat in bounteous flow; It blossomed round his path as flowers bloom, Filling his life with such a rare perfume Of heart's devotion kings can seldom know. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... temperament, co-operating with content and a smooth current down the course of life. But my career has been one of difficulties, and doubts, and errors. From my infancy I have been the sport of accident, and though the wind has often borne me into harbour, it has seldom been into that which the pilot destined. Let me recall to you—but the task must be brief—the odd and wayward fates of my youth, and the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of the composer are not few, and that there is a party formed against him of his own profession, I hope, and am persuaded, that this prejudice will turn in the end to his advantage. For the greatest part of an audience is always uninterested, though seldom knowing; and if the music be well composed, and well performed, they, who find themselves pleased, will be so wise as not to be imposed upon, and fooled out of their satisfaction. The newness of the undertaking is all the hazard. When operas ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last results. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and place,—though her kitchen generally looked as if it had ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... very seldom, I detected a certain gracefulness among the younger women that was altogether new to my observation. It was a charm proper to the lowest class. One girl I particularly remember, in a garb none of the cleanest and nowise smart, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in my time I have had enough of satin shoes and of silver gilt heels; they click-clack as loud as yours, and cost much more to those who walk with them, not to mention that they will seldom deign to walk at all. Your wooden shoes are picturesque. Paganini made a violin out of a wooden shoe. Who knows what music may lurk in yours, only you have never heard it. Perhaps I have. It was Bac who gave you the red shoes that was the barbarian, ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... in a populous city, and its frequent repetitions give it weight and consequence, perhaps they will not censure very severely those who bestow some attention to affairs of this seemingly low nature. Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... were the believers, we young fellows were the scoffers. But for the well known fact that it is very seldom indeed that these fakirs will utter any of their predictions to Europeans, some of us would have gone to him to test his powers. As it was, none of us ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... sensibly diminished. The principal and most powerful solvent of the revived barbarism of Europe was always the codified jurisprudence of Justinian, wherever it was studied with that passionate enthusiasm which it seldom failed to awaken. It covertly but most efficaciously undermined the customs which it pretended merely to interpret. But the Chapter of law relating to married women was for the most part read by the light, not of Roman, but of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... are rare of resemblance between our slang phrases and theirs. Once in a while such a phrase as "Asseyezvous dessus" (literally, Sit on him) strikes one; but seldom. French slang teems with words that caricature and satirize personal defects, of which many are brutally coarse and not quotable. A comical expression for a sumptuous meal is a "Balthazar" (Belshazzar); and an unpleasant one for a coffin is a "boite a dominos" (a box of dominoes); ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... ecstasy hear, When they tune their harps at the jasper throne Of eternal light, with its rainbow zone; And the harmony drawn from those living strings Gushes forth from the fountain whence music springs; But those songs divine, of heavenly birth, Are seldom repeated to sons of earth. Such sounds as I heard by that summer sea Were never produced by man's minstrelsy; Which rose and sank by the billowy motion Of the breaking wave and the heaving ocean: Now borne on the night-breeze was wafted high, Through ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... of considerable height, extremely abrupt and rugged, and frequently exhibit an almost perpendicular face of bare rock. To these succeed numerous conical mountains rising out of Savannahs and plains, and seldom exceeding from 300 to 500 feet in height. Finally between Chagres on the Atlantic side, and Chorrera on the Pacific side, the conical mountains are not so numerous, having plains of great extent interspersed, with occasional ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... them the character of a morbid or degenerative sign similar to the inversions. This view, however, is easier to refute in this than in the former case. Everyday experience has shown that most of these transgressions, at least the milder ones, are seldom wanting as components in the sexual life of normals who look upon them as upon other intimacies. Wherever the conditions are favorable such a perversion may for a long time be substituted by a normal person for the normal sexual aim or it may be placed near it. In no normal person does ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... whom he had so fondly clung from his birth, in a few months he recovered his wonted spirits, and his cheeks again played with dimples, as his flashing eye beamed from under his long eyelashes. He attached himself to the old quarter-master, and seldom quitted him—he slept in his hammock, he stood by his side when he was on deck, at his duty, steering the ship, and he listened to the stories of the good old man, who soon taught him to read and write. For three years thus passed his life; ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... episode, and for several days the legend threatened to become a romance. But the young soldier reappeared in 1813 at the passage of the Bidassoa, where he was promoted lieutenant in the 4th Hussars, and was given the Cross by the Emperor, who seldom awarded it. The return of the Bourbons suddenly interrupted this career, so well begun. The young cavalry officer then undertook the business of maritime insurance, earning honorably a large fortune, which he spent with truly military generosity, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... father and mother—parents only in name—died, a compassionate book-vendor gave him enough stock in trade to set up a little stall of his own. Here, in his book-stall, he sat in the sun all day, waiting for the customers that seldom came, and reading the fine deeds of the people of the ancient time, or the beautiful thoughts of the poets that had warmed millions of hearts before that hour, and still glowed for him with undiminished fire. One day, when he was reading some book, that, small as it was, was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... compensated for our fatigue and disappointment. In our way we came to one of the few places where access to the island is not guarded by a reef, and, consequently, a high surf breaks upon the shore; a more dreadful one indeed I had seldom seen; it was impossible for any European boat to have lived in it; and if the best swimmer in Europe had, by any accident, been exposed to its fury, I am confident that he would not have been able to preserve himself from drowning, especially as the shore was covered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... court chronicler. Ethelberta, in a dress sloped about as high over the shoulder as would have drawn approval from Reynolds, and expostulation from Lely, thawed and thawed each friend who came near her, and sent him or her away smiling; yet she felt a little surprise. She had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but the present assemblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned stability and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under this historical roof. Nobody of her entertainer's ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... least respectable of his party. He would have done true work had it been given him to do. But at the present moment his own party did not believe in him. There was no need at present for independent wrathful eloquence. There seldom is need in the House of Commons for independent eloquence. The few men who have acquired for themselves at last the power of expressing it, not to empty benches, not amidst coughings and hootings, and loud conversation, have had to make their way to that point either by long efficient ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... yells as were seldom heard on the gridiron, Frank, accompanied by Shadduck, whose interfering services were no longer needed, touched the ball down exactly in the middle of the line, behind the two posts, while the straggling Clifford players straggled madly down the field, but too late. Behind them came their ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... forgot the Stewarts. And suddenly he felt absolutely free, alone, with nothing behind to remember, with wild, thrilling, nameless life before him. Just then the long mourn of a timber wolf wailed in with the wind. Seldom had he heard the cry of one of those night wanderers. There was nothing like it—no sound like it to fix in the lone camper's heart the great solitude ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Seldom, say the members of the censor's staff, is anything forbidden found in the foreign language letters. The only striking feature about them as a whole is the small number that are written in German. In fact the Chinese letters as ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of Denmark and what might happen there than we, said that Cnut waited for news from thence. It might be that some trouble would arise at home, for seldom did a king come to his throne there without fighting against upstarts ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... remains congruent with these. Representative government fails to yield all that its inventors hoped of it, simply because it is so tolerably representative of its majorities; and there is thus great truth in the common consolation that our municipal governments, like larger ones, are seldom much worse than we deserve. Each social formation, through each of its material activities, exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and ideals wins also its place and power. At one time the legal and punitive point of view, directing itself mainly ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... it then grew perpendicularly downwards. We learn from this [page 528] case that when the tips are amputated after an exposure to geotropism of only 45 m., though a slight influence is sometimes transmitted to the adjoining part of the radicle, yet this seldom suffices, and then only slowly, to induce even moderately ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... miscellaneous assortment of customs and superstitions under the title: Animal and Plant Lore of Children. This article was in the main composed of reminiscences of my own childhood spent in Northern Ohio, though two or three friends of New England rearing contributed personal recollections. Seldom is a line cast which brings ashore such an abundant catch as did my initial folk-lore paper. A footnote had, by the advice of a friend, been appended asking readers to send similar lore to the writer. About seventy answers were received, from all sorts of ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... being able to squander at one time much larger sums of money than before: "Roberto was now famozed for an arch-playmaking-poet; his purse, like the sea, somtime sweld, anon like the same sea fell to a low ebb; yet seldom he wanted, his labors ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... made frightful havoc. "In January," says Vicars, "we were informed by the Indians that we were to be attacked. The garrison was then so weak that the strongest guard we proposed to mount was a subaltern and twenty men; but we were seldom able to mount more than sixteen or eighteen, and half of those were obliged to have sticks in their hands to support them. The men were so weak that the sentries often fell down on their posts, and lay there till the relief came and lifted them up." His ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... girl, Blanche was nature's self, warm, gentle, confiding,—as an unmarried woman, she was a heartless coquette,—as a matron, an exemplary mother and an affectionate wife. During the time Delancey was abroad, he heard of Blanche but seldom, for the lovers were not of that age in which a correspondence would be tolerated by Blanche's family. She once managed to send him, by the hands of a young cousin, some trifling present, with a few lines accompanying it, informing him that she had not forgotten him. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... SMITH—"You seldom see such beautiful golf as that man plays. His drives were corking, his approaches superb and he never missed ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... was written, I suppose, about the middle of June; and, while he was writing it, Philadelphia was all astir with warlike preparation. Seldom has a peaceful city, a city of Quakers and brotherly love, undergone such a transformation as Philadelphia did in a few months. As Mr. Jefferson sat at his little desk composing the Declaration, with the windows open at that warm season, he must have heard the troops drilling in Independence ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... Molly did not love him. And, he was bound to admit, there was no earthly reason why she ever should. A man in love is seldom vain about his personal attractions. Also, her father firmly believed ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... painfully, time to fade. When she did come to him, he was further annoyed by the fact that Erebus came too, and with a truculent air announced her intention of accompanying them. Mrs. Dangerfield was surprised; Erebus seldom showed any taste for such a gentle occupation. Also she was relieved; she did not want Captain Baster to propose before she had taken ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... not that I do not approve of you, Polly, for I so seldom do that," Aunt Patricia replied. "It is that I also feel it my duty to recall you to your duty. You speak of having lately observed the Camp Fire girls wandering about near you. I feel it an effort to believe this because only a short time ago, while undoubtedly you were enjoying ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... did as he was desired; for on that point he was seldom slow, except in the particulars of giving change, and testing the goodness of any piece of coin that was proffered to him, by the application of his teeth or his tongue, or some other test, or in doubtful cases, by a long series of tests terminating in its rejection. The guest then ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... marriage, he had built a home for Beryl and himself in an exclusive suburb, on a hilly bit of land with a deep ravine at the back. But it was small and Beryl had not even been allowed maids except when they entertained, which was seldom. Soon he would change all that, Stern told himself. They had not dared to while ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... duke returned to France, and divided his time between the Palais Royal and his magnificent rural retreat at Neuilly. Wealth, rank, and hospitality will always draw a crowd. The duke lived, as it were, in a small but brilliant court of his own. He seldom appeared in the court of Louis XVIII., and took no part in public affairs. Much of his time was devoted to superintending the education of his very interesting group of children. Madame de Genlis gives the following ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... different organisation might put the poisoner's science in the wrong—but as before upon human subjects; as before, a 'corpus vili' was taken. The marquise had the reputation of a pious and charitable lady; seldom did she fail to relieve the poor who appealed: more than this, she took part in the work of those devoted women who are pledged to the service of the sick, and she walked the hospitals and presented wine and other medicaments. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... American goldfinch, this bird builds later in the season than any other, its nest, in our northern climate, seldom being undertaken till July. As with the goldfinch, the reason is, probably, that suitable food for the young cannot be had ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... still read their Marryat nowadays—your own conception; and I will only say that it probably bears the same relation to the Melpomene's gun-room as chalk to cheese. The Melpomene's gun-room was low—so low that Strangways seldom entered it but he contused himself—and it was also dark as the inside of a hat, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dismay, the northwest gale continued to blow almost unceasingly during the next few days. Sometimes towards evening the wind would moderate sufficiently to permit us to troll with difficulty along the lee shore of an island, but seldom were we rewarded with more than a single namaycush, and so far from our getting enough fish to carry us over our long portage to Lake Disappointment, we did not catch enough for our daily needs, and were compelled to draw on our little store of emergency provisions. On Wednesday (September 16th) ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... by the Christian Church—the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Of these, the first two are commonly used, the third being not so well known and being seldom used. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... until the Divine Wife could see a change in the man. He grew listless, and kept to one place prone by the river, and looked up but seldom, and then always with a moody face. Interest was dying in him. And when she made sure of it, even while she was saying to herself, 'The creature is sick of his being,' there was a roar of the creative will at work again, and in a twinkling the earth, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Wearied Business Men do shake with glee At mimes that say "Dubuque" or "Kankakee"; As basement-brows that laugh at New Rochelle; As lackwits laugh when actors mention Hell. Perhaps—it may be so—I am not sure— Perhaps it is that thou wast so obscure, And that one seldom hears a single word of thee; I know a lot of girls that never heard of thee. Hence did I smile, perhaps.... How very near The careless laughing to the thoughtful tear! O Fillmore, let me sheathe my mocking pen. God rest thee! I'll not laugh at ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... periods. It was remarked that each of his absences generally coincided with the stopping of a coach—a frequent occurrence in Normandy at this time, and one that was considered as justifiable by the royalists. Seldom did they feel any qualms about these exploits. The driver, and often his escort, were accomplices of the Chouans. A few shots were fired from muskets or pistols to keep up the pretence of a fight. Some of the men opened the chests ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre |
