"Unimportant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... war had come and he was a mere brigadier pigeonholed in an unimportant office with juniors broadly hinting at his retirement while classmates were leading divisions and even army corps to glorious victory on the field of battle. At least, they would have been leading them to glorious victory if there had been any ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... journeys between this place and Pretoria. On no single occasion has there been the slightest hitch or the least cause for alarm. The trains have been absolutely up to time, and very good time. They could not have been more regular in the most peaceful country. This personal experience, in itself unimportant, is typical of a general improvement. I may add, in confirmation of it, that during the last two months the mail train from Capetown to the north has only been late on one or two occasions, and then it was a matter of hours. Six months ago it was quite a common event for it to arrive a day, or ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... actite hypotension may occur in hot weather or with overheating, often termed heat exhaustion. Such patients should, if possible, go to a cooler region, whether to the seashore or to the mountains is unimportant. The treatment of dangerous sudden low blood pressure, as shock, will ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... the agency and purposes of the gods, should be understood as being produced by physical causes. An eclipse, an earthquake, a storm, a shipwreck, unusual rain or drought, a good or a bad harvest—and not merely these, but many other occurrences far smaller and more unimportant, as we may see by the eighteenth chapter of the Characters of Theophrastus—were then regarded as visitations of the gods, requiring to be interpreted by recognized prophets, and to be appeased by ceremonial expiations. When once a man became ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... is no unimportant portion of your art economy at this time. Your water-colour painters are becoming every day capable of expressing greater and better things; and their material is especially adapted to the turn of your best artists' minds. The ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Throughout the continuance of the council, it was split into two fixed and violent parties. The fact is acknowledged and lamented by themselves. Had this not been the case, the face of their proceedings exhibits a proof equally satisfactory. In all questions, however unimportant in themselves, or unconnected with each other, the same names stand invariably contrasted on the opposite columns. Every unbiased observer may infer, without danger of mistake, and at the same time without meaning to reflect on either party, or any individuals of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the confusion to take the delinquent who had caused this "stramash" by the arm, and to lead him to the lawn, where he had a word or two for his private ear. The conference between the young gentlemen was neither brief in its duration nor unimportant in its result. The subject was what the lawyers call tripartite, embracing the information that Charles Seaforth was over head and ears in love with Tom Ingoldsby's sister; secondly, that the lady had referred him ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... desirability of the apartment itself that was worth consideration. She criticised the arrangement of the rooms and the various appointments with an air of real consequence, while the janitor and I followed her about, humble and unimportant, wondering how we could ever have imagined the ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... old Mr Donnithorne's dwelling were thus enjoying themselves, a great storm was gathering, and two events, very different from each other in character, were taking place—the one quiet, and apparently unimportant, the other tremendous and fatal—both bearing on and seriously influencing the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... make any effort to keep her for himself alone. He knew she had love for him, but he knew that love would not necessarily, or even probably, keep her entirely faithful to him. She thought too little of passing intrigues. To her they seemed trifles, meaningless, unimportant. She told him so, when he spoke his jealousy. She said, 'I love you. I do not love these other men. They are in my life for ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... OF WILLS.—Form is unimportant, provided the testator's intention is clear. It should commence with his designation; that is, his name and surname, place of abode, profession, or occupation. The legatees should also be clearly described. In leaving ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... dark, active fellow, well framed for the hardy profession which he exercised. But his face had not the frankness of the jolly hunter; he was down-looked, embarrassed, and avoided the eyes of those who looked hard at him. After some unimportant observations on the success of the day, Brown gave him a trifling gratuity, and rode on with his landlord. They found the gudewife prepared for their reception—the fold and the poultry-yard furnished the entertainment, and the kind and hearty welcome made amends for ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... overtake him. What remains to be told about his story must be extracted from the narrative of the bravo who succeeded, with the aid of an accomplice, in despatching him at Venice.[13] So far as possible, I shall use the man's own words, translating them literally, and omitting only unimportant details. The narrative throws brilliant light upon the manners and movements of professional cut-throats at that period in Italy. It seems to have been taken down from the hero Francesco, or Cecco, Bibboni's lips; and there is no doubt that we possess in it a valuable ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... not overlook in making up your list of characters, we repeat, is to show the director how he may cast his available people to the best advantage. To do this, you should not only mention every character, no matter how unimportant, but in the case of all those characters who do not actually come under the head of principals in that particular picture, you should give the number of the scene or scenes in which they appear. This will, in many cases, enable ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... House; witnesses of course are examined, and counsel heard on behalf of the companies or individuals concerned. To plead before a tribunal of such a nature and on such interests evidently demands qualifications of a special kind. Mr. Hope possessed some external ones which are by no means unimportant. His noble presence, in the first place, gave him a great advantage; and a known name and known antecedents like his were also additional recommendations of great value. Then came his tact, clearness of intellect, memory for names and details, his moral qualities, especially his perfect sense of ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... they believed to be French. At least, "he came from one of the ships in the Lough, and could speak no English." Since that the priest had not returned, and many thought that he had gone away forever. This story, varied in a few unimportant particulars, I heard from several; and also learned that a squadron of several sail had, for three or four days, been lying at the entrance of Lough Swilly, with, it was said, large reinforcements for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... A Brahman of Benares, said to have been one hundred and twenty years old, who came to learn from Buddha the very night he died. Ananda would have repulsed him; but Buddha ordered him to be introduced; and then putting aside the ingenious but unimportant question which he propounded, preached to him the Law. The Brahman was converted and ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... would flow over the croquet lawn. He knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other suchlike commodities handy to have about a house. Among other things he learned how to make fireworks, and after a few explosions of an unimportant character, came to make them very well indeed. The boy who can play a good game of cricket is liked. The boy who can fight well is respected. The boy who can cheek a master is loved. But the boy who can make fireworks is revered above all others as a boy ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... candid and honourable persons, which are rather fitted to support the credit of the story which they stand committed to maintain, than to the pure service of unadorned truth. The narrator is asked, for example, some unimportant question with respect to the apparition; he answers it on the hasty suggestion of his own imagination, tinged as it is with belief of the general fact, and by doing so often gives a feature of minute evidence which was before wanting, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... rapidly. Reynolds, in turn, secured the detail of a comrade of the Sixty-Eighth who was failing fast, and succeeded in saving his life—all of which happy results were directly attributable to that insignificant boyish society, and its equally unimportant badge ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... gasolene consumption was 1/2 pound per horsepower hour, and the engine weighed 3 pounds per brake horsepower, the fuel needed for a six-hour flight would weigh as much as the engine, but for half an hour's flight its weight would be unimportant. ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... their private meetings, their earnest conversations, and their confessions each to make to the other. They swore eternal friendship. They had all things in common—that is, concealments were not permitted amongst the Specialities; and the influence of this small and apparently unimportant club did much towards the formation of ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... having no expectation that his reminiscences would be received with the kind indulgence of which this Second Edition is the proof, with diffidence ventured to tell so many tales connected with his own unimportant life as he has done. Emboldened by the reception his 'Tracks' have met with, he now adds a few stories which he trusts may further ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... solved. If I have not convinced you all it is because I have been timid in my demonstrations, feeble in my arguments, and you must set it down to my theoretic ignorance. However that may be, I repeat, the distance from the earth to her satellite is really very unimportant and unworthy to occupy a serious mind. I do not think I am advancing too much in saying that soon a service of trains will be established by projectiles, in which the journey from the earth to the moon will be ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... in return? The dull debate, The dreary unimportant question, The pressure of affairs of State, A muddled brain, a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... have liked so much to say something to him, something quite unimportant—only to speak, speak—but she felt so strangely timid. It was as though he might say to her: "What have I to do with you, woman?" And ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... ligaments, folds of mucous membrane, etc. It is situated between the hyoid (tongue) bone above and the trachea below. The cartilages are the (1) epiglottis, (2) thyroid, cricoid, arytenoid, the two small, unimportant cornicula laryngis, or cartilages of Santorini, surmounting the arytenoids, and the two cuneiform, or cartilages of Wrisberg, in the folds of mucous membrane on ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... a beautiful illustration of this principle. It is a detailed narrative of the unimportant Kirbit expedition, which is ascribed to the governor Nur ekalli umu. Cylinder E gives a briefer account and Cylinder F one still shorter. Both vaguely ascribe it to the "governors" but do not attempt to claim it for the king. It remained for Cylinder ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead
... the next morning, Lackaday to take over his brigade in France, I to hang around the War Office for orders to proceed on my further unimportant employment. Lady Auriol and Charles saw us ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... behaviour under similar circumstances: for instance, when we first tried to eat with their chopsticks: on that occasion there was a sort of giggling embarrassment shewn by some of us, a contempt as it were of ourselves, for condescending to employ an effort to acquire the use of a thing apparently so unimportant. Their diminutive cups and odd dishes, too, sometimes excited mirth amongst us. Our Loo-choo friends, however, never committed themselves in this way; a difference of manners, which may arise from their looking upon us as their superiors, and vice versa; ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... your pardon," interposes Mr. Rouncewell's son's father. "Sir Leicester, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray dismiss that from your consideration. If you remember anything so unimportant—which is not to be expected—you would recollect that my first thought in the affair was directly opposed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... fully knew their value; and I am not ashamed to say, that in deriving advantages in compensation from the partial favour of the public, I have added some comforts and elegancies to a bare independence. I am sure your Lordship's good sense will easily put this unimportant egotism to the right account, for—though I do not know the motive would make me enter into controversy with a fair or an 'unfair' literary critic—I may be well excused for a wish to clear my personal character from any ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... fact occur in many diseases, especially those of a zymotic character, on certain special days, though undue emphasis was laid by the Greek physicians upon the exact numerical character of the event. It was no unimportant duty of the physician to assist nature by bringing his remedies to bear at the critical times. If the crisis is wanting, or if the remedies are applied at the wrong moment, the disease may become incurable. But ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... experience, and on the other indicates a metaphysical situation consistent with the theory of knowledge. All the different schools tried to justify a theory of knowledge by an appeal to the analysis and interpretation of experience which the others sometimes ignored or sometimes regarded as unimportant. The thinkers of different schools were accustomed often to meet together and defeat one another in actual debates, and the result of these debates was frequently very important in determining the prestige of any school of thought. If a Buddhist ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... was James Kirby, groom to the late baronet and to the present earl. After a few unimportant questions, I asked him if he had ever seen that gentleman before, pointing to Mr. Ferret, who stood up for the more facile recognition of his ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... impossible, indeed, excluding altogether every idea of personal advantage, not to hope highly, at least, of any efforts which may be made to wrest the souls and bodies of millions from the clutch of ignorance and tyranny. The fate of these colonists is by no means the most unimportant spectacle which the passing drama of the world exhibits to the eye of an enlightened and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... relatively unimportant to national economy, used by shallow-draft craft limited to 300 ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... "Unimportant men always do that," answered the other. "They would make great men small, and think by placing themselves on high pedestals they become great. The clown striding through the crowd on his stilts may even look over an emperor. But fortunately there comes a ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... objects exceeding his own dimensions are absolutely great, all falling short of them absolutely small. Hence we habitually regard the whale and the elephant as essentially large and therefore important creatures, the animalcule as an essentially small and therefore unimportant organism. But no geological formation owes its origin to the labors or the remains of the huge mammal, while the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the substance of strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in unbroken beds, over many degrees of terrestrial surface. ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... to the period which terminated with the arrival of the 28th Battalion at Marseilles. That first phase of the unit's history was not so unimportant as might be thought. Although the following years were marked by a series of great events, in which the Battalion took a glorious part, yet there was a sameness in the surroundings and a monotony of routine which was conspicuously absent amongst ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... system has been adopted, and will shortly be put into force. Many equally important measures are alluded to in their places in the pages of this despatch, and I will not inflict upon your lordship a list of many minor Acts, some not unimportant, which have proved beneficial in ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... been avoided in the letter he had just read. He frowned momentarily at the thought. Had she deliberately avoided the subject? And if so—but on the instant his brow cleared again. No, she had written too frankly for that. She had not mentioned the matter simply because she regarded it as unimportant. The great question lay between herself and him alone. Of that he was wholly certain. He smiled again at the thought. No, he was not afraid ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... last—the inn—with its bunch of holly for a sign. It looked a forlorn place, for travellers did not usually stop over night in this small, unimportant village; but the comedians were not in a mood to be fastidious, and would have been thankful for even a more unpromising house of entertainment than this one. It was all shut up for the night, with not a sign of life to be seen, so the tyrant applied himself diligently to pounding on the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... propounded is inconsistent in any way with the natural and universally recognised springs of human action—nay, if, after reading my book, he should not have attained to the firm conviction that the realisation of this new order—apart, of course, from unimportant details—is absolutely inevitable, then I must be content to be placed in the same category as More, Fourier, Cabet, and the rest who have mistaken their ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance. For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding consciousness—its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and affections—which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their importance is relative solely to the individual. There is, indeed, no more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a teleological centre of the individual. Ideas have become mere abstractions; the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... and her favour and confidence and smiles redoubled my difficulties. I saw she had no suspicion but that I was hers for life ; and, unimportant as I felt myself to her, in any comparison with those for whom I quitted her, I yet knew not how to give her the unpleasant surprise of a resignation for which I saw ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... in the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a pair of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, for the Park is rarely used in the morning except by unimportant people who love to be healthy, poor and wise. In the vehicle sat an old gentleman with snowy side-whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could not be worn while driving except by a personage. At his side sat the lady of Remsen's heart—the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Signalman looked out the meaning of the different groups of letters in the book provided for the purpose and showed the result to his commanding officer. Its purport was comparatively unimportant, something about oil-fuel on ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... was as old in years lived as himself, he seemed very young. He began to be a little afraid of the man. He could not understand why the money, nearly twenty-five hundred dollars he had put in the bank during the two years Jim had been with him, seemed so unimportant and the twelve hundred dollars he had earned slowly after twenty years of work seemed so important. As there was much repair work always waiting to be done in the shop, he did not go home to lunch, but every day carried a few sandwiches to the shop in his pocket. At the noon hour, when Jim had ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... muttered regrets as he sat gloomily in the bar-room, and they seemed to affect him more than so unimportant a subject should have done. It was now drawing towards night, and the man became terribly restless, for the pilot was expected every moment, and from vague conjecture the poor fellow worked his mind up into a certainty ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Between ourselves, I should have passed the thing over as unimportant, but—well, the order ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... and had been sheriff of London, and died in 1512: he consequently lived on the spot at that very interesting period. Yet no sheriff was ever less qualified to write a history of England. His narrative is dry, uncircumstantial, and unimportant: he mentions the deaths of princes and revolutions of government, with the same phlegm and brevity as he would speak of the appointment of churchwardens. I say not this from any partiality, or to decry the simple man as crossing ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... possessed.[925] The Reformation is variously regarded as the liberation of the (p. 326) English Church from the Roman yoke it had long impatiently borne, as its subjection to an Erastian yoke which it was henceforth, with more or less patience, long to bear, or as a comparatively unimportant assertion of a supremacy which Kings of England had always enjoyed. The Church is the same Church, we are told, before and after the change; if anything, it was Protestant before the Reformation, and Catholic after. It is, of course, the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... due deliberation, declared the prisoner guilty on all the charges and specifications save two unimportant ones, and sentenced him to be hanged by the neck until dead, at such time and place as the President of the United States ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a case of second sight, in which a quite unimportant event, previously unknown, was revealed, is sent by the percipient, who is a lady well known to both the compilers, and a life-long friend of one of them. She says: "Last summer I sent a cow to the fair ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... harm. But—there might come the terrible moment when she had to face Richard with the confession. Yes, she had known him before. Yes, they had entered into a tacit compact. Yes, she had kept from Nina's father a secret that, while it might be unimportant, certainly should have been ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... star-worship, Goethe, was Clemens Maria Brentano (1778-1842), in many ways the most typical Romantic figure of either school. Brentano's grandmother, Sophie La Roche, had been the friend of Wieland; his mother, Maximiliane, played a not unimportant role in the life of the young Goethe and is immortalized in the latter part of Werther. Maximiliane married Brentano, an Italian from the Como region, and Clemens was the third child of this loveless union. Brentano's early life was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... are at work," continued Jonas, "one acts as director, and the rest follows on, as he guides. Then all the unimportant ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... ninety, likes to have his time limited, and his heir's prospects dwelt upon as the only things of any importance, and Mrs. Dennistoun was a very long way from ninety. She would have sacrificed everything she had to make her child happy, but she did not like, all the same, to be set down as unimportant so far as ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the Old Testament lessons, some of the following in order to complete the course in a year. Lesson XXVIII David and Absalom; XXX The Temple; XXXVI Elisha and Jonah; XXXVIII, XXXIX The Kings of Judah; XLIV Queen Esther. These are suggested for omission not because they are unimportant or uninteresting, but in case some lessons must be omitted. In order to complete the course in one year in the New Testament lessons, the following might be omitted, if some must be. XVI The Mothers Prayer; XX The Good Shepherd; XXIII ...
— Hurlbut's Bible Lessons - For Boys and Girls • Rev. Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
... try to undermine your position? Your whole personality is far too unimportant. But you may take my word for this, that if you don't change your tactics completely, you will cause so much trouble that you will make yourself ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... to be the rights of an Entered Apprentice, few and unimportant as they may be, they are as dear to him as those of a Master Mason are to one who has been advanced to that degree; and he is, and ought to be, as firmly secured in their possession. Therefore, as no Mason can be deprived of his rights and privileges, except after a fair and impartial ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... equal those distinguished men in their ability and virtue, nevertheless we must, like initiating priests of the gods and torchbearers of wisdom, attempt as far as possible to imitate and nibble at their practice. Then, again, if anyone thinks it a small and unimportant matter to govern the tongue, another point I promised to touch on, he is very far from the reality. For silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech. And that is, I think, the reason why the ancients ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Tom, with a puzzled air. "But something has gone wrong." Hastily he got out, and made an examination. He found it was only one of the unimportant wires which had short-circuited, and it was soon adjusted. But they had lost five precious minutes. Tom tried to make up for lost time, but came to a hill a little later, and this reduced ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... whole, the problem seems to me to stand thus:—Where there have been fewest changes, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there the race survives. Where there have been most, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there it perishes. Each change, however small, augments the sum of new conditions to which the race has to become inured. There may seem, a priori, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in different times and places, do we give to Great Men; according to varieties we note in them, according to the sphere in which they have displayed themselves! We might give many more names, on this same principle. I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... THE FIRST STAGE OF LABOR.—There is no definite or even approximate length of time for the first stage of labor,—that, you may recall, was the more or less painless stage, or as it has been termed, the "getting-ready" stage. Inasmuch as it is an unimportant and practically painless stage, most patients do not mind it. They continue to be up and around and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... last to the letter he wanted. It was written on very common note-paper, with brown-looking ink, and the penmanship was evidently that of an uneducated person; but Mr. Sheldon studied its contents with the air of a man who is dealing with no unimportant missive. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Faber, a physician of great distinction, contented to reside, where he was born, in the provincial city of L——, but whose reputation as a profound and original pathologist was widely spread, and whose writings had formed no unimportant part of my special studies. It was during a short holiday excursion, from which he was about to return with renovated vigour, that he had been thus stricken down. The patient so accidentally met ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for a moment without speaking. Sommers could see that his blundering words had placed him in a worse position than before. At the same time he was aware that he regretted it; that "views" were comparatively unimportant to a young woman; and that this woman, at least, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and exactitude of the narrative. This effect he attained by the use of a literary faculty which he possessed in a degree unequalled by any other writer—that of circumstantial invention. By the multiplication of small, unimportant details, each one of which is carefully dwelt upon, and by the insertion of uninteresting personal incidents and moral reflections, seeming true from their very dulness, he gave to his work a remarkable verisimilitude. He did not even issue the book under his own name, but ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... may, by superficial thinkers, be looked upon as unimportant; yet it should not be forgotten that diet has much more to do with health than is commonly realized, and health is intimately connected with mental attitude, and oftentimes is at the foundation of religious and moral development. 'Hypochondriacal crotchets' are often the product of dyspepsia, ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... that we were better armed than they had some effect in securing peace. They acted in quite a friendly manner after we came among them, and Lieutenant Schwatka and I visited all their igloos, leaving needles, thimbles, spoons, knives, and fish-hooks with them in exchange for a few unimportant Franklin relics. The next day we interviewed an old man named Seeuteetuar, who had seen a number of skeletons near the water line in an inlet about three or four miles west from the present camp. He ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... than Zechariah. The years between 500 and 450 furnish the most satisfactory setting for these prophecies. In a very true sense, however, like many of the psalms, they are timeless. The question of their exact date is comparatively unimportant except as it ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... against the idea that any apology had been due. There was but one line which could be considered even mildly significant. "The little net," wrote Blakely, "has now a value that it never had before." Yet Angela was snuggling that otherwise unimportant billet to her cheek when the creaking stairway told her portentously of a solemn coming. Ten minutes more and the note was lying neglected on the bureau, and Angela stood at her window, gazing out over dreary miles of almost ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... had turned to Gaspar to speak these last words. A faint smile came on the lips of Gaspar, and his gaze was far away, as if he were in the midst of an unimportant dream, with Sally Bent the last significant part of it all. The girl flushed and turned ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... inculcators of falsehoods that were fatal to the soul. Elijah, Jeremiah, Paul, firmly and fearlessly opposed those who were turning men from the word of God. That liberality which regards a correct religious faith as unimportant, found no favor with these holy ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... commerce and the public fortune will be brought about in this way; but such results as concern only material prosperity will appear unimportant when compared with the blessings of a higher order which are sure to follow, when, realizing the inner meaning of things, and stimulated by spiritual communion, these peoples meet each other as rivals only in the sciences and arts, in literature and government, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... their tests efficiently done. Nobody noticed the incident in particular; it was over in a second. It conveyed no impression of anything except of a slight confusion,—an error, in fact, immediately corrected,—but I could not fail to notice that the very unimportant incident tended in favour of the view that a power of sympathy or communication between them was genuine, since she got an undesired and unintended impression which certainly was at the moment in ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... name of the man, or men, who had actually committed the crime. Those things were, for the moment, relatively unimportant. The police might find them, but that could wait. The thing that was important was that Bending was certain within his own mind who had paid ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... allow him to escort her, which was obviously the proper thing. When she refused again, and went off, like any nobody, alone, he returned to his chambers, leaving Rosalie to the unimportant persons whose business it was to look ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... broad stream flowed sedately across the deep blue background, worlds and systems drifting majestically overhead, and pouring over the dark horizon. In their vastness and their beauty there was a vague consolation to the prisoners for their own fate, and their own individuality seemed trivial and unimportant amid the play of such tremendous forces. Slowly the grand procession swept across the heaven, first climbing, then hanging long with little apparent motion, and then sinking grandly downwards, until away in the east the first ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... left New York state and moved to the vicinity of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1830. Cleveland at that time was a small, unimportant lakeport and my grandfather was offered his choice between a tract of land upon what is now the most beautiful residence street in the world, Euclid Avenue, and a piece at what was called Brighton, several miles farther from town. It speaks but little for the old gentleman's foresight, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... Canon Whymper's report upon the new church of the Silchester College Mission, and I think before you open the church on Easter Sunday I should like to talk over one or two comparatively unimportant details with you personally. Moreover, it would give me pleasure to make your acquaintance and hear something of your method of work at St. Agnes'. Perhaps you will come to High Thorpe on Monday. There is a train which arrives at High Thorpe at ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... only carry that clear conviction with us day by day into the little things of life, what different things these, which we call the monotonous trifles of our daily duties, would become! The things may be small and unimportant, but the way in which we do them is not unimportant. The same fidelity may be exercised, and must be brought to bear, in order to do the veriest trifle of our daily lives rightly, as needs to be invoked, in order to get us safely through the crises and great times ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... very imperfect powers of self-government, the people contrived to live under it for a hundred and thirty-five years, until 1821. Before the Revolution their petitions succeeded in obtaining only a few unimportant amendments.[9] When the British army captured the city in September, 1776, it was forthwith placed under martial law, and so remained until the army departed in November, 1783. During those seven years New York was not altogether a comfortable place in which to live. After 1783 the ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... demand for immediate downward revision of the tariff, Clay and his more ardent protectionists brushed aside the cautious Adams and defied "the South, the Democratic party, and the Devil." The revision of the tariff which was made in 1832 was no revision, save in a few unimportant schedules in which the planters were not interested; but the vote on this measure showed a curious combination of the Jackson and the Clay politicians in the West and considerable indifference in New England, as the accompanying map shows. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... These anecdotes, unimportant in themselves, are valuable in that they refute the charges made against General Bonaparte at this time— first, that he returned from Egypt with a fortune, and, second, that he carried himself with a hauteur which ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... reputation, but also because he was the son of such a father. He did not, however, begin public life by staking his fame on the results of one elaborate oration; on the contrary, he rose now and then on comparatively unimportant occasions; made a few brief modest remarks, stated a fact or two, explained a difficulty when he happened to understand the matter in hand better than others, and then sat down without taxing too severely the patience or good nature of an auditory accustomed to great performances. Still in ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... in these Sketches, when, merely for the purposes of intelligibility, it becomes requisite to call into notice such personal distinctions in my family as otherwise might be unimportant, I here record the entire list of my brothers and sisters, according to their order of succession; and Miltonically I include myself; having surely as much logical right to count myself in the series ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Government has wonderful means of locating any 'squeak-box', as they call it, that is not registered and which litters up the airways with either unimportant or absolutely evil communications. These methods of tracing unregistered sending stations were discovered during the war and were proved thoroughly before the Government allowed any small ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... report, which he would scarcely get from Count Erskyll, on this new jewel in the Imperial Crown. To be able to furnish that, he would have to remain until the Midyear Feasts, when the Convocation would act on the new constitution. Whether the constitution was adopted or rejected was, in itself, unimportant; in either case, Aditya would have a government recognizable as such by the Empire, which was already recognizing some fairly unlikely-looking governments. In either case, too, Aditya would make nobody on any other planet any trouble. It ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... to be ruffled just now. Her resentment against Taylor, who was sitting watching her as if he read her thoughts—she often wondered how much of them he did read—made anything Gertie said seem momentarily unimportant. ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... once again to run to St. John's, during the following summer, for a meeting of the Board of Directors. With true Christian unselfishness these men come all the way from Ottawa, New York, and Boston, to help with their counsel so relatively unimportant a work as ours. Sir Walter Davidson again lent his heartiest cooperation. The people owe him, Sir Herbert Murray, Sir Henry MacCallum, Sir William MacGregor, Sir Ralph Williams, Sir Alexander Harris, and all the long line of their Governors, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... During Theo's illness she, as his wife, had enjoyed special attention and consideration; and since her incomprehensible refusal of his offer to throw up the Frontier, had even regarded herself as something of a heroine, if an unwilling one. Now, all of a sudden, she felt deserted, unimportant, and more or less "out of it all." The past fortnight seemed an uplifted dream, from which she had awakened to find herself sitting among the dust and stones of prose and hard facts. Yet she could not complain definitely of anything or any one. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... unprepossessing house habitable; every wish and whim of hers he lived but to gratify, and so complete was his confidence in her, that during his absence she was deputed to read all his letters, at her judgment destroying what was unimportant or reserving what required attention. "It would not do for ladies to write him love letters!" ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen have had it most: pardon it in the proud old man! He enjoined the physician to state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attacks were wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did so, and was generally believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively and as vigorous after them as before. Two persons alone were not deceived,—Dalibard and Lucretia. The first, at an earlier part of his life, had studied pathology with the profound research and ingenious ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lights, and as he crossed the house, pressed off the hall lights as he went, while the many unimportant little nothings, almost of themselves, ranged themselves into an ordered text of doubt and conjecture that he could ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... it's them—that old time that I've tried to have live in me. These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn't have been 'unknown'; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world—the dead South. You see," she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, "people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've always ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... possible to give five minutes' attention to any other English preaching: so cold and commonplace are the homilies that pass for such, under the aged roofs of churches. And as for cathedrals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminutive and unimportant part of the religious services,—if, indeed, it be considered a part,— among the pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resounding and lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The magnificence of the setting quite dazzles out what we Puritans ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Charles Lamb told Godwin, that "you have read more books that are not worth reading than any other man"; nor in being described, as was Southey by Shelley, as "a talking album, filled with long extracts from forgotten books on unimportant subjects." One must not have more knowledge than one can keep in subjection; but every literary man needs to accumulate a whole tool-chest in his memory, and another in his study, before he can be more than a journeyman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... that week, as being utterly unimportant in its events or consequences, I pass rapidly, only saying that, when Saturday came, I followed Munro's advice, and ran down to Brighton, under the idea that by so doing I should thoroughly strengthen myself for the next ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... of the South Sea bubble in 1720 shifted the bulk of the separate trading from London to the rival city of Bristol. But the removal of the duties in 1730 brought the previously unimportant port of Liverpool into the field with such vigor that ere long she had the larger half of all the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessary parsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... autopsical adjunct, was permitted to speak for his associates. Death, said he, had resulted from shock and was probably instantaneous. No other cause could be attributed. No other wound was discovered. No marks of scuffle except "some unimportant scratches" on the shoulder. The bullet was found to weigh exactly the same as those of the unexploded cartridges in poor Maidie's prized revolver, and though Brick would gladly have kept the floor and told very much more, the provost-marshal as gladly got rid of him, for, despite ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the resident doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, and one by illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headed and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... days of sitting by the fire, had increased with every move the hovering hands made. She had been familiar with political parties and their leaders, she had met heroes and statesmen; she had seen an unimportant prince become an emperor, who, from his green and boastful youth, aspired to rule the world and whose theatrical obsession had been the sly jest of unwary nations, too carelessly sure of the advance of civilization and too indifferently self-indulgent to realize that a monomaniac, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Canterbury, on being questioned as to certain Roman observances carried on at St. Bartholomew's, Dover, admitted "There may be irregularities," but added "they do not appear to be of any importance." One of these "unimportant irregularities" was the introduction of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to the third and last point—the concessions of the right of fishing in provincial waters—we considered the equivalent proposed for so very valuable a right to be utterly inadequate. The admission of a few unimportant articles free, with the establishment of a scale of high duties as proposed, would not, in our opinion, have justified us in ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... make up for it with trivial things of frequent encounter, a condition favourable to consecutive study. What is common is not necessarily unimportant. Give it our sustained attention and we shall discover in it merits which our former ignorance prevented us from seeing. When patiently entreated, the least of creatures adds its note to ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... with your ignorance. But look here, Frank; take my advice: Don't you do anything foolish, for so sure as you betray any secret you possess there will be hundreds of hands against you—yes, boy as you are, and unimportant as you think yourself. If you breathe a word, it is not merely against me, but against the safety of scores here; and to save themselves one or the other will send his sword through you at the first opportunity, wipe it, put it back in its sheath, and walk away. No one would be the wiser, and ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... said, "we had a battalion of the Black Watch on our right, and they made a pretty big raid on the German trenches. It developed into a sizable action for any other war, but one trifling enough and unimportant in this one. The Germans had been readier than the Black Watch had supposed, and had reinforcements ready, and sixty of the Highlanders were captured. The Germans took them back into their trenches, and stripped them to the skin. Not a stitch or a rag of clothing ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... misled, searchers, either disappear or take on new values. When we remember that Shakespeare, when he went to London, was about twenty-three years old, the father of a family, and the son of an ex-bailiff of the not unimportant town of Stratford, we may dismiss as a fanciful distortion the story of his holding horses at the theatre doors for stray pennies; and in the added embellishment of the story which describes this Orpheon, yet thrifty street Arab, as organising for this purpose ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... seen for himself the working of the criminal law, he would have paused before disturbing such complicated—necessarily complicated—machinery, and would not have spoken of the consequences as being so very slight and unimportant—nay, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... thought is not merely to be exercised towards the poor; it is to be exercised towards all men. There is assuredly no action of our social life, however unimportant, which, by kindly thought, may not be made to have a beneficial influence upon others; and it is impossible to spend the smallest sum of money, for any not absolutely necessary purpose, without a grave responsibility attaching to the manner of spending it. The object ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... affections left Without a vital interest. At that time, Moreover, the first storm was overblown, And the strong hand of outward violence Locked up in quiet. For myself, I fear 110 Now in connection with so great a theme To speak (as I must be compelled to do) Of one so unimportant; night by night Did I frequent the formal haunts of men, Whom, in the city, privilege of birth 115 Sequestered from the rest, societies Polished in arts, and in punctilio versed; Whence, and from deeper ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraba, in Darien. With a good harbor, it is now reduced to an unimportant pueblo named Acla." (Baldwin's "Ancient ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... in the four positions of this phrase? After having been told that your answers were correct, would it be a disappointment to be told that they were not all correct? Is the interest in a story best kept up by first telling the important points and then the unimportant particulars? What then do you think of placing this ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... far as being known by the world went, the old man was as good, or as bad, as dead. He no longer played other than quite unimportant parts. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... whilst above the body it shows but a little more than 0.25 in. Its advantages are manifest. First, it brings the insects much nearer the eye when placed in the cabinet. Secondly, by its position the body is prevented from greasing the paper of the cabinet (a not unimportant item when the reader is told that the white velvet of a newly-lined cabinet drawer has been utterly ruined by the grease from the bodies of low-set insects). Thirdly, the almost total immunity from "mites" which high-set ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... was curling on the young man's lip; the mariner's face had resumed its stern expression. 'The details of my escape from Botany Bay are unimportant. Suffice it, that I once more reached America, and devoted my energies to tracing the fate of my child. In Savannah I was fortunate enough to meet with the attendant of your grandmother. She had accompanied ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... solidity and exactitude he went beyond the point of careful workmanship and became a putterer. He was the King of Putterers. He could out-putter a plumber. And when he had finished it was usually some unimportant piece of work that any man who handled tools could have done as well in ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... low," but one felt certain that nothing ever induced her to do so. The elder aunt, Mrs. Goldbrook, did not share her sister's character as a human rest-cure; most people found her rather disturbing, chiefly, perhaps, from her habit of asking unimportant questions with enormous solemnity. Her manner of enquiring after a trifling ailment gave one the impression that she was more concerned with the fortunes of the malady than with oneself, and when one got rid of a cold one felt that she almost expected to be given its ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... not unimportant to say here that the Sauviats were eminently religious. At the very height of the Revolution they observed both Sunday and fete-days. Twice Sauviat came near having his head cut off for hearing mass from an unsworn priest. He was put in prison, being justly accused of helping a bishop, whose life ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... feeble to be counted of importance for anything in the world. Dear Herr Liszt, take it well to heart when I ask you to relieve me of the load which would probably be heaped on me by the reproach that I had compromised our dear Weber's memory, because it was none other than I, weak and unimportant as I am, who had first mooted this celebration. Pray, do what you can in order to be helpful to our enterprise, for gradually, as I observe the vulgar indifference of our theatres, which owe so much to Weber, I begin to fear that our fund might easily remain such as it is at present, and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator) |
