"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we have in the chronicles something of great value—a true outline of the general situation, and some stirring narratives of the clash and wrestling of armed men, compiled either at first hand from the recollections of those who were actually on the field, or else taken at second hand from others who made notes of what had been told them by those present at the battles. This, then, is what I meant when I said that in early times history was an art. Its ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... speech, therefore, was of tithes and creeds, of beeves and grain, of commodities wet and dry, and the solvency of the retail dealers, occasionally varied by the description of a siege, or battle, in Flanders, which, perhaps, the narrator only gave me at second hand. Robbers, a fertile and alarming theme, filled up every vacancy; and the names of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as household ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... be sure of that. He's probably bought up some second hand food stuff that he plans to work off on ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... surely have been the same hanger-on or sycophant of Ben Jonson's who was caricatured by Dekker in his "Satiromastix" under the name of Asinius Bubo. The gross assurance of self-complacent duncery, the apish arrogance and imitative dogmatism of reflected self-importance and authority at second hand, are presented in either case with such identity of tone and coloring that we can hardly imagine the satire to have been equally applicable to two contemporary satellites of the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... independence which the mother and daughter showed beyond a certain point, and the daughter's great frankness in expressing her difference of feeling. We had already had some hint of this, the first day we met her, and we were not surprised at it now, my wife at first hand, or I at second hand. Mrs. Bentley opened the way for her daughter by saying that the worst of sickness was that it made one such an affliction to others. She lived in an atmosphere of devotion, she said, but her suffering left her so little of life that she could not help clinging selfishly ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Towns, extending over the northern part of Europe and Flanders, which had become wealthy and powerful by their own industry, and a participation of the trade to India with the Italians, (though at second hand,) were on the decline, through pride ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... or three days I count on drawing them," replied Schaunard. "I do not conceal from you that on doing so I intend to give a free rein to some of my passions. There is, above all, at the second hand clothes shop close by a nankeen jacket and a hunting horn, that have for a long time caught my eye. I shall certainly present ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... with the rest, was also made, not only by the leading Roman Catholic papers, but by several others at second hand—viz. that it was a mere copy of an old European work. This has been promptly denied by the publishers, with the offer of $100 reward for any book at all ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... supply copies of the desired work. In the matter of current intelligence the case of the speaker of the small language is still worse. His newspaper will need to be cheaply served, his home intelligence will be cut and restricted, his foreign news belated and second hand. Moreover, to travel even a little distance or to conduct anything but the smallest business enterprise will be exceptionally inconvenient to him. The Englishman who knows no language but his own may travel well-nigh ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... have a thorough summing up of his stolen property. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says,—I quote it at second hand,—"So very straitly did he cause the survey to be made, that there was not a single hyde, nor a yardland of ground, nor—it is shameful to say what he thought no shame to do—was there an ox or a cow, or a pig passed by, and that was not down in the accounts, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... found himself in for it, he forgot that he meant to go away, and said good-morning, as if they knew each other. Their hostess found them talking over the length of the table in a sort of mutual fright, and introduced them. But it's rather difficult reporting a lady verbatim at second hand. I really had the facts from Welkin, who had them from his wife. The sum of her impressions was that Braybridge and Miss Hazelwood were getting a kind of comfort out of their mutual terror because one was as badly frightened as ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... in mind of those clocks and watches which are condemned "a double or a treble debt to pay": which, besides their legitimate object, to show the hour, tell you the day of the month or the week, give you a landscape for a dial-plate, with the second hand forming the sails of a windmill, or have a barrel to play a tune, or an alarum to remind you of an engagement: all very good things in their way; but so it is that these watches never tell the time so well as those in which that is the exclusive ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... as bona fide, if it had been written by Bonnet, but it is impossible to accept it from Buffon. It is only those who judge him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he failed to see the consequences of his own premises. No one could have seen more clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to show a sympathetic reader the conclusion he ought ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... correction. Either have the witness determine the time in terms of some familiar form, i. e., a paternoster, etc., or give him the watch and let him observe the second hand. In the latter case he will assert that his ten, or his five, or his twenty minutes were, at most, no more than a half or a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... returned by a large majority; and, having a loud voice and an easy manner, he soon acquired some reputation both in and out of the House of Commons by the popularity of his own views, and the extent of his wife's information, which he retailed at second hand. He made his maiden speech in the House unabashed the first night he sat there. Indeed, he was afraid of nothing except burglars, big dogs, doctors, dentists, and street-crossings. Whenever any accident occurred through any of these he preserved the newspaper in which it ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... conversation with Arbuthnot, described at second hand the Solomon Islands, the beauties of reef and palm, the delights of a new, free life and laid before her the guarantee of a competence and the possibilities of a fortune. As he talked, Elodie's dark face grew sullen and her eyes hardened. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... bankrupt Pasha, Marchetto?" I inquired. Everything offered for sale in the bazaar at second hand is said to come from the establishment of a Pasha; the statement ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... strange that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dantes to be, should adopt his magnificence at second hand," observed Debray, coolly. ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... implies, his work is a pale reflection of Petrarch. A postscript by a friend—'R. B.'—complains that a publisher had intermingled with Tofte's genuine efforts 'more than thirty sonnets not his.' But the style is throughout so uniformly tame that it is not possible to distinguish the work of a second hand. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... tending to throw light on those records; of the earliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, it may now fee exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Church of private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after having vowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... health till he has spoiled it, like a foolish musician that breaks his strings with striving to put them in tune; for Nature, which is physic, understands better how to do her own work than those that take it from her at second hand. Hippocrates says, Ars longa, vita brevis, and it is the truest of ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Mrs. Tully said proudly, her eyes fluttering between the second hand of the watch and the unbroken surface of the pool. "Women never swim so well as men. But she does.— Three minutes and forty seconds! ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... he stayed home and helped me fix up the nursery. Yes, I was expecting in the spring. That's why he was so for keeping things from me. We painted the woodwork white and gave a couple of coats to a little brown crib I had picked up second hand. He was for buying an enameled one on casters—he loved the best. Next night—next night—he—didn't come home—and at eight o'clock the following morning the extras were on the street—about the killing. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Cibber has described them—the Woffington (a true Hogarth) upon a couch, dallying and dangerous—the Screen Scene in Brinsley's famous comedy, with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon, whom I have not seen, and the rest, whom having seen, I see still there. There is Henderson, unrivalled in Comus, whom I saw at second hand in the elder Harley—Harley, the rival of Holman, in Horatio—Holman, with the bright glittering teeth in Lothario, and the deep paviour's sighs in Romeo—the jolliest person ("our son is fat") of any Hamlet I have yet seen, with the most ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... who set up for professed critics among us, are so stupid, that they do not know how to put ten words together with elegance or common propriety; and withal so illiterate, that they have no taste of the learned languages, and therefore criticise upon old authors only at second hand. They judge of them by what others have written, and not by any notions they have of the authors themselves. The words unity, action, sentiment and diction, pronounced with an air of authority, give them a figure among unlearned readers, who are apt to believe they are very deep because they ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... consciously in opposition to the delegating power was a breach of trust. The population of Paris, being the largest collected portion of sovereign power, expresses its will more surely than deputies at second hand. Barere, who was one of these, proposed an ingenious plan by which every law that passed remained suspended until after the next elections, when the country pronounced upon it by imperative mandate. Thus he disposed ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... carriage-road to the margravine's white villa. Ottilia was leaning on the arm of Baroness Turckems, walking—a miracle that disentangled her cruelly from my net of fancies. The baroness placed a second hand upon her as soon as I was seen standing in the path. Ottilia's face coloured like the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and will-ordered whole. What he knows has been the product of experience, what he may yet know further must be the product of experience. This experience may not all be personal, but even that which he gets at second hand is so far useful in helping him toward that understanding of the universe for which he hopes. He never will reach that understanding, all his experience will make but a fraction of things to be known matters of fact to him; and yet a deathless ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... gentlemen vowed to the Reform, and I owe my American birthright to the honourable fact that they fought on the losing side. As I myself am endowed with a fair allowance of stubbornness, and with a strong distaste to taking my opinions at second hand, I certainly should have been with my kinsfolk in that fight had I lived in their day; and since my destiny was theirs to determine I am strongly grateful to them for having shaped it ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... reproducing the plays, very much after the fashion of Punch and Judy; and even the solemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. There is no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape at these exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literature at second hand. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... still stands in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... who succeeds to her old clothes through the law, is small, not handsome, and a quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... we find a second hand at work. In the second scene of the third act there is far less exuberance of language and a different style of versification, as may be seen in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... escaped death been cried aloud in the streets, my lad, 'twould never have got to your grandfather's ear," he said, in lower tones. "I will tell you what happened, tho' I have it at second hand, being in the North, as you may remember. Grafton came in from Kent and invested Marlboro' Street. He himself broke the news to Mr. Carvel, who took to his bed. Leiden was not in attendance, you may ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 'With a second hand on board to steer while I conned I should have felt less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering into this confounded short ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... second hand," said Erica. "He is a shoe maker, as grand-looking a fellow as you ever saw, fond of reading, and very thoughtful, and with more quiet common sense than almost any I ever met. He had been brought up to believe ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... acquiring some false emotion, not his own, but belonging to the past, or to other persons, because he has been taught that such and such a result of it will be fine. Every attempted sentiment in relation to art is hypocritical; our notions of sublimity, of grace, or pious serenity, are all second hand; and we are practically incapable of designing so much as a bell-handle or a door-knocker without borrowing the first notion of it from those who are gone—where we shall not wake them with our knocking. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... said Dr. O'Grady, "it's perfectly new. At this moment it isn't even finished; I wouldn't ask this committee to buy anything second hand. But you can surely see, Major—you do see, for you raised the point yourself, that with the very short time at our disposal we must, if we are to have a statue at all, get one that's ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... Ingredients, consider'd Antecedently to their Mixture. For though some seem to be made up by the immediate Coalitions of the Elements, or Principles themselves, and therefore may be call'd Prima Mista, or Mista Primaria; yet it seems that many other Bodies are mingl'd (if I may so speak) at the second hand, their immediate Ingredients being not Elementary, but these primary Mixts newly spoken of; And from divers of these Secondary sort of Mixts may result, by a further Composition, a Third sort, and so onwards. Nor is it improbable, that some Bodies are ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Bergson, and new horizons loom on every page you read. It is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... His better half appeared to be some years older, and also a good deal of an original. She was a little short thick woman; but, stout as she was when I had the honour of an embrace, she must have been once much stouter, for her skin appeared from the colour and texture to have come to her at second hand, and to have originally belonged to a much larger person, for it bagged and hung in flaps about her jowls and bosom, like an ill—cut maintopsail, which sits clumsily about the clews. I think I could have reefed her with ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... is here, I think, certainly at second hand, though no doubt he had seen the negroes whom he describes with such disgust, and apparently the sheep ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... upon himself, this renewed practice on the stump crystallized his thought and brought method to his argument. The opposition newspapers had accused him of "mousing about the libraries in the State House." The charge was true. Where others were content to take statements at second hand, he preferred to verify citations as well as to find new ones. His treatment of his theme was therefore ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... to her feet. Whatever Mr. Rollo's own right to comment upon her or her dress might be, she was not in the least disposed to take the comments at second hand. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... imagination is a heavy bird of feeble wing; it flies low, seeing only the things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... invincibility, prophecies that "the war will end in a draw," and so forth. If he is saying such things on his own account, he is a German propagandist, a spy, a paid liar, and should be reported and punished as such. If he is repeating them second hand, he is nothing but an ass, a dupe of some real propagandist, and he should be reported and ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... SECOND HAND BOOKS.—A List of valuable Second-hand Books in Theology, Political Economy, History, and Miscellaneous and Classical Literature, selected from his very Extensive Stock, Gratis, on Receipt of One Stamp ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... their immediate effectiveness if they are 'pure,' and in their more permanent results if they are 'first hand' and are connected with the earlier stages of our evolution. In modern politics the emotional stimulus which reaches us through the newspapers is generally 'pure,' but 'second hand,' and therefore is both facile ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... of encouragement to the negroes, I returned to my post. As I neared the door, I saw two figures in white working over the guns. It was Dorothy and her mother, helping the negroes reload. I sent them back to the stair with affected sternness, but I got a second hand-clasp from Dorothy as she ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... of poetry; it abounds in natural and well-proportioned sentiment; thoughts and images seem to rise up fresh from the writer's observation, and not merely gathered at second hand; a considerable portion is in blank-verse, but the author uses various measures, in all which his versification is graceful ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... took coffee with them after dinner in the drawing-room, while Jewel caressed her watch, never tiring of looking at its clear face and the little second hand which traveled so steadily ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... forehead. "Five minutes, Colonel," he called back to the figure at the door. The colonel nodded efficiently at him, turned and disappeared inside the plane. Malone looked at his watch. The second hand was going around awfully fast, he thought. He wondered if it were possible for time to speed up while he waited, so that by the time Boyd arrived he would be an old, old man. He felt about eight years older already, he told himself, and a minute ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... objections by which religion is assailed or the arguments by which it is defended, imparts to his cause all the interest which naturally attaches to these truths, and leaves to his opponent, who passes over them after him as at second hand, a subject divested of the fire-edge of novelty, I can deem Mr. Longmuir well and not unprofessionally employed, in connecting with a sound creed the picturesque marvels of one of the most popular of the sciences, and by this means introducing them ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... beneath his feet and over his head; and though it was a slow pattern, only twice as fast as the crawl of a second hand around the face of a clock, it ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... Strong and nodded in appreciation of the cadets' smooth efficient work. They strapped themselves into acceleration cushions and watched the red second hand of the astral chronometer sweep around, and then heard Tom counting ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... wouldn't for the world have missed knowing her. She is really extraordinary. The way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I don't know when a woman has amused me more. But excuse me," he added in an instant; "she doesn't amuse you, at second hand, and the subject is an impure one. Let us talk of something else." Valentin introduced another topic, but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition, he had reverted to Mademoiselle ...
— The American • Henry James
... in the accounts written in after years and commonly utilized—as it has been utilized here—to form the narrative of the haunting. Not only this, but a rigorous division of the contemporary evidence into first hand and second hand still further eliminates the element of the marvelous. Admitting as evidence only the fact set forth as having been observed by the relators themselves, the haunting is reduced to a matter of knocks, groans, tinglings, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... is strange that they should glow there, and all memory of the runaway slaves who were sheltered in the cave by the sycamore tree should fade, and be only as a tale that is told. Yet, so memory served the boy, and he knew only at second hand how his mother gave her widow's mite to the cause for which she had crossed the prairies as of old ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... weeks all his sighs were noted. The disappearance of the greater part of the legend of the Three Companions certainly deprives us of some touching stories, but most of the incidents have been preserved for us, notwithstanding, in documents from a second hand. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... some curiosity as to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a more humble ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... matter by filching the complete works of Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton—from an outside stand of a second hand book store.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Poynter mid-way between him and the table, uncertain whether to watch the game or venture on more conversation. He had whispered: "I can tell you a story about that cigar you're smoking . . .," when, at the end of the second hand, Barbara looked slowly round, pushed back her chair ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... in a chair and place a clock with a second hand on the table. Follow the second hand with your eyes as it goes around. Keep this up for five minutes, thinking of nothing else but the second hand, This is a very good exercise when you only have a few minutes ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... generally bring 'em over by the trunk-load. They all passed right through, at any rate. Instead of a whale coming along, the next to bite were a lot of old skates—a regular lot of tramps. They had come into the trousers second hand, usually got for the asking, when preparing to start into New York for the slumming season; but, of course, they had to make for Mary's house just as soon as they put 'em on and the charm got to working. So she has been spending the balance of her life ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... said for many previous years, and then they return to their sick or their lawsuits, without caring in the least what is being said or written in the world since they got their appointments. All Spanish culture is at second hand, purely on the surface, 'translated from the French,' and even this is only for the scanty minority who read, for the rest of those so-called intellectuals have no other library but the text-books ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... attendant upon studying matter whose meaning is only symbolic. Since the mass of pupils are never going to become scientific specialists, it is much more important that they should get some insight into what scientific method means than that they should copy at long range and second hand the results which scientific men have reached. Students will not go so far, perhaps, in the "ground covered," but they will be sure and intelligent as far as they do go. And it is safe to say that the few who ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... Either the Clementine writer quotes our present Gospels, or else he quotes some other composition later than them, and which implies them. In other words, if he does not bear witness to our Gospels at first hand, he does so at second hand, and by the interposition of a further intermediate stage. It is quite possible that he may have had access to such a tertiary document, and that it may be the same which is the source of his apocryphal quotations: that he did draw from apocryphal sources, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... emerged from the inner office, strode briskly up the aisle of the briefing room, and took his customary stance on the platform in front. His face looked stern, and he held his hands clasped behind his back. His royal blue uniform was neat and trim. Over his head, the second hand of the big clock whirled endlessly. In the silence of the briefing room, it seemed to be ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... of the blooming peach is a glimpse of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with his head up and his antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never have seen him so; he may have had the vision at second hand; but it is certain that there was a pet deer in the family, and that he was as likely to have come into the kitchen by the window as by the door. One of the boy's uncles had seen this deer swimming ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... suggested to him by some friend, a student of the Classics, and Giorgione thereupon dressed the old Greek myth in Venetian garb, just as Statius had done in the Latin.[16] The story is known to us only at second hand, and we are at liberty to choose Giorgione's version in preference to that of the Roman poet; each is an independent translation of a common original, and certainly Giorgione's is not the less poetical. He has created a painted lyric which is ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... pass further, I would observe in respect of those which come from the Latin, that it will be desirable further to mark whether they are directly from it, and such might be marked L1, or only mediately from it, and to us directly from the French, which would be L2, or L at second hand—our English word being only in the second generation descended from the Latin, not the child, but the child's child. There is a rule that holds pretty constantly good, by which you may determine ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... story there—who knows. Besides, it's directly on my way to the Globe, and the curtain is not until eight-thirty. Tell you what, old man; come along with me and see the thing to a finish. Fate leads a card—Mr. Esper Indiman's—and we'll play the second hand; what ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... shrewd old fellow pulled his silver time-piece from his pocket and placed it in the hollow of his hand. Then he fixed his eyes upon its white face and stood motionless, watching the second hand make its little circuit. When the sixty seconds had been counted, he held up his hand with profound ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... girl, whom he had been following in the street, unwittingly enticed him into a revivalist meeting. He described that meeting so vividly that had my stupefied mind been capable of fresh emotions, I too might have been converted at second hand by the revivalist preacher. He repeated parts of the sermon, rose to his feet, waved his arms, thundered out the commonplaces of Salvation Army Christianity, as if he had made an amazing theological discovery. It was pathetic. It was ludicrous. It was also inconceivably ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... book-case had gained in the last two years—there were now three of Henry Galleon's novels there. Bobby had given him one, "Henry Lessingham," shining bravely in its red and gold; he had bought another, "The Downs," second hand, and it was rather tattered and well thumbed. Another, "The Roads," was a shilling paper copy. He had read these three again and again until he knew them by heart, almost word by word. He took down "Henry Lessingham" now and opened it at a page that was ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... instruction which were otherwise unattainable. A citation of the ipsissima verba of Erasmus, or Luther, or Melanchthon, or Peter Canisius, or Louis XIV, or Robespierre, or Marat, interested my students far more than any quotation at second hand could do. No rhetoric could impress on a class the real spirit and strength of the middle ages as could one of my illuminated psalters or missals; no declamation upon the boldness of Luther could impress thinking young men as did citations from his "Erfurt Sermon,'' which, by weakening his ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... that use sorceries, incantations, and spells are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I conceive there is a traditional magic not learned immediately from the Devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able, and do empirically practice without his advice, they both proceeding upon the principles of nature; where actives aptly conjoined to disposed passives will under any master produce their effects. Thus, I think at first a great ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... obliged to return to the Court at Aix-la-Chapelle, where his duties kept him through the winter; and he is careful to point out that the later miracles which he proceeds to speak of are known to him only at second hand. But, as he naturally observes, having seen such wonderful events with his own eyes, why should he doubt similar narrations when they are received from ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... hand touched twelve on Brion's watch, then the minute hand. The second hand closed the gap and for a tenth of a second the three hands were one. Then the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand, the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which their royal birth ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... records could be better given by one empowered by yourself to give them, by one who had been present, and who would write in your Grace's interest, than by some interloper who would receive his tale only at second hand. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir Dandan said to Zau al-Makan, "Thus spake the second hand maid to the King who hath found mercy, Omar bin al-Nu'uman. 'Quoth a man to Mohammed bin Abdillah, Exhort thou me!' 'I exhort thee,' replied he, 'to be a self ruler, an abstainer in this world, and in the next a greedy slave.' 'How so?' asked the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... often. Think, my child, what your victorious beauty merits, the victim of a heart unconquered by any but your eyes: alas, he has been my captive, my humble whining slave, disdain to put him on your fetters now; alas, he can say no new thing of his heart to thee, it is love at second hand, worn out, and all its gaudy lustre tarnished; besides, my child, if thou hadst no religion binding enough, no honour that could stay thy fatal course, yet nature should oblige thee, and give a check to the unreasonable ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... peasant type; not bright, of course—you would not expect that—but good-hearted and companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and without examination also—which goes without saying. Their religion was inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed nobody's faith; and when the split ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... alone proves that men who are not scholars venture to pronounce on Shakespeare's scholarship, and that men who take absurd statements at second hand dare to constitute themselves judges of a question of evidence and ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... in which they happen to be brought up. A cautious conservatism is one thing, and blind obstinacy is another. To the educated man (and it is probable that others will have to depend on opinions taken at second hand) a better way of avoiding error ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... classic, which is thoroughly appreciative and satisfactory. The majority are utterly disappointing and deceptive. It is in the transfer of the idiom and costume that the difficulty and consequent failure lie. No one who merely knows at second hand Homer, Herodotus, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Le Sage (a metonym for Gil Blas), Cervantes, La Fontaine, Dumas, Maupassant, Balzac, can have had an opportunity of forming an adequate and just estimate of those authors. You might nearly as soon expect a Frenchman to relish ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... shocked, disgusted, or contemptuously amused in Ivanhoe by such things as were quoted from the Peep a few pages back—so, to those who know something of "the old Elizabeth way," and even nowadays to those who know very little, and that little at second hand, Miss Lee's travesty of it in The Recess is impossible and intolerable. When Mrs. Radcliffe, at the date definitely given of 1584, talks about "the Parisian opera," represents a French girl of the sixteenth century as ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... snow by the daily rains which had begun to fall, and sometimes he read aloud to her a little, but in spite of Pearl's intelligence she had never cared much for books. She craved no record of another's emotions and struggles and passions. No life at second hand for her. She was ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... at the book on the table—the book that he had been reading when I entered the room. These sophistical confidences of his were nothing but Rousseau at second hand. Good! If he talked false Rousseau, nothing was left for me but to talk genuine Pratolungo. I let myself go—I was just in the humour ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... here once for all, that I cannot keep the tales I tell in this volume from partaking of my own peculiarities of style, any more than I could keep the sermon free of such; for of course I give them all at second hand; and sometimes, where a joint was missing, I have had to supply facts as well as words. But I have kept as near to the originals as these necessities and a certain preparation for the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter's stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it's got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the stew ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... alongside. The two drunken men were helped on board and, at once, went below to sleep themselves sober. Then the boat was hoisted on board and, the second hand taking the helm, the Kitty started ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... that a second hand did not remain with Joe, but no one foresaw what would happen. The good mate went below forward, and found the men worse than ever from drink, panic, and religion. He tried all he knew to fetch them on deck, but nothing would serve. He tried the captain, but that worthy ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... told her highness of such difficulties, straits, and annoyance, as did not appear therein to her eyes, nor, I found, could be brought to her ear; for her choler did outrun all reason, though I did meet it at a second hand. For what show she gave at first to my lord deputy at his return, was far more grievous, as will appear ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to take their patriotism at second hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter —exactly as boys under monarchies are taught, and have ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... entered the Cave of Machpelah on March tenth, at noon. It is of interest to note that his account of the Cave agrees fully with that of Conder. It is now quite certain that he was really there in person, and his narrative was not made up at second hand. The visit of Reubeni, as well as Sabbatai Zebi's, gave new vogue to the place. When Sabbatai was there, a little before the year 1666, the Jews were awake and up all night, so as not to lose an instant of the sacred intercourse with the Messiah. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... beats or throbs about seventy-five times in a minute when you are well. Look at the second hand of a watch, while you count the beats in your ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... the seas; and it seem'd to be accomplished, all to his heart's desire. I will conclude from utter inability to write any more, for I am seriously unwell: and because I mean to gather something like intelligence to send to you to-morrow: for as yet, I have but heard second hand, and seen one narrative, which is but a transcript of what was common to all the Papers. God bless you all, and reckon upon us as entering into all your griefs. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality and the presence ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... sing exceptional passions, or humanity's jagged escapades. He is not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive or new, does not deal hard blows. On the contrary, his songs soothe and heal, or if they excite, it is a healthy and agreeable excitement. His very anger is gentle, is at second hand, (as in the "Quadroon Girl" ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... or sudden spasm of the heart; terrible Ziska,[75] as it were, killing him at second hand. For Ziska, stout and furious, blind of one eye and at last of both, a kind of human rhinoceros driven mad, had risen out of the ashes of murdered Huss, and other bad papistic doings, in the interim; and was tearing up the world at a huge rate. Rhinoceros Ziska was on the Weissenberg, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... looks perfectly fresh; but here is some writing on the fly leaf; that would have to be torn out, you know; so that the book could never be sold as a new one again; I should have to sell it as a second hand one, at half price; that would be a dollar and a half, so that you see I would only give you ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in August to help Anne with her quilts. I don't think anything will happen to prevent this time—no quarrelling, anyhow. Those two young creatures have learned their lesson. You'd better take it to heart too, Nora May. It's less trouble to learn it at second hand. Don't you ever quarrel with your real beau—it don't matter about the sham ones, of course. Don't take offence at trifles or listen to what other people tell you about him—outsiders, that is, that want to make mischief. What you think about him is of more importance than what they do. To ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is true of a larger part than we suspect of what we think. The reason is a good one, because our short life gives us no time for a better, but it is not the best. It does not follow, because we all are compelled to take on faith at second hand most of the rules on which we base our action and our thought, that each of us may not try to set some corner of his world in the order of reason, or that all of us collectively should not aspire to carry reason as far as it will go throughout the whole ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... on these floors over our respectful heads, the Company; people I rarely saw, but whose tricks and manners were imitated and discussed by their maids and valets in the housekeeper's room and the steward's room—so that I had them through a medium at second hand. I gathered that none of the company were really Lady Drew's equals, they were greater and lesser after the manner of all things in our world. Once I remember there was a Prince, with a real live gentleman in attendance, and that was a little above our customary levels ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the law, which binds all others, does not and cannot bind the law-maker; he, and he alone, is above the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, is neither to apply to original justice, nor to a discretionary application of it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, and through the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon his opinion of the one nor of the other; but upon a fixed rule, of which he has not the making, but singly and solely the application ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... New hats, blouses, and entire costumes of the most fashionable kind were to be seen in the streets every Sunday. Large sums of money were lost and won at coursing matches. Nearly everyone had a bicycle, and old Malone bought, second hand, a rather dilapidated motor-car. Work of almost every kind ceased entirely, except in the big house, and nobody got out of bed before ten o'clock. In mere gratitude, rents of houses were paid to Sir Tony which had not been paid for ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... an atheist. She was a worthy creature, notwithstanding, only very unpleasant if one happened to step on the toes of a pet ignorance. Mary soon discovered that there was no profit in talking with her on the subjects she loved most: plainly she knew little about them, except at second hand—that is, through the forms of other minds than her own. Such people seem intended for the special furtherance of the saints in patience; being utterly unassailable by reason, they are especially trying to those who desire to stand ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Drydens drank in so much of their enthusiasm and inspiration, and to cast off entirely that slavish dependence upon the opinions of others which they must feel, who take their knowledge of what it is either their duty, their interest, or their ambition to learn, at second hand. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... learnt by letters from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning—the book, been entitled to remember these motives? For what other evidence had been produced besides Morus's own word? His friend Hotton's only; and that was no independent testimony, but only Morus's at second hand. And even now, after Morus's repeated and studiously-worded denials in his Fides Publica, how did ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... botherin' nah, its too lat, you should ha' spokken afoor—an' aw think he's fittest to be wi' his mother." But he roar'd like a bull, an' begged th' parson to do it ovver, an' do it reight; but Lucy said, "He'd noa cashion, for shoo'd live an' dee an owd maid for iver afoor shoo'd have ony chap second hand." But her heart worn't as hard as shoo thowt, soa, shoo gave in, an' th' next time ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley |
