"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smoked in silence a moment, smiling meditatively. "Mother's making some napkins, too!" he broke out. "They're going to get on—Ruth and mother—beautifully. 'She's a dear!' That's what mother says of Ruth half a dozen times a day. 'She's a dear!' And somehow the triteness of the phrase from mother is ridiculously pleasing to me. May I ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... apples and break my windows, I were obliged to take the temptation away by cutting down all my apple trees and moving my house further west, into the wilderness. This would be, in good John Wesley's phrase, "giving up all the good times to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... again elected President, the people seeming impressed with the wisdom of his quaint phrase that "it was best not to swap horses while crossing a stream." Through all the vicissitudes of his first term he justified the unbounded confidence of the nation, supporting with no laggard hand, cheering and inspiring the citizen soldier with noble example and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... with worshipping the Goddess of Reason, might legitimately have retorted that it was rather the Goddess of Unreason that they set up to be worshipped. Verbally considered, Carlyle's French Revolution was more revolutionary than the real French Revolution: and if Carrier, in an exaggerative phrase, empurpled the Loire with carnage, Turner almost literally set ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... felt like Adam when he first proceeded to his primitive tailoring. A wave of shame ran through him. He looked around the great silent room, at the rows of students, each in front of an easel, using his naked body for their purposes. A phrase flashed across his mind—in three years his reading had brought vocabulary—they were using his physical body for their spiritual purposes. For the moment he hated them all fiercely. They were a band of vampires. Habit and discipline alone ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... after phrase she went on, giving him time to hear and to make an inner assent of the will; and repeating also other short vocal prayers that she knew by heart. And so the delicate skein of prayer rose from the altar where this morning sacrifice ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... medium would indicate. Because of this, the author has ventured to designate it Trifolium magnum. It has also been classified, and with no little appropriateness, Trifolium pratense perenne, which has reference to the mildly perennial habit of growth in this plant. In common phrase it is known by such names as Large, Tall, Saplin or Sapling, Giant, Meadow, Perennial Red, Red Perennial Meadow, Pea Vine, Zigzag, Wavy Stemmed, Soiling, and Cow clover or Cow grass. Each of these names has reference to some peculiarity of growth in the plant. For ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... in the nature of things (if one may venture here to employ a phrase too often used out of mere idleness or ignorance) that the undertaking which year by year had been carried forward with so much energy and success, should after a while come to a standstill; and the commonest observation ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... Kingdom of Heaven (or of God) is a state in which the will of God is absolutely and perfectly obeyed. It is capable of partial realisation here, and is sure of complete fulfilment hereafter. To the early hearers of these words the phrase would necessarily suggest the idea which bulked so large in prophecy and in Judaism, of the Messianic Kingdom; and we may well lay hold of that thought to suggest the first of the elements of this blessedness. That poverty of spirit is blessed because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... puts stress on the first word of the phrase instead of on the last, as in my previous remarks. 'The Lord is my Banner,'—no Moses, no outward symbol, no man or thing, but only He Himself. Therefore, in all our duties, and in all our difficulties, and in all our conflicts, and for all our conquests, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... definite aims; one who has a settled purpose in life; one who is strenuously determined to realize a worthy ambition; one who has both microscopic and telescopic capacity, able to look into the minutest details and sweep a broad range with clear vision; and one (slightly changing a potent phrase) whose "reach upward is ever exceeding his grasp." Added to this the Negro scholar above all must be one who makes himself a reforming force for the world's betterment. Here is the Negro's opportunity—to ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... success by one adroit wriggle—we can describe his mode of achieving greatness by no better phrase. He was destined to receive half a million for his treachery to his employers. During the war, when United States securities were at their worst; when men, pledged to take them, forfeited money rather than do so, Mr. Allen had lent the government millions, because he believed ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... any of my flock; for nothing detracts more from the dignity of the apostolical character than rapid motions—such as running, or jumping, or an unordered style of apparel, without hatband or cassock. When out of the village street, I put (as the vulgar phrase expresses it) my best foot foremost, and enacted the part of a running serving-man in the track of my noble conductor; and finally I arrived, in such state as may be conceived, at the entrance-hall of the noble mansion. In the courtyard were numerous serving-men ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... the course of his remarks said: "They ask us to go it blind." Judge Hale, of New York, with an innocent expression, said he would like to have the gentleman from Pennsylvania inform the House as to the meaning of the phrase "go it blind." Stevens said at once: "It means following Raymond." The pertinency of the hit was in the circumstance that Raymond was supporting Johnson, and that Hale was following Raymond, not from conviction but for the reason that they had been classmates ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... New York the visiting English writer and wit, G.K. Chesterton, protested against prohibition and other limitations on American freedom. He quoted the phrase from Patrick Henry's address, "Give me liberty or give me ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated man), "if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that have been properly given to building up these illusions, that—er—in fact, they're what you might call—er—the outcome of the world's crescendo," he rushed his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it—"why do you want to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... changes." Yorn Travann laughed; he recognized the phrase. Probably started it himself. Paul lifted his glass. "To the ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... whole house of Glastonbury which followed, and which became historical, prompt resolution was taken on Dunstan's report, which did honour to the brotherhood, as evincing both their resignation and their trust in God, Who they believed would, to use the touching phrase of the Psalmist, "turn their captivity as the rivers in the south;" so that they "who went forth weeping, bearing good seed, should come again with joy, and ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... harmonizing better with the subject. It means much to the reader of the translation of an Old Irish text to have the atmosphere of the original transferred as perfectly as may be, and this end is attained by preserving its archaisms and quaintness of phrase, its repetitions and inherent crudities and even, without suppression or attenuation, the grossness of speech of our less prudish ancestors, which is also a mark of certain primitive habits of life but which an over-fastidious translator through delicacy of feeling ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... ready to act when those on the stage cease that occupation, gave a splendid imitation of the historic last scene at the Tower of Babel. Having accomplished this to its evident satisfaction, the audience proceeded, like the closing phrase of the "Goetterdaemmerung" Dead March, to become exceedingly ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... to have meaning instead," said Jim. "And besides, nobody who was at hand was quite sure how to turn the Latin phrase. Are you?" ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... careful a manner and guarded so closely? Everybody was asking these questions, but only in the depth of his own heart, for nobody dared to interrupt the painful and anxious silence by a loud word or an inquisitive phrase. Every one seemed to be fascinated by the forbidding glances of the hussars, and stunned by the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... verb and a preposition are used as one verb; in (b), a verb, an adverb, and a preposition unite as a verb; in (c), an article, a noun, a preposition, are united with verbs as one verb phrase. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... one phrase constantly ringing in the ears of the Devon Commissioners, and now, after nearly a generation has passed away, it is ringing in the ears of the nation louder than ever—'the want of tenure.' All the evidence went to show that the want of security paralysed ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Till the breach caused by her second marriage just before he died no one had so much of his society as Mrs. Thrale. She soon became "my mistress" to him, an adaptation of his from the "my master" which was her phrase for her husband. And for him, too, Thrale was "my master." A somewhat masterful servant, no doubt, to them both, but he loved them sincerely and was deeply grateful for their kindness. He lived at their house at Streatham ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... did not seem to hear his explanation as she stood there gazing at him, her mind leaping lightning-like from point to point. "It was that which made you behave so strangely in the garden," she said, and she spoke each phrase with a kind of breathless finality. "You thought that I—I was like those—those other women in the camp." As he tried to take her hand she drew farther away, and stood looking at him out of eyes that were like purple shadows in her white face. It was with ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the Great War the Prime Minister warned the British people that, after the splendid demonstration India was already giving of her loyalty to the cause for which the whole Empire was then in arms, our relations with her would have henceforth to be approached from "a new angle of vision." The phrase he used acquired a deeper meaning still as the war developed from year to year into a life-and-death struggle not merely between nations but between ideals, and India claimed for herself the benefit of the ideals for which she too fought and helped ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... The scorn had gone now, and the voice had grown stern. "It is useless for us to talk together at all. You have made intercourse impossible. I have no desire to hurt or taunt or insult you, as you phrase it; but, if I am to speak the truth, I must say that I feel very strongly that it is to you and your behavior that we owe the greater part of this trouble. If you had been at my side, if Lesley had been under a mother's wing, sheltered as only a mother ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to wander off into the boundless domain of aesthetics, we must stop at this point for a moment to make sure that we are of one mind regarding the meaning of the phrase "artistic pleasure," in so far at least as it is used in ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... sunny Italy, or busy England. Yet the towns were frequent and lively, and the cordial politeness and ready smile of the wooden-shoed peasant restored good humour to the splenetic. Now, the old woman sat no more at the door with her distaff—the lank beggar no longer asked charity in courtier-like phrase; nor on holidays did the peasantry thread with slow grace the mazes of the dance. Silence, melancholy bride of death, went in procession with him from town to town through ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a girdle, generally of wool, for wool by the ancients was supposed to excite love, which the bridegroom the first night unbound in bed. Both in Greek and in Latin the phrase to undo the zone was used to ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Sister Myrtha and her associates among the poor and sick of Zuerich—quiet women, of no particular prominence in the social world, and not learned or accomplished; "nur einfache Maedchen" (only simple maidens, quiet, ordinary women, as we might translate Sister Myrtha's own phrase), but living "not to be ministered unto, but to minister," commending their creed by their deeds, and winning sympathy by the loving, self-denying spirit that ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... three passions which hampered and in the long-run destroyed the accord between king and minister: that for war, whetted and indulged by Louvois; that for kingly and courtly extravagance; and that for building and costly fancies. Colbert likewise loved "buildments" (les batiments), as the phrase then was; he urged the king to complete the Louvre, plans for which were requested of Bernini, who went to Paris for the purpose; after two years' infructuous feelers and compliments, the Italian returned to Rome, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Too long we have been fighting here, around these old walls, to yield them now without a struggle. We say, unhesitatingly, to those in authority, there are brave men here, who are prepared to make of Charleston a second Saragossa. We use no fancy phrase. We mean the exact thing. We mean fight the country inch by inch to her outside lines; and we mean, then, fight it inch by inch to the foot of old St. Michael's walls.... We want no Atlanta, no Savannah business here.... Let Charleston ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... prevalent impressions here of John Bull's general ignorance and apathy as to what is going on in America, I willingly admit that not till I had been a few days resident in Cambridge did the unpalatable fact fully dawn upon me that the country was undergoing the ordeal of "hard times"—a phrase, by the way, which I have had dinned into my ears almost incessantly as far back as I can remember. Besides, although I could not help knowing that the States have been peopled by Europeans, I was hardly prepared to find Americans proper—the descendants of Revolutionary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... smilingly, adding, "Wele ke hau." This was their native phrase of enthusiasm; in other words, ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... vault of Heaven. This lad told about a "free speech fight" in a far Western city, and how the chief of police had led the clubbing, and how they had got back at him. "We bumped him off all right," said "Strawberry"; it was a favourite phrase of his—whenever anybody got in his way, he "bumped him off". And then "Flathead Joe", who came from the Indian country, was moved to emulation, and told how he had put dynamite under the supports of a mine-breaker, and the whole works ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... The phrase arrested her. She turned to him again, and he perceived that her eyes were shining now suspiciously. In an instant the mockery in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... see; we have a blazing fire on the hearth, and here is some comfort for we men slaves;" whereupon he produced two bottles of brandy. Don Ricardo Campana, with whom Bang seemed now to be absolutely in league, or, in vulgar phrase, as thick as pickpockets, had brought a goblet of water, and a small silver drinking cup, with him, so we passed the creature round, and tried all we could to while away the tedious night. But, as if a sudden thought had struck Aaron, he ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... attention, she appeared, strangely enough, to have nothing to say to him. A curious apathy seemed to have taken possession of this resolute woman. Forced to speak first, the Doctor merely inquired, in the conventional phrase, what he ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... official language of the country, and in that Latin the term for the political nation was Populus, which we would naturally translate as people. But populus contrasted in Hungarian law with plebs, the misera plebs contribuens, that phrase of ominous meaning to describe the mass of the oppressed and unenfranchised people, the populus being the nobles, a caste which was relatively very wide, but none the less a caste, and which enjoyed a monopoly ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... to step into my apartement?' he said suddenly. The poor old man had, it seemed, only this phrase still left him always ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... papers were full of the trial; no other subject, could, at the time, either interest or amuse. I doubt whether any affair of the kind was ever, to use the phrase of the trade, so well and perfectly reported. The speeches appeared word for word the same in the columns of newspapers of different politics. For four-fifths of the contents of the paper it would have been the same to you whether you were reading ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... kitchen—not being at all active, in consequence of having lost part of her feet from indulging in a fancy for a couch of snow on one of the coldest nights of the preceding winter, when, to use a charitable phrase, 'she was not quite herself.' I believe that, even after this melancholy warning, that eccentric person was frequently somebody else. 'However,' as Mrs. Bull said, 'she didn't disturb any one'—and although I could not exactly see the force of this reasoning, I treated ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: "Guess he's been in Starkfield too ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Dickson, but his conviction was being woefully shaken. Saskia had said her enemy was a beautiful as a devil—he remembered the phrase, for he had thought it ridiculous. This man was magnificent, but there was nothing devilish in his ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... this last phrase. He felt actual fear in the presence of these two figures, so atrociously commonplace, in their horrible, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... Satyrs, wherefore fear you Spear to wield, and only dare to Talk in swelling phrase, while yet you Cower, Teles like, And when goaded on, past bearing, By our Kleon's tongue so daring, Only gnash your teeth despairing, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... faint, was new vitality to my soul. My eyes swept over all before me. The spheres were plain as villages that dot a landscape. I saw most beauteous forms, yet like our own. Strange sounds I heard of gladness that seemed mixed with sadness:—a low, sweet harmony of both. Else, I know not how to phrase what never man but me ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... words. Keep the general outlines of the music so far as phrasing and rhythm are concerned; but whenever a sacrifice must be made, sacrifice the musical value and emphasize the emotion, the meaning, the poetry, the dramatic or narrative significance of the words. Phrase with this end in view; sacrifice anything except tone-production to this end. Do not distort the rhythm, but bend it sufficiently to emphasize important words and syllables, by holding them a little, at the expense of unimportant words or syllables. Finally, remember that misguided ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... summoned by his horn, folded up his large pocket-hankerchief slowly and reverently, as if it were a banner, put it into his pocket, and uttered in a solemn tone, "Tempus est ludendi." As this Latin phrase was used every day at the same hour, every boy in the school understood so much Latin. A rush from all the desks ensured, and amidst shouting, yelling, and leaping every soul disappeared except myself, who remained fixed to my form. The Dominie rose from ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... entrusted me with your secret, ma'am, the phrase would have had more significance. But, obeying my Master, I do not require to think of my own honor. Those who do not acknowledge their Master, can not afford to forget it. But if they do not learn to obey Him, they will find by the time they have got through what they call life, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... hope, sufficiently elucidated what is meant by the common phrase, "the ordinary rate of profit," and the sense in which, and the limitations under which, this ordinary rate has a real existence. It now remains to consider what causes determine ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... it must take some cleverness to start it. And isn't it curious," she went on, breathlessly, "how a new bit of slang always fills a vacant place in the language? The minute you hear it you know it's what you've always wanted. I suppose the reason we're obliged to use the current phrase is because it expresses the current need. When the hour passes, the need passes with it, and something new must be coined to meet the new situation. I should think a most interesting book might be written on the Psychology of Slang, and if I wasn't ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... ends in confusion: it should clearly close with the words "refused to breed" in place of the bracket and the present concluding phrase. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Ben Shrillett was presiding at a meeting of the Strike Committee. He had read on the way to the meeting the communique that told briefly of Sapper Duffy and his fellow Engineers' work of the night before, and the descriptive phrase struck him as sounding neat and effective. He worked it now into his speech to the Committee, explaining how and where they and he benefited by this strike, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... beating, i.e., allow me to beat. Now as the form of the participle is the same as that of the infinitive, it may be doubted if there is really a distinction between these two forms as to their origin. For instance, the phrase pan putrake mrite mi thka dekhilm, can be translated, Isaw him beating his own son; but it can be explained also as, what they nonsensically call in Latin grammar accusativus cum infinitivo, that is to say, the infinitive can be taken for a locative of the verbal noun, and the whole phrase ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... deepened the mountain spring. The berries of the wintergreen grew scarce, and Rome Stetson, "hiding out," as the phrase is, had to seek them on the northern face of the mountains. The moss on the naked winter trees brightened in color, and along the river, where willows drooped, ran faint lines of green. The trailing arbutus gave out delicate pink blossoms, ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... mortals, it will seem to follow that the moral attributes of Baiame and other gods of other Australian regions are later accretions round the form of an original and confessed bugbear, as among the primitive Arunta, 'a bogle of the nursery,' in the phrase repudiated by Maitland of Lethington. Though not otherwise conspicuously more civilised than the Arunta (except, perhaps, in marriage relations), Mr. Howitt's South Eastern natives will have improved the Arunta confessed ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... item. If a fertile-minded reporter had desired to head his column of Engagements in High Life with Ida's name, and had announced that she would shortly be led to the hymeneal altar (I believe that is the correct phrase in newspaper parlance) by any one in our circle of acquaintances with whom she was at all intimate, it would not have been surprising; but why a person whom she had not seen or heard of for two years should have been selected, is a mystery worthy ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Rossetti who supplied Emerson that fine phrase, "Plain living and high thinking." Of course, it might have been original also with Emerson, but probably it reached him via ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... been seen emerging from the forest near Otsego Lake. The old-fashioned novelist who invented the "solitary horseman" as a means of introducing a romance could not have found a better use for his favorite phrase than to describe the approach of this visitor. For with his coming the history of Cooperstown began. Following the trail from Cherry Valley, the horseman came over the hill which rises toward the east from the foot of Otsego Lake. Before descending into the vale, he dismounted and ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... porters in single file, the one carrying the folded lion skin leading the way; those bearing the waterbuck trophy and meat bringing up the rear. They kept up an undertone of humming in a minor key; occasionally breaking into a short musical phrase in full voice. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... its hundred eyes, where blue and green burst in the ecstasy of their union into a vapour of gold, that the circle of the universe might see. And truly the bird's vanity had not misled his judgment: it was a sight to make the hearts of the angels throb out a dainty phrase or two more in the song of their thanksgiving. Some pigeons, white, and blue-grey, with a lovely mingling and interplay of metallic lustres on their feathery throats, but with none of that almost grotesque obtrusion ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... in the center of the room, his eyes, traversing the walls, fell on the portrait of Bolivar Blake, and with one of the fantastic tricks of memory there shot into his head the dying phrase of that gay sinner: "I may not sit with the saints, but I shall ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... explained truly enough. Perhaps some shallow persons are affected by the fact that in good looks the Portuguese are as a race inferior to the Spaniards. But there is no such real difference in character as to justify an impartial observer in using a phrase so essentially galling to England's allies, of whom Napier said: "The bulk of the people were, however, staunch in their country's cause ... ready at the call of honour, and susceptible of discipline, without any ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... ago, when our Divisional Artillery arrived. Unversed in local etiquette, they commenced operations by "sending up"—to employ a vulgar but convenient catch-phrase—a strongly fortified farmhouse in the enemy's support line. The Boche, by way of gentle reproof, deposited four or five small "whizz-bangs" in our front-line trenches. The tenants thereof promptly telephoned to "Mother," and Mother ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... Visayan islands almost every family owns a pericos, kept as American children keep canary birds. The pericos is about the size and color of a Crow, but has a hard white hood that entirely covers its head. The people teach it but one phrase, which it repeats continually, parrot fashion. The words are, "Comusta pari? Pericos tao." (How are you, father? Parrot-man.) "Pari" means padre or priest. The people address the pericos as "pari" because its white head, devoid of feathers, ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... sophistication. Perhaps in the restricted conditions of her life she had never before had adequate temptation to a subterfuge. Even now, consciously reddening, her eyes drooping before the combined gaze of her little world, she had an inward protest of the literal exactness of her phrase. "Naw ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... next place, the words were, probably, not so disrespectful as they at first appear. Some have thought the original phrase might be rendered, "What is that to thee and me?" meaning, "What concern have we in this want of wine? it is the duty of others to provide, and not ours." It must be admitted, however, that this interpretation is not so honourable to the benevolent character of Christ, nor so natural, under all ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... three kingdoms were emancipated from the despotisms of Pope, Prince, and Prelate, and an inheritance of liberty secured for these Islands of the Sea. The whole achievements of the heroes of the battlefields are comprehended under that phrase of Reformers and Martyrs, "The Covenanted Work of Reformation." The attainments of those stirring times were bound together by the Covenants, as by ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... endures gravely and tensely with a sad Latin dignity, and so it is that this Frenchman endures the war from first to last. For that reason the Germans, after their failure on the Marne, counted on the nervous exhaustion of the French. It was a favourite phrase with them—one of those formulae founded on knowledge without understanding which so often mislead them.—Their formula for us was that we cared for nothing but football and marmalade.—But reading these letters one can understand how they were deceived. ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... writing a paper to be laid before a learned and fastidious society one is bound to let one's hearers a little into the secret, and to state fairly what the subject of the essay really is. I suppose we shall all admit that bad luxury is bad, and good luxury is good, unless the phrase good luxury is a contradiction in terms. We must try to avoid disputing about words. The word luxury, according to its derivation, signifies an extravagant and outrageous indulgence of the appetites or desires. If we take this as the meaning of the word, we shall agree ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... variations of animal species to suit our theorists there is nothing so convenient as the influence of environment. It is a vague, elastic phrase, which does not compromise us by compelling us to be too precise and it supplies an apparent explanation of the inexplicable. But is this influence so ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Japanese history took form. The reverence for the ruler long afterward entitled "Son of Heaven" is the strongest force in the national history. The spirit and prowess of these early conquerors have left an indelible impress upon the language and the mind of the nation in the phrase Yamato Damashi—the spirit of (Divine and ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... so much more delightful than before," suggested Rosalind, "because nobody will stare at us, and we shall have the whole world to ourselves." In that last phrase I recognised the ideal wedding journey, and was not at all dismayed at the prospect of having no society but Rosalind's for a time. But all such anticipations were dispelled in an hour. It was not that we met many people—it is one of the delights of the Forest that one finds society ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... not, if I can make this world swing a little easier on its hinges." That seemed to her a figure not markedly vivid, and she continued. "It needs a sight of oiling. Don't you see it does? O, Mr. Tenney, think of the poor little boy that's got to live along"—the one phrase still seemed to her the best—"not right, and grow to be a man, and you may die and leave him, and his mother may die. What's ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... as dressmakers, Nan and I would have done it, and never given in. We were making quite a fine business of it. We had more orders then we could execute; and you call that play? Confess, now, that you repent of that phrase!" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... for two, but only one brother heard it; for Jeffrey Stackpole, the senior member of the firm, was sick abed with heart disease at the Stackpole house on Clay Street in town, and Dudley, the junior, was running the business and keeping bachelor's hall, as the phrase runs, in the living room of the mill; and it was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in liberty, together with the present trade of the stage, in all their masculine interludes, what liberal soul doth not abhor? Where nothing but filth of the mire is uttered, and that with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, such racked metaphors, with (indecency) able to violate the ear of a Pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Afterward they enjoyed prolonged spasms of mirth, their cachinnations carrying far out over the flat lands disturbing inoffensive truck gardeners in their sleep. They cried "S-o-m-e time!" so often that the phrase struck even their ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... commonplace remarks, assurances of loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's health. His manner was breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. He made it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"—he used that phrase—that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing. He made a curt bow, ostentatiously free ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... in the endeavour to find in Twentieth Century English a precise equivalent for a Greek word, phrase, or sentence there are two dangers to be guarded against. There are a Scylla and a Charybdis. On the one hand there is the English of Society, on the other hand that of the utterly uneducated, each of these patois having also its own special, though expressive, ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... decisive moment is clear. It came when, in Mr. Mackail's phrase, 'Homer came to Hellas'.[42:3] The date is apparently the same, and the influences at work are the same. It seems to have been under Pisistratus that the Homeric Poems, in some form or other, came from Ionia to be recited ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... It was a simple system, and Sir Felix has often in talk with me lamented its gradual strangulation, in his time, by the complexities of modern commerce.—You should hear, by the way, Sir Felix pronounce that favourite phrase of his 'in my time'; he does it with a dignified humility, as who should say, 'Observe, I am of the past indeed, but I have lent my name ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path for every man; a thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do; which could he but be led or driven to do, he were then doing "like a man," as we phrase it. His success, in such case, were complete, his felicity a maximum. This path, to find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... bondage; for twenty-eight he stood in the place nearest to the monarch himself; and not even his enemies dared to assert that his political conduct was guided by other motives than the consideration of public welfare. Indeed, if there is any phrase for which he, the apparent cynic, the sworn despiser of phrases, seems to have had a certain weakness, it is the word salus publica. To it he sacrificed his days and his nights; for it he more than once risked his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a fact, "The Enthusiast" is seen to be a document of extraordinary importance. I do not speak of the positive merit of the poem, which it would be easy to exaggerate. Gray, in a phrase which has been much discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had "no choice at all." It is evident to me that Gray meant by this to stigmatise the diction of Joseph Warton, which is jejune, verbose, and poor. He had little magic in writing; he fails to express ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... it would not have been worth while to exemplify so unambiguous a phrase. The like remark may also be extended to the next word that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... 75, 'note' 1. In the application to Coleridge of the phrase, "Manichean of poesy," Byron may allude to Cowper's 'Task' ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... was predominant over all the other mental faculties, great as these other faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from this omission: since the involutions and overlappings of thought and phrase, which occur in his earlier and again in his latest works, must have been partly due to his never learning to follow the processes of more normally constituted minds. It would be a great error to suppose ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... that, I'm afraid," he contradicted. "He'll just settle down on his heels, and shuffle along in——" He hesitated for a finish of his phrase. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the polite sections of New York City, up among the East Sixties, and at the insistence of my sister and aunt, who lived with me, our home was near enough the great boulevard to be designated by that enviable phrase, "Just off Fifth Avenue." We were on the north side of the street, and, nearer to the Avenue, on the south side, was the home ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... hat. He had intended to follow in a cab, but a sprint would be more effective over such a short distance. He crossed the Strand without heed to the traffic, turned to the right, and, to use his own phrase, "butted into a policeman" at the ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... bitterness thou rail like Nash: Forgive me, honest soul, that term thy phrase Railing; for in thy works thou wert not rash, Nor didst affect in youth thy private praise. Thou hadst a strife with that Tergemini;[11] Thou hurt'dst them not till they ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... gods are good, others bad, and their acts partake of their own natures. Buddhists attribute events to 'retribution' (Inga), while the Chinese ascribe them to be the 'decree of heaven' (Tien ming). This latter is a phrase invented by the so-called 'holy men' to justify murdering sovereigns and seizing their dominions. As neither heaven nor earth has a mind, they cannot issue decrees. If heaven really could issue decrees, it would certainly ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... The Phrase "To have a Button in the Room," and "Sally."—I have again been reading that most amusing book, The Lives of the Norths. At p. 88 of vol. i. (edit. 1826) there is a passage which has always puzzled me. Speaking of some law proceedings in which the Lady Dacres ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... with a curious term for "native land, home," gabaurths (from gabairan "to bear"), which signifies also "birth." As an exemplification of the idea in the Sophoclean phrase "all-nourishing earth," we find that at an earlier stage in the history of our own English tongue erd (cognate with our earth) signified "native land," a remembrance of that view of savage and uncivilized peoples in which earth, land are "native country," for these are, in the true sense ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... The phrase was repeated to me, word for word by my sister De Thianges, who did not conceal her anger, and wished to avenge me, if I did not avenge myself. The Marquise then informed me of another thing, which she had left me in ignorance ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... companions laughed pleasantly, thereby expressing their gratification at the return compliment involved in the phrase "woman haters." ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... many descriptions already wrote of the action of the 13th of September, save only I remember he wrote, from the testimony of a brother aide-de-camp who was by his side, that the General never spoke at all after receiving his death-wound, so that the phrase which has been put into the mouth of the dying hero may be considered as no more authentic than an oration of Livy ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A patriotic phrase in the mouth of a man who has the golden gift of speech, coupled with the statement of a principle popular with his audience, is a sure point in an oration. Something in John's tone and gesture touched the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... laughing, "the mysterious phrase is significant. But the king lays too much stress upon that little duchy of Courland; if I wanted it, I could make it mine without troubling his majesty in the least. As to the bride, I doubt whether it would be agreeable to the czarina for me to marry, and this matter I leave to herself. What does ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... The phrase seemed attractive to him and he repeated it. The policeman, a tall muscular man, surveyed us in silence. Sarakoff, his hair and beard dishevelled, was leaning back in a corner of the seat, with his legs crossed. His dressing-gown ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... we may perhaps recognise in Lord Beaconsfield's inclusive use of the phrase to her of "we authors, Madam" something of the flattery of the courtier, yet assuredly in all her public addresses to her people there is displayed a fine and biblical simplicity, and a directness of appeal indicative of a noble mind and a ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... it is to my mode of dealing that you attribute the delightful simplicity of a transaction involving a little fortune from hand to hand? And where pray, in this terraqueous sublunary sphere—I heard that good phrase from a literary exquisite at Bath, and it seems to me comprehensive—where, then, on this terraqueous sublunary globe of ours, Sir Adrian Landale, could one expect to find another person ready to lend a privateersman, trading under an irresponsible name, the sum of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... policeman is silent and awed by what he feels to be a scene from the human tragedy, though he may not be able to describe it to himself by any more suitable phrase ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... is quite a new delight. Is he really falling in love with her? as the phrase goes. It will be delightful to have duty and ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... equal horizontal bands of red (top), white, and black with three green five-pointed stars in a horizontal line centered in the white band; the phrase ALLAHU AKBAR (God is Great) in green Arabic script - Allahu to the right of the middle star and Akbar to the left of the middle star - was added in January 1991 during the Persian Gulf crisis; similar to the flag of Syria which has two stars but no script and the flag of Yemen, which ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... was that Jimmy Torrance was slowly approaching that mental condition that is aptly described by the phrase, "losing your grip," one of the symptoms of which was the fact that he was almost contented ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... now and slipped off to sleep again, but later when she awakened the charm of the cook's phrase aroused her thoroughly, and she lay wondering what "a double funeral" was like. Would it have been at her house or Richard's? Would two little white coffins have stood side by side, or would each have been in its own place, with the two solemn processions ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... each phrase with kisses—"now you shall have everything . . . everything . . . your heart can wish! Stoves you shall have . . . servants and dresses. . . . Yes, and your emeralds! And your pearls! You shall have . . . emeralds set in a ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... fatally wound and offend him. She tried to show him in a sentence that he was nothing more to her than a blundering, inessential fool, interfering in important business that was no concern of his. And although the hurry of her mind did not permit her to find the deadly phrase she desired, the sharpness of her anxiety to wound ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... these wild northern men can turn a phrase!" whispered Chrysophrasia in my ear,—"so strong and yet so tender!" She could not take her eyes from her nephew, and he appeared to understand that he had already made a conquest of the aesthetic old maid, for he took ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... here uses this phrase, "when the fortieth year was completed," for when it was begun; as does St. Luke when the day of Pentecost ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... me as far as I have gone in this, you will begin to see at once that the men who are going to be successful in solving these problems are the men who are going to learn the game. Among the human family, you know, we have a stock phrase that we use sometimes when a man dies and we don't understand the cause of his death. We say "He died of heart failure." That is a convenient thing to hide behind. "Winter-killing," to my mind, is another such term. It is used, for instance, in a case where an individual ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various |
