"Significancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frequently seen in the hands of men or spirits, and always in a way connected with worship or auspicious protection; sometimes it is held to the king's nostrils by his attendant protecting spirits, (known by their wings); a gesture of unmistakable significancy, since in ancient languages "the breath of the nostrils" is synonymous ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... the University. In 1829, Mr. Froude, or Mr. Robert Wilberforce, or Mr. Newman were but individuals; and, when they ranged themselves in the contest of that year on the side of Sir Robert Inglis, men on either side only asked with surprise how they got there, and attached no significancy to the fact; but Dr. Pusey was, to use the common expression, a host in himself; he was able to give a name, a form, and a personality, to what was without him a sort of mob; and when various parties had to meet together in order to resist the liberal acts of ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... only gives significancy to music, but contributes greatly to heighten its agreeable effect. We have heard it performed, some time or other, in an agreeable place, perhaps, or by an agreeable person, or accompanied with words that describe agreeable ideas; or we have heard it in our ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... uttered with terrible significancy; and the nun turned aside, leaving Flora and the countess each a prey ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... with all my heart," says I, "fortune had brought me first to light in this country; or (but for your sake I could almost say) had never brought me into it at all; for to be a creature of the least significancy, of the whole race but one, is a melancholy circumstance."—"Fear not," says she, "my love, for you have a wife will hazard all for you, though you are restrained; and as my inclinations and affections are so much yours, that I need but ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... in the case before us, the hostile suggestion is peculiarly infelicitous. There is even inexpressible tenderness and beauty, the deepest Gospel significancy, in the reservation of the clause "out of whom He had cast seven devils," for this place. The reason, I say, is even obvious why an "appendix," which would have been meaningless before, is introduced in connexion with Mary Magdalene's august privilege of being the first of the human ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... demanded the use of some tobacco; and he undid his fingers from Elvira's in order to roll a cigarette. It was gently done, and he took care that his indulgence should in no other way disturb his wife's position. But it seemed to catch the eye of the painter's wife with a special significancy. She looked straight before her for an instant, and then, with a swift and stealthy movement, took hold of her husband's hand below the table. Alas! she might have spared herself the dexterity. For the poor fellow was so overcome ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of them on my pillow. Now my agricultural library became far more interesting and useful than before. I had had a touch of real, actual practice, and could already understand and appreciate many suggestions which had heretofore been of doubtful significancy. Thus the long winter came gradually in, closing up the great volume of vegetable life, but affording me abundant time for studying that other volume which had so singularly fallen in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Celestina, I am not altered. Thou art to me as ever, my trusty and valued associate, bound to me by ties of peculiar significancy, and as sacred as those which ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... texture of the narrative, no less than its 'edifying and eminently Christian' character, vindicates for the Pericope de adultera a right to its place in the Gospel. Let me endeavour to explain what seems to be its spiritual significancy: in other words, to interpret ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... mental processes, soon grew weary; he repeated aloud a fact of figures without the least comprehension of the sounds formed by his lips, and he would say them again and again, until he had forced into his blurring mind some significance, some connection. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... survival. Overlaying the countless originating causes of moral ideals are two main preservation—causes, two constant factors which retain certain of the innumerable impulses for one reason or other momentarily dominant. These are of extreme significance for a comprehension of the function of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... up, and smiled with ill-natured significance; for Cratinus, the ribald, had openly declared in the theatre, that Pericles needed only to look in his mirror, to discover a model for the sloping roof of the Odeum. Athenian guests were indignant at being thus reminded of the gross allusion to a deformity conspicuous ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... the fluids or juices of the food on the tin of the can. Such action and such consequent solution of the tin, and consequent admixture of a possibly assimilable compound of tin with the food, in my opinion never occurs to an extent which in relation to health has any significance whatever. The occurrence of tin, not as a compound, but as the metal itself, is, if possible, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... id est occurs three times, once in full, and twice represented by the common contraction .i., which is universally used in MSS. of Irish origin for the introduction of a gloss. If we write the sentence as below, we shall see the significance of the different ways in which the expression is written, and by expunging the glosses can make the sentence less ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... had enlarged his credit in every direction, and had then planned this piece of friendly perjury for Rocque Valescure, who was now descending the steps of the Court House to the arms of his friends and amid the execrations of his foes. What the alleged crime was does not matter. It has no vital significance in the history of Jean Jacques Barbille, though it has its place as a swivel on which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... battle? [14:9]So also you by a tongue if you utter a word not easily understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for you will speak to the air. [14:10]There are perhaps as many kinds of voices in the world, and no one is without significance; [14:11]if therefore I do not know the meaning of the voice, I shall be to him that speaks a barbarian, and he that speaks will be a barbarian to me. [14:12]So also you, since you are earnestly desirous of spirits [spiritual gifts], seek to abound for the edification of the church. ...
— The New Testament • Various
... maritime Midian. But this was our own discovery. The half-Fellah Bedawin, like the shepherds, their predecessors, in the days of Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure; the only object being extra camel-hire. After eating your salt, a rite whose significance, by-the-by, is wholly ignored throughout Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. 'The very children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... McCarter made her fame secure. It is a great picture of a thrilling time, and a series of events of historic significance. Its pages are redolent of the sweet air and wide landscapes; the pictures come and go of idyllic childhood, of growing love, of Indian danger, of jealousy, of massacre, and of the movement toward the settled life of the plains. It is a poignant ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... but his laughter rang without mirth. And his horses, taking the sound to be a command, broke suddenly into a gallop. It was the sympathy between man and beast asserting itself. They, too, possessed that nervous desire to be doing. Something of the significance of the journey was theirs, and their nerves were braced with ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and glad of an excuse to take the easiest path. She lay in bed according to Zebedee's bidding, hardly moving under the clothes, and listening to the noises in the house. She was astonished by their number and significance. All through the night, cooling coals ticked in the grate or dropped on to the hearth; sometimes a mouse scratched or cheeped in the walls, and on the landing there were movements for which Helen could have accounted: Mr. Pinderwell, more conscious of his ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Literature, for all men anxious to see and understand the European world as it lies around them, a great problem is presented in this Goethe; a singular, highly significant phenomenon, and now also means more or less complete for ascertaining its significance. A man of wonderful, nay, unexampled reputation and intellectual influence among forty millions of reflective, serious and cultivated men, invites us to study him; and to determine for ourselves, whether and how far such influence has been salutary, such reputation merited. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... he runs across anything that no one else has endowed with beauty, then straightway he will endow it himself. Crowded trolleys, railroad stations, a muddy road—all have some hidden appeal. Even greed and discord he manages to ignore as such by looking beneath their exteriors for hidden significance. The simpler a pleasure, the greater ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... peculiar and wonderful significance, but Francis did not for the moment appreciate the fact. Turning his head, he simply saw a complete stranger seated unaccountably at the next table, who had butted into a private conversation and whose tone of gentle sarcasm, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... windows representing John on the Isle of Patmos, and others of pictorial significance. In the "Mother's Room" the windows are of still more unique interest. A large bay window, composed of three separate panels, is designed to be wholly typical of the work of Mrs. Eddy. The central panel represents her in solitude and meditation, searching ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... the pose and the modeling, or the idea of the eternal feminine that it expresses to us? What is it that makes the beauty of St. Mark's or of Giotto's tower? the relation of the lines and masses or the sacred significance of the edifices they go to form? What is it that makes the beauty of the Ninth Symphony? the perfection of the melodic sequence, or the Hymn of Joy, the message from the Infinite which ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... these words to Ajax. He admitted their significance, in connection with bonnets and furbelows, and we both went to bed with a sound of marriage-bells in our ears. We slept soundly, convinced that neither Gloriana nor Uncle Jake would leave our service, and at breakfast the next morning discoursed at length ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... we know that the "Glory be to the Father" occurs very frequently in the prayers of the Church and in our private devotions. In the Rosary it is repeated with every decade. This prayer of praise is of great significance for the Christian life. In order to understand its meaning better we must join in spirit the choirs of the blessed before the throne of God. Isaias, the great prophet of the Old Testament, to whom was vouchsafed a profound insight into the mysteries of God, had a vision ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... years cannot rectify? The internal parts of a building are not less vulnerable to accident than its outside; and though the evil may more easily be concealed, it will with greater difficulty be remedied. Many a fair structure have I seen, which, like that now before me" (looking with much significance at Cecilia), "has to the eye seemed perfect in all its parts, and unhurt either by time or casualty, while within, some lurking evil, some latent injury, has secretly worked its way into the very heart of the edifice, where it has consumed its strength, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Moore has tracked occupy that chair? You would think so, could you see him standing before it. There is as much interest now in his eye, and as much significance in his face, as if in this household solitude he had found a living companion, and was going to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... perfectly acquainted with them," replied Miss Woodley, with a significance in her voice and manner which convinced him there was ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... a recognizably epic manner. But what is quite evident is, that in all of them there is no attempt to carry on the development of epic, to take up its symbolic power where Milton left it. On the contrary, this seems to be deliberately avoided. For any tentative advance on Miltonic significance, even for any real acceptance of it, we must go to poetry which tries to put epic intention into a new form. Some obvious peculiarities of epic style are sufficiently definite to be detachable. Since Theocritus, a perverse kind of pleasure has often been obtained by putting ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... which we have found in a previous verse discerning the true significance of ceremonial purification, leads also to the recognition of the insufficiency of outward sacrifices—a thought which is not, as some modern critics would fain make it, the product of the latest age of Judaism, but appears occasionally through the whole of the history, and indicates not the date, ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... more directly apologetic ‘Pensées’ of Pascal there are many of great significance and interest, slight as may be the value of his general historical argument, so far as this can be traced. Wherever he trusts to his own clear judgment and profound penetration, he throws out sentences weighty with meaning, and capable of being ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... a little more definite," said the Deacon, "for I must confess I do not quite see the significance of your remarks." ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... teach himself the significance of contour, and the use of his hands, by fashioning the clay into rudimentary forms of beauty." ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... history of the English language falls naturally into three periods; but these periods blend into one another so gradually that too much significance must not be attached to the exact dates which scholars, chiefly for convenience of treatment, have assigned as their limits. Our language, it is true, has undergone many and great changes; but its continuity has never been broken, and its ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... besides the account of Fanny's visits to Westminster Hall during the early days of the trial. One other event, however, it relates, of sorrowful significance to the diarist. By the death of Mrs. Delany, on the 11th of April, 17; she lost at once a dear and venerated friend, and her only occasional refuge from the odious tyranny of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Jew had hoped to discover his patient in some indiscretion, he was unsuccessful, for he found Ford standing just where he had left him, with his back turned to the door, and gazing with apparent interest at a picture on the wall. The significance of the incident was not lost upon the intruder. It taught him he was still under surveillance, and that he must bear himself warily. Murmuring some excuse for having returned, the Jew again departed, and in a few minutes Ford heard his voice, and that of another ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... other's welfare without the expense of postage). A remarkable instance of "how great events from little causes spring," and have bestowed much admiration on the penetration of Mr. Hill's mind, which "wakened up at once to a significance of the fact," nor ever rested till he had devised and effected his scheme of Post-office Reform; though all the while an uncomfortable feeling might be lurking behind as to the perfect credibility of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... and smiled inwardly as the disputants urged lip and cheek and shades of rose and lily, weighing and appraising. Let me describe her as I saw her or, rather, as I can, adding that even without all this she must still have been beautiful because of the deep significance to those who had eyes to see or feel some mysterious element which mingled itself with her presence comparable only to the delight which the power and spiritual essence of Nature inspires in all but the dullest minds. I know I cannot hope to convey this in words. It means little ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... was a dreadful night; one of those tremendous hurricanes which visit our shores three or four times it may be in a century, seeming to shake the world to its foundations, and to proclaim with unwonted significance the dread power of Him who created and curbs the forces ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... Markham's essay, however, which for us, at the present moment, has principal significance. It is the argument of a professional physiologist, defending the right of scientific research within limits which then seemed just and right to the entire medical profession of the United Kingdom. Every physiologist or physician upon that committee which examined ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... face, sucked the moisture out of the wax of which my moustache was made, and, as it dried it pulled at my skin in a most disagreeable manner. However, I did not blink. I was a Hussar! A word that had for me an almost magical significance; besides which, having engaged in a military career, I understood very well that my first duty was to obey ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... the quiet sea, and the dawning light. I lived over the scenes of the old life in a vague, blissful memory. For the joy of the new life was that all that had befallen me had a strange and perfect significance. I had lived like other men. I had rejoiced, toiled, schemed, suffered, sinned. But it was all one now. I saw that each influence had somehow been shaping and moulding me. The evil I had done, was it indeed evil? It had been ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... kinds of nobleness gives insight into the true significance of things, and gives a standard to settle their relative importance. An uninterested spectator sees nothing; or, what is worse, sees wrongly. Most of our mean estimates of human nature in modern literature, and our false realisms in art, and our stupid ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... the great lesson involved in the disappointment. Submission to the Divine Will is all very well; it is one of the sublimest of the divine laws; but it is not fulfilled by a hopeless and inert evasion of all the duties and demands of life,—it is, instead, in its integrity and its deep significance, fulfilled by the joyful acceptance of the leading, the willing surrender that opens a still wider view and a still more vital faith ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... resided in Paris, yet France was reluctant to lift hand against her so long as she was on French soil. Well, he would turn the matter over to Harleston; let him decide whether it was to be thumbs up or thumbs down for her Alluringness. Furthermore, the meeting with Snodgrass now assumed much significance. Snodgrass was an ex-army officer. Harleston must be warned ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... Master Jeffreys and Morgan, spent hours at the doors of native huts, eagerly questioning the Indians, or listening to long, jumbled stories, eked out in a jargon of Spanish and Indian. Almost invariably they came away as wise as they went. The natives either knew nothing of real significance or ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... contrived to write very poor verse and prose in English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Mr. Horace Mann, in one of his public addresses, commented at some length on the beauty and moral significance ol the French phrase s'orienter and called on his young friends to practise upon it in life. There was not a Yankee in his audience whose problem had not always been to find out what was about east, and to shape his course accordingly. This ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... naively attesting its impeccableness. It was ready to the last shoe button, to the last twist of its waxed mustache. But ready for what? Few outside of Germany appeared to think of asking. The army was taken to be simply Teuton life and of no more ulterior significance than the national beer. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... know you do not love me any longer,' she had said. They were brave words that stood for something very deep in the character of those people—a self-repression that was sublime, often, in their women. As I said them to myself, those lonely summer days in Faraway, I saw in their sweet significance no hint of the bitterness they were to bring. But God knows I have had my share of pleasure and no ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... potentialities often by the most insignificant little things—as long as they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face at an unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek often looked at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged with astonishing significance. These are great mysteries, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Mr. Darwin's many great services to Biological science that he has demonstrated the significance of these facts. He has shown that—given variation and given change of conditions—the inevitable result is the exercise of such an influence upon organisms that one is helped and another is impeded; one tends to predominate, another to disappear; and thus the living world bears within itself, ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... outward expression compared; the senses as avenues of inspiration; the creation of form and sense-objects; what constitutes a "perfect and complete being?" the theory of "counterparts" and its spiritual significance; is procreation the highest function of sex; what constitutes the fundamental law of love? the various expressions of the love-nature from ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... cannot develop maximum skill in gaining your chances if you are unable to learn anything except through personal experience. Personal experience is valuable, no doubt. But you must develop the ability to think out the significance of other men's experiences, and must be capable of applying what you learn to ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... audience did not catch the significance of it. Straight for ring No. 1 Tucker's associates rushed him. But just as they reached the ring they ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... aboard the Tampico assured, the steamship became involved with a new significance. He pictured her on the bridge with him. He selected her place at the table in the saloon, and dreamed of all the life and laughter and grace and beauty she would bring ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... the fertility of the earth. Another prominent survival—equally characteristic of primitive peoples—is the sacredness which attaches to the person of the priest-king, so that his every act or word may have a magic significance or effect. This is reflected generally in the Roman priesthood, but especially in the ceremonial surrounding the flamen Dialis, the priest of Iuppiter. He must appear always in festival garb, fire may never be taken from his hearth ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... the strength of her love, from time to time she casts a furtive glance upon the face of her lover. It is a glance of strange significance; its object being to discover whether upon his features the tortures of long absence have not also ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... the prince, and four of the royal children, embarked at Osborne for Ostend, in tempestuous weather. Her majesty being "a good sailor," was seldom deterred from her voyages by bad weather. The royal visitors only remained a few days, and returned to Osborne. The visit had no political significance, but was dictated simply by the affection of the royal pair for their uncle, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... objects and persons have been observed among the natives of Polynesia, New Zealand and ancient Egypt. The rites, met within all lands, of pouring out water or bathing in order to produce rain from heaven, differ in their significance from ablutions with water and belong to the realm ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sympathy of a man—how wonderful! Who wanted a pack of women? What you really wanted was some man whose trade it was to listen and to give heed. Some man to whom your daughter's pneumonia, of however long ago, was not irrelevant, but had its own significance, as having helped to build you up as you were, you, the problem, with your wonderful, puzzling temperament, so full of complexes, inconsistencies and needs. Some man who didn't lose interest in you just because you were ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... hands with each member of the party—surely a sufficiently unceremonious affair to meet with the approval of the most democratic. The Eskimos were childishly delighted with our success. While, of course, they did not realize its importance fully, or its world-wide significance, they did understand that it meant the final achievement of a task upon which they had seen ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... forgotten. The barons were held to do justice to their undertenants and to renounce tyrannical exactions from them, the king promising to restore order and the "law of Eadward," the old constitution of the realm, with the changes which his father had introduced. His marriage gave a significance to these promises which the meanest English peasant could understand. Edith, or Matilda, was the daughter of King Malcolm of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister of Eadgar AEtheling. She had been brought up in the nunnery of Romsey where her aunt Christina was a nun; and the veil ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... on her hands, now, so that when she spoke her head nodded a little and gave a significance to ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... sound came nearer on the clear, thin morning air, and he recognized it and realized its significance, he knew that it was this fine, almost indistinguishable sound that had penetrated in some mysterious manner to his inner ear and called him ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... startled, almost frightened. The words were full of significance, the tone was not to be mistaken. She looked at Lawrence Newt with incredulous eagerness. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... but most little Presbyterians regarded that document as a necessary but unintelligible evil—the sorrow that haunted the Sabbath. I knew it by rote, Effectual Calling and all, but did not perceive that it possessed either meaning or actuality. Nobody was so unkind as to interpret the significance of the questions and answers; but somebody did interpret them for Stevenson, or his early genius enabled him to discover what it is all about, as he told me once, and it seems that the tendency ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and they carry a message of deep significance. I have watched my own boys; I recall my own boyhood; and I believe the words are true. So thoroughly do I believe in the physical and moral value of the outdoors for children, the open fields and woods, that before my children ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... full of sermons. It is a perfect gospel, a whole Bible of mind-enlightening, heart-cleansing, soul-saving truth. How much light has it thrown for me on the page of the New Testament! What a profound significance has it disclosed in the precepts and parables of Jesus Christ! How do His words burst out with a new meaning! How does it help us to appreciate His trials and the Godlike spirit with which ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Church's teaching, and of a sublime unconsciousness of any other force than a brute one, should be the goal of a machine which beyond everything may be said to symbolize cosmopolitan views and the intellectual and moral kinship of all mankind. In that light the little buzzing wire had a far finer significance to the student Somerset than the vast walls which neighboured it. But the modern fever and fret which consumes people before they can grow old was also signified by the wire; and this aspect of to-day ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... as correct the fallacious statements of the right honorable gentleman. I will give the house an account of this subject, the accuracy of which I believe neither side will impugn. It may not possibly be without interest, and will not, I am sure, be without significance. Lord Derby was sent for by her Majesty—an unwilling candidate for office, for let me remind the house that at that moment there was an adverse majority of 140 in the House of Commons, and I therefore do not think that Lord Derby was open to any ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... client) for "interpretations." If a weasel crosses his path he will not walk onward until somebody else has gone before him, or until he has thrown three stones across the road. He is all the time worrying about the significance of sudden noises, meteors, thunder; especially he is disturbed when he sees birds flying in groups or towards unlucky quarters of the heavens.[] Laches, however, is not merely religious—although he is always asking ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... reported that something in the nature of a disputation was now held. But its significance, at any rate, was small. The bishops and their clergy were to all intents and purposes without a voice; and ere the diet closed, a set of resolutions had been passed which did away with all necessity for further disputation. These so-called "Vesteras Ordinantia" ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... talk back at San Antonio. We're patrolling the boundary line. We're making a grand bluff. I could tell you of a dozen instances where cavalry should have pursued raiders on the other side of the line. But we won't do it. The officers are a grouchy lot these days. You see, of course, what significance would attach to United States cavalry going into Mexican territory. There would simply be hell. My own colonel is the sorest man on the job. We're all sore. It's like sitting on a powder magazine. We can't keep the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... notions. He never allowed his children spending money, except such as they fairly earned by some exertions of their own. "Let them do something," he would say, "to make it fairly theirs, and their generosity will then have some significance—it is very easy for children to be generous on their parents' money." Great were the comparing of resources and estimates of property at this time. Tom and Ned, who were big enough to saw wood, and hoe in the garden, had accumulated the vast sum of ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... several interesting young ladies. General Grant occupied another house (Mrs. Lum's) in Vicksburg during that summer, and also had his family with him. The time passed very agreeably, diversified only by little events of not much significance, among which I will recount ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... David, putting his hand jocosely across the young man's mouth. "No more Hebrew. Remember what happened last time. Perhaps there's some mysterious significance even in that, and you'll find yourself let in for something before you know where ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... marriage-shed or breaking one of its festoons. After the marriage the bride is nearly always sent home with the bridegroom's party for a few days, even though she may be a child and the consummation of the marriage impossible. This may be in memory of her having formerly been carried off, and some analogous significance may attach to our honeymoon. When the custom of capture had died down it was succeeded by the milder form of elopement, or the bride was sold or exchanged against a girl from the bridegroom's family ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... ray of dark but unutterable significance into Mary's, and then were carefully averted. Mary Rogers, although perfectly satisfied that Susy had never seen Clarence since, nevertheless instantly accepted and was even thrilled with this artful suggestion of a clandestine correspondence. Such ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... straight coast. He likewise cites Ptolomy as making the latitude of Elana 29 deg.15' N.[317] yet accounts the difference between that position and the altitude found at Al Tor, 20 deg.10', as of no significance here, though in former instances he had held the tables of Ptolomy as infallible. It is still stranger that Don Juan should after all admit of a gulf of Elana, as will be seen presently, and yet place it at a great distance, and at the opposite side of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... with Harley's approval he began to compose the Letter. Yet it was eight months before the document reached Harley and another two months, during which it circulated among friends, before Swift retrieved it for the printer. Thus, and this fact has significance, the Proposal had its inception and its first consideration in the Tory circles attached to the Harley ministry. A few days before its publication Swift wrote to Stella: "I suffer my name to be put at the End of it, wch I nevr ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... the shadow must fall. It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is not measured by their length, and two much shorter words express the round of our human existence. When I was reading "David Copperfield" a few evenings since, I felt there was more than usual significance in the words of Peggotty, "My future life lies over the sea." And when I closed this book just now, I felt most keenly that I was shortly to establish such an alibi as would have satisfied even the elder Mr. Weller. The relations which have been set up between ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... this is the widespread belief in the second coming of Christ at an early date. Educational institutions of national note are continuously laboring to extend this form of belief. The question as to whether Christ will ever come again is one that does not appear to have any immediate social significance other than it may have some influence on conduct as to the method of preparation for his coming. Those who believe in such coming may either believe that all efforts at social improvement now are fruitless, because the ultimate ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... are looking to a result that will help him towards attaining his great end in life,—an insight, so far as his faculties and opportunities will allow, into that order of things which he believes he can study with some prospect of taking in its significance. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of the whereabouts of other monuments, acquires a knowledge of the country, of the language, of the people and of all the local surroundings that help explain to us the significance of the past. ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... morning I met Quarles in Queen's Square, and his appearance was proof of his enthusiasm. He posed as rather a feeble, inquisitive old man who could talk of nothing but finger prints and their significance. Sir Arthur was evidently not impressed with his ability to solve any mystery. When we entered the drawing-room he seemed lost in admiration of the apartment, and did not even glance at the open coffin which stood on the trestles. He walked to the ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... must be looking into one of the cities of Xoran, but every detail of the chaotic whirl of activity was too utterly unfamiliar to carry any real significance to his bewildered brain. He was as hopelessly overwhelmed as an African savage would be if transported suddenly into the heart ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... first applied to those who wore the skins of savage animals, and went about the country as freebooters; but that popular superstition soon invested them with supernatural powers, and they were supposed to assume the forms of the beasts in whose skins they were disguised. The verb then acquired the significance "to become a were-wolf, to change shape." It did not stop there, but went through another change of meaning, and was finally applied to those who were afflicted with paroxysms of ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... pieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of some huge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracks and flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversed overhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lost all significance in ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... in Cuba continues without any marked change in the relative advantages of the contending forces. The insurrection continues, but Spain has gained no superiority. Six years of strife give to the insurrection a significance which can not be denied. Its duration and the tenacity of its adherence, together with the absence of manifested power of suppression on the part of Spain, can not be controverted, and may make some positive steps on the part of other powers a matter of self-necessity. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... significance of this poem a considerable controversy has raged. Bande Mataram is the Sanskrit for "Hail to thee, Mother!" or more literally "I reverence thee, Mother!", and according to Dr G.A. Grierson (The Times, Sept. 12, 1906) it can have no other possible meaning ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... limbs. Those in the theatre crushed each other to the death—agony. For how long, for how many thousand years, must the earth and the sea, and the fire and the air, utter these things and force them upon us before they are admitted in their full significance? ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... at the irate man before him, for he could hardly believe his senses. Then his eyes blazed with indignation as he grasped the significance of the ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... the Retriever should be chosen for the intelligent look of his face, and particular attention should be paid to the shape of his head and to his eyes. His frame is important, of course, but in the Retriever the mental qualities are of more significance than bodily points. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... feeling decidedly blue when I started back to the office. Vantine's collection had always seemed to me somehow a part of himself; more especially a part of the house in which it had been assembled. It would lose much of its beauty and significance ticketed and arranged stiffly along the walls of the museum, and the thought came to me that it would be a splendid thing for New York if this old house and its contents could be kept intact as an object lesson to the nervous and hurrying ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... frightful looting and of the first atrocities perpetrated by the Germans, who demonstrated a premeditated intention to destroy, defile and wipe out everything in their path. And Paris was doubtless the first city in France to comprehend the significance of this war, which is a war of civilization against barbarism, a sacred war in which the forces of humanity raise a rampart of human breasts against the violent reappearance ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... she begins to lay an egg, and finally, having provided himself with a round stone, he produced it as if he had just deposited it in a nest. Then he pulled out one of his dollars and held it up before them. Quasho and Quashie clapped their hands with delight at the significance of the action, and away they scuttled into the woods, soon returning with ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Beggared and common, plain to all the land For stooks of leaves! And lo! the Wizard Hour, His silent, shining sorcery winged with power! Still, still the streets, between their carcanets Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep. But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance - Obscene, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... perhaps a fitting place for the introduction of a few further remarks as to the significance of the term 'concussion' in connection with the injuries produced by bullets of small calibre, since the most striking exemplification of the results following the transmission of the vibratory force of the projectile is afforded by the behaviour of the comparatively densely ensheathed ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... the truth, I think that the English foot-path is something pathetic beyond description. The better it is, the older, the better worn, the more it speaks with a sad significance of the long established inequalities of old-world society. It means too often the one poor, pitiful right of a poor man, the man who must walk all his life, to go hither and thither through the rich man's country. The lady may walk it for pleasure if she likes, but the man who ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... are more highly wrought, yet every line is crisp and clear and the impressions are black and brilliant. When we realize that the only new technological factor of any consequence was the use of good smooth wove paper, we can appreciate its significance. ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... vibrating quality of the last words. She seemed to be talking low of some wonderful enchantment, in mysterious terms of special significance. He thought that if she only could talk to him in some unknown tongue, she would enslave him altogether by the sheer beauty of the sound, suggesting infinite depths of wisdom ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... down, which was here densely covered with thickets. It was perfectly still; and the only sound was the liquid springing of the water in the pool, and the birds singing in the bushes. Howard had a sudden sense that the place held a significance for him. Had he been there before, in some dream or vision? He could not tell; but it was strangely familiar to him. Even so the trees had leaned together, and the clear ripples pulsed upon the bank. Something strange and beautiful had befallen him there. What ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... more lasting memorial of our ability to avenge our countrymen than any we could raise. The tidings that their ancient citadel had been levelled to the ground would, I felt sure, spread throughout the length and breadth of Afghanistan, bearing with them a political significance ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... in the world then, although, as I have said, the controversy was without much significance. The "views" of Dr. Harris and the rest of the council were already condemned. Here are some letters, not before printed, from Maurice and Kingsley on the case. The closing paragraph of Maurice's letter ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... Administration side in the United States Senate. Of course since the developments began to focus suspicion upon them, they have been watched. Yesterday at church Miss Ballister's wrist bag was picked. Along with things of no apparent significance, it contained a note received by her the day before from Goldsborough—Geltmann rather—reminding her that they were to meet to-morrow night at your cousin's party. Later in the afternoon Madame Ybanca received a telegram and sent an answer, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... amply provided, with moral maxims, which we hold with more or less confidence, but an insight into their significance is not attained without reflection and some serious effort. Yet, surely, in a field in which there are so many differences of opinion, clearness of insight and breadth of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... the Adriatic of the White Star Line. As may be imagined, the Americans on board were delighted to see a destroyer with an American flag darting about the great vessel like a porpoise, while the British appreciated to the full the significance of the occasion—so much so that the following message was formulated and wirelessed to ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... as a matter of course, that which is usually the whole significance of the word, the meekness which is displayed in our attitude towards men. The truly meek heart remains unprovoked amidst all provocation. Most men are like dogs that answer bark for bark, and only make night hideous and themselves hoarse thereby. But it is our business to meet evil ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... German philosophy with French social science. Only one double-number of this journal appeared in 1844. It contained Marx's criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right and his exposition of the social significance of the Jewish question, in the form of a review of ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... eagerness, she had read the first of Bruce's letter hastily so she had not grasped the full significance of what he had written of the part in his failure that Sprudell had played. It was not until she read it again together with Smaltz's confession, that it came to her clearly. When it did she was dumfounded by the extent of Sprudell's villainy, his audacity, the length ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... political and religious controversy which oppressed men's minds; the discouragement, almost hopelessness, which made the Restoration welcome, and Puritanism odious, for a time at least, to the majority of Englishmen. The word Enthusiasm is of strange significance; then and for more than a hundred years later it connoted extravagance and fanaticism. Worthy of notice also are Sprat's words to the effect that the influence of Wilkins and his friends was on the side of discipline and order in the University, and saved it from "ruine." They ought ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... among others, a mighty Tatar woman, a gigantic heroine; I have forgotten even her name now; but in those days my hands and feet turned cold as soon as it was mentioned. 'Yes,' Punin would say, nodding his head with great significance, 'Heraskov, he doesn't let one off easily. At times one comes upon a line, simply heart-breaking.... One can only stick to it, and do one's best.... One tries to master it, but he breaks away again and trumpets, trumpets, with the crash of cymbals. His name's been ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... its past history, at home and abroad. 4. Their importance in the useful and fine arts, and especially in the art of dyeing. 5. Their affinities and analogies to other cryptogamic families, and to the Phanerogamia. 6. Their value as an element of the picturesque in nature; and, 7. Their typical significance. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the glowing predictions being made on behalf of space exploration will not be here tomorrow or the next day. Yet this seems less important than that we recognize the significance of our moment ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... in the direction that the fresh spoors showed the two poor creatures had come from; stood there regardless of our fatigue, and of the blazing heat, of everything in fact but the grim tragedy before us, and the terrible significance it bore for us, who ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... that I am not a sectarian in art, but am thankful for poetry wherever I find it. I have endeavored to make clear the artistic, intellectual, and spiritual significance of many of our contemporary English-writing poets. The difficulties of such an undertaking are obvious; but there are two standards of measure. One is the literature of the past, the other is the life of today. I judge every new ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... much as the child would make his creature walk. But he was a very "nice" young man, was always ready to sing, and faute de mieux it became the fashion with the very young to like him. But there never was a tenor of any note in New York whose singing was so utterly without character or significance and who was so deficient in histrionic ability. His high and long continued favor is one of those puzzling popular freaks ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... agents—just as Poritol and Alcatrante were unquestionably acting for their government. This, at least, was the most probable explanation that entered Orme's mind. The syndicate, then,—or concession, or whatever it was—must be of genuine international significance. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... definitely and frankly this view of mine, opposed to that of the majority, and the more so as the conclusions to which I came, when examining the causes of my disagreement with the universally established opinion, are, it seems to me, not without interest and significance. ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... is no word in the English language more deadly in its vague import than that apparently harmless adjective. As applied to a human being, it generally conveys every kind of odious significance, and curiously enough it is seldom ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... crossed Sleepy Creek. It was frozen to the bottom. The cedars along its shore stood so funereally, so crape-like and dark, the sycamores were so clay-white and long of arm, the great birds slowly circling above a neighbouring wood of so dreary a significance, that the heart sank and sank. Was this war?—war, heroic and glorious, with banners, trumpets, and rewarded enterprise? Manassas had been war—for one brief summer day! But ever since there was only marching, tenting, suffering, and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a matter of convenience, a man considering it his duty to provide for the legitimate continuation of his family. The Doric tribe did not attempt to disguise this principle in its plain-spoken laws; the rest of Greece acknowledged it but in silence, owing to a more refined conception of the moral significance ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... had surely seen it. They were fixed now in a frenzy of realisation upon some distant vision, and, with a shiver, the Chapel followed his gaze. It is easy enough to laugh at bare and conventional words stripped of the atmosphere and significance of their original surroundings. The merest baby in this twentieth century can laugh at the flames of hell and advance a string of easy arguments against the probability of any such melodramatic fulfilment of the commonplace ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... fact that this building was due to the genius and power not of the Church, but of Justinian, leads us back to the significance of the State authority in the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... combination among a little coterie who lived by gambling to drive from the field a player whose skill had diminished their income; nevertheless, the incidents sworn to by some of them wore a suspicious significance, and a verdict was given against Lord de Ros, which he only survived ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... no more the dreams, the poignancies of youth. Some of the mourners hastening to their liquor turned at the Cross and looked up the road to see if they were following, and they were struck vaguely by the significance of the thing. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Taripaca. The latter I have already explained to mean He who Judges, and the former is a synonym of Tocapu, as it is from the verb ttaniy or ttanini, and means He who Finishes completes or perfects, although, like several other of his names, the significance of this one has up to the present remained unexplained and lost. The myth has been preserved to us by a native Indian writer, Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti, who wrote it out somewhere ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... Service has a permanent agent here under the guise of a newspaper correspondent, who is in daily touch with me, and he in his turn has several spies at work. I am, however, the dangerous person. The others are only servants. They make their reports, but they don't understand their true significance. If these people could remove me before any one else could arrive to take my place, their chances of bringing off their coup here would ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only seven men were killed and the same number hurt. She was the larger ship, and the odds in her favor were as ten to seven, reckoned in men and guns, for which reasons Captain Hull ought to have won. The significance of his victory was that at every point he had excelled a British frigate and had literally blown her out of the water. His crew had been together only five weeks and could fairly be called green while the Guerriere, although short-handed, had a complement of veteran ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... in a future chapter. But the whole subject of the differences of the sounds produced under different states of the mind is so obscure, that I have succeeded in throwing hardly any light on it; and the remarks which I have made, have but little significance. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... by any stretch of the imagination be considered as postage stamps or, indeed, of having any philatelic significance yet they are collected by many, in common with adhesive registered labels, as having an interest owing to the fact that they are visible evidence of one phase of the working of the post office. The "officially sealed" labels used by ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... the letters without demanding what species of conversational significance her mistress attached ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... across this place. They were neither kings nor wise men, but they came with every significance—perhaps even greater—than that which the kings bore in the days of old. There was one who came from the North,—brawny and riotous with energy, a man of concentrated power, who held all the thunderbolts of modern capital in his great fists and made flour ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... reasonable, that some great men have presumed to limit to a verbal medium the communications of Him who is everywhere His own witness, and who still gives to His own holy oracles all their peculiar significance and authority? Some seem to think the Almighty has never given to men any notion of Himself, except by words. "Many ideas," says the celebrated Edmund Burke, "have never been at all presented to the senses of any men but by words, as God,[26] angels, devils, heaven, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... facts and not with suppositions, and the facts are that through Professor Gale he was made acquainted with the discoveries of Joseph Henry, which had been published to the world several years before, and could have been used by others if they had had the wit or genius to grasp their significance and hit upon the right means to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse |
