"Past times" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lived by whom I had been plundered. Then, indeed, did I experience intervals that approached madness, despair, and horror: beholding myself destitute of friend or protector, the Empress herself, for whose sake I suffered, deserting me; reflecting on past times and past prosperity; remembering how the good and virtuous, from the cruel nature of my punishment, must be obliged to conclude me a wretch and a villain, and that all means of justification were cut off: O God! How did my heart beat! with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... an evocation of past times was in this name! And their talk passed into a number of ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Member of the Society, over-rating his own Part of the Conversation, but equally receiving and contributing to the Pleasure of the whole Company. When one considers such Collections of Companions in past Times, and such as one might name in the present Age, with how much Spleen must a Man needs reflect upon the aukward Gayety of those who affect the Frolick with an ill Grace? I have a Letter from a Correspondent of mine, who desires me to admonish all loud, mischievous, airy, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... vulture—the inexhaustible repast Drawn from his vitals? Say what meant the woes By Tantalus entail'd upon his race, And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes? Fictions in form, but in their substance truths— Tremendous truths!—familiar to the men Of long past times; nor obsolete ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... sort o' thing," said a beardless young fellow, as a number of the men sat on camp-stools, or stood on the weather-side of the deck, chatting together about past times and future prospects. ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... which a wife was never held responsible to the law, or subject to punishment for any crime committed in the presence or under the influence of her husband, was one of those traits of human nature belonging to ruder ages and to past times; but, gentlemen, in our own Court of Appeals, and in the highest tribunals of England, within the last few years, there is an explicit recognition ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Kingdom depends not only upon the King and the laws and ordinances of the Kingdom, but also upon the loyal obedience of the subjects. And the subjects of "The Kingdom of Heaven" have, in past times, so far forgotten this duty, that it has come to pass that for centuries the great branches of the Church of Christ have had little, if any, outward communion or fellowship with one another. And in our own country the professed members of Christ are divided into many bodies, not only independent ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... saying how she could not be beholden for shawls to any gentleman. I left her there to consult with my shister, did she think there was any thing in it, and my shister thought I was blind to be asking her the question, and I thought my shister must see more into it than I did; and recollecting all past times and every thing, I changed my mind, and came over to her way of thinking, and we settled it that Judy was very like to be my Lady Rackrent after all, if a vacancy should ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... shown in the Rothamsted experiments that the process goes on best in fields lying in bare fallow; and in this fact lies the explanation of one of the many reasons why the practice of leaving fields in bare fallow, so common in past times, and still practised in the case of clay soils in some parts of the country, was so beneficial to the land thus treated. But despite this fact, the practice of leaving soils in bare fallow can scarcely be justified from this ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... could be said; as if it were a great misfortune, that any should be found wiser than his ancestors; but though they willingly let go all the good things that were among those of former ages, yet if better things are proposed they cover themselves obstinately with this excuse of reverence to past times. I have met with these proud, morose, and absurd judgments of things in many places, particularly once in England."—"Was you ever there?" said I.—"Yes, I was," answered he, "and stayed some months there, not long after the rebellion in the west was suppressed ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... who looks as leniently as you do on the failings of others, or to some young man who has not lost the illusions of youth; for only a man who knows life well, or a lad to whom it is all unknown, could understand my story. The captains of past times who fell upon the field of battle used to make their last confession to the cross on the hilt of their sword; if there was no priest at hand, it was the sword that received and kept the last confidences between a human ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... the rich man who can avail himself of other men's faculties. He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men—of men in distant countries and past times." Those who wish to be healthy and efficient are compelled to advance by taking advantage of other men's faculties. He who attempts to learn all by experience does not live ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... lived, or still live, upon its surface, we find ourselves in some difficulty from lack of facts. That every existing organism has been developed out of the simple into the complex, is indeed the first established truth of all; and that every organism which existed in past times was similarly developed, is an inference no physiologist will hesitate to draw. But when we pass from individual forms of life to Life in general, and inquire whether the same law is seen in the ensemble of its manifestations,—whether modern plants and animals are of more ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... woman began to chatter something about an oracle of Apollo. There was, she said, a hole in the rock, from which in past times, perhaps more than a hundred years ago, the oracle used to speak ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... had now run out, and that it would be necessary for the House of Commons to make a new provision for the support of him and of his family. "I am persuaded," said the King, "that the experience of past times and a due regard to the honor and dignity of the Crown will prevail upon you to give me this first proof of your zeal and affection in a manner answerable to the necessities of my Government." Then the King withdrew, and Lord Chesterfield moved for "an address of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the words of God, handled on principles analogous to those which have been successfully applied in acquiring knowledge of His works, might be found capable of answering the hard questions which are now, more, perhaps, than in past times, agitating men's minds. This philosophy, having a surer basis than that of any mere human intellectual system, might be expected to succeed where these have failed. The bearing of these remarks on the main subject of the essay will be ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank, honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it strangely interested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside. Certainly there ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... animal kingdom into orders you will find that there are above one hundred and twenty. The number may vary on one side or the other, but this is a fair estimate. That is the sum total of the orders of all the animals which we know now, and which have been known in past times, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... by fossil remains is by all odds the strongest evidence that we have in favor of organic evolution. Paleontology holds the incomparable position of being able to point directly to the evidence showing that the animals and plants living in past times are connected with those living at the present time, often through an unbroken series of stages. Paleontology has triumphed over the weakness of the evidence, which Darwin admitted was serious, by filling in many of ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... great political results. He conceded, for the sake of argument, that such indulgence might be a fatal error; but he insisted that if Pitt's character was to be blackened because he used parliamentary corruption, the same censure ought in justice to be extended to the greatest monarchs of past times, Louis XIV., Joseph II., Frederic the Great, who, to serve their own ends, outraged the immovable principles of humanity and morality in a far graver manner than could be laid to the charge of the illustrious statesman who consolidated ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... but in various parts also of continental Europe, with regard to the moral and spiritual merits or demerits of Becket, as a subject of the realm and a Christian minister. It is, moreover, only by becoming familiar in all their details with some such remains of past times, that we can form any adequate idea of the great and deplorable extent to which the legends had banished the reading and expounding of Holy Scriptures from our churches; and also how much the praises of mortal man had encroached upon those hours ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... Not to speak of Singha-pura, there are the islands of Langka-wi and Lingga and the towns of Indragiri and Indrapura, &c. Sumeru (in Java), Madura, Ayuthia (in Siam), and many other names, show how great Indian influences have been in past times in the far East. May it not be, therefore, that Malaya or Malayu[46] was the name by which the earliest Sanskrit-speaking adventurers from India denominated the rude tribes of Sumatra and the peninsula ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... woman who was nursing her, she sent for two men who in past times had been favoured lovers. They came to her at once, whilst her husband was gone away to fetch a doctor and an apothecary, as she ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... happy! I don't think its quite right, Jos bach, do you? You are a deacon at Penmorien and you ought to know. If it was a hymn now! but you hear it's all nonsense about the swallows. Ach y fi! she is learning them from Sara ''spridion';[1] some song of the 'old fathers' in past times!" ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... cool, resolute, resourceful man, for whom it is a matter of plain duty to fight his ship till he is fairly beaten, and to report the result briefly, whatever it may be, to his superiors. One can observe the mellowing influence upon Thackeray of the atmosphere of past times and the afterglow of heroic deeds; for in Denis Duval there is no trace of the scorching satire which pursues us in The Newcomes; nor does he once pause to moralise, or to enlarge upon the innumerable hypocrisies ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... to where he is gone, and why he went, and why he did not stay until after luncheon; and Violet explains patiently, recalling past times when the child has been almost inconsolable. She is so solaced by her message that she does not think of ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... The cause of his fall was a suspension of the payment of the interest on the debt, which was the commencement of bankruptcy. This minister has been the most blamed because he came last. Inheriting the faults, the embarrassments of past times, he had to struggle with the difficulties of his position with insufficient means. He tried intrigue and oppression; he banished, suspended, disorganized parliament; everything was an obstacle to him, nothing aided him. After a long struggle, he sank ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... and the honors due to divinity. Wherever Hadrian granted money for the extension of a temple, he was required to perform the ceremony of laying a stone with his own hand. But he always found time to hunt in the desert, to manage the affairs of state, and to visit the most interesting monuments of past times, and at Memphis especially, the city of the dead, with the Pyramids, the great Sphinx, the Serapeum and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a great pleasure to see you here at this time. Many memories of past times and days come up. Though never again likely to see Kalgan, I often in thought go along its narrow, hard streets, and its up and down sideways, call in at your house, see all your faces, even that of the youthful Stephen, and the studious Etta; and often go up over ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... for shingles—a painful, dangerous malady common amongst them, and to cure it living toads are applied to the inflamed parb. I dare say learned physicians would laugh at this cure, but then, if I mistake not, the learned have in past times laughed at other specifics used by the vulgar, but which now have honourable places in the pharmacopoeia— pepsine, for example. More than two centuries ago (very ancient times for South America) the gauchos were accustomed to ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... intended to be an example to others, there is the greatest reason to suppose the matter of it must have been maturely weighed and considered. His majesty first compliments the Scotch parliament upon their peculiar loyalty and dutiful behaviour in past times, meaning, no doubt, to contrast their conduct with that of those English parliaments who had passed the Exclusion Bill, the Disbanding Act, the Habeas Corpus Act, and other measures hostile to his favourite principles of ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... In past times, when we have visited Miss Lavinia, we have been fairly meek and decorous guests, following the programme that she planned with such infinite attention to detail that free will was impossible, and we often felt ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... have alarmingly hastened the decay of the elm trees on Boston Mall and Common, and that they now threaten their entire destruction. Other causes, however, have probably contributed to the same end. It will be remembered that these trees have greatly suffered, in past times, from the ravages of canker-worms. Moreover, the impenetrable state of the surface soil, the exhausted condition of the subsoil, and the deprivation of all benefit from the decomposition of accumulated leaves, which, in a state of nature, the trees would ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... speak for themselves and afford an incontestable proof of the value of punishment as a remedial measure when other remedies have failed.[33] In the re-action which is now in full force, and rightly so, against the excessive punishments of past times, there is a marked tendency among some minds to go to the opposite extreme, and an attempt is being made to show that imprisonment has hardly any curative effect at all. Its evils, and from the very ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... direction, at whatever loss or inconvenience to ourselves. Should it, however, prove that the condition of the poor negro has been impaired and not improved, it will then become proper to enquire what have been in past times the circumstances under which men have become more free, with a view to ascertain wherein lies the deficiency, and why it is that freedom now so obviously declines in various and important portions of the earth. These ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... moment in bewildering darkness. He had to grope the way by his feet feeling the stairs, and by his hand laid on the central stone shaft which had been polished to the smoothness of marble by countless other hands of past times. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... manatee having in past times possessed a wider range than at present seems to have been overlooked. But as a matter of fact the probability that the manatee ever ranged, in comparatively modern times at least, as far north as Ohio without leaving other traces of ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... whole population, the actual number of the genuine disciples of Christ within its pale were in small compass. The revival in some measure, of the spirit of its reformers, even in opposition to the letter of many of its formularies, has, no doubt, in past times, done much to increase its living influence and usefulness, but recent events have shown how large a portion of its clergy instead of going forward in the work of the Reformation, are rather desirous ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... Central Australian aborigines regard as sacred and to the performance of which they devote so much time and labour? At first sight they are simply commemorative services, designed to represent the ancestors as they lived and moved in the far-past times, to recall their adventures, of which legend has preserved the memory, and to set them dramatically before the eyes of their living descendants. So far, therefore, the dramas might be described as purely historical in intention, if not in reality. But there are reasons ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the leisure moments of the day, or at the commencement of night, when seated at my fire, all my thoughts seemed riveted to the progress and success of my journey, and to the new objects we had met with during the day. I had then to compel myself to think of absent friends and past times, and the thought that they supposed me dead or unsuccessful in my enterprize, brought me back immediately to my favourite object. Much, indeed the greater portion, of my journey had been occupied in long reconnoitring rides; and he who is thus occupied ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... barrage of the main oasis river; the large blocks of which it is composed are unquestionably antique, but they have been carried to this spot not by the ancients, but by Berber cultivators of long ago. Gazing upon these venerable stones we were led to talk of past times, of buried treasures and their wondrous lore. One of his uncles, he tells me, is versed in the black arts and an adept at raising hoards; he learnt it from a Moroccan. But bad luck had dogged his footsteps lately. He discovered a treasure whose guardian jin offered to surrender it if he brought ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Rajah of Jalone, the once noted patron and protector of Thuggee, by whose agent he was most politely received at Mahoba, a once splendid but now ruined city, celebrated for its artificial lakes, which in long-past times were formed by a famous Rajpoot prince named Purmal, by damming up the narrow gorges of the hills. "Never had I seen, in the plains of India, a prospect more enchanting! Conceive a beautiful sheet of calm, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... old clergyman, staring strangely around him. "Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their burials, one after another, and the Old Maid ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but even Aristotle was ignorant of its true structural relations, and alludes only to its motion and general appearance. Some account of the gradual steps by which naturalists have deciphered the true nature of these lowest Echinoderms and their history in past times may not be without interest, and is very instructive as showing bow such problems ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... should it not also help with the age-old sexual evils? So reasoning, we have naturally turned to education as one, but not the only, method of attack on the sexual problems which have degraded and devitalized human life of all past times, but which somehow have kept out of the limelight of publicity until ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... with a caressing suavity—and he kissed his sister's forehead. "Possibly; but, by my honour, I wish to repair to you any wrong, real or supposed, I may have done you in past times. I wish to find again my own dear sister. I may over-value your aid, but not the affection from which it comes. Let us be friends, cara Beatrice mia," added the count, for the first time ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... practise the reading of old clefs, otherwise many treasures of past times will remain a closed ...
— Advice to Young Musicians. Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln • Robert Schumann
... detail, we are reminded, of course, of the difference between our own and past times in mimic as in real life. For Prynne one of the great horrors of the stage was the introduction of actresses from France by Henrietta Maria, to take the place of young [84] male actors of whom Dr. Doran has some interesting notices. ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... years my married life was a scene of happiness and prosperity, on which I now look back with a grateful tenderness that no words of mine can express. The memory of my wife is busy at my heart while I think of those past times. The forgotten tears rise in my eyes again, and trouble the course of my pen while ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... ethical basis; for he finds the voice of conscience varying with civilisation, education, race, religion, traditions, customs, and if it be, indeed, the voice of God in man, he cannot but see—in a sense quite different from that intended by the writer—that God "in divers manners spoke in past times". Moreover he observes, as an historical fact, that some of the worst crimes which have disgraced humanity have been done in obedience to the voice of conscience. It is quite clear that Cromwell at Drogheda ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... was repeated in his three sons. They told his stories precisely as he did himself, taking as long in the telling, and making the points in exactly the same way. By and by they will come to think that they themselves were of those past times. Already the young ones look like contemporaries ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... Saint Martin, Oliver and Balue have hearts as hardened as the nether millstone; and my life is embittered by remorse and penances for the crimes they make me commit. Thou, Sir Philip, possessed of the wisdom of present and past times, canst teach how to become great without ceasing to ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... metrical romances, such as are found in every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence, but little reading and writing. All human beings, not utterly savage, long for some information about past times, and are delighted by narratives which present pictures to the eye of the mind. But it is only in very enlightened communities that books are readily accessible. Metrical composition, therefore, which, in a highly civilized nation, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an end, and the roads once more available for travelling, the Fair of the locality was looked forward to with interest. Fairs were among the most important institutions of past times, and were rendered necessary by the imperfect road communications. The right of holding them was regarded as a valuable privilege, conceded by the sovereign to the lords of the manors, who adopted all manner of devices to draw crowds to their markets. They were usually held at the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... that such subjects are below the dignity of the church, we might reply that the church is bound to help us for the reason that the present state of things is partly owing to her efforts. The ministers of the church in past times have labored to convince people that this life for its own sake is of little account; that we were placed here, not to develop the faculties and enjoy the pleasures which pertain to this stage of our existence, but solely to prepare for another. They have ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... the evils which threaten us. I do not dispute the beneficent influence of other factors combined with these, but, taken alone, they would be powerless, and if science were eclipsed they would be transformed into fresh causes of servitude and ignorance, as it has often appeared in past times when the laws of science and of freedom have been set at nought. I therefore declare science and freedom to be the portion of all, and they should be as widely diffused as possible, since the way to knowledge and a worthy life is open to all men. It is a blasphemy against ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... this been? Why is it that I may not think of past times? Why is it that all thought, all memories are denied to me? Who was it that broke the cup at ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... said Mrs Tickit, 'and we all find it so. It an't our stations in life that changes us, Mr Clennam; thoughts is free!—As I was saying, I was thinking of one thing and thinking of another, and thinking very much of the family. Not of the family in the present times only, but in the past times too. For when a person does begin thinking of one thing and thinking of another in that manner, as it's getting dark, what I say is, that all times seem to be present, and a person must get out of that state and consider before they can say which ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... in the world. 'I can't think what it is that your father means,' she had said. 'When he and I were young, he used not to be so fond of the people of Basle, and he didn't think so much then of a peddling buyer of sheetings and shirtings.' Madame Faragon was rather fond of alluding to past times, and of hinting to George that in early days, had she been willing, she might have been mistress of the Lion d'Or at Granpere, instead of the Poste at Colmar. George never quite believed the boast, as he knew that Madame Faragon was at ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... blowing; and in these regions, as in the sub-frigid zones of Europe, wind makes all the difference of temperature. During the evening we were visited by the Ma'zah Bedawin of a neighbouring encampment: they began to notice stolen camels and to wrangle over past times—another ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Lawrence Barrett was a man of high principle and perfect integrity. He never spoke a false word nor knowingly harmed a human being, in all his life. Although sometimes he seemed to be harsh and imperious, he was at heart kind and humble. Strife with the world, and in past times uncertainty as to his position, caused in him the assumption of a stern and frigid manner, but beneath that haughty reserve there was a great longing for human affection and a sincere humility of spirit. He never nurtured hostility. He had no memory for injuries; but a kindness ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... from Him. I suffered most keenly, because I saw in part the great anxieties and troubles that the work would cost me, and I was also very happy in the house I was in then; and though I used to speak of this matter in past times, yet it was not with resolution nor with any confidence that the thing could ever be done. I saw that I was now in a great strait; and when I saw that I was entering on a work of great anxiety, I hesitated; but our Lord spoke of it so ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... had since elapsed, and Lee and the nephew of Mrs. Schuyler were again allied in military service, but under a different banner; and recollections of past times must have given peculiar interest to their present intercourse. In fact, the journey of Washington with his associate generals, experienced like him in the wild expeditions of the old French war, was a revival of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... is situated in the Cerrillos Mountains, eighteen miles from Santa Fe. The deposit occurs in soft trachyte, and an immense cavity of several hundred feet in extent has been excavated by the Indians while searching for this gem in past times. Probably some of the fine turquoises worn by the Aztec nobles at the time of the Spanish Conquest came from this mine. Another mine is located in the Sierra Blanca Mountains in New Mexico, but the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... This chorus is almost as fine as the more famous one in the Carmagnola; both are incomparably finer than anything else in the tragedies and are much more dramatic than the dialogue. It is in the emotion of a spectator belonging to our own time rather than in that of an actor of those past times that the poet shows his dramatic strength; and whenever he speaks abstractly for country and humanity he moves us in a way that permits no doubt ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... is, I feel out of spirits now if I think of papa; I am not easy in my mind about him. When he is very much interested, there is a quivering in his face which I don't remember in past times. He seems to have got older and thinner, all on a sudden. He shouts (which he never used to do) when he threatens sinners at sermon-time. Being in dreadful earnest about our souls, he is of course obliged to speak of the devil; but he never used to hit the harmless pulpit cushion with his fist ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... little procession stopped under the sycamore tree, Zacchaeus would begin to feel uncomfortable. He may have had experience in past times of the way in which the great doctors of orthodoxy were in the habit of treating a publican, and may have begun to be afraid that this new one was going to be like all the rest, and elicit some kind of mob demonstration against him. The crowd would be waiting with intense ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to live! Even in one thought The wisdom of past times to fit together, And from the luminous minds of many men Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye, Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets Of the star-crowded universe, is ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... shall the lady that tieth my garter and shuffles the smock over my head, or the lord that steadieth my chair's back while I eat, or the other that looketh to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem and estate than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times, and will as safely and surely set me down among ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... revelled in the recollection of it. "Our Egyptian taskmasters," he would say, meaning the manufacturers of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England, "only wish to leave us the recollection of past times, and insist upon our purchasing their vile domestic stuffs; but it won't do: no ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... vigorous account of the Penal system in England in past times, and in our own ... It exhibits in detail the career of one of our latest prison reformers; alleged, we believe with truth, to have been one of the most successful, and certainly in his judgments and opinions one of the most cautious ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... virtually set aside in my previous remarks; but it has taken so strong a hold of many as to need some consideration. I shall not attempt to repel the objection by decrying books. Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, as is sometimes said, but lives in them perpetually. But we need not many books to answer the great ends of reading. A few are better than many, and a little time given to a faithful study of the few will be enough to quicken ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and the protracted wars of the Republic, which were fought out in the plains, whence they became deserted and uncultivated, fit only for public pastures in winter time ... the periodical emigrations of the flocks continue as in the past times: they descend from the mountains into the plains by a network of wide grassy roads which traverse the region in every direction and are called tratturi. These lanes are over 100 yards in width and cover a total length of 940 miles.... Not less than 50,000 animals are pastured ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... both sleeping and waking, she was for ever thinking of some way to remove this thorn from her eyes. So at last, after some days, she said to the King, "Son, the time is now come for us to return to our former greatness and the pleasures of past times, since Miuccio has offered to blind the sorceress, and by the disbursement of her eyes to make you ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... to whom it points out in a manner which we have correctly designated gossiping, pleasant, and suggestive, "such sites and edifices as have been rendered classical by the romantic or literary associations of past times." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... climes:— Should these far echoes from thy legend-roll Delight of loftier years, these echoes faint, Thus waken, thus make calm, one restless heart In our distempered day, to thee the praise, Voice of past times, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... and dangerous person, whose very objects are a mystery, save that he is our foe,—Robin of Redesdale. The men of the North have exhibited a spirit of insurrection; a man of that country attends this reputed wizard, and he himself was favoured in past times by Henry of Windsor. These are ominous signs ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... traditional China from modern Europe, but represents a stage which most other civilizations have passed through, and which is therefore not distinctively Chinese; the three characteristics which I have enumerated, on the other hand, distinguish China from all other countries of past times. Something must be said at this stage about each of ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... impression on the mind of our Moslem friend, from the popular belief current in India that the Feringhis are men of no caste, without religious faith or ceremonies—a belief which the conduct and demeanour of the Anglo-Indians in past times tended, in too many instances, to confirm. Off the southern extremity of Ceylon, the ship was again becalmed for several days; but the tedium of this interval was relieved, not only by the ordinary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... confronted him with his deceit and wrong: somehow he could not bring himself to call it by its true name, crime, and fasten it on the man there and then. There was a high-bred delicacy about David Lawrence, a little of the old knightly chivalry that in past times held a man back from striking a fallen foe. And then he was not quite sure. The dishonorable work lay between the two men, and he forbore to blame this ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... important fact that, down to middle Tertiary times at all events, an equable temperate climate, with a luxuriant vegetation, extended to far within the arctic circle, over what are now barren wastes, covered for ten months of the year with snow and ice. The arctic zone has, therefore, been in past times capable of supporting almost all the forms of life of our temperate regions; and we must take account of this condition of things whenever we have to speculate on the possible migrations of organisms between ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... but all this gossip about the Rhineland and its vineyards and the vintages there and in France, sounded fascinatingly novel. And she knew where Italy was on the map; but Italy's skies, and soft air, and mementos of past times of history and art, were unknown; and she listened with ever-quickening attention. The result of the whole at last was a mortifying sense that she knew nothing. These people, her friend and this other, lived in a world of mental impressions and mentally stored-up ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... minds of some Indian and European naturalists, among the former of whom I may mention my brother [Mr. Blandford] and Dr. Stoliezka, their speculations being grounded on the relationship and partial identity of the faunas and floras of past times, not less than on that existing community of forms which has led Mr. Andrew Murray, Mr. Searles, V. Wood, jun., and Professor Huxley to infer the existence of a Miocene continent occupying a part of the Indian ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... of Enchillais heard in that beautiful garden long ago! Oh! the sound of that bell, a little cracked but still silvery, like the once beautiful voices of very old people which still retain something of their sweetness. What charm of past times, and half sad meditations of peaceful death, were awakened by that music which spread itself into the limpid darkness of the surrounding country! And we heard the bell chiming for a long time, but its sound reached us fitfully; one while it ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... formerly, from the hoofs of spurious priests, alike insensible to receive, and impotent to reflect or minister, light or warmth, from the sacred fire they pretend to cherish. In short, such is the pleasant change which has come over literary affairs, that, however apposite in past times, there is not, in the present, any fitness in the exclamation, "Oh, that mine enemy ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... always lawful, because they never deceive. He that writes the history of past times, undertakes only to decorate known facts by new beauties of method or of style, or at most to illustrate them by his own reflections. The author of a system, whether moral or physical, is obliged to nothing beyond care of selection ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... alluding to those Englishmen in past times who anticipated the taste of the present day in respect to laying out grounds, to mention the ever respected name of John Evelyn, and as all other writers before me, I believe, who have treated upon gardening, have been guilty of the same oversight, I eagerly make his memory some slight amends by ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... such lizards in existence, ay, and much larger ones. They may be found not only in the tropical isles of the Orient, but in the Western world, in the lagoons and forests of Equatorial America. Many of the "sailors' yarns" of past times, which we have been accustomed so flippantly to discredit, on account of their appearing rather tough, have under the light of recent scientific exploration ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... therefore, at home, with the allowance for the changes here indicated, and once in America, it may be said that these writings have been in some sense published. But publication is a great idea never even approximated by the utmost anxieties of man. Not the Bible, not the little book which, in past times, came next to the Bible in European diffusion and currency, [1] viz., the treatise "De Imitatione Christi," has yet in any generation been really published. Where is the printed book of which, in Coleridge's words, it may not be ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... softness and tolerance in Clayton that early spring. He had mellowed, somehow, a mellowing that had nothing to do with his new prosperity. In past times he had wondered how he would stand financial success if it ever came. He had felt fairly sure he could stand the other thing. But success—Now he found that it only increased his sense of responsibility. He was, outside of the war ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... roam in foreign climes Forget thy home and long past times? Dost wish to be a wand'rer's bride, And all thy thoughts in him confide? Thou canst not traverse mountain seas, Nor bear cold Lapland's freezing breeze; Thou canst not bear the torrid heats, Nor brave the toils a wand'rer meets; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... to forget that selfish I, and in which lies his purest part; his best happiness! To be sure it may seem grand, it may be quite ecstatic, even if it be only for a moment, to fill the world with one's name; but as, in long-past times, millions and millions of men united themselves to build a temple to the Supreme, and then themselves sank silently, namelessly, to the dust, having only inscribed His name and His glory; certainly that was greater, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... funds were scarce in bleeding France, and all sorts of ways were used to raise them. In the past times when Louis XIV had by relentless extravagance and wars depleted the purse, he caused the patiently wrought precious metals to be melted into bullion. Why not now resort to a similar method? So thought a minister of one ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... into the philosophy of the Upani@sads it may be worth while to say a few words as to the reason why diverse and even contradictory explanations as to the real import of the Upani@sads had been offered by the great Indian scholars of past times. The Upani@sads, as we have seen, formed the concluding portion of the revealed Vedic literature, and were thus called the Vedanta. It was almost universally believed by the Hindus that the highest truths could only be found in the revelation ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... real knight and chevalier of those past times, would not let her mount the downs to have her farewell view of the big ships unaccompanied by him; and partly and largely in pure chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of England's grandeur, as shown in her great vessels of war, thrilled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... estimate the amount or direction of the movements due to volcanic power by no means renders its efficacy as a land-preserving force in past times a mere matter of conjecture. The student will see in Chapter 24 that we have proofs of Carboniferous forests hundreds of miles in extent which grew on the lowlands or deltas near the sea, and which subsided and gave place to other forests, until in some regions fluviatile ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... which abounds most with mementoes of past times, is the picture-gallery; and there is something strangely pleasing, though melancholy, in considering the long rows of portraits which compose the greater part of the collection. They furnish a kind of narrative ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... themselves with victories in the open country, but securing each district as they advanced by the erection of 'burhs' or fortifications. Some of these 'burhs' were placed in desolate Roman strongholds, such as Chester. Others were raised, like that of Warwick, on the mounds piled up in past times by a still earlier race. Others again, like that of Stafford, were placed where no fortress had been before. Towns, small at first, grew up in and around the 'burhs,' and were guarded by the courage ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... self-satisfaction on the part of the buyer. A walk through this Exhibition is an object-lesson in a great many things besides aesthetics; it forces one to ask a good many of Tolstoi's angriest questions; but it enables one also, if duly familiar with the art of past times, to answer them in a manner ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... copy of Florio, which the British Museum purchased, with a view of protecting the Shakspeare autograph (as I was informed in the Museum), turned out to have the autograph of Ben Jonson in the fly-leaf. Leigh Hunt relates of Lord Byron, that Montaigne was the only great writer of past times whom he read with avowed satisfaction. Other coincidences, not needful to be mentioned here, concurred to make this old Gascon still new and immortal ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... much patient observation and study, after having watched the minute changes produced year by year, and multiplying them by thousands and ten thousands, after visiting the various regions of the earth and seeing the changes everywhere going on, and the unmistakable signs of greater changes in past times,—that he could be made to understand that the surface of the earth, however beautiful and harmonious it may appear, is strictly due in every detail to the action of forces ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... look back at the past times of our own country, what changes do we see! the fashion ever changing, the fashion of government, the fashion of religion, the fashion of dress, the fashion of architecture, all ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... thinking dear Harold might have remembered Killy Marey's needs when he gave me that half of his means. And as to going back to Mount Eaton, ghosts of past times would meet me there, whose pain was then too recent to have turned into the treasure ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well as the fortified towns, were, as I here learned, the remnants of past times, when Hindostan was divided into a great number of states, continually at war with each other. The inhabitants of the towns and villages never went out unarmed; they had spies continually on the watch; and to secure themselves from ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to use every man's fortune (that had ever tasted his bounty) in this extremity, as freely as his own. Then with a cheerful look, as if confident of the trial, he severally dispatched messengers to lord Lucius, to lords Lucullus and Sempronius, men upon whom he had lavished his gifts in past times without measure or moderation; and to Ventidius, whom he had lately released out of prison by paying his debts, and who by the death of his father was now come into the possession of an ample fortune, and well enabled ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... once more covered the strip of shingled beach, and the waves rising high began to beat with a sound like thunder against the tremendous cliff, making the earth tremble under him. At length he came to a spot where there was a great gap in the line of the cliff, where in past times a portion of it had tumbled down, and the stupendous masses of rock had rolled far out into the sea, and now formed islands of black jagged rock, standing high above the water. Here among the rocks the sea boiled and roared its loudest, churning its waters into masses ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... nation which Burke had already published, in the autumn of 1790, under the title of "Reflections on the French Revolution." In this survey of the political forces which he saw in action around him, the great Whig writer, who in past times had so passionately defended the liberties of America and the constitutional tradition of the English Parliament against the aggression of George III., attacked the Revolution as a system of violence and caprice more formidable to freedom ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... alchemists who would extract the essence of perpetual youth from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in the commonest and least-regarded matter that passes through our crucible. Spirits of past times, creatures of imagination, and people of to-day are alike the objects of our seeking, and, unlike the objects of search with most philosophers, we can insure their coming at ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... of Allah. They call themselves by the same name as the Christians of the North, yet there is as much difference between their Christianity and that of Wesley or of Channing, as between creeds that in past times have vowed mutual extermination. Still we must not call them barbarians because they cherish an institution hostile to civilization. Their highest culture stands out all the more brilliantly from the dark background of ignorance against which it is seen; but it would be injustice ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... circumstances in which we are assembled if I intervene for a very few moments. I was moved a great deal by that sentence in the speech of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in which he said that the one bright spot in the situation was the changed feeling in Ireland. In past times, when this empire has been engaged in these terrible enterprises it is true—it would be the utmost affectation and folly on my part to deny it—the sympathy of the Nationalists of Ireland, for reasons to be found deep down in centuries ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Blood-money in past times, I was assured both by Malays and Sakai, had always been paid in this manner by the semi-wild tribes of the interior. It was the custom, and Kria's relatives were eager in their prayers to me to accept the proposal. Instead, I exacted a heavy fine of jungle produce from the tribe ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... gratefully, dividing them among the whole population of seventy people, a morsel for each. They have no wheaten bread here; they live not on the "fat of the land," as the Christian poverty-vowing monks of our own and past times. These Desert saints are content with a scanty supply of barley-meal, a little olive-oil, and a few dates. I had been told they did not approve of holding Ben-Adam as slaves, and was greatly disappointed to hear a reply from one of them, "If we had money we would have ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... those I was going to visit, sweltering in flames. Were a Protestant vintner to sell his ale beneath a picture of Catholics burning in hell, I fear we should never hear the last of it. But I must say, that these pictures seemed the production of past times. They were one and all sorely faded, as if their owners were beginning to be somewhat ashamed of them, or lacked zeal to repair them. The conducteur of the stage had an Italian translation of Mr Gladstone's well-known pamphlet on Naples in his hand, which then covered ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... but do you see that Bolouk Bashi who accompanied you hither; his history is a droll illustration of past times. Simo Slivovats is a brave soldier, but, although a ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... of the little scholar at Limmeridge were, however, only of the most vague and general kind. She remembered the likeness between herself and her mother's favourite pupil, as something which had been supposed to exist in past times; but she did not refer to the gift of the white dresses, or to the singular form of words in which the child had artlessly expressed her gratitude for them. She remembered that Anne had remained at Limmeridge for a few months only, and had then left it to go back to her home in Hampshire; ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... creatures been destroyed? That question, however, seemed to present no difficulties. It was answered out of hand by the application of an old idea. All down the centuries, whatever their varying phases of cosmogonic thought, there had been ever present the idea that past times were not as recent times; that in remote epochs the earth had been the scene of awful catastrophes that have no parallel in "these degenerate days." Naturally enough, this thought, embalmed in every cosmogonic speculation of whatever origin, was appealed to in explanation ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the canon is given by Josephus towards the end of the first century A.D. "For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, ... but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine. And of them five belong to Moses.... But as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, the prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... set to read, under the master's direction, a little portion from the best translations of the Greek and Roman historians, and even from the best English authors; this might, in a very engaging manner, initiate them into the knowledge of the history of past times, and of their own country, and give them a curiosity to pass some of their vacant hours in the same laudable pursuit: for, dear Sir, I must still insist that rewards, and innocent gratifications, as also little honours and distinctions, must ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... evil of a rocky bottom is now almost entirely obviated by the admirable invention of iron cables, when the water is not too deep. The links of the chain merely acquire a polish by their friction against the coral reefs and other sharp ledges, by which the best hempen cables of past times would be ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... not. On March 10, 1764, he laid before parliament a list of port dues; some of them were higher than before, and to counterbalance the increase he proposed to give several new advantages to colonial trade. Payment was no longer to be evaded so easily as in past times, and smuggling would be attended with greater risk. The money was to be paid into the English treasury and was to be used only for colonial defence. More would be wanted for that purpose, and he proposed to raise it by an act requiring that all legal documents should bear stamps. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... renown of his forefathers who were believed by virtue to have attained divinity, but actually increased it; if any person disputed formerly the possibility of Aeneas ever having been born of Venus, he may now believe it. The gods in past times have been reported as possessing some unworthy children, but no one could deem this man unworthy to have had gods for his ancestors. Aeneas himself became king, as likewise some of his descendants. This man proved himself so much superior to them that whereas they ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... vapourish moments. The truth is, I have 'no lack of argument' to ponder upon of the most gloomy description, but this arises from other causes. Some day or other, when we are veterans, I may tell you a tale of present and past times; and it is not from want of confidence that I do not now,—but—but—always a but to the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... age in which they are produced; they carry its stamp upon them; the manners of the times are impressed by indelible marks. If it be allowed, that the best of past times were rude in comparison with ours, the cause of the ancients is decided against them; and the want of politeness, with which their works are charged, in our days, must be generally confessed. History alone seems to claim exemption from this accusation. Nobody will ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... I could make this book a thousand pages long. The subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating. But history, to give you a true idea of past times, should be like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It should cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which are best and greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow or should be indicated by a few lines. And in this chapter I can only give you a short ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... members of this family, have had a great national existence, and their national music echoes its history and its character. The heartstirring strains of their mazurkas make many a bosom beat and ache as they remind the listeners of past times. Polish music is the voice of a light-minded, brave-hearted people who lived in a gay turmoil and drained with eager lips and reckless spirits the cup of glory and of joy. The Polish polkas and mazurkas, with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of us at least, the material aspect has given place to one in which poetry and enthusiasm prevail. To such among us the associations of past times are very dear. Cheops, to me, is more ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at Gleninch," I said. "You agree with me in believing Eustace to be absolutely innocent of the crime for which he was tried. Your evidence at the Trial ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... Mr. Everett has said upon this subject were true, it would amount after all only to an argument ad prejudicium, for the Jews of past times, who believed the dreams of the Rabbies, but is of no weight whatever with those who reject them, as do all the Biblical ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... great contest may be conducted, by lawful means, to a happy termination. But, of this I am assured, that by means, lawful or unlawful, to a termination, happy or unhappy, this contest must speedily come. All that I know of the history of past times, all the observations that I have been able to make on the present state of the country, have convinced me that the time has arrived when a great concession must be made to the democracy of England; that the question, whether the change be in itself good or bad, has become a question ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... composed during the author's residence at college, as B.A. It may be remarked that the first two of these exhibit the earnestness with which he already endeavoured to represent to himself and to others the scenes and persons of past times as in actual existence. Of the Dialogue between Milton and Cowley he spoke, many years after its publication, as that one of his works which he remembered with most satisfaction. The article on Mitford's Greece he ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... following the general tendency of the eighteenth century, had been led to neglect the vital importance of the constructive elements of society; that they had sacrificed order to progress, and therefore confounded progress with destruction, and failed to perceive the real importance in past times even of the institutions which had become obsolete. Social atomism or individualism, therefore, implied a total misconception of what Mill calls the 'evolution of humanity.' This marks a critical point. The 'Germano-Coleridgians' had a theory of evolution. By evolution, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... with the statutes they should choose another Sub-Prior, so on the Feast of St. James the Apostle, before the hour for Vespers, Brother Thomas of Kempen was nominated and elected after a brief scrutiny. He was one of the elders, being sixty-seven years of age, and in past times had been appointed to this office, and albeit he knew himself to be insufficient and would have made excuse, yet he did submit him humbly to the assembled Brothers, for his obedience bade him so to do; neither did he refuse to undergo ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... I should think myself the first of men." A year later Silvio was still at work for Prince Doria and the Fieschi, but he again begs earnestly to be taken back by Michelangelo. "I feel what obligations I am under for all the kindness received from you in past times. When I remember the love you bore me while I was in your service, I do not know how I could repay it; and I tell you that only through having been in your service, wherever I may happen now to be, honour and courtesy are paid me; and that is wholly due to your excellent renown, and not ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... disposition to accept the great critic's ironical remark in sober earnest. Much of what is currently accredited as authentic history is in fact a mixture of flattery and calumny, myth and fable. Yet in this set of fables, whatever may have been the case in past times, people will no longer agree to believe. During the present century the criticism of recorded events has gone far toward assuming the developed and systematized aspect of a science, and canons of belief have been established, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... every individual native had two altars, one beside the place where he or she slept, and another at the door of the house, with chests containing large or small idols and stone knives, and books made of the bark of trees containing the record of past times. Especially on the coast and other sultry parts of the country, they were addicted to the most abominable vices, where they had boys in female attire. They fed on human flesh, as we do on beef, having wooden cages in every ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... was, nor seemed built for war, But rather like the work of other days, When men, in better peace than now they are, Had leisure on the world around to gaze, And noted well the past times' changing ways; And fair with sculptured stories it was wrought, By lapse of time ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... my prose, but not upon my poetry. To say the truth, this information mortified me much. I said to myself, 'Cervantes, you are certainly either changed, or the world, contrary to its custom, has grown wiser, for in past times you used to meet with praise.' I read my comedies anew, together with some interludes which I had placed with them. I found that they were not so bad but that they might pass, from what this author called darkness into what others might perhaps ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... will be somewhat of a staggerer to those who from distance, or from want of close observation, regard the Chinese as a down-trodden people, on a level with the Fellahin of Egypt in past times. For the answer, so far as my own experience goes, is that only so much can be got out of the Chinese people as the people themselves are ready and willing to pay. In other words, with all their show of an autocratic ruler and a paternal government, the people ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... relic of past times, rich with the indefinable attraction which nothing but a history of centuries can give, we pass out into Ely Place. This is a quiet cul-de-sac composed almost wholly of the offices of business men, solicitors, etc. At the north end, beyond the chapel, the old houses ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... manure, and they are handy for that, being on the waterside. I believe it was intended to pull them down quite at the beginning of our days; but there was, I am told, a queer antiquarian society, which had done some service in past times, and which straightway set up its pipe against their destruction, as it has done with many other buildings, which most people looked upon as worthless, and public nuisances; and it was so energetic, and had such good ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... dikes, sea-embankments, for example; to Ost-Friesland, as to Holland, they are the first condition of existence; and, in the past times, of extreme Parliamentary vitality, have been slipping a good deal out of repair. Ems River, in those flat rainy countries, has ploughed out for itself a very wide embouchure, as boundary between Groningen and Ost-Friesland. Muddy Ems, bickering with the German Ocean, does ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... are going to sing of the things of yesterday, let us begin with what God did for us in past times. My beloved brethren, you will find it a sweet subject for song at times, to begin to sing of electing love and covenanted mercies. When thou thyself art low, it is well to sing of the fountain-head of mercy; of that blest decree wherein thou wast ordained to eternal life, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... not deceived!" whispered Marie Antoinette into the ear of her companion. "The good Parisians love me still; they, like me, remember past times, and the old loyalty ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... think I have nothing better to do than to give Bourrienne an audience? that would indeed furnish gossip for Paris and Hamburg. He has always sided with the emigrants; he would be talking to me of past times; he was for Josephine! My wife, Duroc, is near her confinement; I shall have a son, I am sure!.... Bourrienne is not a man of the day; I have made giant strides since he left France; in short, I do not want to see him. He is a grumbler by nature; and you know, my dear Duroc, I do ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... knew what she was saying," I said to myself. "Her words were not casual," but not daring to ask her if she intended to make me her happiness, I spoke about the landscape. "You ask me why I like the landscape? Because it carries me back into past times when men believed in nymphs and in satyrs. I have always thought it must be a wonderful thing to believe in the dryad. Do you know that men wandering in the woods sometimes used to catch sight of a white breast between the leaves, and henceforth they could love no mortal woman? The beautiful name ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... "Evolution," as it is called; and this, too, is a question of almost infinite dimensions, which can but be glanced at here. Does Palaeontology teach us that the almost innumerable kinds of animals and plants which we know to have successively flourished upon the earth in past times were produced separately and wholly independently of each other, at successive periods? or does it point to the theory that a large number of these supposed distinct forms, have been in reality produced by the slow ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... but for a moment to the review of past times.—We said that long after the brilliant show of talent, and the creation of literary supplies for the national use, in the early part of the last century, the deplorable mental condition of the people remained in no very great degree altered. To pass from beholding that bright ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... limited patrimony and alliances of this new quasi-dynasty rendered its personal power very inferior to that of the northern branch, and consequently lessened the influence possessed by the ruling family in past times. In Ireland the connections, more or less numerous, by blood relationship with the great families, always exercised a powerful influence over the body of the nation in rendering it docile and amenable to the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... but none the less every human creature must in some sort be a designer, and it has caused immense harm to raise a cloud of what Morris called "sham technical twaddle" between the worker and what should be the spontaneous inspiration of his work. What such combination has produced in past times, may perhaps best be understood by some reading in old church inventories of the simply infinite store of magnificent embroidered vestments which once adorned our churches. In an inventory of Westminster Abbey ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... recognition they expected and deserved. But the new-born republic was too busy and breathless to seek them out or pause to listen to their voices, which were softer, less insistent than others nearer by. In those far past times the Morleys and the Hertfords were equals and the Walden Place deserved its name of the Great House. The Appointed Way was the Big Road, and was kept in good order by well-fed and contented slaves who had not ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... fixed into the ground or into some part of the masonry as magical nails destined to preserve the bricks from destruction, and consequently to keep the memory of the dedicator continually before posterity. Stelaa engraved on both sides recalled the wars of past times, the battle-field, the scenes of horror which took place there, and the return of the victor and his triumph. Sitting or standing figures of diorite, silicious sandstone or hard limestone, bearing inscriptions on their robes or shoulders, perpetuated the features of the founder ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Mark. If you had, the clue to this labyrinth might be in your hands to-day. The more I hear and the more I think, the more firmly am I convinced that the truth we are out to find can only be discovered by a deal of hard digging in past times. There is a lot of spade work demanded and you, or I, may have to return to England to do it—unless we can get the information without the labour. But I've no reason to count on any luck ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts |
