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More "Backwardness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Imogen as she had for Posthumus; and she deserves it better. Of all Shakespeare's women she is perhaps the most tender and the most artless. Her incredulity in the opening scene with Iachimo, as to her husband's infidelity, is much the same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othello's jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, 'My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain.' Her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes; and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... education of this boy for his own best interests. In the Army, it happened during the earlier part of the war that some companies or regiments made much slower progress in training than others; and a whole Division was delayed for months because of the backwardness of a single regiment. When the psychological tests were introduced, these slow-learning units were found to contain a disproportionate number of men of low intelligence. From that time on, it was possible by aid of the tests to equalize the intelligence of different units when first formed, and ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... them, it is thought that the duke was determined to surrender, being so persuaded by his confessor. This example, it is very likely, would have been followed by the rest. But this opportunity was lost, not through the negligence or backwardness of the lord admiral, but through the want of providence in those who had the charge of furnishing and providing for the fleet: For, at that time of so great advantage, when they came to examine into the state of their stores, they found a general scarcity of powder and shot, for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... very solitude, lest any stratagem of the enemy should surprise them whilst being dispersed, they returned in bodies into the forum and the parts adjoining to the forum, where the houses of the commons being shut, and the halls of the leading men lying open, almost greater backwardness was felt to attack the open than the shut houses; so completely did they behold with a sort of veneration men sitting in the porches of the palaces, who besides their ornaments and apparel more august than human, bore a striking resemblance to gods, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... which causes one to mourn for the backwardness of this country, here is the bright jewel in her crown. China is, as far as I know, the only nation which has advanced beyond the so-called heroic age when the soldier claims precedence. England and America must be ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... mathematics, Sir Henry Savile and the Bushman are both woefully backward; and in both cases the backwardness is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... interest of better physical, mental, and vocational opportunities for all, includes not only the better care of all incompetent for self-control, self-support, and self-direction, it also is coming to include a far more searching investigation of the causes of degeneracy and backwardness, and many children are thereby lifted from the hopeless classes to the group of those requiring only special care and teaching to be able ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... very wrinkled old woman, arrayed in the outlandish calico costume of the mountains, was summoned as a witness in court to tell what she knew about a fight in her house. She took the witness-stand with evidences of backwardness and proverbial Bourbon verdancy. The Judge asked her in a kindly voice what took place. She insisted it did not amount to much, but the Judge by his persistency finally got her to tell the story of the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... found himself a small and insignificant person at the capital. There he was nobody, and he missed his beloved adjectives. He did not mingle with the upper set, and his lack of education prevented him from amounting to much in the academies and scientific centers, while his backwardness and his parish-house politics drove him from the clubs disgusted, vexed, seeing nothing clearly but that there they were forever borrowing money and gambling heavily. He missed the submissive servants of Manila, who endured all his peevishness, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... sympathy with Satan, he almost invariably sided with his master, in regard of any angry reflection or seditious movement, and even when unjustly punished himself, the occasional result of a certain backwardness in self-defence, never showed any resentment—a most improbable statement, I admit, but nevertheless true—and I think the rest of his character may be left to the gradual dawn of its ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... afraid, have already conceived some contempt for my heroe, on account of his behaviour to Sophia. The former of these will blame his prudence in neglecting an opportunity to possess himself of Mr Western's fortune; and the latter will no less despise him for his backwardness to so fine a girl, who seemed ready to fly into his arms, if he would open ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... attending the landing on the rock, owing to the breach of sea which had for days past been around it, the artificers showed some backwardness at getting into the boats this morning; but after a little explanation this was got over. It was always observable that for some time after anything like danger had occurred at the rock, the workmen became much more cautious, and on some occasions their timidity was rather ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will step into the gap. It may be—but I do not think this is likely—that the time of rites and ceremonies and formal creeds is PAST, and churches of any kind will be no more needed in the world: not likely, I say, because of the still far backwardness of the human masses, and their considerable dependence yet on laws and forms and rituals. Still, if it should prove that that age of dependence IS really approaching its end, that would surely be a matter for congratulation. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach that he had not chosen her. He, too, was sorry then that, owing to her backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in his mind ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... she then cried a little more and, at length relieving me, assured me that I was the ghost of her son who had some time before been killed by a spear-wound in his breast. The younger female was my sister; but she, whether from motives of delicacy or from any imagined backwardness on my part, did not think proper to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... When he found something that he did understand, such as luncheon baskets, he burst into carols of praise over the superior sense in our civilisation and good management to Continental methods. An example of the first attitude may be found in one of his letters, in which he describes the backwardness and idleness of Catholics who would not build a Birmingham in Italy. He seems quite unconscious of the obvious truth, that the backwardness of Catholics was simply the refusal of Bob Cratchit to enter the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... on, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. There was no hesitation or faltering in his step, and the two youths pressed after him, ashamed of their moment's backwardness. The sun had managed to pierce through the haze, and was shining now with some of its wonted brilliancy. As Raymond turned the corner and saw before him the whole of the little hamlet, he almost wished the sun had ceased to shine, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... greater attention given to the eyes, particularly of children. Such incidental troubles as headache, sleeplessness, or biliousness are frequently due to weak or strained eyes, and in the case of school children a great deal of the alleged insubordination, backwardness, and truancy of the children is caused by their being unable to see written ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... climbing. The Professor, who led the way, not for the sake of leadership, but to be the discoverer of laden blackberry bushes, which began to offer occasional refreshment, discouraged by the inhospitable road and perhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of things in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were never in the marrying way; and had I not at last been absolutely certain that my brother was resolved never to marry, I never should have once thought of doing it; but since this was his determined, unalterable resolution, I judged it fit to overcome a natural disinclination and backwardness, and to put myself in the way of doing something for a family not the worst in Scotland; and, therefore, gave my hand to Mr Stewart, the consequence of which has proved more happy than ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... the same year to retrench the expences of the Company in their Indian settlements, and to reform abuses, returned for answer, That, "however low and inadequate their finances might be to admit of extraordinary expences, yet they deemed it expedient not to shew any backwardness in adopting similar measures to those pursued by other Europeans trading to China; and that they had, accordingly, nominated Mr. Titsingh as chief, and himself (Mr. Van Braam) as second Embassador ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... while the inert, somnolent interior has drowsed away its long eventless existence. The rugged, inaccessible heart of little Sardinia repeats the story of central Arabia in its aloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of its race. Its accessible coast, forming a convenient way-station on the maritime crossroads of the western Mediterranean, has received a succession of conquerors and an intermittent influx of every ethnic strain known in ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... might prefer to wait until he had settled down to the more serious practice of the profession, about which no man could be keener. The truth was that Carrissima was prone to search for a variety of explanations for his backwardness, ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... (Desde la Patria al Cielo) the author's endeavors show that the surest happiness is to be found in one's native village. He begins with an ironical description of the village of S—— in the Encartaciones, in which he depicts the simplicity of the inhabitants and their backwardness, in regard to the spirit of the age. In this village lived, among others, Teresa, a poor widow, and her only child, Pedro. One day, while passing the palace of a wealthy "Indian," he called her and said he was obliged to return to America, and wished ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... The reason of the backwardness displayed from the commencement by Prussia to act as the bulwark of Germany on the Lower Rhine is explained by Stein in his letters: "Hanoverian jealousy, by which the narrow-minded Castlereagh was guided, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... Document: a LETTER from Kaiser Joseph himself, who is personally running about in these parts, over in Bohemia, endeavoring to bring Army matters to a footing; and is no doubt shocked to find them still in such backwardness, with a Friedrich at hand. The Kaiser's Letter, we perceive, is pilot-balloon to the Kaunitz episcopal Document, and to an actual meeting of Prussian and Austrian Ministers on the Bavarian point; and had been seen to be a salutary measure by an Austria ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their Band, stood by the preachers, and, given a chance in open field with the arm of the flesh to back him, Knox's courage was tenacious and indomitable. It was only for lonely martyrdom that he never thought himself ready, and few historians have a right to throw the first stone at him for his backwardness. ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... umbrage at anything the least risky. Her cigarettes horrified him, so she threw them out of the window, and never smoked again. She even quelled the sensuality of her self-surrender, and veiled it with a show of shame-faced backwardness and the adorable ingenuousness of a schoolgirl on her honeymoon. She strove to obliterate the remembrances of the heathenish abandonment of the first days, with their unrestrained impulses, testifying all too plainly to the fact that she was a woman well versed in all the arts of seduction. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... and it was instruction in literary form which was needed to set the beanstalk of English literature growing even unto the heavens. Despite the immense advantage which the English adoption of German innovations in religion gave the country of Luther, that country's backwardness made imitation impossible. Luther himself had not elaborated anything like a German style; he had simply cleared the vernacular of some of its grossest stumbling-blocks and started a good plain fashion of sentence. That was not ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... because we must flirt; can't be comfortable alone together, because everybody prepares our tete-a-tete for us. She is in apprehension of an amourousness which I despair of displaying; I am ashamed of a backwardness which is her only comfort. And the audience grows impatient; had the gods given them humour they would laugh consumedly. Surely even they must smile soon, and so soon as they smile I must take the leap; for, my dear friend, we may be privately unhappy, but we must not be publicly ludicrous. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... small, and all practically independent of the feeble German kings. [37] This weakness of the central power condemned Germany to a minor part in the affairs of Europe, as late as the nineteenth century. Yet Germany found some compensation for political backwardness in the splendid city life which it developed during the later Middle Ages. The German cities, together with those of Italy and other European lands, now call for ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Agriculture, mining and manufactures are in a primitive state unworthy of the Middle Ages. The exhibition from Roumania at Vienna in 1873, although arrayed tastefully, was a lamentable confession of poverty and backwardness. Even Hungary, anxious to display her autonomy to the best advantage, could show little more than the beginnings of a change. The actual condition of the lower Danube is a reproach to European civilization. Everything seems to be lacking—good roads and tolerable houses, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... face beneath was a greater danger to those who hold that beauty is a menace to salvation; on her cheek hung the rosy banner of youth; in her eyes shone the bright arrows of conquest. And the duke, discarding his backwardness, as a soldier his cloak before battle, watched the hue that mantled her face, proffered his open breast to the shining lances of her gaze, and capitulated unconditionally before the smile of victory on her blood-red ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... This backwardness to generalize a rule, found so necessary practically to be followed, may be resolved into that flattering conceit of human dignity, which is yielded reluctantly, inch by inch, as plain demonstration wrests it away. And further, ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... the Duma had followed up its repudiation of the government by openly and unreservedly placing itself at the head of the uprising. In any other country than Russia that would have been done, in all probability, but the Russian bourgeoisie was weak. This was due, like so much else in Russia, to the backwardness of the industrial system. There was not a strong middle class and, therefore, the bourgeoisie left the fighting to the working class. Rodzianko's new appeal to the Czar was pathetic. When hundreds of dead and dying lay in the streets ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... insignificant. The total number of mines at work in 1903 was only nine; their output consisted of phosphates, with a small amount of zinc and tin. Brandy, leather and cork goods, and coarse woollen stuffs are manufactured in many of the towns, but the backwardness of education, the lack of good roads, and the general poverty retard the development of commerce. The more northerly of the two Madrid-Lisbon railways enters the province on the east; passes south of Plasencia, where it is joined by the railway from Salamanca, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... conclude, that the pride of that court, will be less hurt by treating with the American states for terms of peace, than with those, whom she denominates, "rebellious subjects," for terms of accommodation. It is our delaying it that encourages her to hope for conquest, and our backwardness tends only to prolong the war. As we have, without any good effect therefrom, withheld our trade to obtain a redress of our grievances, let us now try the alternative, by independantly redressing them ourselves, and then offering to open the trade. ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... do not keep constantly ahead of our enemies in the development of new weapons, we pay for our backwardness with the life's blood of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... the child will be glad to know me?" asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust—a backwardness to be familiar with me. I have even ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prophets of the Continental-Democratic Movement, have in their leading-articles shown themselves disposed to vilipend the late Manchester Insurrection, as evincing in the rioters an extreme backwardness to battle; nay as betokening, in the English People itself, perhaps a want of the proper animal courage indispensable in these ages. A million hungry operative men started up, in utmost paroxysm of desperate protest against their lot; and, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... blockades and may permanently take over large areas populated by fellow ethnic groups. These areas contain most of the industry. If a much smaller core Muslim state survives, it will share many Third World problems of poverty, technological backwardness, and dependence on historically soft foreign markets for its primary products. In these circumstances, other Muslim countries might offer assistance. GDP: $14 billion; real growth rate —37% (1991) Inflation rate (consumer prices): 80% per month ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... worship," answered the man, in much perplexity, but with a backwardness that strikingly indicated the hard and severe character of Colonel Pyncheon's domestic rule; "my master's orders were exceeding strict; and, as your worship knows, he permits of no discretion in the obedience of those who owe him service. Let who list open yonder ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for I need hardly say that in losing you we lose one of the most valued members of the Baptist church in this district. I speak with all the respect due to your position, when I ask you to realize how irreparable is the injury you inflict upon the cause here by this lukewarm backwardness.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... who was very jovial with every post-boy and ostler on the road. The gentleman, being placed next to me by the chance of our billets, lost no time in opening the conversation, a step which my rustic backwardness would long have delayed. He invited my confidence by a free display of his own, informing me that he was attached to the household of Lord Arlington, and was returning to London on his lordship's summons. For since his patron ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... our time in staring at the nonsense and ignorace of the Pagans?"—"Why truly," said I, "my friend, I think it is; and I begin to be a convert to the principles of merchandising. But I must tell you," said I, "by the way, you do not know what I am doing; for if once I conquer my backwardness, and embark heartily, as old as I am, I shall harass you up and down the world till I tire you; for I shall pursue it so eagerly, I shall ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Goodloe of North Carolina wrote in 1846 in a similar tone but with original arguments. Beginning with an exposition of the South's comparative backwardness in economic development, he showed a twofold working of the institution of slavery as the cause. For one thing it lessened the vigor of industry by degrading labor in the estimation of the poor and engendering pride ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... king and potentate to the grindstone, there was a prodigious stir and motion in all the hearts and pulses of Scotland, and no where in a more vehement degree than in Gudetown. But, for some reason or an other which I could never dive into the bottom of, there was a slackness or backwardness on the part of government in sending instructions to the magistrates to step forward; in so much that the people grew terrified that they would be conquered, without having even an opportunity to defend, as their fathers did of old, the hallowed things of their ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... the standard of their patron, as Indian chiefs in the American wars brought the tomahawks of their tribes to the standard of France or England. Celtic independence greatly contributed to the general perpetuation of anarchy in Scotland, to the backwardness of Scotch civilization, and to the abortive weakness of the Parliamentary institutions. Union with the more powerful kingdom at last supplied the force requisite for the taming of the Celt. Highlanders, at the bidding of Chatham's genius, became ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... had supplanted the old Lutheran teaching; and this had led to a sharp controversy with Mr. Pusey, as he was then, who thought that Mr. Rose[41] had both exaggerated the fact itself and had not adequately given the historical account of it. He had the prudence, but not the backwardness, of a man of large knowledge, and considerable experience of the world. More alive to difficulties and dangers than his younger associates, he showed his courage and his unselfish earnestness in his frank sympathy with them, daring and outspoken as ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... man of indeterminate age, hollow- chested, thin-faced, gravely benignant. It was not alone his glasses that lent him a scholarly appearance; he had the stooped shoulders, the thoughtful intensity of gaze, the gentle, hesitating backwardness of a book-raised man. There were tutors at Yale quite as colorless, characterless and indefinite, and immensely more forceful. In place of the revolver at his belt, it seemed as if Willie should have carried a geologist's pick, a butterfly-net, or a magnifying-glass: one ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... heritage he had brought with him from Russia. He was at that time, he told me, president of a large Jewish congregation, whose pillars of support were men like himself. He complained bitterly of their backwardness and illiberality. They would not introduce an organ and refused to change the prayer book or to secure an "advanced" rabbi. For himself, he did not care whether they had a synagogue—I mean temple—at all. He retained no longer any of the superstitions or narrowness of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... inconvenient resolution, and that he was continually urged and pressed by his followers to attack the Government, they persisting in the notion that the Ministers might be driven out, and always complaining that the moderation of the Duke and the backwardness of Peel alone kept them in their places. The discontent and clamour were so loud and continued that it became absolutely necessary for Peel, if he meant to keep the party together, to gratify their impatience for action, and he accordingly concocted this ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in anger! I will follow her,— No, I will not! Heigho! I love my cousin! O would that she loved me! Why did she taunt me With backwardness in love? What could she mean? Sees she I love her, and so laughs at me, Because I lack the front to woo her? Nay, I'll woo her then! Her lips shall be in danger, When next she trusts them near me! Looked she at me To-day as never did she look before! ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... the Quaker, with a very happy turn of wit, "I do not like to be examined; but lest thou shouldest take up any mistakes by reason of my backwardness to speak, I will answer thee for once, that what her woman's name is I know not, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... displeasure, that Mrs Belfield, suspecting she had gone rather too far, added "I beg you won't take what I've said amiss, ma'am, for we mothers of families are more used to speak out than maiden ladies. And I should not have said so much, but only I was afraid you would misconstrue my son's backwardness, and so that he might be flung out of your favour at last, and all for nothing but having too much ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... certainly neither of these qualifications, and he it was whom Pitt designed to act the leading part in the coming year, "a greater part," he modestly wrote after receiving his appointment, "than I wished or desired. The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some measure forced the Government to come down so low. I shall do my best and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... backwardness about explaining. In fact she always took the greatest pains to be explicit with old Mr. Sommerville about the pit from which she had been digged. "Why, this visit to Aunt Victoria is like stepping ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship, on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted,[42] in all that general and miscellaneous knowledge which is alone useful in the world, he was making rapid and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... itself with the settlement of vitally important questions the consideration of which need not have been postponed because the constitutional question still remained in dispute. Therefore, though I seem to throw upon the Nationalist party the chief blame for our present political backwardness, and, so far as politics affect other spheres of national activity, for our industrial depression, candour compels me to admit that Irish Unionism has failed to recognise its obligation—an obligation recognised by the Unionist party in Great Britain—to ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... house and refurnish, &c.—so that artificial means for stopping inventions will be adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than others, and the backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness of another. At any rate, so far as I can see, the present is about the only comfortable time for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever will be. The past was too slow, and the future will be much ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... the children a-dancing, and as Ellen did not know how, he kept her by him, and kept her very much amused, too, in his own way; then he would have her join in the dancing, and bade Ellen Chauncey give her lessons. There was a little backwardness at first, and then Ellen was jumping away with the rest, and thinking it perfectly delightful, as Miss Sophia's piano rattled out merry jigs and tunes, and little feet flew over the floor as light as the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... which have become immortal in the political annals of North Carolina. These have always been known as the "Mummy letters." They furnished a vivid but rather aggravating explanation for the existing backwardness and chauvinism of the commonwealth. All the trouble, it seems, was caused by the "mummies." "It is an awfully discouraging business," Page wrote, "to undertake to prove to a mummy that it is a mummy. You go up to it and say, 'Old fellow, the Egyptian ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... administrative titles, converted whole provinces into family estates and claimed over their tenants the divine right of unlimited and irresponsible sovereignty. To investigate all the reasons for the political backwardness of these eastern peoples would carry us far afield. But one reason lies on the surface. Outside the free towns they had produced no middle class; and their towns were neither numerous nor wealthy enough to be important in national ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... another, so that the people could never enjoy peace. This proceeding the patricians with difficulty brooked, and the tribune was severely reprehended in the senate; where each severally urged the consul to call a new assembly, for passing the proposal; to rebuke the backwardness of the people; and to prove to them how much loss and disgrace the delay of ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... are not of the highest order: but I can assure you of the excellence of her intentions, and even of the amiability of her disposition. Monsieur will then, I am sure, have the goodness to be considerate with her at first, and not expose her backwardness, her inevitable deficiencies, before the young ladies, who, in a sense, are her pupils. Will Monsieur Creemsvort favour me by attending to this hint?" I nodded. She continued ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... voted the Democratic ticket almost to a man, Jefferson proposed that the period of residence required by the naturalization laws to qualify a voter should be shortened. He had no objection to coercion before 1787. Speaking of the backwardness of some of the colonies in paying their quota of the Confederate expenses, he recommends sending a frigate to make them more punctual. 'The States must see the rod, perhaps some of them must be made to feel it.' His somersets ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Latterly he often told me that, after all, there was a great deal to be said for the rule of the enlightened autocrat. "But," he said, "the mischief is that you can't guarantee a succession of enlightened autocrats; so we must make the best of the rule of the majority." The backwardness of England in education used to make him wring his hands. To lack of education he attributed the tawdriness and vulgarity of popular taste. I thought my own political and social views were advanced: to Paul I ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... no backwardness now; on hers no coyness, no mock modesty. They come together not as at their last interview, timid sweethearts, but lovers emboldened by betrothal. For she knows, that he proposed to her; as he, that her acceptance was sent, and ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... first epoch is from birth to the age of six, during which 25 per cent of all cases commence, usually associated with mental backwardness, and some due to organic brain trouble. The second epoch is ten to twenty-two, the time of puberty and adolescence, during which time no less than 54 per cent of all cases commence. This is, par ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... the child will be glad to know me?" asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust,—a backwardness to be familiar with me. I have even been ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... opposition of those who were looked upon as higher and wiser. The meeting was appointed, and but few came. I felt much backwardness, and as though I could not pray, but a pressure upon me to arise and express myself by way of exhortation. After hesitating for some time whether I would take up the cross or no, I arose, and after expressing ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... great danger. One thing, at any rate, is evident: had an Irish mob threatened to burn down a Roman Catholic church, or a Roman Catholic orphan asylum, or threatened any of the institutions or property of the Roman Church, he would have shown no such backwardness or fear. The mob would have been confronted with the most terrible anathemas of the church, and those lawless bands quailed before the maledictions of the representative of "God's vicegerent on earth." It is unjust to suppose that he wished ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... that week visited her home and there, in the presence of other people, talked considerably about her boy's progress in school, his rapid advance as compared with that of our little dreamer, her relative stupidity and backwardness. And so this boy's mother had continued for some time in the same strain. This caused our little girl to feel much embarrassed—in fact, ashamed and mortified. She had felt that way for several days past, it had made her cry, had made ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... that prince. They were immediately seized, committed to custody, brought to trial, condemned and executed. No legal crime was proved against these brothers: it was only alleged, that at the battle of Flouder they had not done their duty in supporting the king; and as this backwardness could not, from the course of their past life, be ascribed to cowardice, it was commonly imputed to a more criminal motive. The evidence, however, of guilt produced against them was far from being valid or convincing; and the people, who hated them while living, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... individual he might have imposed upon. On the contrary, I had appeared to seek his acquaintance with an eagerness which said but little for my knowledge of the world. The more I reflected, the more I should have been puzzled, had I not connected his present backwardness with his acquaintance with the stranger, whom he termed Warburton. It is true, that I had no reason to suppose so: it was a conjecture wholly unsupported, and, indeed, against my better sense; yet, from some unanalysed associations, I could not ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old enough to be a soldier. When the call to arms went out, every man of the required age was expected at the muster, and the last comer was tortured to death in the presence of his comrades as a lesson against backwardness. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... into or remain long in the cobwebby corners—his love of the open air and exercise derived from generations of active lighthouse engineers, out at all times on sea or land, or from Scottish ministers who were fond of composing their sermons and reflecting on the backwardness of human nature as they walked in their gardens or along the hillsides even among mists and storms, did something to save him here, reinforcing natural cheerfulness and the warm desire to give pleasure. His ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... to his state and services. On February 8, 1668, we find him writing to Evelyn, his mind bitterly occupied with the late Dutch war, and some thoughts of the different story of the repulse of the great Armada: "Sir, you will not wonder at the backwardness of my thanks for the present you made me, so many days since, of the Prospect of the Medway, while the Hollander rode master in it, when I have told you that the sight of it hath led me to such reflections ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the backwardness of Spaniards in the field of invention: "Other nations can do the inventing." In other words, let foreigners build up the sciences, so that we may take advantage ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... is very much a question with me whether, after all, the failure, so far, to secure these fancied rights, is not quite as much the result of woman's backwardness and inefficiency as of man's jealous and greedy monopoly; whether the greatest obstacle does not lie in the adverse opinions prevailing among women themselves. According to my observation, as fast as women have proved themselves adapted to compete with men in any particular field, their brothers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you, Miss Rolleston?" asked she, suspecting, from his backwardness in coming forward, that the object of her intentions ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... good," thinks Henry Chester, for a certain reason wishing to be of the party, that reason, as a child might see, being Leoline. He does not speak his wish, however, backwardness forbidding, but is well pleased at hearing her brother, who is without bar of this kind, cry out, "Yes, father. And the other pair of us, Harry and myself, would like to go too. Neither of us have got our land legs yet, as we found yesterday while fighting the penguins. A little ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... treat. He was only in the 4th grade. His retardation was the result of having been changed back and forth from foreign-speaking to English schools and having been sent away to an institution for truancy. In spite of his backwardness Robert had a fund of remarkably accurate scientific and other information which a mature person might envy. We found our regular series of tests were all done unusually well, except those which ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... capitalists, while a commercial capitalism, as already indicated, was raising its head in all the larger centres. In consequence of this state of things, the rapid development of the towns and of commerce, national and international, and the economic backwardness of the country-side, a landless proletariat was being formed, which meant on the one hand an enormous increase in mendicancy of all kinds, and on the other the creation of a permanent class of only casually-employed persons, whom the towns absorbed indeed, but for the most part with a new form ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... a prey to the designs of the Unitaries. When this happened, he secretly stirred up the provinces into a renewal of the earlier disturbances, until the evidence became overwhelming that Rosas alone could bring peace and progress out of turmoil and backwardness. Reluctantly the legislature yielded him the power it knew he wanted. This he would not accept until a "popular" vote of some 9000 to 4 confirmed the choice. In 1835, accordingly, he became dictator for the first of four successive terms ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... when it was expected of them to make sacrifices, they not only would make none, but declared it an act of impiety to expect it. Some of the people, who feared the Immortals, were dismayed and indignant at this backwardness; and the discontent at last grew universal. Whereupon, the two chief priests held a long conference together, and agreed that something must be done to pacify the multitude. But it was not until the greater of them, acknowledging his despondency, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... latitude was to be allowed in this respect. We have seen on every occasion the vast sacrifices which kings were willing to make in order to people their distant possessions; and the necessity was increased by the backwardness hitherto visible."—Murray's America, vol. i., ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... relief, the renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again, and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea. I love to recall, and would that I could reproduce that life, the unforgettable, the unrememberable. The memory, which shows so wise a backwardness in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended pleasures; and a long-continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its mass) our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of our life's map there lies a roseate, undecipherable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remorse, and strong self-crimination. In the autumn of 1763 he became the comforter of his friend, Lloyd, in the Fleet, supported him in confinement, and opened a subscription for the discharge of his heavy debts, which, owing to the backwardness of others, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... and from excellent, though mistaken motives of delicacy, delayed to intrude himself upon her for a long time. Meanwhile Sir John, now created a baronet, was unremitting, and she began to grow somewhat piqued at the backwardness of him she secretly ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... object that there is no proof, no legal commission or patent, from their High Mightinesses, to substantiate and justify our rights and claims to the property of this province, and insinuate that through the backwardness of their High Mightinesses to grant such a patent, you apparently intended to place the people here on slippery ice, giving them lands to which your honors ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... levies arrived slowly in the American camp, and many of those who were sent were mere boys utterly unfit for active service. The several States discovered much backwardness in complying with the requisitions of Congress, so that there was reason to apprehend that the number of troops necessary for besieging New York could not be procured. This made Washington turn his thoughts more seriously to the southward than he had hitherto done, but all his movements confirmed ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... were off his eyes; and had he list to do it, he could never set them on again. They said he covered his face, and wept like the child he nearhand was. Then he lifted his head, the tears over, and in his eyes was the light of a settled purpose, and in his lips a stern avisement. No latsummes [backwardness, reluctance] was in ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... that her figure-head was of solid gold. As, however, we had no such treasure, and the meeting was unavoidable, and might be hostile, I put myself into a complete posture of defense, with a determination neither to show backwardness nor suspicion. The day arrived, and the pirates swept up the river; eighteen prahus, one following the other, decorated with flags and streamers, and firing both cannon and musketry; the sight was interesting and curious, and heightened by the conviction ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... three years after the period to which I have alluded that an accident of which I need not remind you, my beloved Helen, introduced me to the acquaintance of your family. You may remember the backwardness with which I first received their approaches; the very name of Percy had become ominously painful to me, and yet it inspired me with a strange and undefinable interest. A spell appeared to attract me towards you, and in spite of my first resolution to ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... he hardly ventured to show his face. He had always made Bliss a laughing-stock, had nicknamed him Ass's Head, and had taught others to jeer at his backwardness. He had presumed on his lazy good humour, and affected to patronise and look down on him. An eruption in a long-extinct volcano could not have surprised him more than the sudden outburst of Bliss's wrath, and if the two blows which he had received as he fled before him in sight of the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... respect and gratitude. At length, when further resistance was useless, I took off my slippers, and seated myself with a corner of my hip just resting upon the edge of the sofa, keeping my hands covered with the sleeves of my garment, and affecting a coyness and a backwardness, at which, now that I recollect ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... probable that their dread of the effects of our arms was the principal cause of their backwardness in attacking us; and, indeed, the confidence we appeared to place in this advantage, by opposing only five marines to their whole force, must have raised in them a very high idea of our superiority. It was our business ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... account for an observation we must have frequent occasion to make; that the conversation of men of very moderate capacities is often preferred to that of men of superior talents; in which the world act more wisely than at first they may seem; for, besides that backwardness in mankind to give their admiration, what can be duller or more void of pleasure than discourses on subjects above our comprehension? It is like listening to an unknown language; and, if such company is ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... "The backwardness of the Irish and their poverty are, in my opinion, due to their inferiority as a race of men. Wherever there is a factory, you will find all the foremen Protestants—that is, Saxons. And Irishmen expect it. They will not work under Irish foremen, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... indolence an inherent characteristic of the native, or is it true, as a foreign traveller has said in speaking of a country whose inhabitants are of the same race as these, that this indolence is only a fabrication to excuse our own laziness, our backwardness and the faults of ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... however, is slowly realizing, through the development of organized capitalism in industry and government, and the increase of hired laborers, that it is not nature alone that civilization must contend against, not merely ignorance or poverty or the backwardness of material development, but, more important than all these, the systematic opposition of the employing and governing classes to every program of improvement, except that which promises still further to increase their ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... every way Captain Sutter's environment and the results of his enterprises were in significant contrast to the inactivity and backwardness of his neighbors. He showed what an energetic man could accomplish with exactly the same human powers and material tools as had always been available to the Californians. Sutter himself was a rather short, thick-set man, exquisitely neat, of military bearing, carrying himself ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... town, moreover, is in a Parliamentary district, in which every candidate at the recent general election—and there were seven of them—supported effective voting. Far down in the south I went to a little village containing seven churches, which accounted (said the local doctor) for the extreme backwardness of its inhabitants. "They have so many church affairs to attend to that there is no time to think of anything else." At the close of this lecturing tour The Register undertook the public count through its columns, which did so much to bring the reform before the people of South Australia. ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... and take his grips away from him and rush him off with a lot of "hurrahs" didn't set well. Judd Billings was homesick for one thing; he'd been warned to have nothing to do with strangers, for another; and his natural backwardness in meeting people only added to his quite unaccountable attitude of reserve and resistance. Jack Frey was the one person Judd was prepared to meet. If later Jack should vouch for these fellows, all well and good. Until then he intended to ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... as a whole, prevents any swift readjustments of trade patterns and economic programs. The country's industrial output and GDP are expected to decline further in 1995. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia's geographical isolation, technological backwardness, and potential political instability place it far down the list of countries of interest to Western investors. Resolution of the dispute with Greece and an internal commitment to economic reform would encourage foreign investment over the long ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... and his son felt keenly and spoke strongly. There was so much of sympathy and fellow-feeling between them, that there was no backwardness on Norman's part in telling his whole trouble, with more confidence than schoolboys often show towards their fathers, and Dr. May entered into the mortification as if he were still at school. They did not go into the house, but walked long up and down the garden, working themselves ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... nearly half the year. There are few men who have any just estimate of the amount of provisions and fodder necessary for the sustenance of a family and its cattle for so long a period as a half year, and when accident, or the unwonted backwardness of the season, increases the number of mouths, or the length of the cold term, it is hard for the farmer to decide on sacrificing the life of even a superannuated horse, or weakly yearling, in time to benefit ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... her mother's. She thought of what had just passed with anxiety and distrust. Willoughby's behaviour in taking leave of them, his embarrassment, and affectation of cheerfulness, and, above all, his unwillingness to accept her mother's invitation—a backwardness so unlike a lover, so unlike himself—greatly disturbed her. One moment she feared that no serious design had ever been formed on his side; and the next that some unfortunate quarrel had taken place between him and her sister. The distress in which Marianne had quitted the room was such ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... efficiently by the workers, from the point of view of production, than they are at present by the capitalists. The Bolsheviks oppose self-government in industry every where, because it has failed in Russia, and their national self-esteem prevents them from admitting that this is due to the backwardness of Russia. This is one of the respects in which they are misled by the assumption that Russia must be in all ways a model to the rest of the world. I would go so far as to say that the winning of self-government ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... label, a solid, sedate individual, sedately dressed, sedately conversational. Even without his conversation (which was addressed to a friend seated by his side, and touched chiefly on such topics as the backwardness of Roman hyacinths and the prevalence of measles at the Rectory), one could have gauged fairly accurately the temperament and mental outlook of the travelling bag's owner. But he seemed unwilling to leave anything to the imagination of a casual observer, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... dragged and his knees knocked together, and that he had a paunch; and let him get interested in a conversation, and you heard that he first spluttered, and then roared. Physical wakness and mental backwardness had made him the despair of Augustus: he was the fool of the family, kept in the background, and noticed by none. Tiberius, in search of a successor, had never thought of him; had rather let things go to mad Caligula. He had never ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... under the strong glare of all the torches, the erect form of Deerslayer, standing with commiseration, and as she thought, with shame depicted on his countenance, near the dying female. He betrayed neither fear nor backwardness himself; but it was apparent by the glances cast at him by the warriors, that fierce passions were struggling in their bosoms. All this seemed to be unheeded by the captive, but it remained impressed on the memory of Judith throughout the night. No canoe was met hovering ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... difference was with archbishop Parker, whom he highly offended by his backwardness in proceeding to extremities against the puritans, a sect many of whose scruples Grindal himself had formerly entertained, and was still inclined to view with respect or pity rather than with indignation. Cecil, who was his chief friend and patron, apprehensive of his involving ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... anything that would seem to serve his purpose of thoroughly discrediting the Negro, Mr. Dixon holds up the backwardness of Africa as an indication of the inherent inefficiency of the Negro race. The life of the great body of the Negro race has been cast for untold centuries in Africa. This one simple fact has meant and ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... his brother was to be recommended to the Queen for one of the Commissioners to be appointed by Her Majesty for the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland.... This choise, however honourable to me, was very far from giving me the least pleasure or satisfaction, for I had observed a great backwardness in the Parliament of Scotland for an Union with England of any kind whatsoever, and therefore doubted not but, after a great deal of expense in attending a Treaty in England, I should be oblidged to return with the uneasy reflexion of having either done nothing, or ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... disparagement of the United States Navy; which, since the glories of 1812 and the first re-organization and development procured for it by the popular favor consequent upon its victories, had been allowed to drop into a state of backwardness, as regards the material, similar to that which followed the Civil War, and from which it is but now beginning to emerge. The points which he noted, though most important to that rapidity and order upon which the efficient service of a ship's ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... borders of knowledge and speculation, has been an evil which is the more felt in proportion as specialisation of science and familiarity with previous achievements become more important. It would be very easy to give particular instances of our backwardness. How different would have been the course of English church history, said somebody, if Newman had only known German! He would have breathed a larger air, and might have desisted—I suppose that was the meaning—from the attempt to put life into certain ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... nothing to do, and spending our time in staring at the nonsense and ignorance of the Pagans?"—"Why, truly," said I, "my friend, I think it is, and I begin to be a convert to the principles of merchandising; but I must tell you, by the way, you do not know what I am doing; for if I once conquer my backwardness, and embark heartily, old as I am, I shall harass you up and down the world till I tire you; for I shall pursue it so eagerly, I shall never ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... the scattholds remain undivided, the general backwardness of improvement, and want of agricultural skill and capital, are the immediate causes. The present tenantry are so ignorant of the means of turning these commons to any proper account, that the fee-simple of most of them would, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... that the Legislature will have to interfere unless shipowners look to it themselves. The ease with which preserved foods of all kinds can be obtained and carried now removes the last shadow of an excuse for backwardness in this matter, and in particular the provision of a large supply of potatoes, both fresh and dried, ought to be an unceasing care; this is done on board American ships, and to this is doubtless owing in a great part the healthiness of their crews. Scurvy in the present day is a disgrace ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... or girl of my acquaintance who would not consciously or unconsciously harbour such feelings. And this is not because woman is purer or more virtuous than man: why, virtue and purity are not very different from vice if they are not free from evil feeling. I attribute this simply to the backwardness of woman. The mournful feeling of compassion and the pang of conscience experienced by a modern man at the sight of suffering is, to my mind, far greater proof of culture and moral elevation than hatred and aversion. Woman is as ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Manchester that at "the time when we built the first Dreadnoughts Dreadnoughts were in the air." So our backwardness in naval aviation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... in his collection. Tasman discovered New Zealand on the 13th September, 1642, but did not land on it, an unfortunate event having given him a total distrust of the natives. Some of them, after a good deal of backwardness and seeming fear, ventured to go on board the Heenskirk, which was the consort of his own vessel, named the Zee-Haan. Tasman, not liking their appearance, and being apprehensive of their hostile intentions, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... lustrous jewels. His teeth were white and regular, and his smile when he was in gracious mood, especially when talking to women, had an irresistible charm. I remember very little that he said. One thing was, when the backwardness or forwardness of the season was spoken of, that there was a day—I think it was June 15—when, in every year vegetation was at about the same condition of forwardness, whether the spring were early or late. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... their importunity, he had acted. It was only, therefore, by the urgency of a despairing effort, as a dernier ressort, these had now sought the presence as petitioners, and naturally they dreaded denial. Noting the Condesa's backwardness—a thing new but not displeasing to him, since it gave promise of influence over her—Santa ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... also a corresponding backwardness. The nominal district of Woodhall Spa consisted of outlying portions of the parishes of Woodhall, Langton, Thornton and Thimbleby, these villages themselves being distant from four and a half to seven ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... lavalavas and white drill coats, and being all of them of the obstreperous, no-good class like Peter, they were soon the terror of the island. Not that Mr. Clemm didn't keep them tight in hand, but when it came to an order of court or any backwardness in taxes he never seemed to care much whom they plundered and beat, which was what they reveled in and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... respect to the disposition of the Roman forces and the condition of their magazines. This individual, ennobled by the royal authority, and given a place at the royal table, gained great influence over his new master, whom he stimulated by alternately reproaching him with his backwardness in the past, and putting before him the prospect of easy triumphs over Rome in the future. He pointed out that the emperor, with the bulk of his troops and treasures, was detained in the regions adjoining the Danube, and that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... ambiguity in which we lay as to the length of the rope and the height of the precipice—and that this gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a pitchy night, on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an infant child to steady it at the bottom, a little backwardness was perhaps excusable. But it was, in our case, more than a little. The truth is, we were all womanish fellows about a height; and I have myself been put, more than once, hors de combat by a less affair than the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that accompanies this note, you will find the body of an Englishman, who has this day been murdered by brigands; I call upon you, in the name of Heaven, to rout these murderers out of their dens, and bring them to justice. Should you show any backwardness in so doing, I shall deem it necessary to ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... had been used to teach the little delicate son of the purse-proud lady, and that he had taken great interest in the little fellow both on account of his backwardness and frail health. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... to anchor for the night. The next day we were employed in preparations for sea. On the following night I stood my first watch. During the first few days we had bad weather, and I began to feel the discomforts of a sailor's life. But I knew that if I showed any sign of want of spirit or of backwardness, I should be ruined at once. So I performed my duties to the best of my ability, and after a time I felt somewhat of a man. I cannot describe the change which half a pound of cold salt beef and a biscuit or two produced in me after having taken no ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... employed in the yard, not more than half a dozen had remained at their work, the rest being, like all the townsmen, occupied in removing their goods in great haste. Even the frigates that were armed had but a third, at most, of their crews on board, so many having deserted owing to the backwardness of ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... did French-Canadian agriculture, despite the warm official encouragement given to it, make such relatively meager progress? There are several reasons for its backwardness. The long winters, which developed in the habitant an inveterate disposition to idleness, afford the clue to one of them. A general aversion to unremitting manual toil was one of the colony's besetting sins. ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... ever it has been by any Christian moralist; yet he was not altogether the truthful and true man to whom we accord our highest approbation. There was the case of Mang Chih-fan, who boldly brought up the rear of the defeated troops of Lu, and attributed his occupying the place of honour to the backwardness of his horse. The action was gallant, but the apology for it was weak and unnecessary. And yet Confucius saw nothing in the whole but matter for praise [4]. He could excuse himself from seeing an unwelcome ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... from subject to subject, and then suddenly the important question would be asked, the important subject mooted. On this occasion, however, the Khan came with unusual rapidity to his point. A few inquiries as to the Colonel's health, a short oration on the backwardness of the crops, a lengthier one upon his fidelity to and friendship for the British Government and the miserable return ever made to him for it, and then came a question ludicrously inapposite and put with the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Salisbury; a Norman by birth; and who learnt the art of book-binding and book-illumination, before he had been brought over into this country by William the Conqueror.[251] (A character, by the bye, who, however completely hollow were his claims to the crown of England, can never be reproached with a backwardness in promoting learned men to the several great offices ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to say, 'I am the Lord's!' but when the Lord wants to make practical use of His own, Oh, what backwardness to obey! What slowness of speech on the part of the tongue that was professedly given to the Lord! What weariness of body will sometimes be found when that body is demanded by the Master for some special service! A dumb devil seems to ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... vessel was then rolling a little, and I had taken no food for three days, so that I felt tempted to tell him that I had rather wait till after breakfast; but I knew that I must "take the bull by the horns,'' and that if I showed any sign of want of spirit or backwardness, I should be ruined at once. So I took my bucket of grease and climbed up to the royal-mast-head. Here the rocking of the vessel, which increases the higher you go from the foot of the mast, which is the fulcrum of the lever, and the smell of the grease, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the awkwardness of having to pass through the milk-house to get to the parlour door. These household contrivances appeared to interest Margery much more than the great question of dressing for the ceremony and the ceremony itself. In all relating to that she showed an indescribable backwardness, which later ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... regiment played the part of the army of Appius.[35] There were other martinets, king's and Company's, commanding divisions in that war, and they all signally failed; not, however, except in the above one instance, from backwardness on the part of their troops, but from utter incapacity when the hour of trial came. Those who succeeded were men always noted for caring something more about the hearts than the whiskers and buttons of their men. That the officer who delights in harassing his regiment in times ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... hasty way, but I think correctly, I have thrown the chief burden of backwardness in school, or retardation, upon physical defects. But our special topic is eye trouble. How much of this burden must be referred to this specific source? It is difficult to say exactly. But knowing as we do the great prevalence ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... limited sufficient; many sailors who are now in the service of the merchants, may not return soon enough to lay claim to the bounty, who would gladly accept it, and who will either not serve the crown without it, or will serve with disgust and complaints; as the loss of it cannot be imputed to their backwardness, but to an accident against which they ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... have long lived in a state of backwardness, have a sudden fit of cleanliness, in imitation of more advanced nations, they are apt to clean the outside walls only, and to leave all their accustomed filth hidden behind them. I mention these terrible prisons because, during the visit of the squadron to Naples, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... of Simon Bunce and Hob Hogward, Hal improved greatly, not only in speech but in bearing; he showed no such dislike or backwardness in chivalrous exercises as previously; and when once Sir Lancelot Threlkeld came over to see him, he was absolutely congratulated on looking so much more ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... republic, as we were from a likeness to England under the parliamentary monarchy, although England was the example we followed in that regime, just as the United States is our example in our present government. But just as our backwardness in parliamentary customs was no cause for us to revert from a constitutional to an absolute monarchy, so the insufficiency of our republican customs constitutes no reason for abandoning the federal republic. ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... blankets, assisted to fill the hospital with patients, and rendered the purchase of these articles absolutely indispensable at any price, and on any terms on which they might be procured. I feel myself inclined to suppose, that the backwardness which displayed itself at this time in the government to dispatch the stores which were demanded, arose from a conviction that the supplies which had been previously sent in such abundance were sufficiently ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... the slightest backwardness about explaining. In fact she always took the greatest pains to be explicit with old Mr. Sommerville about the pit from which she had been digged. "Why, this visit to Aunt Victoria is like stepping into another world for me. Everything is so ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... intellectual side proved to be a great treat. He was only in the 4th grade. His retardation was the result of having been changed back and forth from foreign-speaking to English schools and having been sent away to an institution for truancy. In spite of his backwardness Robert had a fund of remarkably accurate scientific and other information which a mature person might envy. We found our regular series of tests were all done unusually well, except those which called for ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Democracy: 'For what would happen if we Germans emerged victorious from this war? Our victory would only mean a strengthening of the dynastic principle of arbitrary power all along the line. Those of us who bewail the political backwardness of our Fatherland must realize that a German victory would prolong this backward condition for centuries. And not only Germany, but the whole of Europe, would have ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... more and, at length relieving me, assured me that I was the ghost of her son who had some time before been killed by a spear-wound in his breast. The younger female was my sister; but she, whether from motives of delicacy or from any imagined backwardness on my part, did not think ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... through which the largest craft are towed to and from the ports by row-boats. In the model of the sea-going vessels there has apparently been little change from the first. Yet in spite of all this backwardness in invention, the city is full of beautiful workmanship in every branch of artificing, and the Venetians are still the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... herself she shall find, certain means of securing her reputation, and preventing all the pernicious consequences of her pleasures. It is necessary, therefore, that, beside the infamy attending such licences, there should be some preceding backwardness or dread, which may prevent their first approaches, and may give the female sex a repugnance to all expressions, and postures, and liberties, that have an immediate ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of eternal felicity hereafter. Oh, what sacred pleasure there is in the idea of spending an eternity together in perfect and uninterrupted bliss! This should encourage us to the utmost exertion and fortitude. But whilst I write, my own words condemn me—I am ashamed of my own indolence and backwardness to duty. May I be more careful, watchful, and active than I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... hints that the Legislature will have to interfere unless shipowners look to it themselves. The ease with which preserved foods of all kinds can be obtained and carried now removes the last shadow of an excuse for backwardness in this matter, and in particular the provision of a large supply of potatoes, both fresh and dried, ought to be an unceasing care; this is done on board American ships, and to this is doubtless owing in a great part the healthiness of their ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... cared what, provided the play were played—and both Captain Maumbry and his wife were in the piece, having been in fact, by mutual consent, the originators of the performance. And so with laughter, and thoughtlessness, and movement, all went merrily. There was a little backwardness in the bill-paying of the couple; but in justice to them it must be added that sooner or later all owings ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the rule of the enlightened autocrat. "But," he said, "the mischief is that you can't guarantee a succession of enlightened autocrats; so we must make the best of the rule of the majority." The backwardness of England in education used to make him wring his hands. To lack of education he attributed the tawdriness and vulgarity of popular taste. I thought my own political and social views were advanced: to ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... nations have secured are eagerly distributed to the remotest corners. The agents of the governmental Bureau of Agriculture, the agricultural county demonstrators, the rapidly spreading agricultural schools, take care that the farmer's "commonsense" with its backwardness and narrowness be replaced by an insight which results from scientific experiment and exact calculation. Agricultural science, based on physics and chemistry, on botany and zooelogy, has made wonderful strides ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... and quite entreated that no such step might be taken, as I had no authority for presentation but to the duchess. However, Lady Crewe was only provoked at my backwardness, and charged Mr. Grattan not to heed me. "Tell the duke," she cried, "that Madame d'Arblay is our Madame de Stael! tell him we are as proud of our Madame d'Arblay as he can be of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... and no strong desire for the necessity of it, no craving for the counterbalancing influence of a Nietzsche, has arisen yet in the British mind. I cannot help pointing out the grave consequences of this backwardness of England, which has arisen from the fact that you have never taken any ideas or theories, not even your own, seriously. Democracy, dear Englishmen, is like a stream, which all the peoples of Europe will have to cross: ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... physical, mental, and vocational opportunities for all, includes not only the better care of all incompetent for self-control, self-support, and self-direction, it also is coming to include a far more searching investigation of the causes of degeneracy and backwardness, and many children are thereby lifted from the hopeless classes to the group of those requiring only special care and teaching to be able to be classed ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... grasping after anything that would seem to serve his purpose of thoroughly discrediting the Negro, Mr. Dixon holds up the backwardness of Africa as an indication of the inherent inefficiency of the Negro race. The life of the great body of the Negro race has been cast for untold centuries in Africa. This one simple fact has meant and still means so much. The peculiar character of the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... were the heritage he had brought with him from Russia. He was at that time, he told me, president of a large Jewish congregation, whose pillars of support were men like himself. He complained bitterly of their backwardness and illiberality. They would not introduce an organ and refused to change the prayer book or to secure an "advanced" rabbi. For himself, he did not care whether they had a synagogue—I mean temple—at all. He retained ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... blockade, combined with the effects of the UN sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro, cost the economy approximately $1 billion in 1992 according to official figures. Macedonia's geographical isolation, technological backwardness, and potential political instability place it far down the list of countries of interest to Western investors. Resolution of the dispute with Greece and an internal commitment to economic reform would help to encourage foreign investment over the long run. In the immediate ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... nothing on earth about me; you may actually do me harm; I am in better hands than yours. I know my own sincerity of purpose; and I am determined upon taking my time." Since I have been a Catholic, people have sometimes accused me of backwardness in making converts; and Protestants have argued from it that I have no great eagerness to do so. It would be against my nature to act otherwise than I do; but besides, it would be to forget the lessons which I gained in the experience ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... reasons which determined the length of our Lord's life upon earth, but this was one of them,—that He could not go away until He had left these men strong enough to stand by themselves, and to lay the foundations of the Church. Therefore He yielded to the plea of their very faithlessness and backwardness, and with this wonderful word of condescension and appeal bade them say for how many more days He must abide in the plain, and turn His back on the glories that had gleamed for a moment on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... slaves. He had a special building erected near the Mansion House for use as a hospital. Once he went to Winchester in the Shenandoah region especially to look after slaves ill with smallpox "and found everything in the utmost confusion, disorder, and backwardness. Got Blankets and every other requisite from Winchester, and settied things on the best footing I could." As he had had smallpox when at Barbadoes, he had ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the landing on the rock, owing to the breach of sea which had for days past been around it, the artificers showed some backwardness at getting into the boats this morning; but after a little explanation this was got over. It was always observable that for some time after anything like danger had occurred at the rock, the workmen became much more cautious, and on some occasions their timidity was rather troublesome. ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over the keys of the melodeon. The others wanted to be coaxed as amateurs always do. There is no backwardness that requires as much persuasion to appear before an audience as that of an amateur, but when once persuaded there is no cheerfulness that exceeds that of an amateur ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... suffers from a want of laborers. Agriculture, mining and manufactures are in a primitive state unworthy of the Middle Ages. The exhibition from Roumania at Vienna in 1873, although arrayed tastefully, was a lamentable confession of poverty and backwardness. Even Hungary, anxious to display her autonomy to the best advantage, could show little more than the beginnings of a change. The actual condition of the lower Danube is a reproach to European civilization. Everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the properly plentiful feeding of the world was only kept waiting for the chemists, she certainly did have her fears. Chemical agriculture is expensive; and though the results may possibly be remunerative, still, while we are thus kept waiting by the backwardness of the chemists, there must be much risk in making any serious expenditure ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... relish the weary climbing. The Professor, who led the way, not for the sake of leadership, but to be the discoverer of laden blackberry bushes, which began to offer occasional refreshment, discouraged by the inhospitable road and perhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of things in general, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... elsewhere, she required small assistance from Flora, whom she dispatched to tidy up the sitting-room instead. The good little lady was armed cap-a-pie by seven-fifteen, at which time a glance into Carlisle's room revealed much backwardness there, not concealed by the appearances of haste. Hugo would have to wait, that was clear; and just as it was clear, up Mr. Canning's name came ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... designs frustrated, if we had once more offered to fight them, it is thought that the duke was determined to surrender, being so persuaded by his confessor. This example, it is very likely, would have been followed by the rest. But this opportunity was lost, not through the negligence or backwardness of the lord admiral, but through the want of providence in those who had the charge of furnishing and providing for the fleet: For, at that time of so great advantage, when they came to examine into the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... only of his late disappointment that he was thinking, but of his whole past life. He was conscious of his hobbledehoyhood,—of that backwardness on his part in assuming manhood which had rendered him incapable of making himself acceptable to Lily before she had fallen into the clutches of Crosbie. As he thought of this he declared to himself that if he could ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... our national existence that the beginnings of the English Navy are to be ascribed, and it was under this stubborn prince that English trade began to depend upon English bottoms. But the real explanation of Anglo-Saxon backwardness lies somewhat deeper. Foreign adventure and the planting of settlements must proceed, if they are to be successful, from an exuberant State; neither in resources, nor in population, nor, perhaps it must be added, in the spirit of adventure, was the England of King Henry VII. sufficiently equipped. ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... consideration of which need not have been postponed because the constitutional question still remained in dispute. Therefore, though I seem to throw upon the Nationalist party the chief blame for our present political backwardness, and, so far as politics affect other spheres of national activity, for our industrial depression, candour compels me to admit that Irish Unionism has failed to recognise its obligation—an obligation recognised by the Unionist ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... by openly and unreservedly placing itself at the head of the uprising. In any other country than Russia that would have been done, in all probability, but the Russian bourgeoisie was weak. This was due, like so much else in Russia, to the backwardness of the industrial system. There was not a strong middle class and, therefore, the bourgeoisie left the fighting to the working class. Rodzianko's new appeal to the Czar was pathetic. When hundreds of dead and dying lay in the streets ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... was only nine; their output consisted of phosphates, with a small amount of zinc and tin. Brandy, leather and cork goods, and coarse woollen stuffs are manufactured in many of the towns, but the backwardness of education, the lack of good roads, and the general poverty retard the development of commerce. The more northerly of the two Madrid-Lisbon railways enters the province on the east; passes south of Plasencia, where it is joined by the railway from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... our time in staring at the nonsense and ignorance of the Pagans?"—"Why, truly," said I, "my friend, I think it is, and I begin to be a convert to the principles of merchandising; but I must tell you, by the way, you do not know what I am doing; for if I once conquer my backwardness, and embark heartily, old as I am, I shall harass you up and down the world till I tire you; for I shall pursue it so eagerly, I shall never let ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... "but you have said something that awakens all my interest. Does this indolence actually, naturally, exist among the natives or is there some truth in what a foreign traveler says: that with this indolence we excuse our own, as well as our backwardness and our colonial system. He referred to other colonies whose inhabitants belong to the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... that time already employed in large numbers in the Company's services, but only in subordinate posts, for which in most cases their educational backwardness alone fitted them, and only as an act of grace on the part of their British rulers. Parliament had recognised the right of the Indian people to expect from us the benefits of good and honest government—perhaps as a duty which we owed to ourselves as much as to them—but it had not yet risen to ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us. We stumble and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible congregation from another, though it be not in fundamentals; and through our forwardness to suppress, and our backwardness to recover any enthralled piece of truth out of the gripe of custom, we care not to keep truth separated from truth, which is the fiercest rent and disunion of all. We do not see that, while we still affect by all means a rigid external formality, we may as soon fall ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... grindstone, there was a prodigious stir and motion in all the hearts and pulses of Scotland, and no where in a more vehement degree than in Gudetown. But, for some reason or an other which I could never dive into the bottom of, there was a slackness or backwardness on the part of government in sending instructions to the magistrates to step forward; in so much that the people grew terrified that they would be conquered, without having even an opportunity to defend, as their fathers did of old, the hallowed things of their native land; and, under the ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... of modern mathematics, Sir Henry Savile and the Bushman are both woefully backward; and in both cases the backwardness is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of the state ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... royal-mast-head down. The vessel was then rolling a little, and I had taken no food for three days, so that I felt tempted to tell him that I had rather wait till after breakfast; but I knew that I must "take the bull by the horns,'' and that if I showed any sign of want of spirit or backwardness, I should be ruined at once. So I took my bucket of grease and climbed up to the royal-mast-head. Here the rocking of the vessel, which increases the higher you go from the foot of the mast, which is the fulcrum ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... end of a period of 120 years, and that at the time of the fall of the Persian Empire there had indeed been one intercalation during their sojourn in Khorassan, but once they were in India this usage had been abandoned; hence the backwardness by one month from the computation of the Kadmis. The latter declared on the other hand that the intercalation was forbidden in the Zoroastrian calendar, that it was only meant for political emergencies, and that this mode of calculation had ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... arouses my interest. Is this indolence an inherent characteristic of the native, or is it true, as a foreign traveller has said in speaking of a country whose inhabitants are of the same race as these, that this indolence is only a fabrication to excuse our own laziness, our backwardness and the faults of ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... on. At that juncture, subsequently, when he was in a state of hesitancy as to entering the holy ministry, and his father had encouraged the idea of delay, his mother said, "The sooner you are a deacon the better"—and broke the spell of what might have been a fatal backwardness. On that evening, at Aldersgate Street, 24th May, 1738, so memorable in the spiritual history of Methodism, when John Wesley stood up in his newly-found fulness of the assurance of grace, and encountered much sharp ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... not till the close of this mournful tragedy that backwardness, rather than impatience, to adopt the perilous and only means of escape that offered, became generally discernible on the part of the unhappy remnant still on board, and that made it not only imperative on Captain Cobb to reiterate his ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... that, notwithstanding his sympathy with Satan, he almost invariably sided with his master, in regard of any angry reflection or seditious movement, and even when unjustly punished himself, the occasional result of a certain backwardness in self-defence, never showed any resentment—a most improbable statement, I admit, but nevertheless true—and I think the rest of his character may be left to the gradual ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... up, and then to buy a new house and refurnish, &c.—so that artificial means for stopping inventions will be adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than others, and the backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness of another. At any rate, so far as I can see, the present is about the only comfortable time for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever will be. The past was too slow, and the future will be ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... of those who were looked upon as higher and wiser. The meeting was appointed, and but few came. I felt much backwardness, and as though I could not pray, but a pressure upon me to arise and express myself by way of exhortation. After hesitating for some time whether I would take up the cross or no, I arose, and after expressing ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... of very civil proverbs, truly. 'Tis hard to tell whether the lady or Mr Tattle be the more obliged to you. For you found her virtue upon the backwardness of the men; and his secrecy upon the mistrust of ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... Englishman comes to-day to the Marquesans and is amazed to find the men tattooed; polite Italians came not long ago to England and found our fathers stained with woad; and when I paid the return visit as a little boy, I was highly diverted with the backwardness of Italy: so insecure, so much a matter of the day and hour, is the pre-eminence of race. It was so that I hit upon a means of communication which I recommend to travellers. When I desired any detail of savage custom, or of superstitious belief, I cast back in the story ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accelerating economic growth by exploiting its potential in hydropower and tourism, areas of recent foreign investment interest. Prospects for foreign trade or investment in other sectors will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community's role of funding more than 60% of Nepal's development budget and more than 28% of total budgetary expenditures will likely continue ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... father's presence till he was old enough to be a soldier. When the call to arms went out, every man of the required age was expected at the muster, and the last comer was tortured to death in the presence of his comrades as a lesson against backwardness. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... thoughts they were suitable to his state and services. On February 8, 1668, we find him writing to Evelyn, his mind bitterly occupied with the late Dutch war, and some thoughts of the different story of the repulse of the Great Armada: "Sir, you will not wonder at the backwardness of my thanks for the present you made me, so many days since, of the Prospect of the Medway, while the Hollander rode master in it, when I have told you that the sight of it hath led me to such reflections on my particular interest, by my employment, in the reproach ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... possible, and proceed up to them.... After taking the Doctors directions in regard to my people ... I set out for my quarters about 12 oclock, time enough to go over them and found every thing in the utmost confusion, disorder and backwardness.... Got Blankets and every other requisite from Winchester, and settl'd things on the best footing I cou'd, ... Val Crawford agreeing if any of those at the upper quarter got it, to have them remov'd into my room and ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... State, or the State being subject to the Church. Here (as we used to see in the papal domains) the Church is the State, and the State the Church. They both are one. And in this we have another cause of the backwardness and depression of Mohammedan society. Since the abolition of the temporal power in Italy we have nowhere in Christian lands any such theocratic union of Caesar and the Church, so that secular and religious advance is left more or less unhampered; whereas in Islam the hierarchico-political ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... American dollars) in circulation in different countries is far from being a true index of their industrial development or of their commercial activity. Indeed, beyond a certain point the larger average amount of money in circulation in a country may indicate backwardness in the development of banks and other credit agencies rather than greater amount of wealth or of business. Notice, for example, the medium position of the great commercial countries, Germany and the United Kingdom, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... their prayers alone; and it was with some difficulty they were constrained to desist from an opposition, which in them who had been the chief promoters of those pious enterprises, appeared with the worst grace imaginable [o]. This backwardness of the clergy is perhaps a symptom, that the enthusiastic ardour which had at first seized the people for crusades, was now by time and ill success considerably abated; and that the frenzy was chiefly supported by the military genius ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... extremely small, and all practically independent of the feeble German kings. [37] This weakness of the central power condemned Germany to a minor part in the affairs of Europe, as late as the nineteenth century. Yet Germany found some compensation for political backwardness in the splendid city life which it developed during the later Middle Ages. The German cities, together with those of Italy and other European lands, now ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... for her security: this Sir R. Ford tells us: And it is too plain a truth, that both here and at Chatham the ships that we have sunk have many, and the first of them, been ships completely fitted for fire-ships at great charge. But most strange the backwardness and disorder of all people, especially the King's people in pay, to do any work, Sir W. Pen tells me, all crying out for money; and it was so at Chatham, that this night comes an order from Sir W. Coventry to stop the pay of the wages of that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... conduct while I remain ignorant of them, nor can I imagine it to be my duty, or the expectation of Congress, that I should blindly fall into the sentiments of any man, especially when I think this backwardness to give proper support to our cause at the Courts of Europe, may be accounted for on other principles. That it does actually exist, I can now no longer doubt. However, Congress will make up their own judgment upon this point from the letters ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Went she in anger! I will follow her,— No, I will not! Heigho! I love my cousin! O would that she loved me! Why did she taunt me With backwardness in love? What could she mean? Sees she I love her, and so laughs at me, Because I lack the front to woo her? Nay, I'll woo her then! Her lips shall be in danger, When next she trusts them near me! Looked she at me To-day as never did she look before! ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... 6.-Backwardness of the season. Marriages. Masquerades. New establishment at Almack's. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... on all sides so much more swiftly for the genius than for the rest of us, led to a result often to be noted in the childhood of exceptional men: a combination of backwardness and precocity. Gilbert Chesterton was in some ways a very backward child. He did not talk much before three. He learnt to read ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... way, but I think correctly, I have thrown the chief burden of backwardness in school, or retardation, upon physical defects. But our special topic is eye trouble. How much of this burden must be referred to this specific source? It is difficult to say exactly. But knowing as we do the great prevalence of eye defects among school children, from 20% to 71%, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... respecting it have been, instead of a thousand arguments. From an apprehension, probably, of the uncourtierliness of their temper, and their inflexible attachment to a system; it seems to appear by those events, that the sovereign had contracted a sort of backwardness to admit them into his councils, which it is to be hoped, was only temporary. It was however such, as, without any other apparent cause to cooperate with it, alone sufficed to delay the forming an administration for six weeks, in a most delicate and critical juncture. ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... his faith was as perfectly orthodox as St Paul's himself."—"I wish you success," says the bookseller, "but must beg to be excused, as my hands are so very full at present; and, indeed, I am afraid you will find a backwardness in the trade to engage in a book which the clergy would be certain to cry down."—"God forbid," says Adams, "any books should be propagated which the clergy would cry down; but if you mean by the clergy, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... fields, their great courage, and their self-governing communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense in which one can call such backwardness barbaric, by comparison with the Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... explanation had taken place between-them, however. Jane knew, both by her own feelings and by all the legends of love from its earliest days, that the moment of parting was generally a crisis in affairs of the heart, and, with a backwardness occasioned by her modesty, had rather avoided than sought an opportunity to favor the colonel's wishes. Egerton had no been over anxious to come to the point, and everything was left as heretofore: neither, however, appeared to doubt in the least the state of the other's' affections; and ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... performance, had not the boy's mother that week visited her home and there, in the presence of other people, talked considerably about her boy's progress in school, his rapid advance as compared with that of our little dreamer, her relative stupidity and backwardness. And so this boy's mother had continued for some time in the same strain. This caused our little girl to feel much embarrassed—in fact, ashamed and mortified. She had felt that way for several days past, it had made her cry, had made her feel miserable and unhappy; so much so ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... There ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials sent out in these days were arbitrary and corrupt. Little was done for the mass of the people and there was outrageous over-taxation. Nevertheless the backwardness of the colony was attributed to the Negro. Governor Eyre complained in 1865 that the young and strong were good for nothing and were filling the jails; but a simultaneous report by a missionary told the truth concerning the officials. This aroused the colored people, and a mulatto, ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... that are important. A nation handicapped by its geography may have to start later in the field, and yet her performance may be relatively better than that of her more favored neighbors. It is astonishing to read German diatribes about Russian backwardness when one remembers that as recently as fifty years ago Austria and Prussia were living under a regime which can hardly be considered more enlightened than the present rule in Russia. The Italians in Lombardy and Venice have still a vivid recollection of Austrian jails; and, as for Prussian militarism, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... long lived in a state of backwardness, have a sudden fit of cleanliness, in imitation of more advanced nations, they are apt to clean the outside walls only, and to leave all their accustomed filth hidden behind them. I mention these terrible ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified."[599] Who can describe that life? and who can sufficiently tell of the grace of Him who hath secured it to men? And who should not feel amazed at the backwardness of sinners to prepare for it—so free and beneficently offered? Truly the glory of God is great in his salvation! The redeemed through eternity will find the glad work of declaring that glory undone. Would that sinners now, by accepting of the great salvation, would ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... and backwardness of a child displeases its mother, but she does not for that reason love it less. On the contrary, she loves it more fondly, because she compassionates it. So, too, is it with God, who cannot, as I have said, love our imperfections and venial sins, but never ceases to love ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... emotions has been reduced to a fine art which neither of the great parties is ashamed to employ. Military ideals possess the mind, and military expenditure eats up the public resources. On the other side, the political economic and social progress of other nations reacts on our own. The backwardness of our commercial rivals in industrial legislation was long made an argument against further advances among ourselves. Conversely, when they go beyond us, as now they often do, we can learn from them. Physically the world ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... lose one of the most valued members of the Baptist church in this district. I speak with all the respect due to your position, when I ask you to realize how irreparable is the injury you inflict upon the cause here by this lukewarm backwardness.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... pursue its actions in leading to the strengthening of its economic and social cohesion. In particular, the Community shall aim at reducing the disparities between the levels of development of the various regions and the backwardness of the least-favoured regions, including rural areas. ARTICLE 130b Member States shall conduct their economic policies and shall co- ordinate them is such a way as, in addition, to attain the objectives ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... In the backwardness of those Dark Ages—curiosity, fellow feeling, mass migration, the spirit of adventure, trade, travel and the need for common action to master nature and repel enemies—broke down barriers and created fields of ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... to be noted in this connection is that this shape of the head seems to bear no direct relation to intellectual power or intelligence. Posterior development of the cranium does not imply a corresponding backwardness in culture.... Europe offers the best refutation of the statement that the proportions of the head mean anything intellectual.... In our study of the proportions of the head, therefore, we are ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... the priests, for such I took them to be, came and sat down along with us, when we made them presents of such things as were about us. Having then made signs to them that we wanted to view the premises, my friend Attago immediately got up, and going with us, without showing the least backwardness, gave us full liberty to examine ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the 'backwardness' of persons to appear in defence of Miss Monk's book. We promise to appear as often on the subject as you are willing to publish our communications. In one of the paragraphs you publish, our book is spoken of as one of ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... proposed to myself in going to Pernambuco I was soon put by that design through the refractoriness of some under me, and the discontents and backwardness of some of my men. For the calms and shiftings of winds which I met with, as I was to expect, in crossing the Line, made them who were unacquainted with these matters almost heartless as to the pursuit of the voyage, as thinking we should never be ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... danger. One thing, at any rate, is evident: had an Irish mob threatened to burn down a Roman Catholic church, or a Roman Catholic orphan asylum, or threatened any of the institutions or property of the Roman Church, he would have shown no such backwardness or fear. The mob would have been confronted with the most terrible anathemas of the church, and those lawless bands quailed before the maledictions of the representative of "God's vicegerent on earth." It is unjust to suppose ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... number of which has just been laid on our table. When we mention that it is edited by Mr. Parker Pillsbury and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all the world will immediately know what to expect from it. Those two writers can never be accused of having nothing to say, or of backwardness in saying it. Each has separately long maintained a striking individuality of tongue and pen. Working together, they will produce a canvas of the Rembrandt school—Mrs. Stanton painting the high lights and Mr. Pillsbury the deep darks. In fact, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... off his eyes; and had he list to do it, he could never set them on again. They said he covered his face, and wept like the child he nearhand was. Then he lifted his head, the tears over, and in his eyes was the light of a settled purpose, and in his lips a stern avisement. No latsummes [backwardness, reluctance] was in him ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the widow De Cusco's hotel, an establishment mounted, as they say now, not at the height, but at the depth of the superlative backwardness of the town. Lieutenant-colonel Pinzon visited him with frequency, in order that they might discuss together the plot which they had on hand, and for the successful conduct of which the soldier showed the happiest dispositions. ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Mr. Hastings, depose (though not on oath) concerning a conversation between him and the said Hastings (but mentioning neither the time nor place where the same was held); in which conversation, after reciting the allegations of the said Hastings relative to several particulars of the delay and backwardness of the Rajah in paying the aforesaid extra demand, and his resolution to exact from the Rajah "a considerable sum of money to the relief of the Company's exigencies," he proceeds in the following words: ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was of solid gold. As, however, we had no such treasure, and the meeting was unavoidable, and might be hostile, I put myself into a complete posture of defense, with a determination neither to show backwardness nor suspicion. The day arrived, and the pirates swept up the river; eighteen prahus, one following the other, decorated with flags and streamers, and firing both cannon and musketry; the sight was interesting and curious, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Hegelians," the "Tuebingen School," and finally Feuerbach himself are summoned from the grave to which the Revolution of 1848 had consigned them. Still, ancient history as these controversies are from the German standpoint, such is the backwardness of philosophy among English-speaking peoples, that we find Engels exposing again and again fallacies which persist even in our time, and ridiculing sentiments which we receive with approbation in our political assemblies, and with mute approval in ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... continue these notes as to the backwardness of portions of the country compared with its general level of culture, because I have dealt with the evidence elsewhere.[244] What I am anxious to point out here is that the faculty of such people as these to think, not in terms of modern science but in terms of their own psychological ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Scots and this uncertainty and backwardness in the English must produce, it was not hard to foresee; and, therefore, that I might neglect nothing in my power to prevent any false measures—as I was conscious to myself that I had neglected ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... that the king needs a counterpart in such a wife, he being impulsively generous; he blames his daughter for her backwardness in not coming to town with Ulysses, whereat the latter frames one of his smallest fibs in excuse of the maiden. Still further, the king in a surprising burst of admiration, wishes that Ulysses, or "such an one as thou art," might stay and be called his ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... with archbishop Parker, whom he highly offended by his backwardness in proceeding to extremities against the puritans, a sect many of whose scruples Grindal himself had formerly entertained, and was still inclined to view with respect or pity rather than with indignation. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... for it walks with him from end to end of the street. He is your only performer that requires not many entreaties for a song; for he will chant, without asking, to a street cur, or a parish post. His only backwardness is to a stave after dinner, seeing that he never dines; for he sings for bread, and though corn has ears, sings very commonly in vain. As for his country, he is an Englishman, that by his birthright may sing whether he can or not. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... various economic blockades and may permanently take over large areas populated by fellow ethnic groups. These areas contain most of the industry. If a much smaller core Muslim state survives, it will share many Third World problems of poverty, technological backwardness, and dependence on historically soft foreign markets for its primary products. In these circumstances, other Muslim countries might offer assistance. GDP: $14 billion; real growth rate —37% (1991) Inflation rate (consumer prices): 80% per month (1991) Unemployment rate: 28% ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... were little better than vanquished men." This account made the consul judge it necessary to go himself among the soldiers, and speak to them; and, as he came up to each, he rebuked them for their backwardness in taking arms, asking, "Why they loitered, and declined the fight? If they did not choose to go out of the camp, the enemy would come into it; and they must fight in defence of their tents, if they would not in defence of the rampart. ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... I was very ready at forming an acquaintance with these fine ladies, and the company that attended them; but travelling the same road, lodging at the same inns, and being obliged to eat at the same table, the acquaintance seemed unavoidable, as any backwardness on my part would have got me the character of a very unsociable being: it was formed then, and even sooner than I desired, for all this bustle was by no means convenient to a person in ill health, particularly to one of my humor. Curiosity renders these vixens extremely insinuating; they accomplish ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... voluntarily, when such good pay and reasonable terms are offered to you, your loyalty will be strongly suspected. The king's business must be done; so many brave troops, come so far for your defense, must not stand idle through your backwardness to do what may be reasonably expected from you; waggons and horses must be had; violent measures will probably be used, and you will be left to seek for a recompense where you can find it, and your case, perhaps, be little pitied ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... think the child will be glad to know me?" asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust,—a backwardness to be familiar with me. I have even been afraid of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and she deserves it better. Of all Shakespeare's women she is perhaps the most tender and the most artless. Her incredulity in the opening scene with Iachimo, as to her husband's infidelity, is much the same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othello's jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, 'My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain.' Her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes; and may ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... better classes and voted the Democratic ticket almost to a man, Jefferson proposed that the period of residence required by the naturalization laws to qualify a voter should be shortened. He had no objection to coercion before 1787. Speaking of the backwardness of some of the colonies in paying their quota of the Confederate expenses, he recommends sending a frigate to make them more punctual. 'The States must see the rod, perhaps some of them must be made to feel it.' His somersets ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... was a greater danger to those who hold that beauty is a menace to salvation; on her cheek hung the rosy banner of youth; in her eyes shone the bright arrows of conquest. And the duke, discarding his backwardness, as a soldier his cloak before battle, watched the hue that mantled her face, proffered his open breast to the shining lances of her gaze, and capitulated unconditionally before the smile of victory on her blood-red lips. With his great shoulders, his massive neck ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... he had been brought over into this country by William the Conqueror.[251] (A character, by the bye, who, however completely hollow were his claims to the crown of England, can never be reproached with a backwardness in promoting learned men to the several great offices ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... their dread of the effects of our arms was the principal cause of their backwardness in attacking us; and, indeed, the confidence we appeared to place in this advantage, by opposing only five marines to their whole force, must have raised in them a very high idea of our superiority. It was our business to keep up this opinion as much as possible; and in justice to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... to drive you, Miss Rolleston?" asked she, suspecting, from his backwardness in coming forward, that the object of her ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... despite the warm official encouragement given to it, make such relatively meager progress? There are several reasons for its backwardness. The long winters, which developed in the habitant an inveterate disposition to idleness, afford the clue to one of them. A general aversion to unremitting manual toil was one of the colony's besetting sins. Notwithstanding the small per capita acreage, accordingly, there was a continual complaint ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... me begging subscriptions for a monument for him. I would not deign to write an answer; but sent down word by my footman, as I would have done to parish officers, with a brief, that I would not subscribe.' Horace Walpole's Letters, ix. 319. In Malone's correspondence are complaints of the backwardness of the members of the Literary Club 'to pay the amounts nominally subscribed by them.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... while the boatman is pushing and picking up. The sport continues till an hour or two after high-water, when the shallowness of the water, and the strength and weight of the floating reeds, and also the backwardness of the game to spring as the tide decreases, oblige them to return. Several boats are sometimes within a short distance of each other, and perpetual cracking of musketry prevails along the whole reedy shores of the river. In these excursions it is not ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... Then Dale and his room-mates were so friendly and jolly that if his captivity had not meant the disgrace of the freshman class, Ken would have rejoiced in it. He began to thaw out, though he did not lose his backwardness. The life of the great university began to be real to him. Almost the whole sophomore class, in squads of twos and threes and sixes, visited Dale's rooms during that week. No Soph wanted to miss a sight of a captive bowl-man. Ken felt so callow and fresh in their presence that he scarcely responded ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... attentions. Sir William, however, misapprehended her gentle signalling, and from excellent, though mistaken motives of delicacy, delayed to intrude himself upon her for a long time. Meanwhile Sir John, now created a baronet, was unremitting, and she began to grow somewhat piqued at the backwardness of him she secretly ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... the Company in their Indian settlements, and to reform abuses, returned for answer, That, "however low and inadequate their finances might be to admit of extraordinary expences, yet they deemed it expedient not to shew any backwardness in adopting similar measures to those pursued by other Europeans trading to China; and that they had, accordingly, nominated Mr. Titsingh as chief, and himself (Mr. Van Braam) as second Embassador ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of the sky; and the relief, the renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again, and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea. I love to recall, and would that I could reproduce that life, the unforgettable, the unrememberable. The memory, which shows so wise a backwardness in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended pleasures; and a long-continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its mass) our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of our life's map there lies a roseate, undecipherable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... science collects and combines the very elements themselves, either to purposes of destruction or towards the progress, improvement, and almost perfection of human nature. The Canadian could only reason from his own experience, and that was so exceedingly limited, that his backwardness in enterprise is less to be wondered at than the eagerness with which he copies the enterprise of others. The Canadian, like the native of old France, is a thinking animal. He is ever doubting, ever mistrustful. In spiritual ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... had certainly neither of these qualifications, and he it was whom Pitt designed to act the leading part in the coming year, "a greater part," he modestly wrote after receiving his appointment, "than I wished or desired. The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some measure forced the Government to come down so low. I shall do my best and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... I can only say I think, the results in my own case were marvellously good, and that I was saved from worse by my own innocence and by the physical backwardness which nature, probably in mercy, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
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