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More "Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whole of the provisions of this beautiful place had been devoured by the king's guests, simply because he had been too proud to see them in a hurry. This was alarming, for I feared I should be served the same trick, especially as all the people said this kind of treatment was a mere matter of custom which those great kings demanded as a respect due to their dignity; and Bombay added, with laughter, they make all manner of fuss to entice one to come when in the distance, but when they have got ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to Flanders as she passed. Diggs observed her closely. He was conscious of a sensation of disappointment. He had counted on a scene—an interesting scene. Circumstances justified something more thrilling than a mere nod of the head, his intelligence argued, and it was really too bad to have it turn ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... towards Babylon, but whirling quickly upwards. Nehushta's eye rested on the far-off point, and she raised one hand to shade her sight. She remembered how, when she was a girl, she had watched the line of that very road from the palace above, and had seen a cloud of dust arise out of a mere speck, as a body of horsemen galloped into view. There was no mistaking what it was. A troop of horse were coming—perhaps the king himself. Instinctively she turned and looked for Zoroaster, and started, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Germany it would evoke inconceivable astonishment to this deluded nation and would swell the malcontents, already a formidable mass, into a united and dangerous army of angry, eye-opened dupes. This is not the mere expression of a neutral view, but is also the opinion of a ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... mere log-book; and such passages are common in the poem. But frequently he bathes the web of the shrouds and ship-rigging in rich ideal gold. Take ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... handle, Something tangible to convince me Of this truth, that I may grasp it, And know what it is. And since So much power and influence have you With your God, implore His grace, That I may believe the faster, Some material fact to give me, Something that we all can grapple, Not mere creatures of the mind. And remember that at farthest But an hour remains in which You must give me sure and ample Signs of punishment and glory, Or you die. These mighty marvels Of your God here let them come, Where the truth we can examine ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... if it were a compliment, but as a mere statement of fact. Will considered. Would it be wise to ask about his friends? Might he not in doing so give some hint that could be used against them? The fierce gaze of the chief seemed actually to penetrate his physical ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... filled with unassorted and parti-coloured remnants, but a large and orderly space whose contents were catalogued and filed and well enclosed from observation. He was also given to the mental argument which follows a point to its conclusion as a mere habit of mind. He saw and knew well those who sat and pondered with knit brows and cautiously hovering hand at the great chess-board which is formed by the Map of Europe. He found an enormous interest in watching their play. It was his fortune as a result of his position to know ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... arbitration.[1188] It may prescribe the evidence which shall be received and the effect which shall be given it; proof of one fact, or of several facts taken collectively, may be made prima facie evidence of another fact, so long as it is not a mere arbitrary mandate and does not discriminate invidiously between different persons in substantially the same situations.[1189] A plaintiff in a stockholder's derivative suit may be required to give security if he does not own a specified amount of stock; the size of his financial ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... a lie," Rupert said calmly. "I know he told you he was afraid to fight me, for that I was more than his match; and it seems to me, sir, that this seeming pity for my youth is a mere cover of the fact that you would rather choose as your victim someone less skilled in fence than I happen to be. Are you a coward, too, sir, as well ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... first met Miss Carson and her mother by chance in Paris, at the rooms of Father Paul, where they had each gone on the same errand, and since that meeting his whole manner toward the two worlds in which he lived had altered so strangely that mere acquaintances noticed ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... with prosperous, happy-looking little red houses nestling among them brought about an effect of well-being that soft weather and beautiful surroundings always gave her. She had, all her life, been able to escape from unhappiness by the mere physical effect of going into the sunshine and the wind—and then unhappiness and grief seemed impossible, incredible. Sitting there with half-closed eyes she dreamed of the future; the disgust of Melbourne had gone; the disillusionment of Louis's letter had gone, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... is outrageous!" cried Josiah Crabtree wrathfully. "Do you think I will allow a mere slip of a girl to stand between me and my plans? Just wait until I am your ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... filth and stench. Their children begin the same story over again as soon as they grow up, and so it goes on for hundreds of years and milliards of men live worse than beasts— in continual terror, for a mere crust of bread. The whole horror of their position lies in their never having time to think of their souls, of their image and semblance. Cold, hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way to spiritual activity—that is, to what distinguishes ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Sedgwick or Warren, and insisted that orders to the cavalry should be given through the cavalry corps commander just as orders to the Second corps were given through General Hancock. He could not bring himself to consent to be a mere staff officer dangling at the heels of General Meade, but conceived himself to be an actual commander, not in name only ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... fashion, who live sumptuously, ride sumptuously to church of a Sunday, and meekly enjoy a sumptuous sermon for appearance sake, will, so long as you pass unheeded the haunts of vice, fall as chaff before the wind. You must make "early education" more than the mere motto of future happiness; you must go undaunted into the avenues of want and misery, seek out the fallen child, forbear with her, and kindly teach her how much good there is in its principles, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Mere ownership of a book, manuscript, painting, or any other copy or phonorecord does not give the possessor the copyright. The law provides that transfer of ownership of any material object that embodies a protected work ...
— Copyright Basics • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... fat man with a flaxen wig, Kersey-mere breeches, a blue straight-cut coat, and a broad-brimmed white hat. To the most daring courage he added great dexterity and cunning; and was said, 'in propria persona', to have taken more thieves than all the other Bow Street officers ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... biologists in Europe and America accept the doctrine of evolution, they are almost unanimous in their refusal to accept as in any sense competent the reputed evidence of "spontaneous generation;" which demonstrates, at least, that what is sought by our leaders in science is not the mere support of hypotheses, cherished though they may be, but the truth, the uncolored truth, from nature. But it must be remembered that the present existence of what has been called "spontaneous generation," ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... on the Pinturicchio table, and as if she had dared to walk where mere moderns feared to tread, a polychrome framed picture of Miss Bleema Pelz, tulle-clouded, piquant profile flung charmingly to the northwest, and one bare shoulder prettily defiled with a long screw-curl, lit, as it ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... this falling away from the standards of the first generation were many. In the first place, the colonists had become mere colonials. Upon the Stuart restoration, the strongest ties which bound them to the pulsing life of the mother country, the religious ones, were severed. The colonists ceased to be the vanguard of a great religious movement, the possible haven of a new political state. Though they received many ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... know, as I should much like to know what you think about it, and whether you would object to supply descriptions of the fish to such a work instead of to 'Transactions.' I apprehend the whole will be impracticable, without Government will aid in engraving the plates, and this I fear is a mere chance, only I think I can put in a strong claim, and get myself well backed by the naturalists of this place, who nearly all take a good deal of interest in my collections. I mean to-morrow to see Mr. Yarrell; if he approves, I shall begin and take ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... had said she would forget in a month, like all other girls, and she was not different from other girls. Yes, it was a difficult question to decide, there was no doubt about that. He despised himself for thinking of giving up Marie, the mere thought horrified him, ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... rigid; and when they began to take an interest in the shops and villas I knew that the worst was over. My arm and knee felt lonely and deserted, as if their mission in life had been accomplished, and they were now mere obstacles, occupying unnecessary space ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... never conceived it possible that so commonplace an emotion as mere nervousness could find place beside the immensities of love itself, yet, during the interminable moment when Garth crossed the room to her side, she was supremely aware of an absurd desire to turn and flee, and it was only by a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if you think, as I do, that ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... wind canvas seemed quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings to the bitter air. But up at the Bluff conditions were terrible. The trenches had disappeared under repeated bombardments, and had become mere chains of shell holes in which the men stood up to their thighs in liquid mud. When the C.O. arrived to take over the headquarters' dug-out he found it blown to pieces. Within lay the bodies of the previous occupants—four officers. ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... become legislators by simply professing to be patriots, will be placed in the awkward predicament of having first to act as such; and that the clergy, in lieu of taking a tenth part of the produce for the mere preaching of Christianity, will be obliged to sacrifice at least a portion to charitable purposes, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... numerous: they do not pay their rent in money, but by making over a third of the produce to the owner; a mode of paying rent, considerably more advantageous to the tenant than the landlord; but the difficulty of obtaining money in payment, excepting for mere retail articles, is very great in all American transactions. "I can pay in pro-duce," is the offer which I was assured is constantly made on all occasions, and if rejected, "Then I guess we can't deal," is the usual rejoinder. This statement does not, of course, include the great merchants of ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... permission to attend church, but after a long official discussion the request was refused. The prison had no facilities for administering spiritual pabulum to a British prisoner. This was a mere excuse, because several of the other prisoners attended church. How I passed that day it is difficult to record. I paced my cell in a frenzy until I could pace no longer. I completed my design on the wall, fumbled ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... successful—protected as he will be by the tremendous fire of the powerful artillery he disposes of—in these twofold operations, the Austrians defending the line of the Colli Euganei could be easily outflanked by the Italian troops, who would have crossed the river below Lago Scuro. Of course these are mere suppositions, for nobody, as you may imagine, except the king, Cialdini himself, Lamarmora, Pettiti, and Menabrea, is acquainted with the plan of the forthcoming campaign. There was a rumour at Cialdini's headquarters to-day that the Austrians had gathered in great ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these lower reaches. We have seen perhaps a dozen such to-day, stopping at the farm landings as well as at the crude and infrequent hamlets,—mere notches of settlement in the wooded lines of shore,—doing a small business in chance cargoes and in passengers who flag them from the bank. A sultry atmosphere has been with us through the day. The glassy surface of the river ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... their adulterous luste: and how thei haue transformed theim selues, into diuers shapes of beastes and foules, to followe after beastly luste. The malice and en- uie of the Goddes, one to an other: The feigne also the heaue[n] to haue one God, the sea an other, helle an other, whiche are mere vanities, and false imaginacio[n]s of their Poeticall wit- tes. The like forged inuencion haue thei wrote, of the migh- [Sidenote: The battaill of Troie .x. yeres for a herlotte.] tie and terrible battaill bruted of Troie, for a beautifull har- lot ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... comparison of one embodiment of it with another. Gibbie's regard then, as it wandered round the room, lighting on this colour, and that texture, in curtain, or carpet, or worked screen, found interest and pleasure. Amidst the mere upholstery of houses and hearts, amidst the common life of the common crowd, he was, and had to be, what he had learned to be amongst the nobility and in ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... to exact reparation due to us for the Alexandria outrages, this feeling need not be taken into account; but that if we were going to Cairo, we ought to make our position clear. As far as Arabi personally was concerned, his use of the phrase "national party" was a mere prostitution of the term. But there was in Egypt a very real desire to see Egyptians in office, and a certain amount of real national sentiment, and that sentiment we might conciliate. I thought that if we intervened ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... that much of its matter was collected on the spot, or that at least most of the tales here presented were perused in other works at the scene of the occurrences related. This volume is thus something more than a mere compilation, and when it is further stated that only the most characteristic and original versions and variants of the many tales here given have gained admittance to the collection, its value will ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... box within reach. What strange chaos there seems to be in the grate after a little while! One after another the matches go off with a phiz and short-lived flare, and each seems to light up a more curious scene than the last. From being mere piled-up blocks of coal in a grate, they grow to be a half blocked up entrance to some unknown place. There is a large shining black portal, half ruined, surrounded with debris. By degrees Hazel's languid curiosity is excited, and she ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... vain to detain him. There was a certain change in Mr. Waife's manner to him: it was much more distant; it was even pettish, if not surly. Lionel could not account for it; thought it mere whim at first: but as he walked part of the way back with them towards the village, this asperity continued, nay increased. Lionel was hurt; he arrested ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... women inevitably grow up mere creatures of impulse. Where are those high qualities which are necessary to give them their proper influence over the minds and actions of the other sex? Where is that powerful sense of the duties of their calling and position, that is necessary to create confidence in the breast of the lover ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... motionless, as if dying or already dead, I now saw had received a horrible wound on the top of his head that had very nearly smashed in the skull, besides almost severing one of his ears which was hanging from the cheek bone, attached by a mere scrap of skin, the bottom boards of the boat near him being stained with blood that had flowed from the cut, and his hair likewise matted together with gore. Oh, it was horrible to see! He was not dead, however, as I had thought, but only in a state of stupor, breathing heavily and making ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... to be described is interesting as a practical application to power-producing purposes of the force exerted by expanding air. It is easy to make, and, for mere demonstration purposes, has an advantage over a steam-engine of the same size in that it can be set working in less than a minute, and will continue to act as long as a small spirit flame is kept burning beneath it; it cannot explode; and its construction is a simpler ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... the good of his fellow-creatures. If it must be confessed that he lingered most over the thanks and admiration he set to haunt his dream-steps, and hover about his dream-person, it must be remembered that he was the only real person in the dreams, and that he regarded lovingly the mere shadows of his fellow-men. His dreams were not of strength and destruction, but of influence and life. Even his revenges never-reached further than the making of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... found Paula still seated at the piano, an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on her part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. But women were curious creatures, he could not help moralizing, and were prone to lose their hearts most strangely and inconsequentially. Might it not be ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... than a mere metaphor has been proved by Professor Freud and others of the Vienna school, who cure cases of hysteria by inducing the patient to give expression to the secret anxieties and emotions which, unknown to him, have been preying upon ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... inexperienced Lawrence they also appeared to be positions of great danger, much to the amusement of Antoine, who, accustomed as he was to the fearful ice-slopes and abysses of the higher regions, looked upon this work as mere child's play. ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Cade, who was a mere adventurer, was quite likely used as a tool by plotters much higher than himself. By putting him forward they could judge whether the country was ready for a revolution and change ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the central government and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the downsized Yugoslavia, and a ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... do I know?—a mere nothing, a horse, a remark! Fair cousin," he exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation, "what noise is this ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... A mere inventor of legends certainly had never dared make a statement so utterly in conflict with the established order of things; there was no necessity for him to do so; he would fear that it would throw discredit on all the rest of his narrative; as ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... literary researches he has too often found amongst the writings of those, most illustrious for their genius and imagination, the least of that which is calculated to meet the approbation of the Christian, or even of the mere Moralist; and in conclusion he will take the liberty of addressing to those who may feel within them the stirrings of a mind capable of mighty things, the sublime words, slightly modified, of an Arabian sage and poet: ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... that of a woman! When Sir Tom returned to this painful and difficult subject, the immediate question as to Lucy's strange conduct died from his mind. It became more easy, by dint of repeating it, to believe that a mere unreasonable panic about little Tom was the cause of her withdrawal. It was foolish, but a loving and lovely foolishness which a man might do more than forgive, which he might adore and smile at, as men love to do, feeling that for a woman to be thus silly is desirable, a counterpoise to the selfishness ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... would like to picture the insect as a living pair of compasses, capable of tracing an elliptic curve by a certain natural inflexion of its body, even as our arm traces a circle by swinging from the shoulder. A blind mechanism, the mere outcome of its organization, would alone be responsible for its geometry. This explanation would tempt me if the large oval pieces were not accompanied by much smaller ones, also oval, which are used to fill the empty spaces. A pair of compasses which changes ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... all I can say is, that it was well that I awoke, for they were going to impale me!" "And for what," cried the lady, feigning astonishment, "would they have used you so cruelly? Surely you must have committed some enormous crime." "Not the least," replied Buddir ad Deen; "it was for nothing but a mere trifle, the most ridiculous thing you can imagine. All the crime I was charged with, was selling a cream-tart that had no pepper in it." "As for that matter," said the beautiful lady laughing heartily, "I must say they did you great injustice." "Ah!" ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Thebans left him news was brought that an entire mora had been cut to pieces by Iphikrates. This was the greatest disaster which had befallen the Spartans for many years; for they lost a large number of brave and well-equipped citizens, all heavy-armed hoplites, and that too at the hands of mere mercenary light troops and peltasts. On hearing this Agesilaus at first leaped up to go to their assistance; but when he heard that they were completely destroyed, he returned to the temple of Hera, and recalling the Boeotian ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... library door, and in marches a line of pale-faced ascetics, rigid of jaw, cold of eye, and exalted with that gloomy fervour which counts burning life's highest joy. Among them was the famous witch-hanger of after years, a mere youth then, but about his lips the hard lines of a spiritual ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... more right to build itself a temple of that sort than to erect a Tower of Babel. Such a habitation is not decent for a mere mortal man. But, after all, I suppose poor Carabas had no choice. Fate put him there as it sent Napoleon to St. Helena. Suppose it had been decreed by Nature that you and I should be Marquises? We wouldn't refuse, I suppose, but take Castle Carabas and all, with ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that, as the lads gazed down, they had but a mere glimpse of a shadowy animal, as it seemed to be running across the lawn, and directly after there was a faint, soft ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... built by the Goddess in memory of him; adding farther, that the Maneros above mentioned is thus honoured by the Egyptians at their feasts, because he was the first who invented music. There are others, again, who affirm that Maneros is not the name of any particular person, but a mere customary form, and complimental manner of greeting made use of by the Egyptians one towards another at their more solemn feasts and banquets, meaning no more by it, than to wish, that what they were then about might prove fortunate and happy ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... world, generally a phantasm, 673-m. Material and Spiritual natures in equilibrium; Light and Darkness, 764-l. Material existence evolved from the Pythagorean Monad, 675-l. Material, result of seeking the mere, 12-m. Material the element of communion between man and God, 714-u. Materialism and Pantheism avoided by an independent mind, 677-m. Matter and mind dual from the idea of an independent mind, 677-l. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... obtaining tobacco is probably the reason why everybody, male and female, used it at that time. I know from my own experience that when I was at West Point, the fact that tobacco, in every form, was prohibited, and the mere possession of the weed severely punished, made the majority of the cadets, myself included, try to acquire the habit of using it. I failed utterly at the time and for many years afterward; but the majority accomplished the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... in which she had wanted help from God more than she had ever in her life wanted it; and these evident signs of faith, of an established relation between earth and heaven, fell most gratefully upon her aching heart. The village of St. Mary's is a mere handful of houses, on a narrow stretch of sandy plain, lying between two forests of firs. Many years ago, hunters, finding in the depths of these forests springs of great medicinal value, made a little clearing about them, and built there a few rough shanties to which they might at ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... the small boat pulled away in the dark, for there was activity apparent on the destroyer not warranted by a mere rescue at sea. Gun-crews rushed to their stations; the tarpaulin covers were off of the guns, and their slender lengths gleamed where they covered the course of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... a cigarette, lay down on a couch, and went on thinking about him. She gave no thought to the matter of whether they had been watched. Lord Loudwater had become of less interest than ever to her; his furies seemed trivial. She had a feeling that he had become a mere shadow in ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... the use of opiates is almost past belief. I have seen a mere girl of seventeen years take at one dose thirty grains of morphia, and I know of a woman who took for years ninety grains a day, and ruined a weak husband, a man of small means, by ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... we are in the presence of a man who had solved in its essentials the problem of the mechanism of the solar system. It appears from the words of Archimedes that Aristarchus; had propounded his theory in explicit writings. Unquestionably, then, he held to it as a positive doctrine, not as a mere vague guess. We shall show, in a moment, on what grounds he based his opinion. Had his teaching found vogue, the story of science would be very different from what it is. We should then have no tale to tell of a Copernicus coming upon the scene fully seventeen hundred years later ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... with eager curiosity to the affairs of Lady Rosamond. Her husband had indeed, when too late, listened to her urgent admonitions. He had resigned his seat in parliament when his physical powers were a mere wreck of his former self. Disease had crept in by stealth and was only too truly realized by the deep ravages thus made—by the wasted and emaciated form—the ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Moreover, the enemy is all about us, and we knew that the watch must be of the best. Tayoga felt that at such a time he could trust me alone, and I felt with equal force that I could trust him alone. We could not put our lives in the hands of a mere beginner." ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... those, who regard love as of necessity a mere Impulse; a thing not subject in any wise to human control, but fitful, an outbreaker, a tyrant. They can govern other emotions and sentiments. Anger, envy, jealousy, resentment, pride, they believe capable of being moderated, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... not the German battery was on the lookout for just such a chance as this, or whether it was a mere fortuitous opportunity of which advantage was taken, could not be learned. But a shell containing high explosive, though, fortunately for the driver, not a large one, landed near the automobile and ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... stifled, and in justice to the ladies' hostel it should be stated that it was not in the least crowded or stifling; this was a mere figure of speech on Eva's part, who, as will have been seen, was apt to turn things round to suit herself. She was only sixteen; very young to be thrown upon the world and her own resources. With the exception of Amy, she was unfortunately not under very good ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... one of many ways in which mere tradition oppresses us. I protest that as moving is now managed in Charlesbridge, there is hardly any reason why the master or mistress of the household should put hand to anything; but it is a ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... three days—is in fact the mere bed of a stream, covered deeply with boulders and stones of all sizes, in which the baggage and artillery horses sank fetlock deep. The difficulties encountered were enormous, and vast numbers of camels, horses, and ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... Dodds had not mentioned that cricket match during the last few days, Hal had not forgotten his promise to get him included in it if possible. Consequently, Dodds's careless inquiry as to whether he intended to come over as a mere spectator disconcerted him very much. However, he swallowed his disappointment, and said that he ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... them no pecunial pain: they got off with no mere pecuniary punishment. (Transcriber's note: "Astert" means "escape". An alternative reading of this line is "there might astert him no pecunial pain" i.e. no fine ever escaped ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... taking her?' cried Lily. 'Yes, for steady, stupid household work, Faith would do very well; she is just the stuff to make a servant of—"for dulness ever must be regular"—I mean for those who like mere steadiness ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... concerned, not unforgiving; but round that standard were assembled such gangs of rogues, ravishers, plunderers, and ferocious bravoes, as were scarcely ever found under the flag of any state engaged in a mere temporal quarrel. In a very similar way was the Jacobin party composed. There was a small nucleus of enthusiasts; round that nucleus was gathered a vast mass of ignoble depravity; and in all that mass there was nothing so depraved and so ignoble ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... themselves. You could no more get an intelligent poor man to praise a millionaire's soul, except for hire, than you could get him to sell a millionaire's soap, except for hire. And I repeat that, though there are other aspects of the matter of the new plutocratic raid, one of the most important is mere journalistic jealousy. The Yellow Press is bad journalism: and wishes to stop the appearance ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... The discouragement of the vain search was profound, and in great gloom and abandoned hope I mounted the steep passage to my own apartment, and sat down to ask myself, if I should not at once surrender the undertaking, and preserve my own skin. That, no doubt, was the counsel of mere prudence; yet the knowledge that fifty men would stand by me to the assault on the citadel of crime and cruelty haunted me and drove me from the craven prompting. I remembered in a welcome inspiration that Black ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... from it will be likely to come to you again. No surface of madrepores is more sensitive to a touch than a Cabinet full of Spirits to a chilling syllable of failure. To regain my lost position, therefore, I said hastily, 'But can it be Effie?' (It was a mere hap-hazard name; I know no 'Effie.') The Medium went to the Cabinet and returned with the answer, 'She says she's Effie, and she wants to see you.' Of course, I went with alacrity to where the curtains of the Cabinet stood open, and there, just ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... his instincts—shaping them to new desires. Where do you find this all-prevailing instinct towards maternity? Among the women of society, who sacrifice it without a moment's hesitation to their vanity—to their mere pleasures? The middle- class woman—she, too, is demanding "freedom." Children, servants, the home!—they are too much for her "nerves." And now there comes this new development, appealing to the intellectual woman. Is there not danger ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... nothing, nor do they 'avail nothing.' But then all external rites tend to usurp more than belongs to them, and in our weakness we are apt to cleave to them, and instead of using them as means to lift us higher, to stay in them, and as a great many of us do, to mistake the mere gratification of taste and the excitement of the sensibilities for worship. A bit of stained glass may be glowing with angel-forms and pictured saints, but it always keeps some of the light out, and it always hinders ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the short answer, given in full hail before the magnates. They looked at each other and askance at the sanguine-hued King, who drove them all huddling before him by mere magnanimity. What could they do but leave hostages? They left Burgundy, Beauvais, and Henry of Champagne—one friend, one enemy, and one blockhead. Now you see a reason for drawing the sword upon the wretched Turks. If Richard had planted, they, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... of those interminable disputes, of which only Russians are capable. After a separation of many years' duration, spent in two widely-different spheres, understanding clearly neither other people's thoughts nor their own,—cavilling at words and retorting with mere words, they argued about the most abstract subjects,—and argued as though it were a matter of life and death to both of them: they shouted and yelled so, that all the people in the house took fright, and poor Lemm, who, from the moment of Mikhalevitch's arrival, had locked ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Freemasonry is of two kinds. We work, it is true, in speculative Masonry only, but our ancient brethren wrought in both operative and speculative; and it is now well understood that the two branches are widely apart in design and in character—the one a mere useful art, intended for the protection and convenience of man and the gratification of his physical wants, the other a profound science, entering into abstruse investigations of the soul and a future ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... introduce novelty. Judges ought to be more learned, than witty, more reverend, than plausible, and more advised, than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue. Cursed (saith the law) is he that removeth the landmark. The mislayer of a mere-stone is to blame. But it is the unjust judge, that is the capital remover of landmarks, when he defineth amiss, of lands and property. One foul sentence doth more hurt, than many foul examples. For these do but corrupt the stream, the other ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... was awake he thought of Underwoods. Underwoods was important. He had to round up the county, and he couldn't do that without first consulting Sir John Corbett, of Underwoods. As a matter of form, a mere matter of form, of course, he would have ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though Fuller says that he was "statutably admitted into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells us that he took no degree, but was later "Master of Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier trailing his pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... examples for practice in Articulation. Inflection, Accent and Emphasis, Reading Verse, for the Management of the Voice and Gesture. These pages were intended for drill work, and in those days the teachers were not content with the dull monotonous utterance of the words or with mere mastery of thought, to be tested by multitudinous questioning. If the pupil obtained from the printed page the very thought the author intended to convey, the pupil was expected to read orally so as to express that ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dog joined in ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... the lake to where the boat was stranded upon the beach, but found it empty. It was a mere shell of blackened steel, with a collapsible roof that, when in position, made the submarine watertight, but at present the roof rested in slots on either side of the magic craft. There were no oars or sails, no machinery to make ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... sex-hygiene who seem to overlook the fact that sexual functioning is only a prominent incident in the cycle of sexual influences in the lives of most people. Human life, and especially marriage, should no longer be regarded from the mere biological point of view as for the sole purpose of reproductive activity. It is a far more uplifting view that the conscious or unconscious existence of the sexual instincts, with or without occasional activity, ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... of this land-forming action, there can be no doubt that the Nile has the intention of filling up by degrees the whole eastern Mediterranean, and that in process of time—say in no more than a few million years or so, a mere bagatelle to the geologist—with the aid of the Po and some other lesser streams, it will transform the entire basin of the inland sea into a level and cultivable plain, like Bengal or Mesopotamia, themselves (as we shall see) the final result of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... respectable man. The sect to which he belonged was the most celebrated and influential among the Jews; and when not debased by positive crime, a Pharisee was always esteemed for his learning and his piety. He had some interest in Christ, either in his mission or his character,—an interest beyond mere curiosity, or he would not have invited him to dine with him. He betrays a sincere friendliness, also, in his apprehension lest Christ should suffer any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... is a favorite spot. At the Long Sault on Rainy River there are three or four mounds grouped together along a ridge. Here some persons of strong imagination profess to see remains of an ancient fortification, but to my mind this is mere fancy. Mounds in our region vary from 6 to 50 feet in height, and from 60 to 130 feet in diameter. Some are circular at the ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... grasp such vast and chaotic materials, arrange them in orderly sequence and resent them as in a gorgeous panorama, moves us to wonder. To be sure, there are many things to criticize in Gibbon's masterpiece,—the author's love of mere pageants; his materialism; his inability to understand religious movements, or even religious motives; his lifeless figures, which move as if by mechanical springs,—but one who reads the Decline and Fall may be too much impressed by the evidences of scholarship, of vast labor, of genius even, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... lighting another cigarette; "always well when you're going it hot for a Party to have some individual in it whom you can omit from general implication of infamous motives. Gives one high moral standpoint, doncha know. Thus, when I want to suggest that THE MARKISS is a mere tool in hands of BISMARCK, I extol honest purposes of OLD MORALITY; hint, you know, that he is not so sharp of perception as he might be; but that gives him the fuller claim upon our sympathy, seeing that he is yoked with a colleague of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... would, in the opinion of most of them, afford sufficient scope for securing a flourishing state of commerce amongst them. There are, however, some disadvantages against which the Hebrew merchants have daily to contend, and unless these be removed, the mere extent of land constituting the field for their exertions would not insure to them those advantages which they might have expected to realise from the benevolent intentions of their illustrious monarch. Merchants professing any other faith, either purchase their stock in the interior of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... conjunction of art and nature—are all that we can aim at within a limited extent of ground. In a small parterre we either trace with pleasure the marks of the gardener's attention or are disgusted with his negligence. In a mere patch of earth around a domestic dwelling nature ought not to be left ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... till then, and who was for the moment acting head of affairs in Spain, in the absence of Charles the Fifth. The jest prospered in the ears of those who heard it; all the cardinals approved their colleague's proposal, and Adrien became pope by a mere accident. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... particular evanescence in the thought of the universal permanence. The inverted torch denotes death to a mere inhabitant of the earth: to a citizen of the universe, downward and upward are the same. Perhaps one who rejects the ordinary doctrine of a future life can be solaced and edified by these substitutes in proportion to his fineness, greatness, and nobleness. But to most persons ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of one of our dead troopers; and when at last a Kurdish chief rode up with a hundred men at his back and demanded to know our business, Ranjoor Singh called Abraham to interpret. We could easily have beaten a mere hundred Kurds, but to have won a skirmish just then would have helped us almost as little as to lose one. What we wanted was free leave to ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... sound kindred to the spiritus lenis (that is, to our ears, the mere distinct separation of a vowel from the preceding sound, as at the beginning of a word in German) and to [h.]. The ' is a very distinct sound in Arabic, but is more nearly represented by the spiritus lenis than by any sound that ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... detection in that particular; and if you can but conceal your features for a short while, on Sir Francis's entrance, the trick will never be discovered. All the rest has been arranged; and I am a mere puppet in the hands of others, to be played as they direct. Bless us! how beautiful this dress is, to-be-sure!—what satin!—and what lace! The Countess of Exeter has just such another. Have you heard that her ladyship has gained her cause against those wicked Lakes, who conspired ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... reacting against an outside world and spurred on by internal activities and needs. We discussed stimulation, reflexes, inhibition, choice and the organizing activity, memory and habit, consciousness and subconsciousness, all of which are primary activities of the organism. But these are mere theories of function, for the activities we are interested in reside in more definite reactions, of which ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... had that effect had not a higher motive than mere worldly advancement actuated me in leaving my native country to come hither. Look you, it was thus: I had for many years been the pastor of a small village in the mining districts of Cumberland. I was dear to the hearts of my ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... whensoever he seeth me, and he wisheth to carry out his fell design and plunder me. He is like a wild bull seeking to slay the bull of a herd of tame cattle so that he may make the cows his own. Or rather he is a mere braggart who wisheth to seize the property which I have collected by my prudence, and not an experienced warrior. Or rather he is a bull that loveth to fight, and that loveth to make attacks repeatedly, fearing that otherwise some other animal will prove to be his equal. If, however, his ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... some secluded spot, and the calves soon begin to follow their mother about, and they follow her, too, into their second year. Horns begin to grow on the young bull before he is a year old, but they are mere knobs until he is a year and a half old, when spikes form; by the third year he is supplied with antlers. The perfect antlers of a big bull sometimes measure seventy inches across, yet every winter—in January or February—the horns are shed. During the mating season moose are frequently hunted ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... much lately of the restricted sphere of woman. We have been told how many spirits among women are of a wider, stronger, more heroic mould than befits the mere routine of housekeeping. It may be true that there are many women far too great, too wise, too high, for mere housekeeping. But where is the woman in any way too great, or too high, or too wise, to spend herself in creating a home? What can any woman make diviner, higher, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... house still went on. Set a business going, and it is astonishing how long it will continue to move by the force of mere daily routine. People flocked in for shirts and stockings, and young women came there to seek their gloves and ribbons, although but little was done to attract them, either in the way of advertisement or of excellence of supply. Throughout this wretched month or two Robinson ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... to legislate with these men." But some days afterward, perhaps in the midst of the work of the committee on the statutes affecting trade and commerce, the same member was able to relieve himself by the remark: "Well, after all, I find these are but men, and, in mere matters of business, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... century and more. But if we recall the circumstances it ceases to astonish. I myself spent many months in the forests of Borneo, Central America, and the West African coast. After that experience I scarcely understand how such a quest, for a given object, can ever be successful unless by mere fortune. To look for a needle in a bottle of hay is a promising enterprise compared with the search for an orchid clinging to some branch high up in that green world of leaves. As a matter of fact, collectors seldom discover ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Diastole and Systole are not mere arbitrary processes. They usually represent an earlier pronunciation which had passed out of vogue in ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... shall not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shall not covet thy neighbor's WIFE, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." Ex. xx. 17. In inventories of mere property, if servants are included, it is in such a way as to show that they are not regarded as property. Eccl. ii. 7, 8. But when the design is to show, not merely the wealth, but the greatness and power of any one, servants are spoken of, as well as property. In a word, if riches alone ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... himself that the walls had always been shadows, the links that bound him always mere ghostly hindrances, part of the vague dreams that had filled his life and bound his horizon. Now that was all over. The more perfect reality lay before him and was his. The dim figures of his childhood's imagination gave place to definite forms. And each bore the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... wild joy. He watched them grow paler, dimmer, disappear one by one. A shadow hovered down, rested upon the river, and gradually thickened. The bonfire on the bluff showed as through a foggy veil. The watchers were mere groping dark figures. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... 'Gentle Shepherd' would be still better, only that his poem is cast into actual dramatic characters. Besides, though with plenty of feeling and a good deal of homestead poetry, he wants imagination, elegance, and a certain scorn of mere earth, which is essential to the constitution of a true poet. You want none of these, but you want his vivacity, character, and action: I mean to say you have not as yet exhibited these qualities. The hooks with which you have fished for praise in the ocean ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... could prevent frontiersmen from exploring the region claimed by France, or from occupying favorite spots. There was no opportunity for compromise between the two parties; agreement was impossible, a conflict was a mere matter of time, and the elaborate arguments which each side set forth as a basis for its claim were intended only to give the prestige of a legal title. In the struggle the English colonies had one significant ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... history of the Church. How great it was will appear if we observe that the weight of authority among critics and commentators sees here an extension of the message of salvation to Greeks, that is, to pure heathens, and not a mere preaching to Hellenists, that is, to Greek- speaking ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the yards and it was rumoured among those in the church, and sundry of the prisoners came with their usual complaints to me, and among the rest a large-boned, tall young man, as he told me from Pennsylvania, who was reduced to a mere skeleton. He said he was glad to see me before he died, which he had expected to have done last night, but was a little revived. He further informed me that he and his brother had been urged to enlist into the British army, but had both resolved to die first; that his brother had died last night, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... (p. 283):—'Hazard knew not what to make of these mere Greek letters and spent several days in fruitless thoughts, until the priest let him understand that he was only to pronounce them, then he would hear from the sounds that it was Italian and meant: Nella fidelta finiro la vita.' ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... thin and gray against an opal-coloured morning sky. The day had come on hot and misty. The sun, though it was now high, was a red ball, streaked across with purple clouds. The tall buildings, of which he had heard so much, looked unsubstantial and illusionary,—mere shadows of grey and pink and blue that might dissolve with the mist and fade away in it. The boys were disappointed. They were Western men, accustomed to the hard light of high altitudes, and they wanted to see the city clearly; they couldn't make anything of ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... keen. She sensed an undercurrent, and her first attempt to touch it had failed. The mere name of Stefani Gregor had not roused Cutty's astonishment. She was quite positive that the name was not wholly unfamiliar ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... as pleased to know that his extraordinary performance had solved a difficulty, effaced his other graces, and enabled them to place him on the moral pedestal of a mere musician, to whom these eccentricities were allowable and privileged. He shared the admiration extended by the young ladies to their music teacher, which was always understood to be a sexless enthusiasm and a contagious juvenile disorder. It was also ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... clad in a mere pleated kilt and bare to the belt, struck with sycamore sticks the wild-ass-skin stretched over their kettledrums suspended from a leather baldric, keeping the time which the drum major marked by clapping ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the King agreed to send for Lord Wilmington, and to place him at the head of the ministry. It is remarkable that this man, who was a mere cipher, should have been again had recourse to, after his failure in making a government at the very commencement of the reign of George the Second, when his manifest incapacity, and the influence of Queen Caroline, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... replied Oliver, who had carefully kept himself out of sight, during the interview; and who was shaking from head to foot at the mere recollection of the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... where aesthetic feeling appears almost pure, are by no means the only sphere in which men show their susceptibility to beauty. In all products of human industry we notice the keenness with which the eye is attracted to the mere appearance of things: great sacrifices of time and labour are made to it in the most vulgar manufactures; nor does man select his dwelling, his clothes, or his companions without reference to their effect on his aesthetic senses. Of late we have even learned that the forms ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... explanation of who we were, and the motive of our visit, appeared to excite his surprise. That five officers of the land service, unaccompanied by a single sailor, should leave their vessel on the open ocean, and from mere curiosity, visit a strange sail at such a distance, was, he declared, most extraordinary. He said they had observed our ship early in the morning—had been occupied (like ourselves) in vain endeavors to make us out—had remarked ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... on the minutes," says I, "and proceed to show the Corrugated some teamwork that mere salaries can't buy. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... when he ought to be returning to his work, Mr. Robinson, possibly for the mere sake of saying something, requested a ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... I viewed them heretofore. Now mark what I have to say, villain. You have placed me and my daughter in fearful jeopardy; but it is in your power to make reparation for the injury; and as I hold you to be a mere instrument in the matter, I am willing to spare the life you have forfeited, on condition of your making a full confession in writing of your attempt, to be 'used by me against your employers. Are you willing to do this, or shall I strike upon the bell, and have ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... eyes. The wild emotions that were her being were roused beyond control. Bending towards him she began to pour out, first brokenly, then in a torrent, the wretched, incoherent story, of which the mere telling, in such an ear, meant new treachery to William and new ruin ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... too, that he thought out the Perseus and Medusa. In prison, works like the Pieta were his ambition, but when freedom came the Perseus was uppermost in his mind. Every great work of art is an evolution—the man sees it first as a mere germ—it grows, enlarges, evolves. The Perseus of Cellini was a thought that took years to germinate. The bloody nature of the man and his love of form united, and the world has this wonderful work ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... still upon the active list, with four years of service ahead of him. He was to be the next Aide on Personnel, the knowing ones said, and the orders were being looked for every day. Therefore he was decidedly a personage to tie to—more important even than the Secretary, himself, who was a mere figurehead in the Department. And the officers—and their wives, too, if they were married—crowded around the Westons, fairly walking over one another in their ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... not know on that first morning after our arrival, when I ran up the Scalla della Trinita to the top of the Pincian hill, and looked around me with such transport, that I stood by mere chance on that very spot from which Claude used to study his sun sets, and his beautiful effects of evening. His house was close to me on the left, and those of Nicolo Poussin and Salvator Rosa a little ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... education? Not the mere accumulation of knowledge, nor the mere training of the powers of the mind, but the building of manhood. You have tempered your Damascus blade, but who is going to hold it—the patriot, or the rebel? You have your educated man with his printing ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... become of him when he could perform his beloved work no longer? She knew very well how they were pressed for money, and how much had gone to help Philip in his fight in British Columbia. How many things had they gone without! Even mere common necessities had been given up. Naturally her mind turned to the auction, and the money her father had paid down for the farm. Four thousand dollars! Where had it come from, and why would her father never tell her, or speak about it in her presence? ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... scepticism. In any case, had he the slightest ground for the hope that she might ever feel to him as warmly as he did to her? He could not recall one instance of Ida's having betrayed a trace of fondness in her intercourse with him. The mere fact of their intercourse he altogether lost sight of. Whereas an outsider would, under the circumstances, have been justified in laying the utmost stress on this, Waymark had grown to accept it as a matter of course, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Nor were these mere empty regulations designed only to keep religion before the eyes of the people without any intention of enforcing them. The preachers were invested with extraordinary powers, and were commissioned to make house to house visitations, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... European War may be, in no circumstances can the dreams of the Nationalists be realised. Even if Germany and her arms were so victorious that Russia lay at her feet a mere inert carcase ready for the chopper, she would no more dream of giving Russian provinces to an independent Turkey than she would hand over to her Berlin itself. And if, as we know, Germany can never be victorious, will the Allies once more strive to keep the Sick Man alive, or leave ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... princely bearing, and his grand Stewart features were set in an expression of easy nonchalance and scorn; aware as he was that of whatever he might be accused, there were few of his judges that did not share the guilt, and moreover persuaded that this was a mere ceremony, and that the King would never dare to go beyond this futile attempt to overawe him. He stood alone—his father and the others were reserved for another trial; and as, richly arrayed, he stood opposite to the jury, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other Scottish brothers, diseased his mind with a most envious rancour. He confined all his literary efforts to the pitiable motive of destroying theirs; he was prompted to every one of his historical works by the mere desire of discrediting some work of Robertson; and his numerous critical labours were all directed to annihilate the genius of his country. How he converted his life into its own scourge, how wasted talents ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... partially to surprise the big cowpuncher from the north, and that there was a call for fighting. What chance would he have in the dim and bewildering light of that moon against the surety of Sinclair who shot, he knew, as other men point the finger —instinctively hitting the target? It would be a mere butchery, not a battle. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... worst of Neave's state was the fact of his not being a mere collector, even the collector raised to his highest pitch of efficiency. The whole thing was blent in him with poetry—his imagination had romanticized the acquisitive instinct, as the religious feeling of the Middle Ages turned passion into love. And yet his ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... moment one of the first scholars in Europe for head-master,—a school which has turned out some of the most remarkable men of the rising generation. The master sees at a glance if a boy be clever, and takes pains with him accordingly. He is not a mere teacher of hexameters and sapphics. His learning embraces all literature, ancient and modern. He is a good writer and a fine critic; admires Wordsworth. He winks at fighting: his boys know how to use their fists; and they are not in the habit of signing ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that this letter was worth ten louis, I meant that it was worth that much to a mere stranger, and I am very sure I should not have to go very far to find one; but Monsieur le Baron is too sensible not to know the value of this secret. I do not wish to set a price upon it, but since I am obliged to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wife, "if thou wilt make a fair scholar of little Will. 'Tis a mighty good offer. There are not many who would let their child be taught by a mere stripling like thee!" ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sentiments, and could not understand why Tarbell and Nurse felt so badly about the execution of their mother. He told them to their faces, without dreaming of giving them offence, that, while they thought she was innocent, and he thought she was guilty and had been justly put to death, it was a mere difference of opinion, as about an indifferent matter. In his "Meditations for Peace," presented to these dissatisfied brethren, for the purpose and with an earnest desire of appeasing them, he tells them that the indulgence of such ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... time; but still it is evident that, sooner or later, the British feeders will come into keen competition with the foreign producer of meat, and that the price of their commodity will consequently fall. The mere probability of such a state of things, were there no other reason, should induce the feeder to devote increased attention to the improvement of his stock, and to discover more economical methods of feeding them. There is still much to be learned relative ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... and that our fire knocks their earthworks to pieces. I am inclined to think that behind these earthworks there are masked batteries, for surely the Prussian Engineer Officers cannot be amusing themselves with making earthworks for the mere pleasure of seeing them knocked to pieces. Anyhow they are playing a deep game, for, as far as I can hear, they have not fired a single siege-gun yet, either against ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... we of our certain knowledge, special grace, and mere motion will permit or allow any of our liege subjects to barter, buy, or procure of any of our English allies, Teas of any kind: provided always each man can purchase not less than ten nor more than one hundred and fourteen boxes at a time and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... all his love of mystery and occasional exaggeration, was certainly a good friend to me. He often gave me good advice, and was more of a father to me than a mere friend. He was a man of the world; and he forgot that I never meant to be a man of the world, and therefore his advice was not always what I wanted. He was also a great friend of my cousin who was married to a Prince of Dessau, and they had agreed ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... to which they had been directed, they found, lying upon the ground, a man about forty years of age. Although he appeared a mere skeleton, consisting of little more than skin and bones, he did not present the general aspect of a man suffering from ill health; nor yet would he have passed for a white man anywhere ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... raised; but there may be treason without arms, or without the application of force to the object. When war is levied, all who perform a part, however remote from the scene of action, being leagued in the conspiracy, commit treason. But a mere conspiracy to levy war is not treason. A secret, unarmed meeting of conspirators, not in force, nor in warlike form, though met for a treasonable purpose, is not treason; but these offenses ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... deficient. One principle of philosophy he practically possessed in perfection; he enjoyed the present, undisturbed by any unavailing regret for the past, or troublesome solicitude about the future. All the goods of life he tasted with epicurean zest; all the evils he bore with stoical indifference. The mere pleasure of existence seemed to keep him in perpetual good humour with himself and others; and his never-failing flow of animal spirits exhilarated even the most phlegmatic. To persons of a cold and reserved ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... will pardon me for intruding," Norton repeated. "Believe me, it is not with mere idle curiosity. Let me introduce my friend, Professor Kennedy, the scientific detective, of whom you have heard, no doubt. This is his assistant, Mr. Jameson, of the Star. I thought perhaps they might stand between you and that crowd in the hall," he added, ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... Gascony. Thus it is to my own interest to procure your safe escape from Paris. And if you reach Nerac, monsieur, you cannot do better than to stay there. The King of Navarre will give you some post more worthy of you than that of a mere soldier, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... are awakened within him they show themselves in his causal body as colours, so that instead of being a mere transparent bubble it gradually becomes a sphere filled with matter of the most lovely and delicate hues—an object beautiful beyond all conception. It is found by experience that these colours are significant. The vibration which denotes the power of unselfish affection shows ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... of the conquest might as well be blank paper." We believe him; but had his purpose been, not "to denounce in general terms the venerable precedents so constantly quoted by our annalists, but to show their defects and their errors in detail," he would hardly have used them, as he has done, as mere wadding for the great gun which he was loading, and which has exploded with such terrible effect. His objection to the "standard histories" is, that their authors were Spaniards, ecclesiastics, royal historiographers,—that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... was but twenty-three years of age, he had tasted the bitter cup of Slavery pretty thoroughly under Kendall B. Herring, who was a member of the Methodist Church, and in Jack's opinion a "mere pretender, and a man of a very bad disposition." Jack thought that he had worked full long enough for this Herring for nothing. When a boy twelve years of age, his mother was sold South; from that day, until the hour ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... first of all the law of economy in material which demands that the idea of the problem should be expressed with the least possible number of men, and that no pieces should be added for the mere sake of increasing the number of variations. Then, of course, a problem should have only one solution. A position which has more than one key move is not considered a problem, because the main point at issue in a problem is ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker
... on the battlefield can compensate for the miseries of an unjust and unnecessary war; and that avenging justice will sooner or later overtake the wickedness of a heartless egotism. It taught the folly of worshipping mere outward strength, disconnected from goodness; and, finally, it taught that God will protect defenceless nations, and even guilty nations, when they shall have expiated their crimes and follies, and prove Himself the kind Father of all His children, even amid chastisements, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... slain; and at Tanagra a considerable force was worsted, and the leader Panthoides killed. But these encounters, though they raised the victor's spirits, did not thoroughly dishearten the unsuccessful; for there was no set battle, or regular fighting, but mere incursions on advantage, in which, according to occasion, they charged, retired again, or pursued. But the battle at Tegyrae, which seemed a prelude to Leuctra, won Pelopidas a great reputation; for none of the other commanders could claim any hand in the design, nor the enemies ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to lay plans, but another matter to carry them out. Miss Gibbs usually locked the wire door behind her, only leaving it open when she went upstairs to fetch something and meant to return almost immediately. The mere fact of its difficulty increased Raymonde's zest for the adventure. Her wild, harum-scarum spirits welcomed the element of possible danger, and the imminence of discovery added an extra spice. For days she haunted the vicinity ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... case of Fame and Little Padbury, which we abandoned over a month ago. They were poor when they left, and have only had very dry grass ever since. It is a wonder to me they all do not give in, as many are mere skeletons. Poor old Brick held up as long as he could, but was forced to give in, and we had to leave him to his solitary fate; he will probably go back to the spring (Fort Mueller). Barometer 28.30; latitude 26 degrees 22 minutes ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... Saduko that I had always known, and yet so changed. All the life and fire had gone from him; his pride in himself was no more; none could have known him for that ambitious, confident man who, in his day of power, the Zulus named the "Self-Eater." He was a mere mask of the old Saduko, informed by some new, some alien, spirit. With dull, lack-lustre eyes fixed always upon the lovely eyes of Mameena, in slow and hesitating tones he ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... that she could never look Cherry-pie in the face again. She had a frantic feeling that if she could not escape from that intolerable insistence on the—the wedding, she would die. In the street, the mere cessation of Miss White's joyous twittering was a relief. Well, she must go where she could be alone. She walked several blocks before she thought of Willis's; it would take at least two hours to get there, and she could think things over without interruption. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... wife, Lloyd, Belle, my wife's daughter, Austin her child, and to-night (by way of rarity) a guest. All about the walls our South Sea curiosities, war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes, etc.; and the walls are only a small part of a lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed windows, or mere open space. You will see there no sign of the Squire, however; and being a person of a humane disposition, you will only glance in over the balcony railing at the merry-makers in the summer parlour, and proceed further afield after the Exile. You look round, there is beautiful green turf, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the simple reason that he did not know the answer to the question, and that 'Trombin' alone was evidently not a name, but a nickname. The mere fact that the friends had both once had a right to sit in the Grand Council by no means implied that they had known each other, even by sight. To gain time Gambardella ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... had been there to argue it; and what are we to think of the Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the Indies who thus takes what can only be called a mean advantage of a poor seaman in his employ? It would have been a competence and a snug little fortune to Rodrigo de Triana; it was a mere flea-bite to a man who was thinking in eighth parts of continents. It may be true, as Oviedo alleges, that Columbus transferred it to Beatriz Enriquez; but he had no right to provide for her out of money that in all equity and decency ought to have gone to another and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... knew how to give to the meanest and most blundering of creatures. Indeed, it was the least successful of Green Valley's ministers who had designated Grandma's seat as Inspiration Corner. And then had in a final burst of wrath told Green Valley that like Sodom and Gomorrah it was doomed, that no mere man preacher could save it, that its only hope lay in Grandma Wentworth, who alone understood its ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... atmosphere. You are lying to yourself under the influence of this other—who lies to you. Prove what you say if you want me to believe. The scientific mind must have proof, undeniable, irrefutable proof. Statements, mere statements of unbelief are meaningless things which do not convince even their authors. If you need to convince yourself, and convince me, then engage yourself to some man, marry him, and I tell you now you will bring about the direst tragedy that ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Rogers's office was not brilliantly lighted, and that he merely glanced at her. Still, whatever minor differences there may have been, she had the air, the general appearance, the look of Miss Holladay. Mere facial resemblance may happen in a hundred ways, by chance; but the air, the look, the 'altogether' is very different—it indicates a blood relationship. My theory is that she is an illegitimate child, perhaps four or five years ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... morphology." I believe we shall only make progress in this direction if we frankly adopt the simple everyday conception of living things—which many of us have had drilled out of us—that they are active, purposeful agents, not mere complicated aggregations of protein and other substances. Such an attitude is probably quite as sound philosophically as the opposing one, but I have not in this place attempted any justification of it. I have touched very lightly upon the controversy ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... by the kindness of a mere acquaintance," he said, "that I was enabled to get here so soon. My own horses were tired out with a hard day yesterday, and I was going out to seek others in Pampeluna—no easy task on market-day—when I met a travelling carriage on the Plaza de la Constitution ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... feel the same emotion of delight in the contemplation of the heavenly vault, as in the view of a beautiful landscape, or a majestic site. A traveller needs not to be a botanist, to recognize the torrid zone by the mere aspect of its vegetation. Without having acquired any notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with the celestial charts of Flamsteed and De La Caille, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... barrel-vaulted nave with flanking chapels, though the designers of some of these buildings have copied such peculiarities as the tall and narrow pilasters of which his school was so fond, and which, as will be seen, ultimately degenerated into mere pilaster strips. ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... was not yet come for a great college in Baltimore and the institution languished away. In 1843, the Commissioners of Public Schools petitioned to have it transferred to the city as a High School, and in 1852, it had only one teacher and 36 scholars, a mere ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... home from the book-bindery Jessie would go several blocks out of her way to see how Jack was getting along, and Barbara and his mother soon discovered that it was something more than mere friendship that actuated the girl's visits. Although against their expostulations, every cent that she could scrape together, over and above the cost of the bare necessities of her living, she would expend for fruit to ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... problem appears to me, in spite of all this, not completely exhausted. It might not thus be absolutely ruled out that more than a mere superstition lurks behind the folk belief which conceives of a "magnetic" influence by which the moon attracts the sleeper. Such a relationship is indeed conceivable when we consider the motor overexcitability of all sleep walkers ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... so. " 'This passage, referring to all the previously mentioned forms of Brahman by means of the word 'so,' negatives them; intimating thereby that Brahman is nothing else than pure Being, and that all distinctions are mere imaginations due to Brahman not knowing its own essential nature. How then can Brahman possess the twofold characteristics?—To this the next ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... mainly by showing that they could be deists in all but the name. The dissenters, less hampered by legal formulae, had drifted towards Unitarianism. The position of such divines as Paley, Watson, and Hey was not so much that the Unitarians were wrong, as that the mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was superfluous to quarrel. The doctrine was essentially traditional; for it was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of England as deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... to get some of the oldtime merry-merry who are now some of our leading actresses to appear at the benefit, but they all threw a fit at the mere mention of the fact that they had once carried a spear. For my part I see nothing degrading in the work, even if we are held up to the gibes and chaff of some of ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... substance—the principles of the social system with the commencement of human society? What should we say to a mechanic of a different description, who should undertake the repair or construction of a ship of the line, without any practical knowledge of the art, on mere theory, and with no other resources than those which the savage employs in the construction of his canoe?" Notices sur la ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... as that of a grown man. There was colossal mental power and nameless evil glowing in the dark depths of the two abnormally large eyes that stared fixedly out from under the heavy forehead. The thing had no nose. The mouth opening, surrounded by a rosette of flabby gray skin, was a mere slit. The entire skull and face were covered with small, closely overlapping scales of ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... "the blue ribbon of intellectual adventure, the unachieved North Pole of spiritual exploration. He has had countless predecessors in the enterprise, some of whom have loudly claimed success; but their log-books have been full of mere hallucinations and nursery tales. What if it should be reserved for Mr. Wells to bring back the first authentic news from a source more baffling than that of Nile or Amazon—the source of the majestic stream of Being? What if it should be given him to sign his name ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... professional technique, especially if they should include, like his, acute discussion of the speaker's obligation to honesty of thinking, no less than integrity of conduct; of the immorality of the pragmatic standard of mere effectiveness or immediate efficiency in the selection of material; of the aesthetic folly and ethical dubiety of simulated extempore speaking and genuinely impromptu prayers, would not be superfluous. But, on the other hand, we may hope ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... stages of a plant's growth, its budding and blossoming and seed-bearing, that this lesson has come to me: the lesson of death in its delivering power. It has come as no mere far-fetched imagery, but as one of the many voices in which God speaks, bringing strength and gladness from His ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... chief next, and yet so far, above him; it may be important, insignificant, or wholly omitted. Like any lesser ducus of the realm, he must appear before his lord twice a year to renew his oath of allegiance. In law, he is as mere a subject as the slave who bears his betel-box; or that other slave who, on his knees, and with averted face, presents his spittoon. In history, he shall be what circumstance or his own mind may make him: the shadow or the soul of sovereignty, even as the intellectual and moral weakness or strength ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... love me, Lina," answered Mabel, and her face was luminous with that warm, tender light, which made her whole countenance beautiful, at times, beyond any mere symmetry of features that ever existed. "I think you love ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... significance of the Letter would be minor if it were confined to its role in the exchange between Berkeley and Mandeville.[2] Berkeley had more sinners in mind than Mandeville, and Mandeville more critics than Berkeley. Berkeley, however, mere than any other critic seems to have gotten under Mandeville's skin, perhaps because Berkeley alone made effective use against him of his own ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... went out only once, had a night of thrilling experiences, and killed a large male lion. The lion appeared early in the evening and her first shot just grazed the backbone. An inch higher and it would have missed, but as it was, the mere grazing of the backbone paralyzed the animal, preventing its escape. All night long it crouched helplessly before them, twelve yards away, insane with rage and fury. Its roars were terrifying. A number of ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... National Association should accept any sort of "under the ink or between the lines" as favorable pledges; and before I shall consent to put my name to any document favoring either candidate, I must see in black and white, in the candidate's own pen tracks, something to warrant such favoring. Mere gallantry ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... religion and the subjects of every form of government; although there has been the dead weight of a large ignorant vote, yet the little settlement, which 150 years ago rested upon the eastern shores of the Atlantic a mere colonial possession, has steadily climbed upward until today it occupies a proud position of equality among the greatest governments of the world.... The fact that woman suffrage must come through a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... repays by aspiring to my cousin's hand," answered Harry. "Were he a man of family I should say nothing, of course; but he is, sir, a mere adventurer. His father is a common boatswain—a warrant officer—not a gentleman even by courtesy, and his mother, for what I know to the contrary, might have been a bum-boat woman, and his relations, if he had any, are probably all ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Farnsworth by way of thanks for his truly beautiful pink roses? I'd like to write a nice, every-day letter, and tell him all about the party and everything; but, as he just sent his visiting card, with a mere line on it, I suppose ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... wind, going erect, without any trouble. It is true that Lionel in time began to think that the keeper, instead of having the deer in mind, was bent on a pilgrimage into Cromarty or Sutherland, or perhaps towards the shores of the Atlantic; but this interminable tramp was a mere trifle compared with their labors when they began to go up wind again. For now there was nothing but stooping and crawling and slouching behind hillocks, up peat-hags, and through marshy swamps; while the heat produced by all this painful ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... dictated by theories of morality or trade or monopoly. If this matter is left to the territories it is left to the source of sovereign power and to local interests; if it is controlled by Congress it means an increasing centralization. What I really mean is that this mere assumption that Congress can deal with the matter in virtue of some vague sovereignty, without pointing out some express power in Congress to do so, leads straight to imperialism. And thus on the whole, having ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... (as I have sometimes heard it), better than the kind and gentle words some people use in refusing to give. The curse sinks deep into the heart; or if it does not, it is a proof that the poor creature has been made hard before by harsh treatment. And mere money can do little to cheer a sore heart. It is kindness only that can do this. Now we have all of us kindness in our power. The little child of two years old, who can only just totter about, can ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... has been for eight or ten years in the employ of the Baptist Foreign Missionary Board, and is located at Bangkok, in Siam. For several years before he left this country he was a vegetable eater, sometimes subsisting on mere fruit for one or two of his daily meals. And yet, as a mechanic, his labor ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... rightly used, intelligently imparted to the patient or her friends, will make of the nurse such a broad-minded, sympathetic woman that everyone who employs her will appreciate the fact that she has a wide culture, and brings to her patient something besides mere technical skill. ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... had seen the African conveyed to the cellar, and locked in; this fact she also communicated to her mistress, who heard it with much pleasure, as she had anticipated that her paramour would meet with a worse fate than mere confinement.—She determined to effect his release, if possible, although she knew that some time must necessarily elapse before she could hope to accomplish ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... the extreme difficulty of knowing when to draw the line between friends and acquaintances. I have also observed that when your wife and daughters intend such a thing, they always obtain permission for the ball first, and then tack on the supper afterwards; commencing with a mere stand-up affair,—sandwiches, cakes, and refreshments,—and ending with a regular sit-down affair, with Gunter presiding over all. The music from two fiddles and a piano also swells into Collinet's band, verifying the old adage, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... that the sentiment and tone of the affair may have undergone some slight—or perchance more than slight—metamorphosis in its transmission to the reader through the medium of a thoroughgoing democrat. The tale itself is a mere sketch with no involution of plot nor any great interest of events, yet possessing, if I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over the mind which the shadow of the old Province House flings upon the loiterer ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), but Denmark has decided not to join the 12 other EU members in the euro; even so, the Danish Krone remains pegged to the euro. Given the sluggish state of the European economy, growth in 2003 was a mere 1.1%. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... eyes, And looking, as he always looked, perceived Juan amongst the damsels in disguise, At which he seemed no whit surprised nor grieved, But just remarked with air sedate and wise,[fy] While still a fluttering sigh Gulbeyaz heaved, "I see you've bought another girl; 't is pity That a mere Christian should be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... work went on in the valley I had a couple of tents for my gang of navvies, some of whom were sailors. I always found these excellent workers, and specially handy and clever in many ways, where a mere landsman would be at fault. I worked with them, and shared everything as one of themselves, even to a single nip of rum I allowed to each man once a day. They treated me with every respect, and ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... broadsides printed at the Aldermary press. We have not met with any older impression, though we have been assured that there are black-letter copies. In Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border is a ballad called the Broomfield Hill; it is a mere fragment, but is evidently taken from the present ballad, and can be considered only as one of the many modern antiques to ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... great deal and laughed at everybody's stale jokes, and pretended to be terribly hilarious. But there was a pathetic droop to every mouth, and not a soul referred to home. Each one seemed to realize that the mere mention of the word would ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... we shall give a mere outline, and even that somewhat disjointed, of the subject of diving. We feel tempted to pass by the fabulous period altogether, but fear lest, in our effort to eschew the false, we do damage to the true. Perhaps, therefore, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... had ever been fraught with such overwhelming bitterness as this. She had never known such fear, even in the grip of the wild waters or during the grizzly's charge. This was something that went deeper than mere life: it touched realms of her spirit undreamed of, and the blow seemed more cruel and more dreadful than any that the world could deal direct to her. If she had paused for one second of self-analysis, heaven knows what light ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... at Milan; instead of snatching a mouthful of baba like a lackey finishing off a bottle behind a door, or wearing out one's wits with giving and receiving letters like a postman—letters that consist not of a mere couple of tender lines, but expand to five folio volumes to-day and contract to a couple of sheets to-morrow (a tiresome practice); instead of dragging along over the ruts and dodging behind hedges—it would be better to give way to the adorable ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because women are discontented, it is because they have seen visions of duty, and that is something that we not only can not resist but if we be true Americans we do not wish to resist. Because America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... still gazing after the canoe, now a mere speck amid the waste of waters, but turned and looked into ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... in the attitude of actual physical as well as political antagonism to the mother and daughter. If it came to an issue, man would have to decide whether he would defend his own opinion, expressed in his ballot, or the opposite opinion expressed by his wife in her ballot. And the mere suggestion of difference in family opinion, final action upon which could only be taken by a resort to that in which the men must always be superior, would not only endanger family life and peace, but would develop a fatal inequality ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... with Frederick the Great, that all our systems of education are wrong, because they aim to make men students or clerks, whereas the mere shape of the body shows (so thought King Frederick) that we are primarily designed for postilions, and should spend most of our lives on horseback. But it is very certain that all the physical universe takes the side of health and activity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the case of geology. We have only to do with theories. All that can be brought forward is merely matter of opinion or theory—such theory resting indeed on a foundation of ascertained facts—but being in itself a mere inference more or less probable from those facts. Even if it were proved to be a true account of the causation of those facts, it would be by no means certain that other facts, however similar, might not have had ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... the person who had seized it. The sensible, I say, reflected that, when he spent so much to prevent molestation in his disgraceful course, he would not be restrained from any most outrageous proceedings through mere hope ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... shirtings, and other articles made entirely of cotton are frequently mere combinations of fancy shades, while fabrics composed of silk and jute materials, including silk ties, handkerchiefs, etc.—in fact the cloths in which fancy shades are used—show that coloring and its combinations in all woven product embellished ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... elegant, which, however, you must not tell her, because she is to be surprized: her dressing room, and a little adjoining closet of books, will be enchanting; yet the expence of all he has done is a mere trifle. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... and arrival of her first car, and the engagement of her chauffeur had been a thrilling experience. It was incredible, too, that her new bankers should, without hesitation, deliver to her enormous sums of money at the mere affixing of her signature to an oblong ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them. And then there are lots of lovely names and words—Monophysite, Iamblichus, Pomponazzi; you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what comes of the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... does make such a fuss of things. You might think, to hear him talk, that the getting up of coal, lighting fires, chopping wood and cleaning flues was the entire work of a household, instead of being mere incidents in the daily routine. If he had to tackle my duties—but men never seem to understand how much there is to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... behavior so engaged me, I don't know: but at the end of half an hour I was still watching him. By this, 'twas near dark, bitter cold, and his pretence to read mere fondness: yet he persevered—though with longer glances at the casement above, where the din at times was fit to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... "Bladensburg, sah!" The gin-drinking, cock-fighting, sporting element of the town was aroused, and Utie and Tiltock were invited on all sides to imbibe to the significant toast of "The Field." Very noisy, very insolent, nuisances indeed, these two mere lads—the offspring of a vain and ignorant social period of which some elements yet remain—borrowed the money to hire a carriage, and at midnight they set out with some associates by the old, rutty, clay ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... and that quality is the whole of Dickens. It is a quality difficult to define—hence the whole difficulty of criticising Dickens. Perhaps it can be best stated in two separate statements or as two separate symptoms. The first is the mere fact that the reader rushes to read it. The second is the mere fact that the writer rushed ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... is rooted in an aboriginal unity of instincts, you cannot compare it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of negroes from planters—if it were true that a white man in early youth always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could compare it with ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... spendthrift kindness of the populace squandered a kingdom on a churl. Nay, not even Africanus, when he rewarded the records of his deed, rose to the munificence of the Danes. For there the wage of that laborious volume was in mere gold, while here a few callow verses won a sceptre for ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... he answered with the stern honesty that would not let him deceive himself or others, cost what it might to be true. "There is a certain solid satisfaction in it that I did not use to find. It is not a mere dogged persistence now, as it once was, and that is a ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... of course, possess different capacities for doing this. Young or undisciplined minds can read only in one way,—and that way is, to mentally pronounce every word, and dwell equally upon all the parts of every sentence. This comes naturally in the first instance, from the mere method of learning to read, in which every word is a spoken symbol, and has to be sounded, whether it is essential to the sense, or not. This habit of reading, which may be termed the literal method, goes with most persons through life. Once learned, it is very hard to unlearn. There ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... that the New Orleans leaf in his book of experience was safely turned and securely pasted down, Griswold was nettled to find that the mere mention of the name sent creeping little chills of apprehension trickling up and down his spine. But innate stubbornness scoffed at the warning; derided ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... admiration softened to a warm, invading gentleness, a sense of weakness glad of itself, happy to acknowledge his greater strength. Had David's intuitions been as true as hers he would have known when these moments came and spoken the words. But on such matters he had no intuitions, was a mere, unenlightened male trying to win a woman by standing at a distance ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... whereon he could speak with full confidence. The Fleet could lie off out of sight and range of the Turks and with their guns would dominate the railways and, if necessary, burn the place to ashes. The bulk of the people were not Osmanli or even Mahomedan and there would be a revolution at the mere sight of the smoke from the funnels of our warships. But if, for some cause at present non-apparent, we were forced to put troops ashore against organized Turkish opposition, then he advocated a landing on the Asiatic side ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... library's books for his personal profit, the librarian is to receive administrative support for his various expenses during the year and, as a scholar working with other scholars within his university instead of as a mere factotum, the librarian is to receive an adequate salary (perhaps the only one of Dury's reforms that ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury
... that the mythology which we regard merely as a collection of fables was to the Greeks actually true; or at least that to nine Greeks out of ten it would never occur that it might be false, might be, as we say, mere stories. So that though no doubt the histories of the gods were in part the inventions of the poets, yet the poets would conceive themselves to be merely putting into form what they and every one believed to ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... The gilded leather to fit up thy room. If not to some peculiar end design'd, Study's the specious trifling of the mind; Or is at best a secondary aim, A chase for sport alone, and not for game. If so, sure they who the mere volume prize, But love the thicket where the quarry lies. On buying books Lorenzo long was bent, But found at length that it reduc'd his rent; His farms were flown; when, lo! a sale comes on, A choice collection! what is to be done? He sells his last; ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... character there is in a hand! Hers was a hand that Titian would have painted with elaborate care! Thin, white, and delicate, with the blue veins raised from the surface. Yet there was something more than mere patrician elegance in the form and texture. A true physiologist would have said at once, "There are intellect and pride in that hand, which seems to fix a hold where it rests; and lying so lightly, yet will not be as lightly ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tore away as if he was goin' to take the fort alone; I was next him, an' kept close as we went through the ditch an' up the wall. Hi! warn't that a rusher!" and the boy flung up his well arm with a whoop, as if the mere memory of that stirring moment came over him in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... 1. MERE ASSUMPTION. Begging the question means assuming the truth of that which needs proof. This fallacy is found in its simplest form in epithets and appellations. The lawyer who speaks of "the criminal on trial ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... respectfully believe that from ancient times decisions upon important questions concerning the welfare of the empire were arrived at after consideration of the actual political condition and its necessities, and that thus results were obtained, not of mere temporary brilliancy, but which bore good ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... rheumatism that she can't leave her room, and must sit there by the window all day long. She is fond of children, too. Of course she has plenty of this world's goods, and her old friends do not neglect her, yet I am sure that you could give something to her by your mere presence which none of the older persons could. Then there is poor old ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... The mere mention of the dishes made his mouth water, while his anger against the dame who had compiled it mounted higher. He remotely contemplated writing to inquire of the culinary oracle why she ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... States," says: "Seldom has a woman in any age acquired such ascendency by the mere force of a powerful intellect, and her influence ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... carried into another atmosphere, is cared for by ginhating minds and hearts: habit fastens on him—fair, decent, and temperate habit—and he grows up like the Cure yonder, a brother of Aaron. Which is the real? Is the instinct for the gin killed, or covered? Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting, in which the real man never lives his real life, or is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the old policy of oppression was soon renewed, and was carried onward until in November of 1909 the Finnish Parliament was dismissed by imperial command. All through 1910 repressive laws were passed, reducing Finland step by step to a mere Russian province, so that before the close of that year the Finlanders themselves surrendered the struggle. One of their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... self-deception, telling himself he had boarded the Roland, not for the sake of little Ingigerd Hahlstroem, but because he wanted to see New York, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Yellowstone Park, and Niagara Falls. That is what he would tell the Hahlstroems—that a mere chance had brought them ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... in his studies much of the keen sagacity and clearness of intellect which characterized his future business career. Although never a college student, he was always what may justly be termed a well-read man, and, indeed, a learned one. At fifteen years of age he went a mere boy into the wholesale grocery house of Coolidge & Haskell, a firm well-known to many of Boston's older residents. In his capacity as clerk he displayed a marked ability, and won for himself the commendation of his employers. In 1842 Charles Head obtained for him a position in the banking-house ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... tidiest of kitchens she entered. Everything shone that could be made to shine. A hearthrug made by Miss Abbot's mother lay before the fireplace, in which a mere handful of fire was burning. An arm-chair with cheerful red cushions stood beside the fire. It was quite comfortable, but Jean felt a bareness. There were no pots on the fire—nothing seemed ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... much about it afterwards; but it was the doing, not the talking, that he really valued, and benefactors of this sort are not too common. He was, moreover, diligent and conscientious: his heart was in his work, and his adherence to the Church of England no mere matter of form. He was capable of affection: he was usually courteous and tolerant. Then what was amiss? Why, in spite of all these qualities, should Rickie feel that there was something wrong with him—nay, that he was wrong as a whole, and that if the Spirit of Humanity should ever hold ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... were young men. On the word they went. Each knew what he had to do. Each had his little book of instructions. He needed no orders. The mere fact that mobilization had been ordered was all he needed to know. He knew already where he must report, where his uniform and his equipment would be given to him, and which regiment he was to join. He was a soldier by virtue of the three ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... saying insolent things of parvenus who have driven them from their positions, not yet by separating themselves from the masses whose soul and intellect and providence they ought to be, that the nobility will exist. Instead of being a party, you will soon be a mere opinion, as de Marsay said. Ah! if you only knew how my ideas on this subject have enlarged since I have nursed and cradled your child! I'd like to see that grand old name of Guenic become once more historical!" Then suddenly plunging her eyes into those of Calyste, who was listening ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Everett will probably say, that he made these deadly stabs at my character upon the same principle that the New England Cobbler killed the Indian Hogan Mogan. "Not out of malice, but mere zeal Because he ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... "Mere newspaper abuse, however, by no means gave content to the outraged feeling of the chivalry. They therefore sent a formal demand to our Government for information as to whether Gen. Hunter, in organizing his regiment of emancipated slaves, had acted ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... this event Bethlehem was a mere village of a few hundred people. It might have been thought that Jerusalem, the historic metropolis and proud capital of the country, the chosen city of God and seat of the temple and center of worship, a city beautiful for situation, magnificent ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... you are kind, you are good. You are an Americano, one of a great nation. You will feel sympathy for a poor young man,—a mere muchacho,—one of your own race, who was a vaquero here, senor. He has been sent away from us here disgraced, alone, hungry, ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... to do; what I am is what you made me. What I have done I have done because I thought you would approve. Do you think I would have come back if I had not known that I was coming back to you?" Suddenly an impatient exclamation escaped him, and his clasp about her tightened. "Oh! words—the mere things that one can say, seem so pitiful, so miserably inadequate. Don't you know, can't you feel what you are to me? Tell me, do ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Montricheux to the Dents de Loup wound upward like a single filament flung round the mountains by some giant spider. The miniature train, edging its way along the track, appeared no more than a mere speck as it crept tortuously up towards the top. At its rear puffed a small engine, built in a curious tilted fashion, so that as it laboured industriously behind the coaches of the train it reminded one ridiculously of a baby ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... On turning it out, I found it was one of my own, and on showing it to him, he remembered it at once. "O aye," he said, "I mind now. It's pretty bad; ye'll have to do better than that, chieldy," and chuckled, chuckled. He is a strange old figure, to be sure. He cannot endure Pirbright Smith—"a mere aesthatic," he said. "Pooh!" "Fishin' and releegion—these are my aysthatics," he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of almond-trees Came three girls chattering of their sweethearts three. And lo! Mercutio, with Byronic ease, Out of his philosophic eye cast all A mere flow'r'd twig of thought, whereat ... Three hearts fell still as when an air dies out And Venus falters ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... have done with me," said Sam, "after I had enlightened him on some of the facts of this country, for that mere trifle of a statement about ice forming on a river in England was a mighty small incident, in comparison with what I have ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... near Coserow. In almost all trials of witches hills of this kind in the neighbourhood of the accused are mentioned, where the devil, on Walpurgis Night and St. John's Eve, feasts, dances, and wantons with them, and where warlock priests administer Satanic sacraments, which are mere mockeries of those of Divine institution.] was their Blockula), they had talked of my daughter, and Satan himself had sworn to the sheriff that he should have her. For that he would show the old one (wherewith the villain meant God) what he could do, and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... disfranchisement was done on purpose to deprive the plaintiff of the particular advantage which resulted to him from his corporate character? I believe this is a case of the first impression, where an action of this kind had been brought, upon a mere mistake, or error in judgment. The plaintiff had broken a by-law, for which he had incurred certain penalties, and happening to be personally present in the court, he was called upon to show cause why he should not pay the forfeitures; to which not making any answer, but refusing ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... toward the door, as Joseph Dunn appeared, shouting, "Stop it! Stop it! She forged those letters. She broke her sister's heart. Stop it, I say!" Every person in the room seemed terror-stricken at the wild spectacle he presented. His face, wasted to a mere skeleton, was ghastly white, while his long yellow hair hung in matted locks about his brow, and a look of wild frenzy was in his eye, as darting toward the paralyzed Julia, he seized her as with a lion's grasp and ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... men who buy everything that strikes them as cheap—for instance, that very morning, at Kibotus he had stood to watch a fish auction and had bought a whole tub-full of pickled fish for "a mere trifle;" but when, presently, the cargo was delivered, his wife flew into a great rage, which she vented first on the innocent lad who brought the fish, and then on the less innocent purchaser. They would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... about that. I loved you from the very first moment—that was the thing that counted. I had always dreamed of some one just like you; I had always known that no other sort of man could make me happy. Blood isn't a mere empty word; it's the only thing that counts. Do you know, that's why I always have a ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... The thing is evident; and from this idea duly considered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes, which we ought to ascribe to this eternal Being. [If, nevertheless, any one should be found so senselessly arrogant, as to suppose man alone knowing and wise, but yet the product of mere ignorance and chance; and that all the rest of the universe acted only by that blind haphazard; I shall leave with him that very rational and emphatical rebuke of Tully (1. ii. De Leg.), to be considered at his leisure: 'What can be more sillily arrogant and misbecoming, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... weed, the mere smell of which causes a horse to bolt," said Nort, "it may be the thing that's causing the cattle to die. Maybe it's the poison weed that caused ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... standing, address, and knowledge of the world, he was usually called on to occupy the chair of the moderator. In process of time that which was originally conceded as a matter of courtesy passed into an admitted right. So long as the metropolitan bishop was inducted into office by mere presbyters, the circumstances of his investiture pointed out to him the duty of humility; but when the most distinguished chief pastors of the province deemed it an honour to take part in his consecration, he immediately increased his pretensions. Thus it is that the change in the mode ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Beatitude springs from the preceding, and all twined together make an ornament of grace upon the neck, a chain of jewels. The second sounds a more violent paradox than even the first. Sorrowing is blessed. This, of course, cannot mean mere sorrow as such. That may or may not be a blessing. Grief makes men worse quite as often as it makes them better. Its waves often flow over us like the sea over marshes, leaving them as salt and barren as it found them. Nor is sorrow always sure of comfort. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... practical farmer. The book, indeed, which serves for his card of introduction, is called "The Gentleman Farmer";[F] but we must not judge it by our experience of the class who wear that title nowadays. Lord Kames recommends no waste of money, no extravagant architecture, no mere prettinesses. He talks of the plough in a way that assures us he has held it some day with his own hands. People are taught, he says, more by the eye than the ear; show them good culture, and they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... all kinds and qualities,—some well-to-do, some very poor, some gentle and well-mannered, some wild as steers, some brazen-faced and pushing, some sweet and shy and modest. I had one little child—a mere tot—take hold of the ribbon with which I tied my cape and ask me how much it was a yard; she also inquired about the quality of the narrow lace edge on my handkerchief, and being convinced that it was real, sharply told me to look out "it didn't get stoled." One little girl came every ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... though lucrative office, an office which, the writer begs leave to observe, many a person with a great regard for gentility, and no particular regard for principle, would in a similar strait have accepted; for when did a mere love for gentility keep a person from being a dirty scoundrel, when the alternatives apparently were "either to be a dirty scoundrel or starve"? One thing, however, is certain, which is, that Lavengro ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... things: a fine sense, in the first place, of the sound, value, meaning, and associations of individual words, and next, a sense of harmony, proportion, and effect in their combination. It is amazing what nobility a mere truism is often found to possess when it is clad ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... intituled The Genealogie and Pedigree of the Earles of Southerland and written down to 1630 by Sir Robert Gordon, Baronet of Gordonstoun, and continued by Gilbert Gordon of Sallach[52] until 1651, as mere fiction as regards all persons before William, first Earl. "Alane Southerland, Thane of Southerland," Walter "first Earle," Robert, second earl, who is alleged to have founded "Dounrobin Castell" were purely fictitious persons. ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... committed in his palace by the husband, attended by a band of cut-throats.[211] In 1577, at Milan, Count Giovanni Borromeo, cousin of the Cardinal Federigo, stabbed his wife, the Countess Giulia Sanseverina, sister of the Contessa di Sala, at table, with three mortal wounds. A mere domestic squabble gave rise to this tragedy.[212] In 1598, in his villa of Zenzalino at Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, with the assistance of a bravo called Jacopo Lazzarini, killed his wife Anna, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... to sail out before them. These sea-fights along the south coast were nearly the last things that we hear of in Alfred's reign. The crews of two Danish ships were brought to Winchester to Alfred and there hanged. One cannot blame him for this, as these Danes were mere pirates, not engaged in any lawful war, and many of them had been spared, and had made oaths to Alfred, and had broken ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... or frequent use of pickles is by no means to be recommended, where any regard is paid to health. In general they are the mere vehicles for taking a certain portion of vinegar and spice, and in the crisp state in which they are most admired are often indigestible, and of course pernicious. The pickle made to preserve cucumbers and mangoes, is generally so strongly impregnated ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... necessities of Natal left but scant numbers to Cape Colony, which was comparatively of less consequence, because the points of vital importance to Great Britain lay near the sea-coast, protected by their mere remoteness from any speedy attack. On the far inland borders of the colony the situation soon reduced itself to that with which we were so long familiar. The four or five thousand men available at the outbreak ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... man, observing my look, said: "Although my daughter's husband holds a federal position in Washington, the pressure of his business is so great that he has little time to give us mere gossip—I beg your pardon, did ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... then, that conciliation was from the first impossible,—that to attempt it was unwise, because it put the party of law and loyalty in the wrong,—and that, if it was done as a mere matter of policy in order to gain time, it was a still greater mistake, because it was the rebels only who could profit by it in consolidating their organization, while the seeming gain of a few days or weeks was a loss to the Government, whose great advantage was in an administrative system thoroughly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... splendour of a court he knew, And all the ardour of the tented field, Soft Passion's idler charm, not less untrue, And all that listless Luxury can yield. He tasted, tender Love! thy chatter sweet; Thy promis'd happiness prov'd mere deceit. To Hymen's hallow'd fane by Reason led, He deem'd the path he trod the path of bliss; Oh! ever-mourn'd mistake! from int'rest bred, Its dupe was plung'd in misery's abyss: But Friendship ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... his exasperation growing upon him, he was heard in a public place saying sardonically, "that it would be the very luckiest thing for Lieut. D'Hubert, because the next time of meeting he need not hope to get off with the mere trifle of three weeks ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... going. He would set it by the cabin clock, telling himself every time that he must really keep that watch going for the future. And every time, when Lingard went away, he would let it run down and would measure his weariness by sunrises and sunsets in an apathetic indifference to mere hours; to hours only; to hours that had no importance in Sambir life, in the tired stagnation of empty days; when nothing mattered to him but the quality of guttah and the size of rattans; where there were no small hopes to be watched for; where to him there was nothing interesting, nothing ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Holland are familiar to all travellers, as lands lying below the level of the sea, once a mere morass, redeemed from that state, and brought into ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... their sorrow. Understand, I don't care the snap of my finger for beer, or to gamble; but these things will be expected of me now as in the old days when I knew no better, and I dare not assume a superior attitude toward people who have known me since I was found, a mere baby, half buried by the ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... for the sake of argument, that the Crown did demand this territory, and that the mere advice of an agent without powers was binding on Massachusetts, the fact would have no direct bearing upon the point under consideration. The relinquishment by Massachusetts of the whole of the territory ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... dress, the vegetable and the animal world; and the South Sea with its Zoophyte islands, were interdicted to me; and thus everything on which I would have gathered together and erected my hopes was condemned to be left a mere fragment, even in its very origin. O, my Adalbert! such is the reward for all the labours ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... was a small one,-a mere slit in the wall; but it let in a stream of zero air and I saw Hexford shiver as he stepped towards it and looked out. But I felt hot rather than cold, and when I instinctively put my hand to my forehead, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... involuntarily produced at our first meeting; and I was really sorry, as I have always retained a true esteem for him, though his singularities and affectation of affectation always struck me. But both those and his spirit of satire are mere quizziness 3 his mind is all ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... AEnone, had left him. Left him for a stripling of a slave—a mere creature from the public market. What was the loss of gold and jewels and quarries to this! And how could he ever hold up his head again, with this heavy shame upon it! For there could be no doubt;—alas! no. Had he not seen her press a kiss upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... vain called to the people to help me; they seemed to think that I was as mad as the bear, or that I was a mere bearish Englishman, who had lived so long amongst animals of that description that I very naturally took it for an old friend Larry continued to shout out to me for help, until Jacques Chacot seized his jaws, and, closing ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... cost almost, these were to be made subservient to the interests of England. So well was this plan carried out, that Ireland found itself being governed by a small English clique and its Houses of Parliament a mere tool in the clique's hands. The Parliament no longer represented the national will, since it did really nothing but ratify what the English party asked for, or what the King's ministers in England instructed should ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... mark of the dissolute manners of those times, that an audience, to whom matrimonial infidelity was nightly held out, not only as the most venial of trespasses, but as a matter of triumphant applause, were unable to brook any ridicule, upon the mere transitory connection formed betwixt the keeper and his mistress. Dryden had spared neither kind of union; and accordingly his opponents exclaimed, "That he lampooned the court, to oblige his friends in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... and her brood is a long one. "Mother Goose," writes Mr. Walter T. Field, "began her existence as the raconteuse of fairy tales, not as the nursery poetess. As La Mere Oye she told stories to French children more than two hundred and fifty years ago." According to the researches made by Mr. Field in the literature of Mother Goose, "the earliest date at which Mother Goose appears as the author of children's stories is 1667, when Charles Perrault, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... studied, that the old unauthenticated stories clash with the analogous tales current on better authority in our own day. But these ancient legends are given, not as evidence, but for three reasons: first, because of their merit as mere stories; next, because several of them are now perhaps for the first time offered with a critical discussion of their historical sources; lastly, because the old legends seem to show how the fancy of periods less critical than ours dealt with such facts as are now reported in a dull undramatic ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... an industrial life and citizenship be given at least a knowledge of an adequate physical standard? To allow the school child to deteriorate whether before or after going to work is only to waste potential citizenship. Citizens who use themselves up in the mere getting of a living have no surplus strength or interest for overcoming incompetence in civic business, or for achieving the highest aim of citizenship,—the art of self-government for the ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... wits she repeated, "I have nothing to forgive, but everything for which to thank you. My starting you in the life intellectual cannot compare with your finding me hanging by a mere thread from a tall tree top and restoring me to the life physical, without which my brilliant intellectual attainments would have been as nothing," she ended gaily, breaking the ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... to be recognized as a great and original composer for a machine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the mere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, wooden flutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins. He made ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... which had been found in the pocket of the murdered soldier. This letter, judging from the half-effaced heading at the top of the note-paper, must have been written in some cafe on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. To discover which precise cafe would be mere child's play; and indeed the fourth landlord to whom Lecoq exhibited the letter recognized the paper as his. But neither he, nor his wife, nor the young lady at the counter, nor the waiters, nor any of the customers present at the time, had ever once heard mention made ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... talking about mere manner. The matter and substance of the orator's speech must depend upon the intellectual quality of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... is to soar to a little height and then drop to the ground, with wings closed, singing as it descends. It invariably affects open plains. There are very few tracts of treeless land in India which are not tenanted by finch-larks. The nest is a mere pad of grass and feathers placed on the ground in a tussock of grass, beside a clod of earth, or in a depression, such as a hoof-print. The most expeditious way of finding nests of these birds in places where they are abundant is ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... galleries clap, Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap; But, wiser far than he, combustion fears, And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers; Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl, It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl, Who from his powder'd pate the intruder strikes, And, for mere malice, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... withdraw from further contracting with the government. Our profits for the year were dazzling, and the actual growth of our beeves in the Outlet was in itself a snug fortune, while the five herds bought at the eleventh hour cleared over one hundred thousand dollars, mere pin-money. I hurried home to find that fortune favored me personally, as the Texas and Pacific Railway had built west from Fort Worth during the summer as far as Weatherford, while the survey on westward was within easy striking distance of both my ranches. My wife was dazed and delighted ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... and mother come to New York City at once? Everett and I are to be married on Friday evening at eight o'clock, then take a night train for California. So my well-laid plans for a grand wedding the last of October will have to end in mere announcement cards. But I'll explain. You know I told you of those wonderful open-air performances of Greek plays that have been going on at a spot not far from Ravenwood, the motion picture studio where Everett ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... that, as a rule, savages do not throw away their lives recklessly. The moment it became evident that darkness would no longer serve them, those who were in the open retired to the woods, and potted at the windows of the ranch, but, as the openings from which the besieged fired were mere loop-holes made for the purpose of defence, they had little hope of hitting them at long range except by chance. Those of the besiegers who happened to be near the stockade took shelter behind the breast-work, and awaited ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... have," he blamed himself, in such seriousness as if it were the gravest matter he had risked, and not the mere touching of a blood-red welt ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... devoid of all human sympathy, feeds its vanity in a cold contempt and derision of everything, and solely occupies itself in aimless detraction? Why exhibit such a moral deformity, which could hardly be tolerated even in Tragedy, for the mere purpose of producing domestic discontent and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... explain further this fruitful principle of "limitation of space." Walter knew the fruit of it, even if he failed to recognize the origin. He was not worried so much by the mere coming home as by the punishment he expected to receive as soon as that New Testament should be missed. He had returned from his little excursion into the country with Glorioso, and now in Amsterdam again the ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... allusions, brought the color to his cheeks so quickly that Dr. Barbesol had nicknamed him "the thermometer of modesty." Was he as innocent as he looked? ill-natured people asked themselves. Was it the mere presentiment of unknown and shameful mysteries or else indignation at the relations ordained as the concomitant of love that so strongly affected the son of Virginie the greengrocer? The urchins of the neighborhood as they ran past the shop would fling disgusting remarks at ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Derryclare, in the Connemara district of Galway, and almost under the shadow of the Twelve Pins, there stands by the wayside a small rude monument of uncut stones, a mere heap, surmounted by a rough wooden cross. Such stone heaps as this are common on the west coast, and originate in the custom of making a family memorial, each member of the family, or, in some cases, each friend attending the funeral, contributing a stone to the rude monument. ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... accordingly by no means a great and splendid city. It was surrounded by what was called a mud wall—that is, a wall made of blocks of clay dried in the sun. The houses of the inhabitants were mere hovels, and even the palace of the king, and all the other public buildings, were of very frail construction; for all the architecture of the Monguls in those days took its character from the tent, which was the type and model, so to speak, of all ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Though I thank you heartily all the same; it would be a shame at my age to be a beggar. But can you think of an employment where I can make something?—what they offer me is so trifling. I have a mother and a brother—a mere child, sir—at home." ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... queer and shaken he had felt when he awoke. Now he came to think of it, he had been strangely jarred. A mere sound could scarcely have ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... looked at her new groom in a manner which expressed frank astonishment. Was he in earnest, or was it mere bravado? An idea came ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... to take a hand in the supper. She was hungry and could not bear that those dusky, dirty hands should set forth her food, so she went to work cheerfully, giving directions as if the Indian woman understood her, though she very soon discovered that all her talk was as mere babbling to the other, and she might as well hold her peace. The woman set a kettle of water over the fire, and Margaret forestalled her next movement by cutting some pork and putting it to cook in a ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... zeal and in union had a great advantage over the Protestants, so had they also an infinitely superior organization. In truth Protestantism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The Reformed Churches were mere national Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was utterly without any machinery for foreign operations. The Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for Scotland ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great Chartres rose of the west front was put there to please her, since it was to be always before her eyes, the most conspicuous object she would see from the high altar, and therefore the most carefully considered ornament in the whole church, outside the choir. The mere size proves the importance she gave it. The exterior diameter is nearly forty-four feet (13.36 metres). The nave of Chartres is, next perhaps to the nave of Angers, the widest of all Gothic naves; about fifty-three feet (16.31 metres); and the rose takes every inch it can get of this enormous span. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... with great suspicion on the legend which has come down to us. He will perhaps be inclined to regard the princes who are said to have founded the civil and religious institutions of Rome, the sons of Mars, and the husband of Egeria, as mere mythological personages, of the same class with Perseus and Ixion. As he draws nearer to the confines of authentic history, he will become less and less hard of belief. He will admit that the most important parts of the narrative ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... battle. He was engaged continually in riding up and down upon spirited horses, and shooting in all directions, backward and forward, and both to the right side and to the left, with his bow and arrow. Nor was all this exhibition of ardor on his part a mere useless display. It had great influence in awakening a corresponding ardor among the chieftains of the troops, and among the troops themselves. They felt proud of the spirit and energy which their young prince displayed, and ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... period is usually described as the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Church, a name which recalls the exile of the Jews from their native land. [5] The long absence of the popes from Rome lessened their power, and the suspicion that they were the mere vassals of the French crown seriously impaired the respect in which they had ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... incandescence, for future globes, with orbits contracting in proportion to condensation, its maximum of attraction. As material space is boundless, so the creation of globes is endless therein, through electric action, by producing gradual centres of material condensation, the mere ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ends, Hammurabi has in mind the patron god of Babylon when speaking of Bel.[150] It is this amalgamation of the old Bel with Marduk that marks, as we have seen, the transition to the use of Bel's name as a mere title of Marduk. Elsewhere, however, Hammurabi uses Bel to designate the old god. So when he calls himself the proclaimer of Anu and Bel[151] the association with Anu makes it impossible that Marduk should be meant. At times he appears to refer in the same inscription, now to the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... enjoyed with avidity the conversation of his chosen friends, he was not satisfied with intellectual epicureanism. He was resolved to make for himself a name, to leave behind him some not unworthy memorial. The history of the Reformation attracted him strongly. If an historian is a man of science, or a mere chronicler, then certainly Froude was not an historian. He made no claim to be impartial. He held that the Oxford Movement was not only endangering the National Church, but injuring the national character and corrupting ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... off, the judges were selected, and all other preliminaries were arranged. We rode our horses ourselves, and coming up to the score nicely we let them go. I saw from the start that it would be mere play to beat the Lieutenant's horse, and therefore I held Tall Bull in check, so that none could see how fast he really could run. I easily won the race, and pocketed a snug little sum of money. Of course everybody was now talking horse. Major North ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... natural reward of his own foolhardiness that Sut had acted. When the warriors were confident of their success, he discharged his rifle with marvelous quickness, and with a more important result than the mere tumbling ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... observed that, in spite of the present absence of all primitive remains (whether mere flints, or actual graves with bodies and relics) of the primeval population between the Fayyum and el-Kawamil, there is no proof that the primitive race of Upper Egypt was not coterminous and identical ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... some fairy mere Embosomed in the leafy screen, And streaked with tints of heaven's sheen, Where'er the water's surface clear Bore not the hues of verdant light From myriad boughs on mountain height, Or near the shadowed banks were seen ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... authors (Leo Diaconus, Johannes Lydus, Corippus, the new fragment of Dexippus, Eunapius, &c., discovered by Mai) which could not be comprised in the former collections; but the names of such editors as Bekker, the Dindorfs, &c., raised hopes of something more than the mere republication of the text, and the notes of former editors. Little, I regret to say, has been added of annotation, and in some cases, the old ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... steward of my own fortunes. I now have to confess to you that my dear wife thought to ease the family burden by an act of sin, lightly regarding the fraud as merely a family matter. The money she secured by unlawful means was, from her point of view, mere surplus wealth belonging to her father—wealth in which she had a reversionary interest. Indeed, we now know that she had more than reversionary interest—that ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... there is no charge for more height than the sixth story and the whole way has one more room. That is no mere change. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... defeat,—may stand as excuse for one more attempt to make plain its operations to the survivors of the one hundred and eighty thousand men who there bore arms, and to the few who harbor some interest in the subject as mere history. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... when he merely replied that the rector had called upon him. The truth was that some tentative advances had been made to him, and Mr. Euston had presented him to a few of the people in his flock; but beyond the point of mere politeness he had made no response, mainly from indifference, but to a degree because of a suspicion that his connection with Mr. Harum would not, to say the least, enhance his position in the minds ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... identify a far worse threat now—bushwhacker ... guerrilla, one of the jackals who hung on the fringe of both armies, looting, killing, and changing sides when it suited their purposes. Such a man was a murderer who would kill another for a pair of boots, a whole shirt, or the mere whim of ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... arc slashed at the trees a mere hundred yards behind. He screamed at the blast. "Damn you, Pete! Damn your robots! Damn, damn ... Oh, Peggy!" He ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... this imagining of men and women of gum-elastic, all but the skeleton, does not seem to me so simple a matter as it appears to have been regarded by M. de Gasparin. Let us take it for granted that his theory of a nervous fluid, which is the agent in table-moving,[57] is the true one. How is the mere disengaging of such a fluid to work a sudden transmutation of muscular and tendinous fibre and cellular tissue into a substance possessing the essential properties of a vegetable gum? And what becomes of the skin, ordinarily so delicate, so easily abraded or pierced, so readily injured? Is that transmuted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... darling of some wealthy house. Often, when she forgot what she was doing, Louie made surmises concerning Frarnie Maurice, wondering if she were the noble thing that Andrew needed to ennoble him—if she were really so strong and beautiful that the mere sight of her had killed all thought or memory of an older love; trying to believe her all that his guardian angel might wish his wife to be, and to acknowledge that she herself was so low and small and ignorant that she could only have injured him—to be convinced that it was neither ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... more than five years (one of them in traveling), to come back without having acquired a profession and settle down into a mere walking ledger! To have princely advantages at his command, and yet throw them madly to the winds and be content to plod along the road of mercantile life, without one spark of ambition, when his mental endowments ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... considered to be skill, nothing ever put him so completely out of temper as to be put in for it. This low gambling became a passion with him; but it was a passion that proved to be the fruitful cause of fights and quarrels without end. Being seldom either cool or sober, he was a mere dupe in the hands of his companions; but whether by fair play or foul, the moment he perceived that the game had gone against him, that moment he generally charged his opponents with dishonesty and fraud, and then commenced a fight. Many a time has he gone home, beaten ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the Company by his friend Clive: nominal: I made more outside; to scurrilous abuse in public and private: mere words; say fifty rupees; to threat to hang me: mere words again: say fifty rupees. Total ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, but I have been here fifteen years—fifteen years of watching rich society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got to be somewhere before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... hills of this kind in the neighbourhood of the accused are mentioned, where the devil, on Walpurgis Night and St. John's Eve, feasts, dances, and wantons with them, and where warlock priests administer Satanic sacraments, which are mere mockeries of those of Divine institution.] was their Blockula), they had talked of my daughter, and Satan himself had sworn to the sheriff that he should have her. For that he would show the old one (wherewith the villain meant God) what he could do, and that he would make ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... crystalline form of boron, and Woehler and Buff the hydrogen compounds of silicium and a lower oxide of the same element. This is by no means a full statement of Woehler's scientific work; it even does not mention all the discoveries which have had great influence on the theory of chemistry. The mere titles of the papers would fill several closely-printed pages. The journals of every year from 1820 to 1881 contain contributions from his pen, and even his minor publications are always interesting. As was truly remarked ten years ago, when it was proposed by a Fellow of the Royal Society ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... western Christianity against the invasion from the East which, except for these bars, would enter here as by a postern. At a hazard, my suspicion would fall on the iron doors that open inwards in the base of chimneys. We have been fondly credulous that there is nothing but ash inside and mere siftings from the fire above; and when, on an occasion, we reach in with a trowel for a scoop of this wood-ash for our roses, we laugh at ourselves for our scare of being nabbed. But some day if by way of experiment ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... me you were dead. At first I did not believe him, and then one of my old servants from Trevose came and said you had died there." She told me this in a trembling voice, as though she were frightened, told me in broken sentences, which revealed to me more than the mere words ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... social skill of Lady Gosstre, who was nevertheless narrow in her range; and on the capacities of mansions, on the secret of mixing people in society, and what to do with the women! A terrible problem, this latter one. Not terrible (to hostesses) at a mere rout or drum, or at a dance pure and simple, but terrible when you want good talk to circulate for then they are not, as a body, amused; and when they are not amused, you know, they are not inclined to be harmless; and in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... anything! And you say that you are not forcing me into this marriage! And you try to think, or to make me think, that it is all for the best, and all delightful and all easy, when you are sacrificing me and my youth and my life and my happiness to the mere idea of a better position in society—because poor papa was a sulphur merchant and bought a title which was only confirmed because he spent a million on a public charity—and every one knows it—and the Count of San Miniato comes of people who have been high and mighty gentlemen ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... whether this is not a mere matter for the craft: in reality the public is concerned. The letter written by one friend to another, gossiping about a play or a book or a picture, exposes the writer to an action for libel unless it can be protected on the ground of truth, privilege or fair comment; and casually ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own voice—with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it—served to ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... and to demand an explanation. I listened to whispered conversations in a salon where I was visiting, but could hear nothing; in order to do us better justice they waited until I had gone. I returned to Brigitte and told her that all these stories were mere nonsense; that it was foolish to notice them; that they could talk about us as much as they pleased and we ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... baptized the catechumens, long retained the names of the twelve first converts, engraved on a monument. King Olas was much pleased with the accounts he heard of the man of God, and many flocked from remote parts, out of mere curiosity to hear his doctrine, and to see him minister at the altar, admiring the rich ornaments of linen, and over them of silk, which he wore in celebrating the divine mysteries, with a mitre on his head, and a crosier, or pastoral ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... who sets up a number of costly volumes, like superfluous furniture, for mere ornament, and is far more careful to keep them from contracting a single spot of ink, than to use them, as the means of instructing his ignorance, and correcting his faults! Better a man without books, than books without ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... and nodded. He judged in a detached spirit—a mere spectator at a play—and he was forced to admit to himself that it was subtly done of his brother, and showed an astuteness in this thing, at least, of which he ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Mere statistics are untrustworthy; dates are even less dependable. But, to avoid hairsplitting, what we call "modern" English literature may be said to date from about 1885. A few writers who are decidedly "of the period" ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... only a mere government security, but is also specially mortgaged on the estates of the person who owes the annuity to the government, and who is, at any time, at liberty to redeem it at from twenty to twenty-five years purchase. Claims of this description, mortgaged on most desirable estates near the metropolis, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... She was a mere child and still under the tutelage of her despotic father when he—Taurus Antinor—tired of the enervating influences of decadent Rome, had obtained leave from the Emperor Tiberius to go to Syria as its governor. The imperator was glad enough to let him go. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Gales and Cloudy, with rain on the Latter part. At 10 departed this Life Jno. Rearden,* (* John Reading.) Boatswain's Mate; his Death was occasioned by the Boatswain out of mere good Nature giving him part of a Bottle of Rum last night, which it is supposed he drank all at once. He was found to be very much in Liquor last night, but as this was no more than what was common with him when he could get ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... indicates the watches! "How often have we heard our guides exclaim in the savannas of Venezuela," says Humboldt, "or in the deserts extending from Lima to Truxillo, 'Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend.'" Cuba is indeed a land of enchantment, where nature is beautiful and bountiful, and where mere existence is a luxury, but it requires the infusion of a sterner, a more self-reliant, self-denying and enterprising race to test its capabilities and to astonish the world with ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... time there had been over her a premonition of something unwonted of much import to her. The very dusty flowers and weeds by the way-side seemed to cry out to her as she passed them. They seemed no longer mere flowers and weeds, but hieroglyphics concerning her future, which she could ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the mere narrowness and crookedness of a road a defect within the meaning of the statutes. Towns and cities are only required to keep highways in suitable repair as they are located by the public authorities, and they have no right to go outside the limits defined by the location in ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... in, the boys found themselves at a spot in which the water that lapped the foot of the great Barrier washed—or would when the ice left it—at the very bases of the mountains, which here were no more than mere hills. They were cut into in all directions by deep gulches into which during the summer it was evident the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... large cities. Like the shepherds who left their flocks on the plains and went into Bethlehem to see the promised redemption, these people sought the centres of excitement. The large cities were overrun with them. The demand for unskilled labor was not great. From mere spectators they became idlers, helpless and offensive to industrious society. Ignorant of sanitary laws, imprudent in their daily living, changing from the pure air and plain diet of farm life to the poisonous atmosphere and rich, fateful food of the city, many fell victims to the sudden change ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... replied the captain. "Eight days would do it. But of course this is mere fine talk. You are not to look for any ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... were unreasonable: not that they were an exorbitant equivalent for what was given up in giving up Egypt, but because they were not feasible. Sir Sidney made Kleber sensible of this. Officers treating for a mere suspension of arms could not include topics of vast extent in their negotiation, such as the demand for the possession of the Venetian Islands, and the annulment of the Triple Alliance. But it was urgently necessary to settle two points immediately: ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Isle of Song. Her ancient history passed unceasingly into the realm of artistic representation; the history of one generation became the poetry of the next, until the whole island was illuminated and coloured by the poetry of the bards. Productions of mere fancy and imagination these songs are not, though fancy and imagination may have coloured and shaped all their subject-matter, but the names are names of men and women who once lived and died in Ireland, and over whom their people raised the swelling rath and reared the rocky cromlech. ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... the term "knowingly" applies, not to the fact of voting, but to the fact of want of right. Any other interpretation of the language would be absurd. We can not conceive of a case where a party could vote without knowledge of the fact of voting, and to apply the term "knowingly" to the mere act of voting, would make nonsense of the statute. This word was inserted as defining the essence of the offense, and it limits the criminality to cases where the voting is not only without right, but where it is done willfully, with a knowledge ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... opportunity of learning from you, and you with that of instructing me. Accordingly, I particularly wish to know whether you think there exist such things as phantoms, possessing an appearance peculiar to themselves, and a certain supernatural power, or that mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my part, I am led to believe in their existence, especially by what I hear happened to Curtius Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and obscure, he was a hanger-on in the suite of the Governor of Africa. While pacing the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east. While we are reading these sentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... pleases her," so the Vicomte said. "You should have seen her looks when your friend M. Jones praised Miss Newcome! She ground her teeth with fury. Tiens ce petit sournois de Kiou! He always spoke of her as a mere sac d'argent that he was about to marry—an ingot of the cite—une fille de Lord Maire. Have all English bankers such pearls of daughters? If the Vicomtesse de Florac had but quitted the earth, dont elle fait l'ornement—I would present myself to the charmante meess ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the shanty of Caleb Clark, a mere squatter now on a farm once his own. As the boys drew near, a tall, round-shouldered man with a long white beard was seen carrying in ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... were but different ways of saying the same thing. She was an only child who had travelled a great deal with her parents, had found her interests in their pursuits, and had grown backward in school work. The little girls with whom she was expected to associate seemed to her mere children. The elder girls did not want her friendship, and snubbed her. I prescribed a change to a small boarding-school with only a few girls, where age differences would not matter so much, and where she could make friends with girls older than ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... when Jimmy came in after the paper was out he found Miss Larrabee in tears, and the foreman leaning over the counter laughing so that he couldn't speak. It wasn't Jimmy's fault. The foreman had done it—by the mere transposition of a little brass rule separating the society news from Jimmy's story with the Kipling verse at the head of it. The rule tacked the Kipling verse onto Miss Larrabee's article announcing the engagement. Here is the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... and in this declaration it gives us marked pleasure to add we are confident that the convention has but spoken the intelligent and patriotic sentiment of the country. Ever inaccessible to the low influences which often control the mere partisan, governed alone by an honest opinion of constitutional obligations and rights and of the duty of looking solely to the true interests, safety, and honor of the nation, such a class is incapable of resorting to any bait for popularity at the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... brought him within a few feet of them, but they continued to lounge indifferently on the musket box upon which they had been sitting, giving a mere nod as recognition of his presence, and showing no ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... an increased rate of speed has to be maintained, which is, of course, tantamount to a further reduction of the payment. In fact, their position upon the Red Sea line is now this, that they would be better without the mails than with them, as the mere expense of the increased quantity of fuel necessary to realize the increased speed which they have undertaken to maintain, will swallow up the whole of the Government subvention. To increase the speed of a vessel from 8 ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... in September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the down-sized Yugoslavia, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... crimes, Lucy moved along, leaning on the arm of the gallant earl, and languidly smiling, with her heart far away, at his endeavours to amuse her. There was something interesting in the mere contrast of the pair; so touching seemed the beauty of the young girl, with her delicate cheek, maiden form, drooping eyelid, and quiet simplicity of air, in comparison to the worldly countenance and artificial grace of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... struck the lad was the sound of the waterfall which he had heard so distinctly when stretched upon the earth. It was somewhere near him—so close, even, that he fancied he could feel the dampness from it, but the soft, rippling character showed that it did not amount to much. It was a mere cascade, the water of which entered and passed out the cavern by some means which the boy ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... even some to whom he had been mis-represented, upon the account of his education, were convinced of his worth and knowledge in sacred things, as perceiving him to be a man of round judgment, delivering himself plainly and powerfully; insomuch that many, who came mere spectators for novelty sake rather than to edify and be improved, went away well satisfied with what they heard, and wondered, as the Jews did at the Apostles, viz.: Whence this man should have these things; perhaps not considering that God more immediately assists those ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... impossibility, and like every other maiden, thou canst not experience the future till it comes. Hast thou, then, no faith in me at all? Out, out, upon the love that cannot trust! O Aranyani, surely thy love is very small, and a mere imitation and counterfeit of love: for as a rule, true love is tested by its power of putting faith in what it loves. See, then, thou unbeliever, I will try to bring the future before thy very eyes, and as I did before, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... the faculties of the mind there is none so little fatiguing to exercise as mere wonder; and, for my own sake, I try always to wonder at things without the least critical reservation. I therefore, in the sense of deglutition, bolted this prison at once, though subsequent experiences led me to look with grave indigestion upon ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... fiction, who, without extraneous advantage, and by mere virtue of caste-consciousness, and caste-eminence, and caste-exclusiveness, doth bestride this ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the far-off consequences come back upon you. And you say to yourself, 'Oh, Heaven, if I had fifty lives this crime would reappear, as Pelion upon Ossa!' So was it with my affection. Left to natural peace, I might have conquered it: Verschmerzeon. To charm it down by the mere suffering of grief, to hush it by endurance, that was the natural policy—that was the natural process. But behold! A new form of sorrow arises, and the two multiply together. And the worm which was beginning to fall asleep is ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... who always tried to cheat, and who clutched her tiny winnings with precisely the same greediness shown by the Monte Carlo female gamblers. Or the hour brought a stroll with the French danseuse and her poodle, and a conversation about the mere trivialities of life, which a year or two, or even a few months ago, Bernardine would have condemned as beneath contempt, but, which were now taking their rightful place in her new standard of importances. ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... by aspiring to my cousin's hand," answered Harry. "Were he a man of family I should say nothing, of course; but he is, sir, a mere adventurer. His father is a common boatswain—a warrant officer—not a gentleman even by courtesy, and his mother, for what I know to the contrary, might have been a bum-boat woman, and his relations, if he had any, are probably ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... rose at six, and was called to the queen soon after seven. Only Mrs. Schwellenberg was with her, and again she made me a mere looker-on; and the obligation I felt to her sent me somewhat lighter hearted ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... humility, in order to confuse him whom he addresses with the very height of his isolated elevation. He exaggerates the awkwardness of his manner and the rudeness of his speech, as a means of covering his real thoughts under the appearance of mere uncouthness; yet, despite all his self-command, there is something in his air, certain fierce expressions which betray him to the close observer, who discerns in his sardonic smile, and in the marked emphasis with which he leans on his long staff, the hopes that ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... an entirely different matter. This young Cinq-Mars, my friend, will be a mere puppet. He will think of nothing but his ruff and his shoulder-knots; his handsome figure assures me of this. I know that he is gentle and weak; it was for this reason I preferred him to his elder brother. He will do ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... have observed that the mere knowing that other people have been tried as we have been tried is a consolation to us, and that we are relieved by the assurance that our sufferings are not special and peculiar, but common to us with many others. Death has always been a terror ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... a mere boy when he began to write, turning from the first to the metrical form of expression and remaining faithful to it in most of his subsequent efforts. His poems and essays have been printed in almost all the leading magazines. So far he has published five volumes ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... apostolic Father, he here edits and annotates letters which have long since been discredited by scholars of all classes, and which he himself confesses to be apocryphal. The Acts of Martyrdom of Ignatius—which he also acknowledges to be a mere bundle of fables—he treats with the same tender regard. Nor is this all. He gives these acts, or large portions of them, in Latin and Greek, as well as in Coptic and Syriac; and annotates them in addition. He supplies, likewise, English translations. It may be argued, that the publication ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... unworthy lord! Whom mere despite of heart could so far please And love of havoc (for with such disease Fame taxes him) that he could send ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... well up in the firing trench. Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... rather mercenary: perhaps that is too strong a word; but, in short, a mere man of the world. Might it not be that Grace Carden would wish him to learn your attachment either from your lips or from her own, and not detect it in an impetuous young man's conduct on the platform of a railway, at the tender ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... tableau! The murdered Alice Webster, with gory temple, long, damp tresses clinging to her form, in striking pose, advancing and receding, mutely gesticulating such fearful prophetic menace, was too real for chimerical conjecture or mere coincidence. How came that door closed just after the tableau? That declamation! Such pertinent lines and ghostly utterances, so exactly imitating ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... suitable for composition purposes, and this material is of the best because the ideas are sure to be your own. The first requisite of successful composition is to have thoughts of your own. The expressing of ideas that are not your own is mere copy work, and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... there is," said Lady Binks, in a tone which implied something more than mere assent to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the fruitless hammering with mere fists subsided. In that time Hank Butts had raced forward, and now was back again with a prize that he had caught up from a locker near the motors. This was nothing more nor less than the hitching weight that Hank had once made very nearly famous, as described in the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle toward him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when be tried to grasp at it it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... IV left no heir, his brother William, a man of sixty-five, now came to the throne. He had passed most of his life on shipboard, having been placed in the navy when a mere lad. He was somewhat rough in his manner, and cared nothing for the ceremony and etiquette that were so dear to both George III and George IV. His faults, however, were on the surface. He was frank, hearty, and a friend to the people, to whom he was familiarly ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Carew, who was produced and swore that he had never before seen the boy, that he was not among the gang of burglars who had robbed Blenkins's store and dwelling-house, and that he had had no part in helping to conceal the plunder. In opposition to this, the mere finding of a scrap of Barney's coat close to the Conscripts' Hollow seemed now of slight consequence, although it could ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... which had served in the East, the men were not acclimated to the Mississippi valley, and in the bayous and marshes about Vicksburg had suffered greatly. Malarial fevers ate out their vitality, and even those who reported for duty dragged themselves about, the mere shadows of what they had been. General Parke reported their arrival and was then obliged to go upon sick-leave himself. General Welsh, who had distinguished himself at Antietam, reported that his division must recuperate for a few weeks before ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... jackanapes who wouldn't come when you called "Grub!" and wouldn't wait a second till you'd felt about in the dimness for your gun. Hideous to lie so close to a man who snored, and who'd deprived you of your 44 Marlin. Although it meant life, the Boy grudged the mere animal heat that he gave and that he took. Full of grudging, he dropped asleep. But the waking spirit followed him into his dreams. An ugly picture painted itself upon the dark, and struggling against the vision, he half awoke. With the first returning consciousness came the oppression ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... God, sees the world in a new light. This great Universe is no longer a mere machine, wound up and set going six thousand or sixty millions years ago, and left to run on afterward forever, by virtue of a law of mechanics created at the beginning, without further care or consideration on the part ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... administration of Government really rests with the Chief Secretary in recent times, although it was not so before the advent of Mr. Foster. Men like Lord Naas, Sir Robert Peel the younger, and Mr. Chichester Fortescue—afterwards Lord Carlingford—were mere official cyphers, but after Mr. Gladstone's 1880 ministry this has never been ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... palpable that she had specially dressed herself up to coax that order out of me. Till that moment, I had never viewed Bimala's adornment as a thing apart from herself. But today the elaborate manner in which she had done up her hair, in the English fashion, made it appear a mere decoration. That which before had the mystery of her personality about it, and was priceless to me, was now ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... touch," he says, "a string of much delicacy—the political character of the Review. It appears to me that this should be of a liberal and enlarged nature, resting upon principles—indulgent and conciliatory as far as possible upon mere party questions, but stern in detecting and exposing all attempts to sap our constitutional fabric. Religion is another slippery station; here also I would endeavour to be as impartial as the subject will admit of.... The truth is, there is policy, as well as morality, in keeping our swords clear ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It is a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest, best, and noblest life that is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... giants were got together, very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incontestable superiority of the very tallest of the party; and so I have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stubble was of a dirty yellow; the ground, parched, cracked, and dry, of a cheerless brown. By the roadside the dust lay thick and grey, and, on either hand, stretching on toward the horizon, losing itself in a mere smudge in the distance, ran the illimitable parallels of the wire fence. And that was all; that and the burnt-out blue of the sky and the steady ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... bullet-holes, spattered all over. "Hurrah for Grant!" cried a stripling shrill; Three urchins joined him with a will, And some of taller stature cheered. Meantime a Copperhead passed; he sneered. "Win or lose," he pausing said, "Caps fly the same; all boys, mere boys; Any thing to make a noise. Like to see the list of the dead; These 'craven Southerners' hold out; Ay, ay, they'll give you many a bout" "We'll beat in the end, sir" Firmly said one in staid ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... spoken, the vision vanished, but the bridal gift which I still held in my hand shewed me that it had not been a mere dream. It was of gold, but to me more precious than the most prized of all metals. Unto you I will shew it when I am permitted to see your faces, and to converse with you freely. Till that earnestly wished-for time, I ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... until He left Vraja to meet Kamsa, we find Him ever chasing away every form of evil that came within the limits of His abode. We are told that when He had left Vraja and stood in the tournament field of Kamsa with His brother, His brother and Himself were mere boys, in the tender delicate bodies of youths. After the whole of the Lila was over They were still children, when They went forth to fight. From that time onwards He met, one after another, the great incarnations of evil and crushed them with His ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... he replies, "arose from mere stubbornness; the devil inspired them with this constancy you speak of, just as he prompted Judas to hang himself. These heretics are not real but counterfeit martyrs (perfidiae martyres). But while I may approve the zeal ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... 1503 the hostile forces came face to face again, Gonsalvo being forced by the exigencies of the campaign to encamp in a deplorable situation, a region of swamp, which had been converted by the incessant rains into a mere quagmire. The French occupied higher ground and were much more comfortably situated. But Gonsalvo refused to move. He was playing his old waiting game, knowing that the French dared not attack his intrenched camp, and that time would work ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... ancestors, after their settlement in this island. One of the four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity, and was called the "Irmin-street." The name Arminius is, of course, the mere Latinized form of "Herman," the name by which the hero and the deity were known by every man of Low German blood, on either side of the German Sea. It means, etymologically, the "War-man," the "man of hosts." No other explanation of the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... all of them reference to the throne he is soon to ascend, without which they would be the mere ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... fortunate that there was no special significance to Myrtle in the name of Clement Lindsay. Since the adventure which had brought these two young persons together, and, after coming so near a disaster, had ended in a mere humiliation and disappointment, and but for Master Gridley's discreet kindness might have led to foolish scandal, Myrtle had never referred to it in any way. Nobody really knew what her plans had been except Olive and Cyprian, who had observed a very kind silence about the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for their share of the land, had parted with them long since, either to their own officers or to the trafficers in such bonds, who had sprang up by hundreds, and who obtained them from the needy soldiers often for a mere trifle. Sharp-sighted speculators like Dr. Petty, by whom the well-known Survey of Ireland was made, acquired immense tracts of land at little or no outlay. Of those soldiers, too, who did receive grants of land many left after a while. Others, despite ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... of mere laws in favour of the subjects, in the case of the administration of them falling into the hands of persons hostile to the spirit in which they had been provided, had been so fatally evinced by the general history of England, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game now forever discredited, of the balance of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... you, sir," replied the captain, "for the people out this way are nearly all venturesome sailors, and for any number of years have put to sea in the most crazy of bamboo craft, and set sail to land where they could, some of them even going in mere canoes. So you see we may come upon people in the most unexpected places. But I have several islands in my mind's eye, between here and the east end of New Guinea, where you gentlemen may ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... will rise. His private character is altogether suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has got. If you examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features, because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor—mere effects of a great spirit upon a weak body—mere accidents of a great career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues, and he practises them all—secretly—always secretly. You all know him so well that there is no need for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... haste to abase himself. "It is mere snobbery our making so much of London. A kind of despicable cant, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... the space ship, and insulated well; and the thin atmosphere of this wild world could cut a blast of sound to a mere fraction of its volume! But the walls were admitting a fragmental echo of what must have been a reverberating voice. They were quivering to the ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... luggage has unfortunately been lost. His portmanteau, pauvre petit, was so small. A poor widower, I did what I could. I am but a mere man, madame." ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... was mere lightness of speech. Oliver's inclusion of him in his remark shook him to the depths of his sensitive nature. The man who despises the petty feelings and frailties of mankind is doomed to remain in awful ignorance of that which there is of ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... was laid before Congress, who immediately passed the acts necessary on our part to secure to France the commercial advantages conceded to her in the compact. The treaty had previously been solemnly ratified by the King of the French in terms which are certainly not mere matters of form, and of which the translation is as follows: WE, approving the above convention in all and each of the dispositions which are contained in it, do declare, by ourselves as well as by our heirs and successors, that it is ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... aback, stopped dead. The five canoas, and one of the periaguas, got under her stern, and so plied her with shot that her decks were like shambles, running with blood and brains, five minutes after she came to the wind. Meanwhile Richard Sawkins ran his canoa—which was a mere sieve of cedar wood, owing to the broadside—alongside the second periagua, and took her steering oar. He ordered his men to give way heartily, for the third Spanish ship, under old Don Peralta, was now bearing down to relieve the admiral. Before she got near enough to blow the ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... leading, take up the measure, Turn with the tune again,—clarinets clear Answer their pleading,—harps full of pleasure Sprinkle their silver like light on the mere. Semiquaver notes, Merry little motes, Tangled in the haze Of the lamp's golden rays, Quiver everywhere In the air, Like a spray,— Till the fuller stream of the might of the tune, Gliding like a dream in the light of the moon, Bears them all away, and away, ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... recited in the claim, or containing some of them, and mechanical equivalents for the rest of them. Were it not for this liberal doctrine, the pioneer inventor could gather little fruit from his patent, for the patent could be avoided, perhaps, by the mere substitution of a wedge for the screw or lever called for by the claim. The court, having ascertained from the prior art that the inventor is entitled to invoke the doctrine of equivalents, will proceed to ascertain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... to tell you, sir—I was a mere automaton, a machine, in the hands of others. A new publication was sent to me, with a private mark from my employer, directing the quantum of praise or censure which it was to incur. If the former were allotted ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason,—this man is to be called the principal offender; while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human understanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd; so shocking to the soul; so ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... belligerent soul), agonize—and disappear.... The world is full of incomprehensible things.... Last of all, on our way back, I discovered near the park gate—saw it before She did—one of those invincible beasts called hedge-hogs, the mere sight of which brings us dogs to bay. What madness to realize that an animal is hiding under that pin-cushion and laughing at me, and that I can do nothing, nothing! I implored her—She can do nearly everything—to pluck him for me. She began by turning him over with ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... still showing plenty of visible gold on the face of the slopes. Yet to these alleged Jews this gold was of no account. Imagine it; as Quick said, such a topsy-turvy state of things was enough to make a mere Christian feel cold down the back and go to bed thinking that the world must ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... I lay my hand upon the part affected; at other times I breathe into the eye, ear, or mouth of the patient. Then, again, on other occasions I am able to banish the disease by a mere word or gesture." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... in conclusion, permit me to say under the guise of fiction, I have essayed to weave a story which I hope will subserve a deeper purpose than the mere amusement of the hour, that it will quicken and invigorate human hearts and not fail to impart a lesson of ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... right to throw suspicion on Bartlett Cloud by mentioning the small occurrence on the football field so long before? It was inconceivable that Cloud would go to such a length in mere spite. And yet—Remsen ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a church and piously pursue his devotions. There are a few curious stories in which amatory matters play only a subordinate part or none at all, though it must be confessed that this last is a rare thing. Some are mere anecdote plays on words (sometimes pretty free, and then generally told by Nomer-fide), or quasi-historical, such as that already noticed of the generosity of Francis to a traitor, or deal with remarkable trials and crimes, or merely ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... are not for the better," replied Mr. Touchwood, eagerly. "I left your peasantry as poor as rats indeed, but honest and industrious, enduring their lot in this world with firmness, and looking forward to the next with hope—Now they are mere eye-servants—looking at their watches, forsooth, every ten minutes, lest they should work for their master half an instant after loosing-time—And then, instead of studying the Bible on the work days, to kittle the clergymen with doubtful points of controversy ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to leave it, Tom," he said slowly, his eyes roaming over the bright, little room. "I don't like to leave it even to hobnob with crowned heads, and to take tea with dukes, earls, princes and kings, to say nothing of mere lords. My world is right here; and it's all the world I want, Tom. It's bounded on the south by the sound, on the north by the property of the municipality, on the east and west by somebody else's worlds, and above by eternity." ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... and can be easily introduced by dropping a few plants about the borders at the time of the ripening of the seeds. In many localities, it is found growing in spontaneous abundance; and one of the best and most healthful of salads may be obtained for the mere labor of gathering. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... much higher degree of skill to paint two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas Lawrence, so that nobody who had ever seen them could for a moment hesitate to assign each picture to its original. Here the mere caricaturist would be quite at fault. He would find in neither face anything on which he could lay hold for the purpose of making a distinction. Two ample bald foreheads, two regular profiles, two full faces of the same oval form, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... much for Lou. What with lonesomeness for her brother and anger at the mere thought of anyone suspecting him, she gave way to a ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... only Number 3. A mere closet, gentlemen," responded the landlord in a pleasant voice. "To be sure, we sometimes use it as a sleeping-room when we are hard pushed. Jake, the clerk you saw below, used it last night. But it's not on our regular list. Do you want a peep ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... we are taught by the subject, as thus considered, that the mere sense of duty is not Christianity. If this is all that a man is possessed of, he is not prepared for the day of judgment, and the future life. For the sense of duty, alone and by itself, causes misery in a soul that ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... and the witnesses, one after another, who went to the box in an effort to swear his life away. He went again through the agony of the new freedom—the freedom of a man imprisoned by stronger things than mere bars and cells of steel—when first he had gone into the world to strive to fight back to the position he had occupied before the pall of accusation had descended upon him, and to fight seemingly in vain. Friends had vanished, a father had gone to his grave, believing almost ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... The stillness awed him. There had not been a shell all night. He put his head up over the parapet and waited. Nobody fired at him. He felt that the night was waiting for him. He heard voices going along the trench: some one said it was a black night: the voices died away. A mere phrase; the night wasn't black at all, it was grey. Dick Cheeser was staring at it, and the night was staring back at him, and seemed to be threatening him; it was grey, grey as an old cat that they used to have at home, and as artful. Yes, thought Dick ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... whole baronage is well expressed in the story of how Earl Warenne, unsheathing a rusty sword, declared to the commissioners: "Here is my warrant. My ancestors won their lands with the sword. With my sword I will defend them against all usurpers." Nor was this mere boasting. The return of the king's officers tells us that Warenne would not say of whom, or by what services, he held his Yorkshire stronghold of Conisborough, and that his bailiffs refused them ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... "Mere evasion, baron!" replied Joseph, angrily. "Even if you had not written the words in that letter, I should still ask of you, who it is that ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... way he had come. Once in the road, he glanced back at the house, but the whole place seemed to be in pitchy darkness. There was nothing for it now but to make his way to the nearest police station, and get all the assistance possible. There was no trouble at the station across the Common, the mere mention of Field's name being sufficient. A few minutes later half a dozen constables in silent shoes were on their way to the scene of action. There was to be no fuss and bother; they decided to enter quietly and unostentatiously by the larder window, which ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... fluids. As in other forms of oesophageal obstruction, the difficulty of swallowing varies quite remarkably from time to time, presumably from variations in the degree of congestion of the mucous membrane and of spasm of the muscular coat, but also from mere nervousness, the patient having greater difficulty when in a hurry, as in a railway refreshment room, or embarrassed by ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... looks as if the tales, or tales from which they had been derived, had been originally believed as true, and, having ceased to be thus received, had continued to be repeated, in a shape more or less altered, for mere amusement. If we may venture to affirm this and to generalize from such cases, this is the way ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... a kinder purpose than they imagined. She wanted no more of Burt's forced allegiance, and was much too good-natured to permit mere pique to cause unhappiness to others. "Let Gertrude win him if she cares for him," was her thought, "and if she can't hold him his case is hopeless." She could not resist the temptation, however, to tease ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... she felt she had steadily lost, rather than gained, ground; and the flash of anger that had colored her cheeks, lit twin beacons in her eyes, which she resolutely fought down until they faded to mere gleams of resentment and determination. But she forgot to control her lips; and they are the truest indices to a woman's character and temperament; and Kirkwood did not overlook the circumstance that their specious ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Telemachus answered, "Father, I have always heard of your renown both in the field and in council, but the task you talk of is a very great one: I am awed at the mere thought of it; two men cannot stand against many and brave ones. There are not ten suitors only, nor twice ten, but ten many times over; you shall learn their number at once. There are fifty-two chosen youths from Dulichium, and they have ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... white labor could be substituted. But it is not so with the more Southern States. I would like to see a Louisiana sun shining upon your New England States for a while—how quickly you would fit out an expedition for Africa. It is the mere accident of climate that makes your States ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... discord in God's providence. Then, in the early years of the fifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy plastered the gate of the chatelet, as you now see it, over the sunny thirteenth-century entrance called Belle Chaise, which had treated mere military construction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will know what a chatelet is when you meet another; it frowns in a spirit quite alien to the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; it forebodes wars of religion; dissolution ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... if an American, having captured a title and worn it for five years, would renounce it for mere good looks and brains; in other words, if Lady Carnath, formerly Miss Edith Ingoldsby, of Washington, and still earlier—before her father had found leisure to crown a triumphant financial career with the patriotic labors ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... of Nations will be a natural, nameless league of human hearts. The broad sympathies and discerning insight needed for the healing of earthly woes cannot flow from a mere intellectual consideration of man's diversities, but from knowledge of man's sole unity-his kinship with God. Toward realization of the world's highest ideal-peace through brotherhood-may yoga, the science of personal contact with the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... others if they could not. Always she thought of it now when she looked at Jamie. She saw again the agony on his face, the crimson stain on the palms of his hands. Her heart ached for him, and because it did so ache, his mere presence had come to be a pain to her. Remorsefully she confessed to herself that she did not like to be with Jamie now, nor to talk with him—but that did not mean that she was not often with him. She was with ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... end to all our fighting," said Detricand aloud at last. "But he is right. It is now a mere waste of life. I know my course. . . . Even to-night," he added, "it shall ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... keep back your scoldings now, to please YOURSELF by pleasing your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... immediately before our arrival in Bruges, leaving the whole of his property to me, and appointing me sole executor. I have never understood why Alresca did this, and I have always thought that it was a mere kind caprice ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... of this, nothing at all remains for me to be done ('And not exert myself, and contribute thereto this nothing, my all, which remained for me to do.'—Ozell.). In my opinion, little honour is due to such as are mere lookers-on, liberal of their eyes, and of their crowns, and hide their silver; scratching their head with one finger like grumbling puppies, gaping at the flies like tithe calves; clapping down their ears like Arcadian asses at the melody of musicians, who ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... dispatched envoys to the Swedish camp, offering to surrender important fortresses to Oxenstiern, and to join him against the emperor. It was an atrocious act of treason, and so marvellous in its aspect, that Oxenstiern regarded it as mere duplicity on the part of Wallenstein, intended to lead him into a trap. He therefore dismissed the envoy, rejecting the offer. His officers now abandoned him, and Gallas, who was appointed as his successor, took command of ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... otherwise. These sewing-women must have been deprived of work, or the consumers of clothing must have immediately begun to purchase and wear double or treble as much as they had been accustomed to. I do not doubt that the consumption increased from the mere fact of increased cheapness. I believe it is an invariable law of trade, that consumption increases as price diminishes. If silks were to fall to a shilling a yard, everybody would turn away from cotton shirts. As it was, shirts were made without collars, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... great Museum. The journey up the Nile was postponed until our return. It was a pleasant break and gave Bickley, a most omnivorous reader who was well acquainted with Egyptian history and theology, the opportunity of trying to prove to Bastin that Christianity was a mere development of the ancient Egyptian faith. The arguments that ensued may be imagined. It never seemed to occur to either of them that all faiths may be and indeed probably are progressive; in short, different rays of light thrown ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... despised. At the last he retreated to Catana without having achieved anything, save that he demolished Hyocara, a humble town of the barbarians, out of which the story goes that Lais the courtesan, yet a mere girl, was sold amongst the other prisoners, and carried thence ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... is the hall of their island home two years later. This sturdy log-house is no mere extension of the hut we have seen in process of erection, but has been built a mile or less to the west of it, on higher ground and near a stream. When the master chose this site, the others thought that all he expected from the stream was a sufficiency of drinking water. ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... good generalized summary," Dr. Harnosh of Hosh grudged, unwilling to give a mere layman too much credit. He dipped a spoon into a tobacco humidor, dusted the tobacco lightly with dried zerfa, and rammed it into his pipe. "You must understand that our modern Statisticalists are the intellectual heirs of those ancient materialistic thinkers who denied the possibility ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... truly beautiful or venerable; we reverence the religious sentiment in all its forms, the family and whatever else has its foundation either in human nature or Divine Providence. The work we are engaged in is not destruction, but true conservation; it is not a mere resolution, but, as we are assured, a necessary step in the progress which no one can be blind enough to think ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... fact, he was the most perfect type of the artist. Nothing escaped his mind. From life and from books he drew his material, each time reshaping it with a master-hand. Creation is a divine prerogative. Re-creation, infinitely more wonderful than mere calling into existence, is the prerogative of the poet. Shakespeare took his colours from many palettes. That is why he is so great, and why his work is incredibly greater than he. It alone explains his unique achievement. Who was he? What education did he have, what opportunities? ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... that the motive-power was missing, and that unless something deeper than mere desire of achievement stirred him, he would probably never attain. He needed a goal that should make everything else in the world pale before it, and something that seemed almost as life and death to hang on his success. But how get it for him? If he loved, and was bidden wait until he had ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... "A mere nothing; but I am so gentle. D'Artagnan reckons his duels by hundreds. It is very true he is a little too hard and sharp—I have often ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a noxious drug'—that is the terminology which describes the offence—will be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... 'A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no swine to keep, and no husks to share with them? Eh?' pursued the client, rocking one leg over the other, and searching the ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... was the daughter of Sophie-Victoire Delaborde milliner, the grandchild of a certain bird-seller on the Quai des Oiseaux, who used to keep a public-house, and she was the great-granddaughter of Mere Cloquart. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... life if anything not unpleasant HAPPENED between me and Charles. Nothing happens. Something happens in my relationship to my dog. I pat him and he is pleased; he barks for joy when I go out. I cannot live with anybody with whom I am always on exactly the same even terms—no rising, no falling, mere stagnation. I am dead, but it is death without its sleep and peace. Fool, fool that I was! I cannot go on. What shall I do? If Charles drank I might cure or tolerate him; if he went after another woman I might win him back. I can lay ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... perhaps, she had come at last without asking, and as a consequence Luc returned to the world, a mere bundle of bones. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of an empty world came back forcibly upon him,—a world as empty as a hollow shell! Houses there were around him, and streets, and a noble edifice consecrated to the worship of God,—nevertheless there was a sense of absolute desertion in and through all. Was not the Cathedral itself the mere husk of a religion? The seed had dropped out and sunk into the soil,—"among thorns" and "stony places" indeed,—and some "by the wayside" to be devoured by birds of prey. Darker and heavier grew the cloud of depression on the Cardinal's soul,—and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... attach us all to you in these days than before, when you were perhaps more conscious of being liked. Liking is not loving, Howard. There is no pain about liking; there is infinite pain about loving; that is because it is life, and not mere existence." ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... upon the fundamental principles which have now been discussed as merely the foundation for his life work, as the entrance portal to his cosmology. Posterity has judged otherwise; it finds his chief work in that which he considered a mere preparation for it. The start from doubt, the self-certitude of the thinking ego, the rational criterion of certitude, the question of the origin of ideas, the concept of substance, the essential distinction between conscious activity and corporeal being, and, also, the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... arrested?" Charles Rambert asked, the mere sound of the name seeming to wake all his former enthusiasm on the subject ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the Golden Bull was not correct, and that it was proclaimed in 1336, during the reign of the Emperor Charles IV. 'That is true, Sire,' replied the Prince Primate I was mistaken; but how does it happen that your Majesty is so well acquainted with these matters?'—'When I was a mere sub-lieutenant in the artillery, said Napoleon,—at this beginning, there was on the part of the guests a marked movement of interest, and he continued, smiling,—when I had the honor to be simply sub-lieutenant in the artillery I remained three years ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... He would stand in front of his house, jingling his money—our money—in his pockets, and watch us depart with the greatest serenity, whether we went east or west. I thought him at one time the most genial of Bonifaces (for it was his profession to wear a smile), and at another a mere mocker of human woe. When I grew up, I perceived ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... which gave the place its name, "Willow Lake." The house had formerly been owned by two maiden women with much sentiment, the sisters of the present owner. The place was "Willow Lake." The pond was the "Willow Mere," in defiance of the name of the place. The little rustic bridge was the "Bridge of Sighs," for some obscure reason, perhaps buried in the sentimental past of the sisters. And the little hollow which was profusely sprinkled with violets ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and is not a mere educational task. Anybody could teach boys trades and give them an elementary education. Such tasks have been done since the beginning of civilization. But this task had to be done with the rawest ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... him enter the carriage and drive away, and thirteen years passed before I looked upon him again. Of course the reported illness was a mere ruse to lull his apprehensions. His father received him with a hurricane of reproaches, threats, maledictions. He taunted, jeered him with having been hoodwinked, cajoled, outwitted by a 'wily old washwoman,' ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Even at this age, when she was, as one might suppose, a mere slip of a girl, she was deeply conscious of herself, her sex, her significance, her possible social import. Armed with a fair skin, a few freckles, an almost too high color at times, strange, deep, night-blue, cat-like eyes, a long nose, a rather pleasant mouth, perfect teeth, and a really good ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Ascanius, yea, and all that manner held. Then from that council to the tomb that duke of men did pass; Mid many thousands, he the heart of all that concourse was. There, worshipping, on earth he pours in such wise as was good Two cups of mere wine, two of milk, and two of holy blood, And scatters purple flowers around; and then such words he said: "Hail, holy father! hail once more! hail, ashes visited 80 Once more for nought! hail, father-shade and spirit sweet in vain! Forbid with me that Italy to seek, that fated plain, With me Ausonian ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the grant of a constitutional charter. The king, Frederick, convoked the Estates, to whom he, on the 15th of March, 1815, solemnly delivered the newly enacted constitution. But here, as elsewhere, was the government inclined to grant a mere illusory boon. The Estates rejected the constitution, without reference to its contents, simply owing to the formal reason of its being bestowed by the prince and being consequently binding on one side alone, instead of being ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... himself would have charge of the food and the wine and therefore that no powder could be mixed with the food, no drug with the wine. As to getting him drunk, the duke couldn't hope to do that, and he laughed at the mere thought of it. Then an idea came ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... guzzlers and gormandizers ate and drank. They forgot all about their homes, and their wives and children, and all about Ulysses, and everything else, except this banquet, at which they wanted to keep feasting forever. But at length they began to give over, from mere incapacity ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dingy wilderness; but when you had discovered him in some remote recess he would take pleasure in exhibiting his treasures. He would take down his excellent copy of Eliot's Indian Bible, a book so faithfully made in every respect that I question if, as a mere piece of book-making, it could now be matched in the United States. He lived to see this rarity command in New York the price of fourteen hundred and fifty dollars. He would show you forty-one works, in the original editions, of Increase and Cotton Mather, the most ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... journalist, and poet. His one universally known poem is "Abou Ben Adhem." The secret of its appeal is no doubt the emphasis placed on the idea that a person's attitude toward his fellows is more important than mere professions. The line "Write me as one that loves his fellow men" is on Hunt's tomb in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... love," says he, "you are twice blessed being not only witty yourself but a cause of wit in others; was that bit of Primitive Lee with which M'Clare regaled us really not from the hand of the mistress, or was it a mere pastiche?" ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... told Lawson it was an impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never have been allowed out of his studio; he was not less contemptuous when the two heads were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck too, but his picture was refused. Mrs. Otter sent a blameless Portrait de ma Mere, accomplished and second-rate; and was hung in a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of delight in either power, that delight of the sensitive appetite is accompanied by a bodily transmutation, whereas delight of the intellectual appetite is nothing but the mere movement of the will. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 6) that "desire and joy are nothing else but a volition of consent ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... undressing, and fixed his eyes alternately on the door and his watch. Perhaps the unwonted seriousness of his attitude struck him, but a sudden sense of the preposterousness of the whole situation, of his solemnly ridiculous acceptance of a series of mere coincidences as a foregone conclusion, overcame him, and he laughed. But in the same breath ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... young man in business to-day is nothing more nor less than a plodder,—a mere automaton. He is at his office at eight or nine o'clock in the morning; is faithful in the duties he performs; goes to luncheon at twelve, gets back at one; takes up whatever he is told to do until five, and then goes home. ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... badly, Leonore thought, for meeting Dorothy the next day at a lawn party, after the mere greetings, he said: ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Mercadet Madame, these are mere petty details; don't bother about the means to an end. You, a little time ago, were trying to control your servants by kindness, but it is necessary to command and compel them, and to do it ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride, that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just because man can measure himself, his littleness, his brevity of existence, with this growth out of the earth, that he is more personally impressed by it than he might be by the mere variation in the contour of the globe which is called a mountain. The imagination makes a plausible effort to comprehend it, and is foiled. No; clearly it is not mere size that impresses one; it is the dignity, the character in the tree, the authority ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... taste to refuse to remove his hat when other heads were bared, and little better to refuse to pledge in company the name of Pitt, because he preferred Washington, cannot admit of a doubt; but that he deserved to be written down traitor, for mere matters of whim or caprice, or to be turned out of the unenvied situation of "gauging auld wives' barrels," because he thought there were some stains on the white robe of the constitution, seems a sort of tyranny new in the history of oppression. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... they belong, they form a connected narrative of the development of architecture, in which the history and progress of the art can be authentically traced. Care has been taken to popularize the theme as much as possible, to make the descriptions plain and vivid, to render the text free from mere technicalities, and to convey a correct and truthful impression of the various ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... influence has been dominant until the present day, or at least until the advent of Islam. In another large area comprising China, Japan, Korea, and Annam it appears as a layer superimposed on Chinese culture, yet not a mere veneer. In these regions Chinese ethics, literature and art form the major part of intellectual life and have an outward and visible sign in the Chinese written characters which have not been ousted by an Indian alphabet[3]. But in all, especially in Japan, the influence of Buddhism ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... what it means, Olivetta?" she concluded in a benumbed voice. "It means that, except for less than a thousand which I have on hand,—a mere nothing,—I am penniless until more dividends are due—perhaps months! I cannot go to Europe! I ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... third phase (a common European currency) of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), but Denmark has decided not to join 12 other EU members in the euro; even so, the Danish Krone remains pegged to the euro. Given the sluggish state of the European economy, growth in 2003 was a mere 0.3%. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... before Kazan had looked upon a similar scene when he had returned into the north from Broken Tooth's old home. It had not interested him then. But a quick and thrilling change swept through him now. The beavers had ceased to be mere water animals, uneatable and with an odor that displeased him. They were invaders—and enemies. His fangs bared silently. His crest stiffened like the hair of a brush, and the muscles of his forelegs and shoulders stood out like whipcords. Not a sound ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... "Are people beasts—mere cattle of the fields to be trampled upon by a horse?" she gasped, as soon as she had ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... spoke up Helen, with all of her mother's bluntness. "Dal always was love-sick over Daren, when she was a mere kid. She never got over ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... he constantly calls them to their faces; he insists, as Carlyle says, that "Cash Payment is the only nexus between man and man." Even the relation between himself and his wife is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, mere "Cash Payment." Money determines the worth of the man; he is "worth ten thousand pounds." He who has money is of "the better sort of people," is "influential," and what he does counts for something in his social circle. The huckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... my best to get Ellador's point of view, and naturally I tried to give her mine. Of course, what we, as men, wanted to make them see was that there were other, and as we proudly said "higher," uses in this relation than what Terry called "mere parentage." In the highest terms I knew I tried ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... misanthrope and satirist—to-morrow, learning, with implicit obedience, to fold a shawl, as a Cavaliere—the same man who had so obstinately refused to surrender, either to friendly remonstrance or public outcry, a single line of Don Juan, at the mere request of a gentle Donna agreed to cease it altogether; nor would venture to resume this task (though the chief darling of his muse) till, with some difficulty, he had obtained leave from the same ascendant quarter. Who, indeed, is there that, without some previous clue to his transformations, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... my dear madam," he said. "Let me make my defence for what, otherwise, you might consider mere boyish folly. I am passionately fond of athletic sports of all kinds, and indulge in them as a pleasure. No real man is without some sort of pleasure, more or less harmless. Nay, even your fanatic is a man who makes ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of Racine as mere tours de force; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. For, as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. But the notion of 'a mere tour de force' ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the day's heat, what with the thieving Indians, the sand-storms and the cats, our nights by no means gave us the refreshment needed by our worn-out systems. By the latter part of the summer, I was so exhausted by the heat and the various difficulties of living, that I had become a mere ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... asserted that we have two sorts of poetry so entirely separate and distinct the one from the other, that the one is purely native and untinged with foreign influence, while the other springs from mere imitation. The two sorts are not so utterly contrasted as that. Even the secondary poetry is not without originality. On the other hand the primary poetry betrays here and there the Latin culture and the Christian sentiment; and yet if ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... government's ability to restrict the content of speech in a designated public forum by restricting the purpose of the designated public forum that it creates is not unlimited. Cf. Legal Servs. Corp. v. Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533, 547 (2001) ("Congress cannot recast a condition on funding as a mere definition of its program in every case, lest the First Amendment be reduced to a simple semantic exercise."). As Justice Kennedy has explained: If Government has a freer hand to draw content-based distinctions in limiting a forum than in excluding ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... which it had so long waited, strong and thorough in proportion to her nature, not rapid in receiving impressions, but steadfast and uncompromising in retaining and working on them when once accepted, a nature that Alick Keith had discerned and valued amid its worst errors far more than mere attractiveness, of which his sister had perhaps made him weary and distrustful. Nor, indeed, under the force of the present influences, was attractiveness wanting, and she suited Alick's peculiarities far better than many a more charming person would have done, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the previous one on Sabbath days. Nor does it even matter whether Atticus meant Addison, or Sappho Lady Mary. The satire is equally good, whether its objects are mere names or realities. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... as these to be brought before the infant mind: let the feelings of the heart, as well as the powers of the understanding, be called into exercise; let babes have "the pure milk of the Word" before "the strong meat;" let as little stress as possible be laid on "the mere letter," and as much as possible on "the spirit" of "the truth;" let it be shewn that piety is not merely rational, but in the highest degree practicable; let this be done with diligence, faith, and prayer, and I hesitate ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... will find I have borrowed several incidents as well as names from Ashmole, and the more early authorities; but my first acquaintance with the history was through the more pleasing medium of verse. There is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers has a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in more advanced life. At this season of immature taste, the author was greatly delighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... fainting fit, in sleep, or in death, the perfect instrument of the physical body becomes useless when the hand of the master workman drops it. The body is only his tool, whereby he contacts the things in a universe which is not himself; and the moment he leaves it, it is a mere heap of matter, doomed to decay, to destruction. But just as he has that body for knowledge here, so he has other bodies for knowledge otherwhere, and in every world he can know, he who is the Knower, and every world is made up of objects of knowledge, which ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... the distant headland was cut off from view, Sarah Libbie would go through the little ceremony and after it was over return to her knitting with a quiet gladness, although the presence of the other factor in the drama was a mere matter of conjecture. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... views of Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-in-law in the ward, whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous romance, had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host; but he looked upon Helen as a mere child, and naturally left her to the countess. The dim sense of her equivocal position, of her comparative humbleness of birth and fortunes, oppressed and pained her; and even her gratitude to Harley was made burdensome by a sentiment of helplessness. The grateful ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distinguishable. This voice outlives the rest at every strophe, and contrives to add a supplemental antiphonic phrase that recalls in turn the favourite melodies of the opera. Camillo hears it, but takes it as a delusion of impassioned memory and a mere theme for the recurring melodious utterance of his regrets. Michiella hears it. She chimes with the third notes of Camillo's solo to inform us of her suspicions that they have a serpent among them. Leonardo hears it. The trio is formed. Count Orso, without ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... In the mere sensuous arts of painting and sculpture the Germans are poor, in the ennobling arts of literature and music they are great; and this fact provides a key to ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... layman—a citizen who has not experienced the test of action and danger in battle—to understand or appreciate our feelings that night. It is hard to describe them, to paint with mere words the intense seriousness and gravity of the situation. You can imagine a dark night at sea—a night so black that the senses feel oppressed. You can add to these a thrill of impending danger and a vision of capture by a cruel enemy and the thought that the very next second will sound the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... too, better than she'd ever liked any man, perhaps, except her first love—the handsomest Irish boy you ever saw, whom she couldn't think of marrying because he'd no family and no money. But she was only seventeen then and Jerry Taylor was a mere subaltern. He died in India of enteric when Di was eighteen; and before Captain March came on the scene she had liked and flirted with at ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... but that could not be called a beneficial incident; that seemed to Sigismund and the council a most small and insignificant one. And it kindled Bohemia, and kindled Rhinoceros Ziska, into never-imagined flame of vengeance; brought mere disaster, disgrace, and defeat on defeat to Sigismund, and kept his hands full for the rest of his life, however small he had thought it. As for the sublime four years' deliberations and debates of this Sanhedrim of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... administrative work. The real measure of his energy can only be found when all these are considered together. Without this there can be no conception of the limitations imposed upon him in his chosen life's work. The mere amount of his research is greatly magnified by the smallness of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... statements. In Bridger's case, however, there was ground for doubt, inasmuch as he had a reputation for exaggeration, and the facts that he related about the wonders of the Yellowstone were considered mere fabrications. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... poured out for himself a glass of water with a trembling hand; then hastily swallowing it, went to sit down at the first vacant place, and this was, by mere chance, placed next to the seat on which poor Mercedes had fallen half fainting, when released from the warm and affectionate embrace of old Dantes. Instinctively Fernand drew ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... them. And so, if I always imagined the woman I loved as in a setting of whatever places I most longed, at the time, to visit; if in my secret longings it was she who attracted me to them, who opened to me the gate of an unknown world, that was not by the mere hazard of a simple association of thoughts; no, it was because my dreams of travel and of love were only moments—which I isolate artificially to-day as though I were cutting sections, at different ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... equally right in principle, it is mere matter of opinion which we prefer. If the one be demonstratively better than the other, that difference directs our choice; but if one of them should be so absolutely false as not to have a right to existence, the matter settles itself at once; because a negative proved ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... naturally looked at the commercial end of Wonota's improvement. Nor did Ruth overlook the chance the Osage maid had of becoming a money-earning star in the moving picture firmament. But she desired to help the girl to something better than mere money. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... important circumstance, that all the sections of the Act, except four, belong to the latter division; that is, they refer to mere matters of administration. The four sections in question are the seventh, the fourteenth, the sixteenth, and the ninety-seventh. Of these, the seventh, the fourteenth, and the ninety-seventh deal ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... led you, field, or line, or staff, Showed they were fit for more than mere parade; Their motto: "Victory or an epitaph," And well they ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... consisting merely of faint dots. Modern poetry, especially lyric, with its wealth and interplay of rhyme, affords a fine opportunity for the printer to mediate between the poet and his public, and this he has been able to do by mere indention and leading, without resorting to distinction of type. The reader of a sonnet or ballad printed without these two aids to the eye is robbed of his rightful clues to the construction of the verse. It seems hardly possible that a poem could have been ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... refrain from lamenting that in his literary researches he has too often found amongst the writings of those, most illustrious for their genius and imagination, the least of that which is calculated to meet the approbation of the Christian, or even of the mere Moralist; and in conclusion he will take the liberty of addressing to those who may feel within them the stirrings of a mind capable of mighty things, the sublime words, slightly modified, of an Arabian sage and poet: O man, though ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... works, "Life is a Dream" may be regarded as the most universal in its theme. It seeks to teach a lesson that may be learned from the philosophers and religious thinkers of many ages—that the world of our senses is a mere shadow, and that the only reality is to be found in the invisible and eternal. The story which forms its basis is Oriental in origin, and in the form of the legend of "Barlaam and Josaphat" was familiar ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... singing in their peculiar manner; it was a most wild and abandoned and barbaric kind of music, if it could really be called music at all. It consisted chiefly of shouting and yelling in different scales, as if the singers were overflowing with joy at the mere idea of being alive. I would often hear them singing, or yelling like children, in the deep recesses of the forest. In fact the contentment and happiness of these little people was quite extraordinary, and I had a great affection ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... they started back up the side gorge to where it joined the greater, and then began to descend again by what proved to be a very precipitous but direct way down toward the sea, water soon after making its appearance in a mere thread, which suddenly leaped down from a crack in the side and found its way to the bottom: while as they were hurried on by their more nimble captors, the stream kept on increasing in volume by the help of the many tiny tributaries which ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... hostile meeting I found a much more formidable adversary in the shape of the governor himself, who was stamping furiously up and down the verandah of my apartment. He received me with, 'What the d—- l do you mean, young sir, by making love to my daughter? you are a mere boy.' (I was twenty and did not relish his remark.) 'What means ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... university in Ireland during the fourteen and fifteenth centuries[23] proved a failure, students who wished to obtain a degree were obliged to go to Oxford, from which various attempts were made to exclude "the mere Irish" by legislation,[24] to Cambridge, Paris, or some of the other great schools on the Continent. If one may judge from the large number of clerics who are mentioned in the papal documents as having obtained a degree, a fair proportion of clerics during the fifteenth century both from ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... sort exists in Bontoc. The nearest approach to it is the exchange of property, as carabaos or hogs, between two pueblos at the time a peace is made between them — at which time the one sueing for peace makes by far the larger payment, the other payment being mere form. This transaction, as it occurs in Bontoc, is a recognition of submission and of inferiority, and is, as well, a guarantee of a certain amount of protection. However, such payments are not made at all regularly and do not stand as true tributes, though in time they might ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... there in its cream. And on the other hand John spends five chapters (xiii.-xvii.), almost a fifth of the whole, on a single evening. He devotes seven chapters (xiii.-xix.), almost a third of all, on the events of twenty-four hours. John is controlled not by mere proportion of space or quantity, but by the finer proportions ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... Latin and Greek quotations from the heathens and fathers, those thunderbolts of scholastic warfare, dwindled into mere pop-gun weapons before the sword of the Spirit, which puts all such rabble to utter rout. Never was the homely proverb of Cobbler Howe more fully exemplified, than in this triumphant answer to the subtilities of a man deeply schooled in all human acquirements, by an unlettered ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the folk-lore of the red men is found to be extremely interesting and instructive.[57] Their religion consisted mainly in a devout belief in witchcraft. No well-defined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine men" were mere conjurers, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... reporting what he had seen, whether his report was of value or not. Muller had simply uttered aloud the thought that came into his mind, a habit of his which years of official training had not yet succeeded in breaking. It was annoying to himself sometimes, for these half-formed thoughts were mere instinct—they were the workings of his own genius that made him catch a suspicion of the truth long before his conscious mind could reason it out or appreciate its value. But that sort of thing was not popular in official ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... as Brasile, log-wood, &c. is a mistake: Upon recension therefore of these exotics, I cannot but encourage the more frequent raising the rest of those semper-vivents, especially such as are fittest for the shrubby parts, and furniture of our groves, mere gardens of pleasure, which none but the ever-green become. To these we might add (not for their verdure only) other more rare exotics, styrax arbor, and terebynth, noting by the way, that we have ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... 7th of October Jackson himself reached the rendezvous. He was still a mere wreck, thin as a shadow, tottering with weakness, and needing to be lifted bodily to his horse. His arm was closely bound and in a sling. His wounds were so sensitive that the least jar or wrench gave him agony. His stomach was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... shortly after; and likewise that of his son, Diadumenia'nus, whom he took as partner in the empire. 25. Macri'nus was fifty-three years old when he entered upon the government. He was of obscure parentage; some say by birth a Moor, who, by the mere gradation of office, being made first prefect of the praetorian bands, was now, by treason and accident, called ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... outside is not one of mere inconvenience. It never rains. How can it when the water from the oceans cannot evaporate to form clouds? Little by little the rivers begin to run dry—there is no rain to feed them. No fog blows in from the sea; no clouds cool the sun's glare; ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... her wealth, {she points at} the tombs of her ancestors. Sparta was famed;[49] great Mycenae flourished; so, too, the citadel of Cecrops, and that of Amphion. {Now} Sparta is a contemptible spot; lofty Mycenae is laid low. What now is Thebes, the city of Oedipus, but a {mere} story? What remains of Athens, the city of Pandion, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... her," thought Everychild. He could just see her now: a mere blur in the shadows far ahead of him. He could no longer hear the sound of her feet. Then quite ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... the casualness that he could assume. "How does it strike you?" And to himself: "This'll make her see I'm not a mere lunatic. This'll give her ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... hunger, and weariness, and the strange creatures which crawled out from the crevices in the rocks, and ran along the hot sand. He had no time to examine them. At length he found that he was rising on the side of another bank, and what had seemed mere shrubs in the distance, now assumed the appearance of a group of tall cocoa-nut trees. "Should there be no water below, I shall find what will be almost as refreshing," thought Paul, as he hurried on, almost forgetting his fatigue in his eagerness to reach the spot. The sand, however, ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... person to call him 'Domine,' sir. It was not till many ages after that men would have the word 'you,' as though they were double, instead of 'thou' employed in speaking to them; and usurped the flattering titles of lordship, of eminence, and of holiness, which mere worms bestow on other worms by assuring them that they are with a most profound respect, and an infamous falsehood, their most obedient humble servants. It is to secure ourselves more strongly from such a shameless traffic of lies and flattery, that we 'thee' and 'thou' a king with the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... upstairs in triumph. I enter the bedroom like no mere humdrum son, but after the manner of the Glasgow waiter. I must say more about him. He had been my mother's one waiter, the only manservant she ever came in contact with, and they had met in a Glasgow hotel which she was eager to see, having heard of the monstrous things, and conceived ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... that many of these persons possess something more than mere tenderness or sympathy. Not a few of them are truly conscientious in what may be called the larger concerns of life—especially in external religion. They not only feel the force of conscience, but they obey her voice in some things. They would not fail to attend ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... mud, and now dismantled, had a wretched appearance;[5] and the town which is contained within them is, though very populous, a mere collection of wretched hovels; the only respectable habitation within is the palace, which consists of three detached buildings—one for the chief, another for the females of his family, and the third for his court of justice, I could not ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Aunt Rachel, speaking warmly, "to get hurt at a mere word. It's a little hard that people can't open their ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... might always remain in which the theory was still as hypothetical as at first—so long as it was not actually disproved (which it is scarcely in the nature of the case that it should ever be) it would deserve to be retained, for its mere convenience in bringing a large body of phaenomena under a general conception. In a resume of the general principles of the positive method at the end of the work, he claims, in express terms, an unlimited license ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... of introduction is always sent, never left in person. Calls at the theater or in opera boxes are mere social amenities, and are not accepted as formal. A man enters an opera box, stands, and bows. His hostess will turn around and greet him. He will then, if there is a vacant chair, take one, and sit and talk a little while, leaving on the arrival ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... thought it might come to that. I heard the alarm beating all night to assemble the National Guard; and I am told that some volunteers have marched out to support Marmot. But they are a mere handful: what can ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... leather clothes—walk'd much at night, solitary, deeply troubled ("the inward divine teaching of the Lord")—sometimes goes among the ecclesiastical gatherings of the great professors, and though a mere youth bears bold testimony—goes to and fro disputing—(must have had great personality)—heard the voice of the Lord speaking articulately to him, as he walk'd in the fields—feels resistless commands not to be explain'd, but follow'd, to abstain from taking off his hat, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... it were through mists of love and wonder, whom men could not forget, but for centuries continued to celebrate in countless songs and stories. They were not literary phantoms, but actual existences; imaginary and fictitious characters, mere creatures of idle fancy, do not live and flourish so in the world's memory. And as to the gigantic stature and superhuman prowess and achievements of those antique heroes, it must not be forgotten that all art magnifies, as if in obedience to some strong law; and so, even ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... reflection, resolved, and when she had resolved, she believed it done. By a candle she had by her, to read a little novel she had brought, she surveyed him often, as curiously as Psyche did her Cupid, and though he slept like a mere mortal, he appeared as charming to her eyes as the winged god himself; and it is believed she wished he would awake and find by her curiosity, her sex: for this I know, she durst no longer trust herself a-bed ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... far country were liars, every one. Their mere howdy-do was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were undertakers. To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made no conscientious diagnostic of your case, but answered at random, and usually ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... to-morrow shall be as grave as an elegy. I change with the weather, I don't know why. You see, I am capable of anything, according to the moment. There are days when I would like to kill people,—not animals, I would never kill animals,—but people, yes, and other days when I weep at a mere thing. A lot of different ideas pass through my head. It depends, too, a good deal on how I get up. Every morning, on waking, I can tell just what I shall be in the evening. Perhaps it is our dreams that settle it ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... very desirable that the pirates should not be frightened away before the Charles Town fleet could reach them, the vessels of the latter were made to look as much like mere merchantmen as possible. Their cannon were covered, and the greater part of the crews was kept below, out of sight. Thus the four ships came sailing down the bay, and early in the morning made their appearance in the sight of the pirates. When the ship and ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... had again seated himself at the edge of his veranda. The summer sun grew unpleasantly warm. The morning-glories on their trellises had begun to droop. A little later they would hang, wretched and limp, mere faded scraps of dissolution. Overhead the temple bell struck seven. Kano shuddered at this foreign marking out of hours. A melancholy, intense as had been his former ecstacy, began to enfold his spirit. Perhaps he had waited too long for the simple breakfast; perhaps the recent ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... went on driving piles, stringing cables, binding chains, although, now that the inspiration of Orde's combative spirit was withdrawn the labours seemed useless, futile, a mere filling in of the time before the supreme moment when they would be called upon to pay the sacrifice their persistence and loyalty had proffered for the altar of self-respect and the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... for me to answer your question, Paul, but I understand enough of both French and German to know that his broken English is a mere sham—a mixture, and a bad one too, of what no German or Frenchman would use—so it's not likely to be the sort of bad English that a Swede would speak. Moreover, I have caught him once or twice using English words ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... Antonia in a slow voice; "I partly grasp your meaning. The pawning of the jewel is to me a mere nothing. I have had chequered times when the tea-pot and even the coffee-pot have been sold for the sake of a quarter of a cake of cobalt or of rose-madder, but then the tea-pot and the coffee-pot and the hair which grew on my head were undoubtedly my own. I cannot ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... that in San Francisco, but whatever form, the underlying principle of a proper division of functions must be embodied. The Affirmative must admit that proper correlation of departments has brought about municipal success, as far as mere organization can do so, yet, notwithstanding that, after fifteen years of misrule under the commission form in Sacramento the freeholders by unanimous choice again adopted distinct legislative and administrative ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... stretches blue to the eastward there appears a distant canoe, a mere speck, no bigger than a bird far ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the Dubois house, and on her way home she saw the Emperor approaching. She had slipped behind a statue as quickly as possible, and he could scarcely have recognised her, for the gloaming had already merged into partial darkness; but the mere thought of having been so near him quickened ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to be affected, moved, by this leave-taking, but without success. In regard to Japan, as with the little men and women who inhabit it, there is something decidedly wanting; pleasant enough as a mere pastime, it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... barbarous manner cut off his toes, feet, legs, and thighs. The holy martyr held out his limbs and joints, one after another, with invincible patience and courage, repeating these words, "Lord, teach me thy wisdom:" for the tyrants had forgot to cut out his tongue. After so many martyrdoms, his body lay a mere trunk weltering in its own blood. The executioners themselves, as well as the multitude, were moved to tears and admiration at this spectacle, and at such an heroic patience. But Arcadius, with a joyful countenance, surveying his scattered limbs ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... time the student has slowly worked his way to this chapter, he will no doubt—should he be apt, and have an artistic mind—have achieved things beyond the mere drudgery of the profession. I take it that, being interested in his work, he will not have rested content with mounting—even in a perfect manner—his animals at rest, but will have "had a shy" at animals in action, or engaged in some characteristic ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... overlook the offence of the soldier, in deeper indignation at the conduct of the infinitely more culpable officer; but not one word did he credit of a statement, which he assumed to have been got up by the prisoner with the mere view of shielding himself from punishment: and when to these suspicions of his fidelity was attached the fact of the introduction of his alarming visitor, it must be confessed his motives for indulging in this ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the Almighty he says nothing), and that, being the creator and preserver of all things, he is 'of so exalted a nature that it is idle to imagine the feeble supplications of wretched mortals can reverse the decrees and change the purpose of unerring Wisdom.' The new moon prayers are mere matters of tradition; 'our fathers did it before us.' 'Such is the blindness of unassisted nature,' says Park, who is not satirising, in Swift's manner, the prayers of Presbyterians ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... proceed in Great Britain, but he was ignorant of the object Government had in view by his mission; and though large sums were promised if successful, and if he gave satisfaction by his zeal and discretion, the money advanced him was a mere trifle, and barely sufficient to keep him from want. He was, therefore, really distressed, when he fixed upon some necessitous and greedy emigrants for his instruments to play on the credulity of the English Ministers ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... known but too well elsewhere, but unexpected here. But not the watching of the often tragic meeting of these great fatalities of inherited spirit and habit only: for equally fascinating almost has been the watching of the elaboration by this double-natured period of things of little weight, mere trifles of artistic material bequeathed to it by one or by the other of its spiritual parents. The charm for me—a charm sometimes pleasurable, but sometimes also painful, like the imperious necessity which we sometimes feel to ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... bighorn heads, and elk and stag antlers on the other walls supplied racks for an ample variety of rifles, polished by familiar use and kept, through love of trusty friends, in good order. Trophies of the hunt, disposed sometimes in effective and sometimes in mere man fashion, flanked the racks and showed the tastes of the owner of the isolated habitation; for few trails led within miles of ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth, pub. about 1692, first in Latin and afterwards in English, a work which, in absence of all scientific knowledge of the earth's structure, was necessarily a mere speculative cosmogony. It is written, however, with much eloquence. Some of the views expressed in another work, Archaeolgiae Philosophicae, were, however, so unacceptable to contemporary theologians that he had to resign his ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... narrowing of the activity of each worker, which would make his work constantly more simple, and more monotonous, and himself more and more dependent on the regular co- operation of an increasing number of other persons over whom he had no direct control. Without the growth of modern machinery, mere subdivision of labour would constantly make for the slavery and the intellectual degradation of labour. Independently of the mighty and ever-new applications of mechanical forces, this process of subdivision or specialization would take place, though at a slower pace. How ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... them, so that they had filled the city with their armed retainers. Fathers and mothers, masters and dames, sisters and fellow prentices, found their doors closely guarded, and could only look with tearful, anxious eyes, at the processions of poor youths, many of them mere children, who were driven from each of the jails to the Guildhall. There when all collected the entire number amounted to two hundred and seventy-eight, though a certain proportion of these were grown men, priests, wherrymen and beggars, who ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... I was engaged once; you know girls instinctively engage themselves to some one whom they fancy; they imagine themselves in love, and it is a pleasant fallacy. My engagement might have gone on forever, if he had contented himself with a mere engagement. He was a young army officer stationed miles and miles away. We wrote volumes of letters to each other—and they were clever letters; it was rather like a seaside novelette, our love affair. He was lonely, or restless, or something, and pressed his case. Then Mama and Gene—those ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... what was that life to others?—a thing full of warm beneficence, of active uses, of hardy powers fitted to noble ends! In paralysing that life as it was to others, there may be sin wider and darker than the mere infidelity to love. And now do you dare to ask, 'Can I again be the Caroline ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... even on the ground, most of them being lost. "Before and during the breeding-season the females, sometimes accompanied by the males, are seen continually haunting and examining the domed nests of the Dendrocolaptidae. This does not seem like a mere freak of curiosity, but their persistence in their investigations is precisely like that of birds that habitually make choice of such breeding-places. It is surprising that they never do actually lay in such nests, except when the side or dome has been accidentally ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Nobody dies of mere grief; Of this Antonia was an instance. Aided by her youth and healthy constitution, She shook off the malady which her Mother's death had occasioned; But it was not so easy to remove the disease of her mind. Her ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... finally refused to work. Threats of compelling them to work were made. The men answered by gathering up their guns and starting for the woods, in the rear. At this point General Warren came down and spoke to the men in a reasonable manner. The mere fact of his coming among them had a good effect on the men. He urged the necessity of the work, and told them that if provisions were not on hand by a given time, he would consent to their ceasing from work. The men then went to ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... with a roof. Vitruvius writes of it as frequented by merchants, who would find in it shelter and quiet for the transaction of their business. Legal tribunals were also set up in it, though it is a mistake to suppose the basilica a mere law court. The magistrates who presided over these tribunals had sometimes platforms, curved or rectangular in plan, provided as part of the permanent fittings ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... twenty pages or so of the sixth volume (nominally iii. 2) afford a good example of the fashion in which, as may be observed more fully below, even an analysis of the Grand Cyrus, though a great advance on mere general description of it, must be still (unless it be itself intolerably voluminous) insufficient. Not very much actually "happens"; but if you simply skip, you miss a fresh illustration of magnanimity ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the formalities of the Constitution had not been complied with, and this were not a mere pretext, how easy would it have been to have passed a new act in conformity with the constitutional formalities, assuming the debt, or providing for the issue of new bonds to be delivered to the holders on the return of those alleged to be informal. But the truth is, this alleged unconstitutionality ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with the exception of one old woman, who, sooner than again be led into slavery, dashed herself to pieces from the summit of the mountain. In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom: in a poor negress it is mere brutal obstinacy. We continued riding for some hours. For the few last miles the road was intricate, and it passed through a desert waste of marshes and lagoons. The scene by the dimmed light of the moon was most desolate. A few fireflies flitted by us; and the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... us enjoy a story of battle and adventure. Some of us delight in the anxiety and excitement with which we watch the various strange predicaments, hairbreadth escapes, and ingenious contrivances that are presented to us; and the mere imaginary dread of the dangers thus depicted, stirs our feelings and makes us feel eager and full ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a start and found that the fire had crept along a jutting branch and had reached his fingers. He sprang to his feet. The fire lay in smouldering embers, for the sticks were mere brushwood. A terrible fear seized him. His life depended upon the maintaining of this fire. Carefully he assembled the embers and nursed them into bright flame. At all costs he must keep awake. A further excursion into the woods for fuel thoroughly roused him from his sleep. Soon ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... he assented wretchedly. "And, oh, this is hard, sir. I am wholly innocent of the charge, and yet of course you have no right to take my mere word. This, in the face of a desperate expedition that I want to join more than I ever wanted anything in my ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... as seen apart from the horrible counterbalancing never-to-be-written rest of me—by the side of which, could it be written and put before you, my note would sink to its proper and relative place, and become a mere 'thank you' for your good opinion—which I assure you is far too generous—for I really believe you to be my superior in many respects, and feel uncomfortable till you see that, too—since I hope for your sympathy and assistance, and 'frankness is everything in such ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... summers were formerly hotter than they are now, bringing as a proof the Vineyards and English-made wine of other days. This was Parkinson's idea. "Our yeares in these times do not fall out to be so kindly and hot to ripen the Grape to make any good wine as formerly they have done." But this is a mere assertion, and I believe it not to be true. I have little doubt that quite as good wine could now be made in England as ever was made, and wine is still made every year in many old-fashioned farmhouses. But foreign wines can now be produced much better and much ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... borders of a neighboring river, twenty-five of the Indians had been busied ten days in preparing for their annual deer-hunt. They planted posts interlaced with boughs in two straight converging lines, each extending mere than half a mile through forests and swamps. At the angle where they met was made a strong enclosure like a pound. At dawn of day the hunters spread themselves through the woods, and advanced with shouts, clattering of sticks, and howlings like those of wolves, driving the deer before them into ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... wind began to dash loose objects about, tearing limbs off trees and hurling them aloft as if they were mere splinters. A cocoanut crashed down, striking the ground near Piang; another fell, and yet another. Then the rain came in torrents. It fell unevenly as if poured by mighty giants from huge buckets. The ground beneath Piang was swaying, undulating. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... in the chronicles of the expedition,—modest, unassuming, matter-of-fact—the word of one who had done a difficult thing thoroughly and well, and who was at the end, as he had been throughout, larger than the mere circumstances of his labor. His companion was of the same stalwart stuff. It is hard to choose between them in any essential detail of manhood. Nor were the officers much exalted in temper above the men of their command. When we are celebrating the heroes of our national life, every ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... broadens the lines and gives a very rich effect, and, if continued sufficiently, fills the spaces between the lines and produces an almost black effect. All this work is varied according to the wishes of the etcher. A plate that left the etcher's hand a mere skeleton may be made to produce a print which is a thing of life. The possibilities of an etching in the hands of a skilful printer are almost limitless; the effects can vary with every impression, each showing a new picture. His processes are as interesting ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... square, from the centre of which rose a tall flagstaff. The buildings behind those just described were smaller and insignificant—the principal one being the house appropriated to the men; the others were mere sheds and workshops. Luxuriant forests ascended the slopes that rose behind and encircled this oasis on all sides, excepting in front, where the clear waters of the lake sparkled ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... in pain are strange and abnormal, and sometimes seem unaccountable; it is not the mere suffering at which any are amused. We can sometimes laugh at a person, although we feel for him, where the incentive to mirth is much stronger than the call for sympathy. Still we confess that some of the old malice lingers among us, some skulking cruelty peeps ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... this but we cannot ascend, or rise above it. But is this any answer to the argument? A sophister could press it further, and take advantage from that very ground—What! is not this to establish a mere tyranny in the Lord, that he doeth all things of mere will and pleasure, distributes rewards and punishments without previous consideration of men's carriage? But here we must stand, and go no farther than the scriptures walk with us. Whatever reasons or causes may be assigned, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... moderate Catholics make advances to him, struck with his sympathetic ability and his valor, and hoping that he would end by becoming a Catholic, but patriotic wrath was kindling in France against Philip II. and the Spaniards, those fomenters of civil war in the mere interest of foreign ambition. We quoted but lately the words used by the governor of Dieppe, Aymar de Chastes, when he said to Villars, governor of Rouen, who pressed him to enter the League, "You will yourself find out that the Spaniard is the real head ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to endeavor to set off before the wakening of your father," said the hunchback. "The quarter in which the young lady dwells, is so deserted, that the mere going there will almost serve for ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... seated himself on a branch, and the giant, who could not see what he was doing, had the whole tree to carry, and the little man on it as well. And the little man was very cheerful and merry, and whistled the tune: "There were three tailors riding by," as if carrying the tree was mere child's play. The giant, when he had struggled on under his heavy load a part of the way, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... all that, but this person will not stay there very long; it's only a makeshift for a night, a mere lock-up house till farther examination. There is a small room through which it opens; you may light a fire for yourselves there, and I 'll send you plenty of stuff to make you comfortable. But be ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... which the words above quoted were spoken were weird and strange. A man and a mere youth were sitting by a campfire that was blazing and crackling in a narrow gulch far away in the Rocky Mountains, days and ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... out as usual, had breakfast, and were then on the move. We had not much to do. The empty sledges we were to use for driving up to the starting-point were ready; we only had to throw a few things on to them. But it turned out that the mere fact of having so few things was the cause of its taking a long time. We were to harness twelve dogs to the empty sledges, and we had an idea that it would cost us a struggle to get away. We helped each other, two and two, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... received, however, had so much effect upon King Malcolm that he went himself to visit the strangers in their ship. He was not a mere barbaric prince, to be dazzled by the sight of these great persons, but no doubt had many a lingering recollection in his mind of Siward's great house in Northumberland, where he had taken refuge after his father's murder. It is curious and bewildering ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... by Eusebius, of about the year 200, it is apparent that they who at that time contended for the mere humanity of Christ, argued from the Scriptures; for they are accused by this writer of making alterations in their copies in order to favour their opinions. (Lardner, vol. iii. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... to witness this old man, apparently a mere useless burden, becoming the sole protector, support, and adviser of the lovers who were both young, beautiful, and strong. His remarkably noble and austere expression struck Morrel, who began his story with trembling. He related the manner in ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... its ruins and the Ponte Nuovo over the Fiumi Uniti, according to Dr. Ricci, being also constructed from its remains, as were other buildings in Ravenna. Then like the Rocca Malatestiana at Rimini it came to be used as a mere prison, and when it failed to prove useful for that purpose it was allowed to become the picturesque ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... it, that Maggie was still there. I came, I went—without their so much as dreaming. What do they really suppose," she asked, "becomes of one?—not so much sentimentally or morally, so to call it, and since that doesn't matter; but even just physically, materially, as a mere wandering woman: as a decent harmless wife, after all; as the best stepmother, after all, that really ever was; or at the least simply as a maitresse de maison not quite without a conscience. They must even in their odd way," she declared, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... which stands for the husband. It is vigorous, alert, active, positive, monopolising all the means of communication and production. So intense is its consciousness that it ignores the very existence of its partner, excepting as a mere appendage and convenience to itself. Then there is the Unconscious Personality, which corresponds to the wife who keeps cupboard and storehouse, and the old stocking which treasures up the accumulated wealth of impressions acquired by the Conscious Personality, but who ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... senor, you are kind, you are good. You are an Americano, one of a great nation. You will feel sympathy for a poor young man,—a mere muchacho,—one of your own race, who was a vaquero here, senor. He has been sent away from us here disgraced, alone, hungry, ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... deputies had never been allowed the privilege of debate, had been at its best a very imperfect expression of popular sentiment; and now was reduced to a mere empty form. Abuses which had been corrected under the vigilant personal administration of two able and patriotic sovereigns returned in aggravated form. Misrule and disorder prevailed, while their King was absorbed in the larger field of ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... reflect on ourselves, who have been so much better favoured, yet have neglected to teach them, than on those who, whilst they are sinning, know not what they are doing. To say a negro is incapable of instruction, is a mere absurdity; for those few boys who have been educated in our schools have proved themselves even quicker than our own at learning; whilst, amongst themselves, the deepness of their cunning and their power of repartee are quite surprising, and are especially shown in their ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... unexpected social privileges were granted him; his way was made easier in a hundred particulars. From every quarter delicately gratifying distinctions came to him. Without his volition he found that he had risen to an entirely different position from that which he had formerly occupied; the mere coupling of his name with Mildred Wayland's had lifted him into a calcium glare. It affected him not at all, he only knew that he was truly enslaved to the girl, that he idolized her, that he regarded ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... been a bad son, and the Talking Cricket was right when he said that a disobedient boy cannot be happy in this world. I have learned this at my own expense. Even last night in the theater, when Fire Eater. . . Brrrr!!!!! . . . The shivers run up and down my back at the mere thought of it." ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... and sheltered harbor, I inferred that it would be made the objective point of the contemplated attack. The Secretary of War, in his reply to the questions of the Investigating Commission, says that the movement against Santiago, as then planned, was to be a mere "reconnaissance in force, to ascertain the strength of the enemy in different locations in eastern Cuba"; but Colonel Babcock certainly gave me to understand that the attack was to be a serious one, and that it would be made with the whole ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... my Uncle Adam. His nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in conspicuous mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and wrinkles like a ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and dragging: take him at his best, and even when he could be induced to hold his tongue, his mere presence in a corner of the drawing-room, with his open-air wrinkles, his scanty hair, his battered hands, and the cheerful craftiness of his expression, advertised the whole gang of us for a self-made family. My aunt might mince and my cousins bridle; but there was no getting over ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... find an evolution in Botany, another in Geology, and another in Astronomy, and the effect is to lead one insensibly to look upon these as three distinct evolutions. But these sciences, of course, are mere departments created by ourselves to facilitate knowledge—reductions of Nature to the scale of our own intelligence. And we must beware of breaking up Nature except for this purpose. Science has so dissected everything, that it becomes ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... to the pictures on street ballads of the present day. To explain Bewick's improvements would occupy too much of our space, but, we may observe, generally that the engravings of the above period were mere patches of black and white, till Bewick introduced those beautiful reliefs, or varieties of light and shade which principally form the pictorial effect of an engraving. By this means he raised wood-engraving from a state ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... Eupatrid, who pretended to be better informed than any other person upon all manner of subjects, 'beside her the daughter of Coelus and the Sea would seem but a mere ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... parts as are diseased, will be found permeated with a deep, foxy colour. It is believed by some persons that one stage of this disease is identical with the disease named 'Tacon' by the French, and in this country known as 'Copper Web,' Rhizoctonia crocorum. This Rhizoctonia is a mere spawn or mycelium, a mass of rusty-brown material like a thick coating of spider's web of a red tint. This parasite attacks the Crocus (especially C. sativus), the Narcissus, Asparagus, Potato, and other plants. Immersed in the softer and damper ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... traditional method of impersonation. You may learn where a particular personage used to stand on the stage, or down which trap the ghost of Hamlet's father vanished; but the soul of interpretation is lost, and it is this soul which the actor has to re-create for himself. It is not mere attitude or tone that has to be studied; you must be moved by the impulse of being; you must ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... the stereotyped "sensibility" of the old world one may discover in the openness of Crevecoeur's heart; and that is the completeness of his interest in all the humbler sorts of natural phenomena. Nature is, for him, no mere bundle of poetic stage- properties, soiled by much handling, but something fresh and inviting and full of interest to a man alive. He takes more pleasure in hunting bees than in expeditions with his dogs and gun; the king- birds destroy his bees—but, he adds, they drive the crows ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... his slaves better than most men. This gentleman was also the owner of a girl who was perfectly white, with straight hair and prominent features. This girl was said to be the daughter of her own master. A feeling of attachment sprang up between Mary and George, which proved to be more than mere friendship, and upon which we base the burden of ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... he, "fools have been lavishing poetic praise and amorous compliment on mortal women, mere creatures of earth, smacking palpably of their origin; Sirens at the windows, where our Roman women in particular have by lifelong study learned the wily art to show their one good feature, though but an ear or an eyelash, at a jalosy, and hide all the rest; Magpies at the door, Capre n' ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... controlling his thoroughbred English horse to her gentle pace. Every now and then his mount would wheel about and rear in revolt, she following him with fond looks, proud of the elegant cavalier who could subdue without apparent effort, by the mere pressure of his thighs, that ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... none more studious than he in the schoolroom, yet he always took the keenest delight in every kind of active and manly sport, and was the acknowledged leader of the playground. But he had qualities of mind and heart far more desirable and meritorious than those of mere bodily activity and strength. Such was his love of truth, his strong sense of justice, and his clearness of judgment, that, when any dispute arose between his playmates, they always appealed to him to decide the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... a girl of seventeen, dark-haired and serious, and with a sweet sad face, for she had had many cares laid on her shoulders, even whilst still a mere baby. She was the eldest of the Strehla family, and there were ten of them in all. Next to her there came Jan and Karl and Otho, big lads, gaining a little for their own living; and then came August, who went up in the summer to the high Alps with the farmers' cattle, but in winter ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... very outset the sight of peasants, men and women, unconcernedly at work in the fields gathering the harvest, struck me as strange and unnatural. The men were either old or well advanced in middle age. Everywhere women, girls, and mere lads ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... time, and he had successfully regained his sense of supremacy. Taken wholly by surprise, he had not felt able to cope with this gaunt, dusty, desperately determined Knight. But the Knight would leave more than mere travel stains behind, in the scented waters of the bath! He would reappear clothed and in his right mind. A good meal and a flagon of Italian wine would further improve that mind, mellowing it and rendering ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... the human modicum of joy. But his heart rejected also this reproach. In no other circumstance could he place her justly. She was so amply made for joy—so strong to love, to endure; so true to the eternal passions. But not mere household love, the calm minutes of interlude in the fragments of a busy day! They would not satisfy the deep thirst for love in her heart. He had given the best he had—all, nearly all, as few men could give, as most men never give. He must content ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... foam-topped waves danced up wildly, the sky was of a murky hue, the wind roared and whistled as loudly as before, and the ship, instead of gliding on with calm dignity, tumbled and tossed as if she was a mere cock-boat. ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... reasons for that," replied his father. "The first, that you are not sufficiently in earnest in your petitions; and next, that you imagine that your prayers are to do all, without any exertion on your part—that the mere fact of having asked the help of the Almighty will insure you a supernatural ease and delight in performing these duties, forgetting that, while we are in this world we have to fight, to run steadily forward, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... not be very inviting; nationality, without race as a plea, is like the smoke of this nargileh, a fragrant puff. Well, then, there remains only personal influence: ancient family, vast possessions, and traditionary power: mere personal influence can only be maintained by management, by what you stigmatise as intrigue; and the most dexterous member of the Shehaab family will be, in the long run, Prince ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... registry; the corpse was conveyed to the morgue. The count told every one that this adventure had happened during his absence at Auteuil, and that he only knew what was related by the Abbe Busoni, who that evening, by mere chance, had requested to pass the night in his house, to examine some valuable books in his library. Bertuccio alone turned pale whenever Benedetto's name was mentioned in his presence, but there was no reason why any one should notice his doing so. Villefort, being called on to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at the present time they no longer made any impression. The opposition of political ideas came to the surface in this matter as in others. The King held the strongly monarchical view that the populations of both countries were united with one another by the mere fact of their being both subject to him. To this the Parliament opposed the doctrine that the two crowns were distinct sovereignties, and that the legislation of the two countries could not be united. They wished to fetter the King to the old legal position which they were far more ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... ROBERT,—I want to give you more than a mere "good-bye" in words, as you take your leave of us. I want to tell you how much I have been pleased with your course here as a student, how gratified I have been to see your pleasantness in your work, and how thoroughly you have won my respect and esteem; and then want to add ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... change in his wife's condition. Now she sank, and he buried his face in the bedclothes and cried; now she recovered a little, and he rated at her and made rough jokes at her. At one moment he appeared to be all {118} tenderness to her, at another moment he went on as if the whole illness were a mere sham to worry him, and she might get up and be well if she would only act like a sensible woman. The Prince of Wales made an attempt to see the Queen. The King spoke of him as a puppy and a scoundrel; jeered at his impudent, affected airs of duty ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... an almost simultaneous movement. These half-dazed, wholly sick creatures moved with the precision of a universally impelling force. The store might have been one huge magnet—perhaps it was—and these dejected early risers mere ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... I wrote. But there I was on the wide world again. So I took up with a Russian prince, whom I met at a gambling-table in Pera,—a mere boy, but such a plucky one,—and went with him to Circassia, and up to Astrakhan, and on to the Kirghis steppes; and there I ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the activity of his reason or the activity of his intuition working in isolation, it then becomes obvious that the universal revelations of the aesthetic sense, if they can be genuinely disentangled from mere subjective caprices, are an essential part of what we have to work with if we are to ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... of sheep momentarily barred the way before defiling past. And beyond the gentle undulations of the ruddy Campagna Rome appeared amidst the violet vapours of evening, sinking by degrees as the carriage itself descended to a lower and lower level. There came a moment when the city was a mere thin grey streak, speckled whitely here and there by a few sunlit house-fronts. And then it seemed to plunge below the ground—to be submerged by the swell of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the trees that grew upon the banks of the river. As soon as day broke, they began to consider how they would reach those trees. Although swimming a river of that width would have been to any of the four a mere bagatelle, they saw that it was not to be so easy an affair. Had they been upon either bank, they could have crossed to the other without difficulty—as they would have chosen a place where the water was comparatively still. On the rock they had no choice, as the rapids extended ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... your father's. I, old Morgan, Am that Belarius whom you sometime banish'd. Your pleasure was my mere offence, my punishment Itself, and all my treason; that I suffer'd Was all the harm I did. These gentle princes— For such and so they are—these twenty years Have I train'd up. Those arts they have as Could put into them; my breeding was, sir, as Your Highness knows. Their nurse, Euriphile, ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... was quick in her affections and resentments, but looking back many years later Godwin declares that they were "as happy as is permitted to human beings." "It must be remembered, however, that I honoured her intellectual powers and the nobleness and generosity of her propensities; mere tenderness would not have been adequate to produce the happiness ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... go home, Elizabeth," the substitute continued, unconcernedly making her way to the blackboard as though this life-and-death affair were a mere incident in her many duties, "and bring me back a written excuse ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... doctors and commissariat officers, and they submit to be patronised by him. Half-priest, half-buffoon, something of a Friar Tuck and something of a Louis XV. abbe, he is a sort of privileged person, who by the mere force of impudence has made his way in the world. Most English girls in their teens fall in love with a curate and a cavalry officer. Monseigneur Bauer, who combines in himself the unctuous curate and the dashing dragoon, is adored by the fair sex ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... essence of Christian Science is not "faith-healing" in the ordinary sense. It does not say, e.g., "Here is a case of genuine, unmistakeable rheumatism or consumption, but faith is able to dispel it"; on the contrary, it says, "This alleged rheumatism or consumption is a mere illusion, a phantasm of the imagination; and the way to be cured is for the 'patient' to discover his mistake. There are no maladies—there are only malades imaginaires." Mrs. Eddy states in plain words that "Mortal ills are but errors of thought" [2]; it is from this point of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... seeing that in this world the keeping of their persons inviolate is deemed as the highest duty of Women, and is held in high regard! O thou possessed of wealth of splendour, it is only to test the power of my mantras that I have, from mere childishness, summoned thee. Considering that this hath been done by a girl offender years, it behoveth thee, O lord, to forgive her!' Then Surya said, 'It is because I consider thee a girl that, O Kunti, I am speaking to thee so mildly. To ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... inglorious reigns of Constantius and Gallus only enabled the barbarians to renew their strength. They are signally defeated by the Emperor Julian, A.D. 360, who alone survives of all the heirs of Constantius Chlorus. The studious Julian, who was supposed to be a mere philosopher, proves himself to be one of the most warlike of all the emperors. He repulses the Alemanni, defeats the Franks, delivers Gaul, and carries the Roman eagles triumphantly beyond the Rhine. His victories delay the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... conqueror returning from his victories. But we kept the old farm, and as you know, it still plays an important part in my life though I passed the title to my brother many years ago. It is my only home, other homes that I have had were mere camping places for a day and night. But the wealth which my bumps indicated turned out to be of a very shadowy and uncommercial kind, yet of a kind that thieves cannot ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... dressmaker, a Schneiderin, as they call them over there, and ran a fairly big business in the Praguer Strasse. I've always been told that German husbands are the worst going, treating their wives like slaves, or, at the best, as mere upper servants. But my experience is that human nature don't alter so much according to distance from London as we fancy it does, and that husbands have their troubles same as wives all the world over. Anyhow, I've come across a German husband or two as didn't carry about with him any sign of the ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... case was the receipt of a letter from his sister in Germany, before his trial, informing him of the fact that she, his parents and all his relatives had utterly disowned him and regarded him with no sympathy whatever. As this was done before he was proven guilty, and upon mere knowledge of the accusation, it is significant in showing that the whole family were as deficient in the social propensities as was ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... large and flourishing town, built somewhat on Philadelphia principles, in blocks, and, like Philadelphia, gridironed all over with tramway lines. It is a good thing one is able to get off the marble pavements into the cars without having far to go, for the streets are at times mere sloughs of despond. It is the same in all ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... people. Such action provided ample protection and was as wings for the accomplishing of the gigantic tasks set for a small band of heroic men and women. The Church was kept informed from time to time as to the progress of the midnight work. Care was taken not to allow this work to become a mere fad, but it was so presented as to rank with every other ministry of the Church. The young people were not drawn into this type of work at all, as it was not deemed advisable to take young people into the streets of sin where the fight ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Apaches were closing around the fugitive, and it seemed inevitable that he should reap the natural reward of his own foolhardiness that Sut had acted. When the warriors were confident of their success, he discharged his rifle with marvelous quickness, and with a more important result than the mere tumbling over of ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... looking at Betty; he was staring out on the lake. His eyes and mouth were hard again; he looked like a mere intellect, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... in finer air than I can breathe with my commonplace lungs. Such delicacy of sentiment is something that I admire without comprehending. I am bewildered. I am of the earth earthy, and I find myself in the incongruous position of having to do with mere souls, with natures so finely tempered that I run some risk of shattering them in my awkwardness. I am as Caliban ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the less the chance of survival unless well cared for. They may be smothered out by the adverse force of superior numbers; they are even more likely to be bred out of existence by unprevented cross-fertilization, or to disappear from mere change of fashion. The question, however, is not so much about reversion to an ancestral state, or the falling off of a high-bred stock into an inferior condition. Of such cases it is enough to say that, when a variety or strain, of animal or vegetable, is led up to unusual ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... later he reappeared in Africa. Marie was with him. They were living in a small town on the rim of the desert near Biskra. Grimshaw occupied a native house—a mere hovel, flat-roofed, sun-baked, bare as a hermit's cell. Marie had hired herself out as femme de chambre in the only hotel in the place. "I watched over him," she told me. "And believe me, monsieur, he needed care! He was thin as a ghost. He had starved more ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... seemed old-fashioned and crude to the taste of twenty years after, yet the triumphs of Shakespeare's maturity failed to exhaust the opportunities for innovation and advance. We are amazed to-day at the mere number of plays produced, as well as by the number of dramatists writing at the same time for this London of two hundred thousand inhabitants. To realize how great was the dramatic activity, we must remember further that hosts of plays have been lost, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... child home to mother, not knowing what else to do, but she wouldn't have it at any price, even for a night. She doesn't like children, you know, and Father has joked so much about 'the Pointers' that she is quite rampant at the mere idea of a child in the house. She told me to take it to the Rose Garden. I said it was running over now, and no room even for a mite like this. 'Go to the Hospital,' says she. 'Baby isn't ill, ma'am,' says I. 'Orphan Asylum,' says ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Coal.—By mere convention, we call the peat which accumulated in the Carboniferous age by the name of bituminous coal; and an examination of the Carboniferous strata in different countries has shown that the peat-beds formed in the Carboniferous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... her thoughts clung to him. Just as, insensibly, her vision of Canada had changed, so had her vision of Anderson. Canada was no longer mere fairy tale and romance; Anderson was no longer merely its picturesque exponent or representative. She had come to realise him as a man, with a man's cares and passions; and her feelings about him had begun ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... near its close, when a drunken man, in the quarrelsome stage of intoxication, stumbled in through the open door. Felix knew him by sight well; a confirmed drunkard, a mere miserable sot, who hung about the spirit-vaults, and lived only for the drink he could pour down his throat. There had been a vague instinctive dread and disgust for the man, mingled with a deep interest ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... satire on everything is a satire on nothing; it is mere absurdity. All contempt, all disrespect, implies something respected, as a standard to which it is referred; just as every valley implies a hill. The persiflage of the French and of fashionable worldlings, which turns into ridicule the exceptions and ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... of Delia.———"Ah," said he, starting from his trance, "what do I see? Art thou, lovely intruder, a mere vision, an aerial being that shuns the touch?" "I beg ten thousand pardons. I meaned not, sir, to interrupt you. I will be gone." "No, go not." Answered he. "Thou art welcome to my troubled thoughts. I ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... judiciously treated, would make a novel, and I especially see in the character and sufferings of the Quaker, previous to his crime, matter for effective psychological treatment. The contrast between the semi-insane nature and that of the hypocrite might be powerfully worked up; but these are mere suggestions from an old craftsman, who never expects younger ones to see things as ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Ulysses, a shipwrecked mariner, but just escaped from the waves, and utterly destitute of clothing, awaking and discovering that only a few bushes were interposed between him and a group of young maidens, whom, by their deportment and attire, he discovered to be not mere peasant girls, but of a higher class. Sadly needing help, how could he yet venture, naked as he was, to discover himself and make his wants known? It certainly was a case worthy of the interposition of his patron goddess Minerva, who never failed ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... a personal friend during his stay in Kansas: "Young men must learn to wait. Patience is the hardest lesson to learn. I have waited for twenty years to accomplish my purpose." These are not the words of a mere visionary idealist, but the mature language of a practical and judicious leader, a leader than whom the world has never seen a greater. By greatness is meant deep convictions of duty, a sense of the Infinite, "a strong hold on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... but apparently exists. But precognition? That's not simply mechanical or kinetic, like TK. PC is something terrifyingly different." Her voice hushed as she said it. "It's a kind of sensitivity that has nothing to do with mere kinetics. It defies time!" She looked back at me. "I simply find it comical that you thought of yourself as sensitive ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... little absurd to couple the word "terrible" with any action of mere inanimate matter, from which, after all, we stood in no very evident peril. Yet "terrible" is the only word for it. Grand it was not, because in all its action and voice it seemed infernal. Though its movement is slow and deliberate, it would scarcely occur to you to call either the constant impulse ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... the background. The grasp of his hand was firmer than usual, the tone more earnest, which said, "I am very glad to see you!"—and yet the doctor felt that in them both there was more—and also less—than mere ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... adventure, what need to tell how the mutton was placed on the spit, and slowly unroasted—how the potatoes were wrapped in their skins, and handed over to the gardener to be buried—how, when the mutton had at length attained to rawness, the fire, which had gradually changed from red-heat to a mere blaze, died down so suddenly that the cook had only just time to catch its last flicker on the end of a match—or how the maid, having taken the mutton off the spit, carried it (backwards, of course) out of the house, to meet the butcher, who was coming ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... signified by it. Let this course be adopted in the education of children, and they will not be required to spend months and years in the study of an "art" which they can not comprehend, for the simple reason that they can not apply it in practice. Grammar has been taught as a mere art, depending on arbitrary rules to be mechanically learned, rather than a science involving the soundest and plainest principles of philosophy, which are to be known only as developed in common practice ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... description of a town with an appropriate engraved frontispiece, or adorning your biography of So-and-so with a portrait. But the temptation to overstep the bounds of seemliness is so great that it is seldom the collector stops at a mere frontispiece. In most cases the Grangerite soon loses his self-control, and develops an acute mania for embellishing his volume with all and every print upon which he can lay his hands, apposite in the slightest degree ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Willoughby might have learned that she was not so iniquitously wise of the things of this world as her mere sex's instinct, roused to the intemperateness of a creature struggling with fetters, had made her appear in her dash to seize a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... parents regarding the upbringing of children. And it has come to pass that one must be very bold to venture to brush off the dust of disuse from certain old saws and educational truisms, such as "All play and no work make Jack a mere toy," "No gains without pains," "We learn to do by doing," "Train up a child in the way he should ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... same state assemble, but they transmit to the central government the list of their individual votes, and not the mere result of the vote ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... terror of Natural Science, which seems to possess, with a religious possession, so many good and pious people! How rigidly do they bind themselves hand and foot with the mere letter of the law, forgetting Him who came to teach us, that 'the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life!' What are we to say of those who, when the old crust which clogs and hampers human knowledge is cracking and breaking all around them, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... do, mere Descoings?" was the cool greeting the colonel bestowed on the old woman whom Joseph was in the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... fish with that, using but a dozen inches of line, and not letting so much as your eyebrows show above the bank. Is it a becoming attitude for a middle-aged citizen of the world? That depends upon how the fish are biting. Holing a put looks rather ridiculous also, to the mere observer, but it requires, like brook-fishing with a tip only, a very delicate wrist, perfect tactile sense, and a fine disregard ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... his age fairer of semblance: beautiful exceedingly was he, with a face brighter far than the full moon; and he was of tongue eloquent and of pluck puissant, valorous, formidable. Also he was mighty fond of wine mere and rare and of drinks in the morning air and of converse with the fair and he delighted in mirth and merriment and he was assiduous in his carousing which he would never forego during the watches of the night or the wards of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... proudly there reveal Her streams in louder accents, adding still More noise and waters to her channel, till At last swoln with increase she glides along The lawns and meadows in a wanton throng Of frothy billows, and in one great name Swallows the tributary brooks' drown'd fame. Nor are they mere inventions, for we In th' same piece find scatter'd philosophy And hidden, dispers'd truths that folded lie In the dark shades of deep allegory; So neatly weav'd, like arras, they descry Fables with truth, fancy with history. So that thou hast in this thy curious mould ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... was to be induced to buy it, or to be bought over from further opposition by some concession of an indefinitely future title. But that the estate was to become his at once, without purchase, and by the mere free will of his hated relatives, was an idea that he ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Derringham, and he laughed incredulously. "They matter no more to me than the flowers in the garden—enchanting in the summer time, a mere pleasure for sight and touch, but to make or mar a man's life!—not even to be considered as factors ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... himself by Abou Hassan, while he told him all that had happened to him, from his waking in the palace to his waking again in his own house, all which he described as a mere dream, and recounted all the circumstances, which the caliph knew as well as himself, and which renewed his pleasure. He enlarged afterwards on the impression which the dream of being caliph and commander of the faithful had made upon him, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... an ordinance relative to captures, which will show the respect paid by these States to the armed neutrality. It will be evident to you, that this is not a mere empty compliment, since nothing can be more injurious to us than conforming to principles, which our enemy despises, and is permitted to despise with impunity, particularly on this coast, where Britain is left at liberty to consider us not as independent ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... faces had been mere blurs for me: but now it struck me that all three were rather peculiar; that is, peculiar when ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... from the dark and steaming jungle to behold and rejoice in the Sun the huge and lazy butterflies. And they danced, but danced idly, on the ways of the air, as some haughty queen of distant conquered lands might in her poverty and exile dance, in some encampment of the gipsies, for the mere bread to live by, but beyond that would never abate her pride to dance for ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... the verandah of the Court buildings. He had been hauled into consultations with barristers, and examined and badgered and worried to death. The hard Sydney pavements had made his feet sore. The city ways were not his ways, and the mere mental effort of catching trains and omnibuses, and keeping appointments, and having fixed meal-times, was inexpressibly wearing to a man who had never been tied to time ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... foremost ranks were already at the top and paused a moment, for a murderous fire greeted the first heads which appeared, and several men, mortally wounded, rolled down again. But the rest pressed on, using both hands and feet to climb the hill, whose ascent would have been mere sport for fresh youths, skilled in gymnastic exercises, but which must have seemed terribly steep to harassed, exhausted troops. As they worked their way upward with the utmost zeal, evidently striving to excel one another, Prince Louis thought of some stanzas ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Missael whether they actually considered the holy ikons to be mere planks of wood, Chouev answered,—"Just look at the back of any ikon you choose and you will see what they ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... sitting in the House of Commons, I found, on my study table, a sheet of paper on which there was a representation—marvellously like!—of the creature into which, as it seemed to me, the woman of the songs was transformed as I clutched her throat between my hands. The mere sight of it brought back one of those visitations of which I have told you, and which I thought I had done with for ever,—I was convulsed by an agony of fear, thrown into a state approximating to a paralysis ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the carriage folk from the outer world, who sometimes penetrate Tiverton's leafy quiet, may wonder at the queer little enclosures of sticks and pebbles on many a bare, tree-shaded slope along the road. "Left there from some game!" they say to one another, and drive on, satisfied. But these are no mere discarded playthings, dear ignorant travellers! They are tokens of the mimic earnest with which child-life is ever seeking to sober itself, and rushing unsummoned into the workaday fields of an aimlessly frantic world. They are houses, and the stone boundaries are walls. This tree stump ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... decline. And, finally, this land, then half-subdued, Which from one central city's guarded seat As from a fastness in the rocks our scant Handful of Dorian conquerors might have curb'd, He parcell'd out in five confederate states, Sowing his victors thinly through them all, Mere prisoners, meant or not, among our foes. If this was fear of them, it shamed the king; If jealousy of us, it shamed the man. Long we refrain'd ourselves, submitted long, Construed his acts indulgently, revered, Though found perverse, the blood of Heracles; Reluctantly the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... how much in England the condition of a prisoner depends on the disposition of the governor in office and the system in vogue for the moment. The mere words of his sentence do not indicate at all what his fate will be. He comes in—under Sir John—to light labour, much schoolmaster and chaplain, and the expectation of a ticket-of-leave when a fraction of his time is expired. All at once Sir James supersedes Sir John, and with him comes in ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... there was plenty of dry wood. He did everything decently and in order. He took the pelt from the bear, carved the body properly, and then, just as the Indians had done, he broiled strips over the coals. He ate them one after another, slowly, and tasting all the savor, and, intense as was the mere physical pleasure, it was mingled with a deep thankfulness. Not only was the life nourished anew in him, but he would now regain the strength ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mentioned that, concerning anything of this kind, no sailor in a man-of-war ever presumes to be an agitator, unless he is of a rank superior to a mere able-seaman; and no one short of a petty officer—that is, a captain of the top, a quarter-gunner, or boatswain's mate—ever dreams of being a spokesman to the supreme authority of the vessel in soliciting any kind of favor for himself ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... ran back again and Beverly would do likewise when she got ready. She was probably with some friend in the neighborhood. She was in the habit of forming friendships with all sorts and conditions of people. That her horse was also gone might be a mere coincidence, or else she was trying to frighten them all, and would come riding back by sundown. She was capable of almost any insubordination, and rising at dawn and riding off somewhere was merely a ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... angular shade over a green angular lamp sat where the sawdust box had been. True—a green angular smoker's set also was upon the table—the only masculine appurtenance in the corner; but it was clearly a sop thrown out to offended and exiled mankind—a mere mockery of the solid comfort of the sawdust box, filled with cigar stubs and ashes that had made the corner a haven for weary man for nearly a score of years. Above the black-stained seat ran a red dado and upon that in fine old English script, where once the old sign ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... owing to a mere chance question that this account of the Last Day was obtained from an Indian. It was related to Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, of Calais, Maine, by Mrs. Le Cool, an old Passamaquoddy Indian. It casts a great light on the myth of Glooskap, since it appears that a day is ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... marches and muffled drums.' Is it glad, innocent, and happy? All nature smiles and puts on the garments of beauty; the stars sing together, the trees of the forest rejoice, and the floods clap their hands. Thus the visible universe becomes a mere reproduction of the spirit of man that beholds it. Create a mind, and it creates for its residence an external world of its own hue and character. Make that mind happy, and its external world, from pole to pole and from the zenith to its centre, is resplendent with light ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... first object (as usual) was originality. The extent to which this has been neglected in versification is one of the most unaccountable things in the world. Admitting that there is little possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear that the possible varieties of metre and stanza are absolutely infinite; and yet, for centuries, no man, in verse has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original thing. The ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Carduchians abandoned their dwelling places, and with their wives and children fled to the mountains; so there was plenty of provisions to be got for the mere trouble of taking, and the homesteads too were well supplied with a copious store of bronze vessels and utensils which the Hellenes kept their hands off, abstaining at the same time from all pursuit of the folk themselves, gently handling ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... Euripides lay in the conquered women. It is from them that he has named his play and built up his scheme of parts: four figures clearly lit and heroic, the others in varying grades of characterisation, nameless and barely articulate, mere half-heard voices of ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... was taken up in the superintendence of servants, the discharge of an infinitude of housewifely tasks. She had no assistance from her daughter; the girl went to school, and was encouraged to study with the utmost application. The husband's presence in the house seemed a mere accident—save in the still nocturnal season, when Mrs. Jordan bestowed upon him her ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... pitiable to think how many well-meaning enthusiasts have fallen victims to the careless or crafty curator. Sometimes it scarcely needs a connoisseur to suspect the good faith of catalogues. I, myself, a mere babe and suckling, came to the conclusion, after a visit to the Velasquez Exhibition in London, that Velasquez must have been very versatile. It is too bad that artists should be hanged for crimes they never committed. 'T is to ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... King's English. Now and again I shall give you rather a free translation, so you mustn't hold me too tight to anything I may say. I tell you this, because I'm going to state facts and not hand you mere ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... heathen originals, are almost universally of a pleasing and joyful character, and in many cases possess a symbolic meaning. Flowers, crowns of leaves, garlands, vines with clustering grapes, displayed more to the Christian's eyes than mere beauty of form. In these and other similar accessories the symbolism of the early Church delighted to manifest itself. On their terracotta lamps, fixed in the mortar at the head of graves, on their sepulchral tablets, on their rings, on their glass cups and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... better anchorage and was some six miles closer to Santiago, was made the base. From Siboney there stretched for eight or ten miles a rolling country covered with heavy jungle brush and crossed by mere threads of roads. There was indeed a railroad, but this followed a roundabout route by the coast. Through this novel and extremely uncomfortable country, infected with mosquitoes, the troops pressed, eager to meet ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... member of the senate, and as a man just entering political life, depended on this decision,—he literally could not command time to read over the necessary documents. So the appointed day arrived before Vivian's opinion was formed; and, from mere want of time to decide for himself, he voted as Wharton desired. Another and another political question came on; the same causes operated, and the same consequences ensued. Wharton managed with great address, so as to prevent him from feeling that he gave up his freewill. Before Vivian was aware ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... sure I did not wish to be the cause of any. It seemed to me, however, that the Heer Pereira wished to make a mock of me and to bring it home to me what a poor creature I was compared to himself—I a mere sick boy ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... HELENA.]—There was a controversy in Aeschylus' day whether language, including names, was a matter of Convention or of Nature. Was it mere accident, and could you change the name of anything at will? Or was language a thing rooted in nature and fixed by God from of old? Aeschylus adopts the latter view: Why was this being called Helena? If one had understood God's purpose one would have seen it was because she ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... industrial school there are the strongest grounds for co-operation and unity. It is not a matter of mere emphasis, for we would be glad to see ten industrial schools to every college. It is not a fact that there are to-day too few Negro colleges, but rather that there are too many institutions attempting to do college work. But the danger ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... little doubt of Master Frank's intentions, upon many others, so subtle were his inventions, so well-contrived his plots, it became a matter of considerable difficulty to say whether the mishap which befell some luckless acquaintance were the result of design or mere accident; and not unfrequently well-disposed individuals were found condoling with "Poor Frank" upon his ignorance of some college rule or etiquette, his breach of which had been long and deliberately planned. Of this latter description was a circumstance which occurred ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... beauty—blest. Thus taste the feast, by nature spread, Ere youth, and all its joys are fled; Come, taste with me the balm of life, Secure from pomp, and wealth, and strife. I boast whate'er for man was meant, In health, and Stella, and content; And scorn! oh! let that scorn be thine! Mere things of clay ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... butcher in the High Street who sprang to the most dazzling height of fame amongst the schoolboys and other well-practised, self-believing liars of the parish. On the Wednesday the man was as mere and simple a salesman of dead pig as might be found within the limits of the land. On the Thursday he had obliterated the memory of the achievements of Nelson and Six-teen-String Jack. Surveying the circumstances from a considerable ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... it is possible to conduct a victorious campaign with the single watchword 'Down with Socialism.' Well, I am not fond of mere negatives. I do not like fighting an abstract noun. My objection to Anti-Socialism as a platform is that Socialism means so many different things. On this point I agree with Mr. Asquith. I will wait before I denounce Socialism till I see what form it takes... Socialism is not ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... and his friend's and it seemed to him unjust. Gallaher was his inferior in birth and education. He was sure that he could do something better than his friend had ever done, or could ever do, something higher than mere tawdry journalism if he only got the chance. What was it that stood in his way? His unfortunate timidity He wished to vindicate himself in some way, to assert his manhood. He saw behind Gallaher's refusal of his invitation. Gallaher was only patronising ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... our sex," said Mr. Clacton in a jocular manner, indeed, but like most insignificant men he was very quick to resent being found fault with by a woman, in argument with whom he was fond of calling himself "a mere man." He wished, however, to enter into a literary conservation with Miss Hilbery, and thus let ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... definite plan to propose," said Mr. Shaw, "I am very ready to consider it. I have understood myself from the first to be acting under the directions of the ladies who planned this expedition. As a mere matter of honesty to my employers, I should feel bound to spare no effort to find the treasure, even if my own interests were not so vitally concerned. Considering its importance to myself, no one can well ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... of our happiness, a part of our honor. I have done for you, my prince, what I have done for no other man. I have given you four thousand dollars, without security and without interest. I lent to Knobelsdorf, for the prince royal, upon his mere word, my honest gold, and what have I received? My letters, in which I humbly solicit payment, remain unanswered. I am mocked and reviled—the door contemptuously shut in my face, which door, however, was most graciously opened ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... varied; and was selected because of its intrinsic interest—action, appeal to self-activity. The lessons are not mere collections of words and sentences, but have continuity of thought. The pictures, being adapted to the text, are distinct aids in teaching children to read. The helps to teachers are varied, time-saving, practical. The method is ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... faith I returned to Simon's Bay for mere necessaries, and in all honour and good faith, in return, I should on change of opinion or of policy on the part of the British authorities, have been desired to leave the ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... car company, of course, refused to acknowledge responsibility for Mr. Bulson's valuables. Nor on mere suspicion could Mr. Bulson get a justice in Tillbury to issue ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... on you, though you cannot justify me—you, who are occupied beyond measure, and I, who know it! I have been under the delusion, too, during this writing, of having something like a friend's claim to write and be troublesome. I have lived so near your friends that I keep the odour of them! A mere delusion, alas! my only personal right in respect to you being one that I am not likely to forget or waive—the right ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... of bone itself as a mere material or tissue, with its admirable lightness, compactness, and flawlessness. And every bone in our body is a triumph of engineering architecture. No engineer could better recognize the direction of strain and stress, and arrange his rods and columns, ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... was active it was at that moment. I struck out with my clenched fists, throwing all the power I possessed into my blows, and fortunately for me—a mere boy in the grasp of a heavily-built man—he was comparatively, powerless from loss of blood consequent upon his wounds, so that I was able to wrest myself free, and ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... road in my direction, and reconciling me by their crestfallen demeanor with the inclemencies of the season, were peasants. The one was an old man, gray-haired, stooping, and apparently sixty years of age: the other, his son, as I afterward found out, was a mere youth of, at the most, twenty. They were strikingly alike in physiognomy, notwithstanding the difference in their years, but neither had anything at all remarkable either in his looks or general ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... accepted the improvement; he invented a cupboard for his father's canvases; he laid an electric bell from the kitchen beneath the floor of the dining-room, so that Miss Bracy could ring for Deborah by a mere pressure of the foot; and the well-rope which Deborah had been used to wind up painfully was soon fitted with a wheel and balance-weight which saved ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was preeminently the turning-point in the development of political society in the western hemisphere. Though small in their mere dimensions, the events here summarized were in a remarkable degree germinal events, fraught with more tremendous alternatives of future welfare or misery for mankind than it is easy for the imagination to grasp. As we now stand ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... matter of his body which a man had at any time of his life be raised, it is as much his own and the same body as that which he had at his death, and commonly much more perfect; because they who die of lingering sickness or old age are usually mere skeletons when they die; so that there is no reason to suppose that the very matter of which our bodies consists at the time of our death shall be that which shall be raised, that being commonly the worst and most imperfect body ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... all in a minute, take in what the rest were saying, size up the situation with a glance, frame a reply, and meet the case by a slight change of ground; and he was liable, therefore, to defeat by the mere swiftness, apprehension, and agility of a Lloyd George. There can seldom have been a statesman of the first rank more incompetent than the President in the agilities of the council chamber. A moment often arrives when substantial victory is yours if by some slight appearance of a concession ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... to show in preceding chapters the development of the young American army in France from a mere handful of new troops up to the creation of units capable of independent action on the front. Only that intense and thorough training made it possible for our oversea forces to play the veteran part they did play in the great Second Battle of ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... golden autumn sun, and make their bow to the audience before retiring for the year. All the living things become for a few brief hours happy and careless, drinking to the full the last drops of the mere joy of life before the advent of winter and rough weather. The bank flowers still show blossom among the seed-heads, and though the thick round rushes have turned to russet, the forget-me-not is still in flower; and though the water-lilies have all gone ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... experience, the persons who led the advance in this little procession, were subjects of a proper attention and respect; but as the admiration of mere vulgar travelling would in itself be vulgar, care was taken to reserve the condensed feeling of the company for the celebrated English writer and wit, who was known to bring up the rear. This was not a common house, in which dollars had place, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... obviously be wide as the universe, but if we are to engage in it to any purpose we must definitely begin it somewhere. A treatise on reality may easily be the most unreal of things—a mere battle in the air. So long as it is a discussion of theories it has this danger, and the first necessity is to bring the search down to the region of experience and rigorously insist on its remaining there. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... calculation, no provision for the future, is but a visionary or an incompetent, and runs the risk of sooner or later asking alms from those at whose parsimony he has sneered. And yet, what would become of us if these cares absorbed us entirely? if, mere accountants, we should wish to measure our effort by the money it brings, do nothing that does not end in a receipt, and consider as things worthless or pains lost whatever cannot be drawn up in figures on the pages of a ledger? Did our mothers look for pay in loving us and caring ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... in curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand in Chladni's famous experiment,—fresh ideas coming up to the surface, as the kernels do when a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer's wagon,—all this without volition, the mechanical impulse alone keeping the thoughts in motion, as the mere act of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps them wound up,—many times, I say, just as my brain was beginning to creep and hum with this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... blush, may seem a mere effort at paradox, but its literal truth becomes patent on brief inspection. Ask the average American what is the salient passion in his emotional armamentarium—what is the idea that lies at the bottom of all his other ideas—and it is very probable that, nine times out of ten, ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... trust the trustworthy among his own race, to risk something in business, to strike out in new lines of endeavor, to buy houses and make homes, to regard beauty as well as utility, to save rather than display. In short, let us subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will, energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor above sleight-of-hand tricks, and common sense, ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... the modern world, large business rests on rectitude and honor, as well as on good judgment. Education does this through the contemplation and study of the moral ideals of our race; not in drowsiness or dreaminess or in mere vague enjoyment of poetic and religious abstractions, but in the resolute purpose to apply spiritual ideals to actual life. The true university fosters ideals, but always to urge that they be put into practice ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... hungry wails - "Reward us, ere we think or write! Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... fashion, at once shows that they belong to the monkey tribe. Many of them are very ugly, and in their wild state they are the fiercest and most dangerous of monkeys. Some have the tail very long, others of medium length, while it is sometimes reduced to a mere stump, and all have large cheek pouches and bare seat pads. They are found all over Africa, from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope; while one species, called the hamadryas, extends from Abyssinia across the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... coffee," she added, with a complete change of tone. "I sleep horribly badly, and that's why I take coffee. Mere perversity! Three ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Mr. Noddy to his own mother"—the word standing, of course, as "brother" in the original. Summing it all up, the Reader would then add, with a rise and fall of the voice at almost every other word in the sentence, the mere sound of which was inexpressibly ludicrous—"Everybody said the whole dispute had been conducted in a manner" (here he would sometimes gag) "that did equal credit to the head and heart of both ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... deep breath of the sparkling air outside. He stood irresolutely a moment on the wooden steps of the building looking down the row of hastily constructed barracks. Some were painted green, some were of plain boards, and some were still mere skeletons. Above his head great piled, rose-tinted clouds were moving slowly across the immeasurable free sky. His glance slid down the sky to some tall trees that flamed bright yellow with autumn outside the camp limits, ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... a fool, Akulina,' he said at last, 'so don't talk nonsense. I desire your good—do you understand me? To be sure, you're not a fool—not altogether a mere rustic, so to say; and your mother, too, wasn't always a peasant. Still you've no education—so you ought to do what ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... told in this book were very different from each other in many ways. The child abbess, Mere Angelique, ruling her convent, and at war with naughty abbesses who hated being earnest, does not at once remind us of Hannibal. The great Montrose, with his poems and his scented love-locks, his devotion to his cause, his chivalry, his death, to which he went gaily clad like a bridegroom to ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... all his books around, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound: Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there; Then wrote and flounder'd on, in mere despair." ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... of you, gentlemen, may imagine that the velocity we propose to impart to it is extravagant. It is nothing of the kind. All the stars exceed it in rapidity, and the earth herself is at this moment carrying us round the sun at three times as rapid a rate, and yet she is a mere lounger on the way compared with many others of the planets! And her velocity is constantly decreasing. Is it not evident, then, I ask you, that there will some day appear velocities far greater than these, of which light or electricity ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... winter and rheumatic spring. The veiled rays of the sun and the soft shadows produce the effect of a golden moonlight, and make even Nature's shabbiest corners attractive. To be out-of-doors with nothing to do, and nothing to think of but the mere pleasure of existence, is happiness enough at such times. But I was looking at a river panorama which is one of Nature's best efforts, I have heard; and on that morning it seemed to me impossible that the world could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the king of Sian were gone with all his army, he of Canvoja would wage war; and the Sianese without their king are a people who have no spirit, or arms for their defense, for they possess nothing more than machetes, small bucklers, and javelins made of cane, all of which is a mere trifling armament. The men of Canvoja have many arrows and are very skilful with them. If the king was conquered at first it was because of the little confidence which he had in his own subjects; for, in short, it has since transpired that the larger part of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... my mind on a canal-boat," said Mr. Pedagog, sharply, passing his coffee back to Mrs. Pedagog for another lump of sugar, thereby contributing to that good lady's discomfiture, since before their marriage the mere fact that the coffee had been poured by her fair hand had given it all the sweetness it needed; or at least that was what the School-Master had said, and ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... love of God a mere wavering thing, perhaps known only at critical times; or was it not rather His vital breath and native air? "I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am"; and "the only-begotten Son is in the bosom of ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... excursions far up along shore this way, skating at furious speed; pausing now and then to set fire to the bunches of tall dried grasses and reeds, that protruded through the ice in the midst of the stream. These flamed fiercely at the mere touch of a match. ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... to rejoice in the crystal splendour of the morning; but within the quiet room the spell remained unlifted, the silence lay untouched. It was as though the presence of Death had turned it into a peaceful sanctuary that no mere earthly tumult ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... is the case, and habit confirms the assumption; yet, when reflection has overcome habit, it will be seen that its adoption was due to accident alone,—that it took place before any attention was paid to a general system, in short, without reflection,—and that its supposed perfection is a mere delusion; for, as a member of such a system, it presents disagreements on every hand; as has been said, it has no agreement with anything, unless it be allowable to say that it agrees with the Arabic mode ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... found the tide in, and no sign of Charley's clothes. The other men whom she had besought to come had disappeared, it must have been in some other direction, for she had not met them going away. They, finding nothing, had probably thought her alarm a mere conjecture, and given up ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... this purports to represent proves the empty-headedness of the writer, and when he added that the strong indictment rebounded off my hide because I had heard myself a hundred times denounced in language equally eloquent, I can only agree that he was a mere lisping babe in comparison with some adjectival denunciators who, to their regret, find I am still alive and equal ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... like Cyrene, and its port Ptolemais (Tolmeita) took its place: but after the Arab conquest (A.D. 641) it became the chief place of the Cyrenaica for a time and a principal station on the Kairawan road. Though now a mere village, Merj is still the chief centre of administration inland, and has a fort and small garrison. No ruins of earlier period than the late Roman and early Arab seem to be visible on the site. The latter ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... certain galleys of Genoese corsairs, who had, in their cruises off the coast of Armenia, taken many boys, he bought some of these latter, deeming them Turks, and amongst them one, Teodoro by name, of nobler mien and better bearing than the rest, who seemed all mere shepherds. Teodoro, although entreated as a slave, was brought up in the house with Messer Amerigo's children and conforming more to his own nature than to the accidents of fortune, approved himself so accomplished ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... enough," insisted the professor angrily. "Will one mere private detective restore my L6000 Japanese 4-1/2 per cent. bearer bonds? Is the return of my irreplaceable notes on 'Polyphyletic Bridal Customs among the mid-Pleistocene Cave Men' to depend on a solitary director? I demand that the police shall ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... freely into his shirt-frill. 'I see,' repeated he, staring that way; 'but I think (puff) that's a mere (wheeze) occupation ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... hands, the foaming mouth, the implication, the shriek, the madness, the flying here and there in the one attempt to get rid of himself, the horror increased at his every appearance, whether in company or alone, regarded in contrast with the dagger scene of "Macbeth" makes the latter mere child's play. That day, John Zwink, in the character of Judas, preached fifty sermons on the ghastliness of betrayal. The fire-smart of ill-gotten gain, the iron-beaked vulture of an aroused conscience; all the bloodhounds ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... spite of the fact that tradition reckons this gift to have been of decisive importance, one does not like to believe that a girl of high intellectual and artistic ability could be so easily and fatefully overcome by a mere trinket. Still less does one like to believe that Spinoza fell in love with a girl whose mind was so far removed from the joys that are eternal and spiritual. But, of course, it is conceivable that the girl took the ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... in a cattle-boat in rough weather: 'Helpless cattle dashed from one side of the ship to the other, amid a ruin of smashed pens, with limbs broken from contact with hatchway combings or winches—dishorned, gored, and some of them smashed to mere bleeding masses of hide-covered flesh. Add to this the shrieking of the tempest, and the frenzied moanings of the wounded beasts, and the reader will have some faint idea of the fearful scenes of danger and carnage ... the dead ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... bulwarks, all lowering to the south. In these the aggressive nature of storm-flung snow was most apparent. They were formidable structures; formidable and intimidating, more through the suggestiveness of their shape than through mere size. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... God have made possible the cure of a dread disease. Here, as in all matters of pure religion, it is what men say and write, not the fact itself, that makes all the misunderstanding; we make our judgments and conceive our prejudices from mere surface considerations. Call life what you will,—leave out the symbolic word "God" altogether,—the facts remain. The true scientific spirit must reverence and adore the power that lies behind creation. It is ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... you can't guess what dreadful things I said," cried poor overwhelmed Polly, clasping her hands tightly together at the mere thought of the words ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... 415 B.C. Athens was full of bold and restless spirits, who longed for some field of distant enterprise, wherein they might signalize themselves, and aggrandize the state; and who looked on the alarm of Spartan hostility as a mere old woman's tale. When Sparta had wasted their territory she had done her worst; and the fact of its always being in her power to do so, seemed a strong reason for seeking to increase the transmarine dominion ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... that time have hardly set eyes upon a female form. They come on shore bursting with a full masculine longing for the society of the other sex, with a year's stored-up feeling to let out; and there is a positive intoxication to them in the mere dance—in the mere holding at Nieuwediep Anniken or Bibecke, or at Portsmouth Mary Ann, by the waist; and Mary Ann and Bibecke perfectly understand this, and for the moment feel themselves persons of ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... Montfort ventured to flee from France to England, where he did homage to Edward as King of France for the duchy which he claimed. He then went to Brittany, and there shortly afterwards died. The new Duke of Brittany, also named John, was a mere boy when he was thus robbed of both his parents' care, and his cause languished for want of a head. Edward took upon himself the whole direction of Brittany as tutor of the little duke. Northampton was once more sent thither, but for a time the war degenerated into sieges ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... man's God has triumphed," he said, "and the Aztecs have been defeated. You were right, Roger. Mere handful as they were, the white men have gained the day. Even now, I hardly know how it came about. Never did my countrymen fight more bravely. For hours, the Spaniards stood as a wall which we, in vain, tried ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... and diversity, assign the cause why iron should not move to iron, which is more like, but move to the loadstone, which is less like? Why in all diversities of things there should be certain participles in nature which are almost ambiguous to which kind they should be referred? But there is a mere and deep silence touching the nature and operation of those common adjuncts of things, as in nature; and only a resuming and repeating of the force and use of them in speech or argument. Therefore, because ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... "something"—a mere patch of denser black in a darkness emphasized more than relieved by the grey-white crests of breaking seas—resolved itself into a large vessel, which as day broke was seen to be a frigate, like themselves under the shortest of canvas, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Frederick grew up he was drawn into a long struggle with the Papacy which ended in the overthrow of the Imperial authority. From this time the quarrel of Guelfs and Ghibelins for the most part became mere family feuds resting on no principles. Charles of Anjou was adopted as Papal champion; the republics of the North were in effect controlled by despots for a brief moment. Rome revived her republicanism under the leadership of Rienzi. In the general chaos the principle ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Government of the United States conceives that it has incurred in this tragic occurrence, and to the indisputable principle upon which that responsibility rests. The Government of the United States is contending for something much greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity, which every Government honors itself in respecting and which no Government is justified in resigning ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... it was not that; here are mere words again. You have perhaps imagined it was so; but it was for your own advancement. I have heard you speak to the young girl. You thought but of yourselves; you do not love each other. She thought but of her rank, and you of your ambition. One loves in order to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... towards the Derbyshire border, he was not in truth thinking of Dora's counsels or of Lucy Purcell at all. Every now and then he lost himself in the mere intoxication of the spring, in the charm of the factory valleys, just flushing into green, through which the train was speeding. But in general his attention was held by the book in his hand. His time for reading had been much curtailed of late by the toils of his business. He caught covetously ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... distinct schools. Fascinating as they undoubtedly are, they utterly abandon the power to teach for the art of pleasing. They are not for the public; have little to do with events of any great interest. There is a manifest descent from the high pretensions of art; the aim is to gratify the mere love of exact imitation, and to interest by portraiture of manners. "If, then," says our author, "truth of imitation is the first business of works of art; if, without that, no picture is in a situation to please; if all that is visible over the whole face of nature be included in the domain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... you intimate, she is a hermit's daughter, you cannot lawfully ask her in marriage. You may as well then dismiss her from your mind, for any good the mere sight ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... father, who was left behind when she got off, soon after made his way on North, and joined his children. He was too old and infirm probably to be worth anything, and had been allowed to go free, or to purchase himself for a mere nominal sum. Slaveholders would, on some such occasions, show wonderful liberality in letting their old slaves go free, when they could work no more. After reaching New Bedford, Clarissa manifested her gratitude in writing to her friends in Philadelphia repeatedly, and evinced ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... under Admiral Dahlgren (whom I find a most agreeable gentleman, accommodating himself to our wishes and plans). Then I would favor an attack on Wilmington, in the belief that Porter and Butler will fail in their present undertaking. Charleston is now a mere desolated wreck, and is hardly worth the time it would take to starve it out. Still, I am aware that, historically and politically, much importance is attached to the place, and it may be that, apart from its military importance, both you and the Administration may prefer ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... As a mere literary criticism on Smith's writings, it would appear that he had a habit of transferring to his own career notable incidents and adventures of which he had read, and this is somewhat damaging to an estimate of his originality. His ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... York in Parliament, spoke in 1784, when Boswell wrote of him: "I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table, but as I listened he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale." The York streets are full of old houses, many with porches and overhanging fronts. One of the most curious rows is the Shambles, on a narrow ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... the forty miles route to Corinth, which, to his surprise, was bloodlessly evacuated before him. He was an engineer, and like some other engineers in the Civil War, was overmuch set upon a methodical and cautious procedure. But his mere advance to Corinth caused the Confederates to abandon yet another fort on the Mississippi, and on June 6 the Northern troops were able to occupy Memphis, for which Lincoln had long wished, while ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... speak of mere counting as one of the simplest operations in the world; but on occasions, as I shall show, it is far from easy. Sometimes the labour can be diminished by the use of little artifices; sometimes it is practically impossible to make the required enumeration ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... effort he managed to get to close tight enough so that the bar could be dropped into place. That avenue seemed quite safe; and as the windows had each one a couple of stout bars fastened across them, it looked as though there could be no ingress unless the intruder were a mere child, or else made use of that wide-throated ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... shaft, reached the bottom, and Samuel Kempson and his boy were helped into it, and with some of the other men, began their ascent. The father held the boy in his arms, and watched his countenance as they neared the light which came down from the mouth of the pit; first a mere speck, like a star at night, and growing larger and larger as they got ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... 33: "Every sin committed since birth by man or woman is absolved by bathing in 'holy Pushkara"). It may be remarked that as a general thing the deities invoked by women are, by predilection, female divinities, some of them being mere abstractions, while 'the Creator' is often the only god in the woman's list, except, of course, the priests: "Reverence to priests, and to the Creator ... May Hr[i], Cr[i] (Modesty and Beauty), Fame, Glory, Prosperity, Um[a] (Civa's ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... shore for proper clothes for Chin Chi, who looked a very different person when dressed in bright-coloured robes and a gay cap. He had got a similar dress for Jerry and me. He told Captain Frankland that he could not venture to invite him on shore, but that, as we were mere boys, he might take us under ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... made close comparison. It was, in fact, the first time that he had seen the girl's features; hitherto they had been, like everything else not embalmed in his memory, a mere vague perception, a detail of the phantasmic world through which he struggled against ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... (ko-shugo-dai), to whom the name daikwan (another term for "deputy") was often given. These daikwan were selected from among the members or vassals of a shugo's family to act provisionally as shugo-dai. As for the jito, from the middle of the Kamakura epoch their posts became mere sinecures, the emoluments going to support their families, or being paid over to a temple or shrine. Occasionally the office was sold or pawned. The comparatively small areas of land within which the jito officiated soon came to be recognized as their private domains, but after the Onin ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... which he had discovered were carried in solemn procession before him. The only valuable part of them consisted in some little fillets, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, and in some bales of cotton. The rest were mere objects of vulgar wonder and curiosity; some reeds of an extraordinary size, some birds of a very beautiful plumage, and some stuffed skins of the huge alligator and manati; all of which were preceded by six or seven of the wretched natives, whose singular ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... one or more agricultural papers, from which he learns many new methods of cultivation, while his knowledge of the reasons of various agricultural effects enables him to discard the injudicious suggestions of mere book farmers ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... in one cave of special importance, two enormous carronades looking with peculiar wickedness and malignity down a shelving rock, which perhaps, although not without tremendous difficulty, might be scaled. The mere wind of one of these huge guns would be sufficient to topple over a thousand men. What sensations of dread and horror must be awakened in the breast of a foe when this hollow rock, in the day of siege, emits its ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... dropped. With care I pulled the valance, and the seam opened more, but not much. I raised myself on my elbow, my eyes to the opening. There were the thighs and legs stretching out to the floor, her bum was at the mere edge of the bed, her cunt but about six inches above my nose. I had a wonderfully keen scent for the aroma of a woman, and swear I smelt her cunt distinctly, though I could not see it. She sat there for full five minutes, talking to Jenny about the dress, whilst I kept sniffing ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... flat, or even in a city house, we do not know, nor care to know, who the people above or next door to us may be; and they are in precisely the same position with regard to us. Mere adjacency gives us no claim upon their acquaintance, nor does it put us at the mercy of their insistence. Our calling list is not governed by locality, and we can cut it as we wish without embarrassment. Choice is not so easy in the suburb. There, willynilly, we must know ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... records of the men and manners of the age in which they were drawn, whilst the latter, being in their own day but caricatures of life, will, in course of time, fade and lose their interest, and at length become levelled with the mere ephemera, or day-flies of literature. It is true that novel-writing has, within the last sixteen, or eighteen years, attained a much higher rank than it hitherto enjoyed; but it should be remembered that this superiority has not been grounded in mawkish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... should by hellish human circumvention be brought to distrust and dread, and abjure his own perfect love, is most mournful indeed—it is the infirmity of our good nature wrestling in vain with the strong powers of evil. Moreover, he would, had Desdemona been false, have been the mere victim of fate; whereas he is now in a manner his own victim. His happy love was heroic tenderness; his injured love is terrible passion, and disordered power, engendered within itself to its own destruction, is ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... clothes that Saville Row has carefully designed and carried out for a Society peacock, and the result is not a member of the phasianidae, but a golden eagle. It is as if the art of the tailor or shirt maker were grateful for once to adorn something more than a mere dandy. That depth of the eye, that wise and learned mouth, those intelligent and almost understanding hands, the noble studious brow,—all these embellishments added to the figure of the ordinary man, give a certain finish to well-made garments, which these in their turn ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... monarchy—that it is no necessary effect of republican institutions, but the reverse. Our quarrel, therefore, is not with the declaration of rights, but that this celebrated declaration should be regarded, in the instance of one class in the community, as a mere rhetorical flourish, and should thus be deprived of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... folly, and a long ministration of love, and knew now a trifle about both. It is true she wrote nearly as much silly poetry, but it was not so silly as before, partly because her imagination had now something of fact to go upon, and poorest fact is better than mere fancy. So free was her heart, however, that she went of herself to see her aunt at the castle, to whom, having beheld the love between David and his daughter, and begun to feel injured by the little notice her father took of her, she bewailed ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... anticipated. They were like two trained elephants of the east, possessing themselves all the finer instincts and generous qualities of the noble animal, but disciplined by a force quite foreign to their natural condition into creatures of mere convention, placed one on each side of a younger brother, fresh from the plains, and whom it was their duty to teach new services for the trunk, new affections, and haply the manner in which to carry with dignity ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his hands again. "Mr. Kielland, I'm a mere mortal. In order to measure something, it has to stay the same long enough to get it measured. In order to describe something, it has to hold still long enough to be observed. In order to form a logical opinion of a creature's mental capacity, it has ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... sir," he gasped. "No lawyer shall make me. I've known him since he was ten, Judge, and they're mistaken. It's not any mere lawyers can make me believe that awful thing, sir, of our Master Jack." The servant was shaking from head to foot with intense rejection, and the man put up his hand as if to ward ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... I. Now it may be my historic sense, or it may be mere curiosity, but I mean to hunt up the personal history of those hundred-odd strangers who died forlorn and lonely ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... sharp youngsters, and having come well supplied, they did a thrifty business. When their stock in trade was all disposed of they wished to return, but they were so intelligent and observant that I thought their mission involved other purposes than the mere sale of newspapers, so they were held till we crossed the Chickahominy and then ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... ill of him," said Sir Charles, before Agatha could retort. "It is a mere matter of feeling, and I should not have mentioned it had I known the altered relations between him and ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Ischomachus, you have created in the soul of some one a desire for your welfare; have inspired in him not a mere passive interest, but a deep concern to help you to achieve prosperity; further, you have obtained for him a knowledge of the methods needed to give the operations of the field some measure of success; you have, moreover, made ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... difficulty of obtaining tobacco is probably the reason why everybody, male and female, used it at that time. I know from my own experience that when I was at West Point, the fact that tobacco, in every form, was prohibited, and the mere possession of the weed severely punished, made the majority of the cadets, myself included, try to acquire the habit of using it. I failed utterly at the time and for many years afterward; but the majority accomplished the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... money to establish Monty in the homes of his ancestors at Montdidier Towers and Kirkudbrightshire Castle; for that would have been an unbelievable amount; it takes more than mere affluence to keep up an earldom in the proper style. But we all ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... dumb negro and a razor! I had long ago given up the hypothesis that Gumbo had been purchased out of pure philanthropy. The disappointment of baffled cruelty in Moore's brother would not alone account for the necessity of such defensive preparations as had just been made. Clearly Gumbo was not a mere fancy article, but a negro of real value, whose person it was desirable to obtain possession of at any risk or cost. The ghastly idea occurred to me (suggested, I fancy, by Moore's demand for a razor) that Gumbo, at some period of his career, must have swallowed a priceless diamond. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... very noble device, for the mere name of Chancery, and the high repute of the fees therein, and low repute of the lawyers, and the comfortable knowledge that the woolsack itself is the golden fleece, absorbing gold for ever, if the standard be but pure; consideration of these things staved ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... in Quebec, although he was wishful to see the city for himself, and to judge of the strength of its position. He knew that the fleet from Louisbourg would be hanging about nearer the mouth of the great estuary, and to a traveller of his experience the journey either by land or water was a mere trifle. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... animal, ordered it to be killed, and passed on. The people, however, interpreted the accident as a bad omen, and wished him not to proceed; but he could not attend to their suggestions, as he thought the king would look upon it as a mere pretence, and therefore ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... voyages; but just call to mind how many years of hardship, of danger, cold, and starvation I have undergone to collect all these anecdotes, and then judge whether it be worth any man's while to go for the sake of mere curiosity." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... under the advice of Parson Whymper. Trevethick, the only man that had attached any importance to the possession of it, was dead; and it was not likely that any one at the sale should bid one-half of the sum which this stranger was prepared to give for the mere gratification of his whim. The mine itself, indeed, had scarcely been mentioned in the transaction; it merely formed a portion in the lot comprising the few barren acres on which this capricious purchaser had expressed his fancy to build a home. ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... entered, but had not glanced twice at her. As he turned now, before going out of the door, he fixed on her his baleful glance. His aspect was more full of meaning than could have been any words. A horrible power, of which he was boastfully conscious, shone from his little, pointed eyes. His mere presence was deadly. Plainly as if he had spoken was the significance of his long gaze. Any one could have ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... move. As though he had never before seen a woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn, Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery, so overcome by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and inarticulate. For protection she moved in some alarm ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... the cook and steward had their usual duties to attend to, and could not therefore be spared to lend a hand in re-rigging the brig, even had they possessed the necessary knowledge—which they did not; although later on, perhaps, when it came to mere pulling and hauling, their strength would be found useful, and would be unhesitatingly called for. Meanwhile the brig, although under her fore-course only, and running before the wind, needed to be steered; and this job Leslie undertook to personally attend to throughout the day, thus sparing ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Paragraphing, exercises in Parallel Construction Parenthesis, marks of Parenthetical Classes, punctuation Parsing definition of first step in models for written Participles adjectival as adjective modifiers as attribute complements as mere adjectives as mere nouns as objective complements as prepositions as principal word in a phrase definition of expansion of forms of in independent phrases misuse of modified by a and the modified by a possessive nounal, called gerunds, infinitives, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... more conspicuously so by the raven hair, that fell in long silken ringlets down her slender white throat, and spread like a dark veil round her elegant bust and shoulders. Her lofty brow was pure as marble, and marked by that high look of moral and intellectual power, before which mere physical beauty shrinks into insignificance. Soft pencilled eyebrows gave additional depth and lustre to a pair of the most lovely deep blue eyes that ever flashed from beneath a fringe of jet. There was an expression of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... were not so learned as we, yet they were wiser. They did not explain the phenomena of nature, but described with a graceful and imposing imagery. The rainbow, reduced in our colleges to a mere conformation of matter, was the scarf of Iris; the light-footed hours preceded the car of night, and the rosy-fingered Aurora opened the horizon to permit the car of Jove to pass. When the thunder rolled, Jupiter spoke to attentive mortals. When volcanic mountains trembled, the old Titans ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... from being a title of respect for women—there is a close analogy in the history of sire—came to signify "mother." Chaucer translates the French of the Romaunt of the Rose, "Enfant qui craint ni pere ni mere Ne pent que bien ne le comperre," by "For who that dredeth sire ne dame Shall it abie in bodie or name," and Shakespeare makes poor Caliban declare: "I never saw a woman, But only Sycorax, my dam." Nowadays, the word dam is applied only to the female parent ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... been the slave of a senator. Ennius (239-169), a Calabrian Greek, wrote epics, and also tragedies and comedies. Him the later Romans regarded as the father of their literature. The beginnings of historical writing—which go beyond mere chronicles and family histories—appear, as in the lost work on Roman history by M. Portias Cato (Cato the Censor, 234-149). The great historian of this period, however, was the Greek Polybius. The Greek philosophy was introduced, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the way of the wilderness. Men get to see that every one must do his share and a little discomfort is scoffed at. The boys enjoyed the early morning paddle through the two lakes, while the portaging of the canoes was by this time mere child's play to them. They really thought nothing about it and took their turn when traveling light just as a matter of course. The improvement in Pud was the most noticeable. He had lost weight and was quicker on his feet and handled himself much better. They arrived at ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... written constitutions and our Supreme Court are important safeguards, as will be shown below. The independence of our executives is another important safeguard. But if our executive departments were mere committees of the legislature—like the English cabinet, for example—this independence could not possibly be maintained; and the loss of it would doubtless entail upon us evils far greater than those which mow flow from want of ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... women are a rarety in Johnstown now. This is not a natural peculiarity of Johnstown nor a mere coincidence, but a fact with a terrible reason behind it. There are so many more men than women among the living in Johnstown now because there are so many more women than men among the dead. Of the bodies recovered there are at least two women to every one man. Besides the fact that their ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... some rain." "Glad to see you about again; you must take care of yourself." "How the young folk shoot up, don't they?" Strings of stupid, inevitable perfunctory remarks came to his mind, remarks that were certainly not the mental exchange of human intelligences, but mere empty parrot-talk. One might really just as well salute one's acquaintances with "Pretty polly. Puss, puss, miaow!" Groby began to fume against the picture of himself as a foolish feathered fowl which his nephew's sketch had first ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... conduct the experiment. Being duly disrobed and placed, he was informed that an artery was to be opened, and left to bleed till life expired. An incision in the flesh at the back of the neck was made, as a mere feint, and warm water allowed at the same moment to trickle slowly down his shoulder and back, when, in a brief time, spasms set in, and ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... you have seen the men and the town, the tale can go on; it is a mere recital of certain incidents which took place during the last year or two of John Ringo's life; incidents which show the difference between his breed of bad man and the breed to which Buckskin Frank belonged. To the chronicler these incidents appeal for that very reason. The ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... used to shirk with an idle prayer. He must, in effect, change himself into the political Providence which he formerly conceived as god; and such change is not only possible, but the only sort of change that is real. The mere transfiguration of institutions, as from military and priestly dominance to commercial and scientific dominance, from commercial dominance to proletarian democracy, from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to capitalism, ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... are several things you ought to learn besides mere book knowledge. I propose that you should be young country ladies whom no one will be ashamed to know. You must learn to dance properly, and to skate properly if there ever is any skating here. If not, we will go abroad for the purpose. But while ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... arises from no desire for economy, but simply because he does not think for himself; other travellers do the like, and he follows their example. Yet what money could recompense him for occupying for the same time on land a double-bedded room—not to say a mere china closet—with a man of whom he knows nothing except that he is subject to chronic sickness? A pleasant sort of travelling companion indeed, yet, strange to say, the commonest of all. Where there is a slender purse ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... suit, and more than one woman made a deep, if brief, impression upon him. His disdain of woman has, we are sure, been much exaggerated. At Saint Helena he declaimed against women, but his remarks were mere paradoxes, not meant to ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... need not spend or waste your time in mere verbal criticism, but I wish to point out that that word 'soul' in one of our two texts means both the soul and the life of which it is the seat; and also to remark that the being saved and the winning of the life or the soul has distinct application, in our Lord's words, primarily to corporeal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... was to land at some point below Eastport, and make a break of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, between Tuscumbia and Corinth. General Smith was quite unwell, and was suffering from his leg, which was swollen and very sore, from a mere abrasion in stepping into a small boat. This actually mortified, and resulted in his death about a month after, viz., April 25, 1862. He was adjutant of the Military Academy during the early part of my career there, and afterward commandant of cadets. He was a very handsome and soldierly man, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Bromley lord chancellor; but under the maiden reign neither the deepest statesman, the most studious lawyer, nor the rudest soldier was exempted from the humiliating obligation of accepting, and even soliciting, those household and menial offices usually discharged by mere courtiers, nor from the irksome one of assuming, for the sake of their sovereign lady, the romantic disguise of armed champions and enamoured knights. Sir Henry Lee, however, appears to have devoted his life to these chivalrous ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... luminosity prevent our capability of perceiving the ultimate minuter details which go to form the texture of the solar surface. 'Bearing in mind that a second of arc on the Sun represents 455 miles, it follows that an object 150 miles in diameter is about the minimum visible even as a mere mathematical point, and that anything that is sufficiently large to give the slightest impression of shape and extension of surface must have an area of at least a quarter of a million square miles; ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... brought there from a bin in the cellars—it was part of a quantity of fine wine laid down by John Mallathorpe, years before, and its original owner would have been disgusted to think that it should ever be used for the mere purpose of quenching thirst. But Esther Mawson had another purpose in view, with respect to that bottle. Carrying it to her own sitting-room, she carefully cut off the thick mass of sealing-wax at its neck, drew the cork, and poured ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... new cell, which was in the Salt Tower, he was bitterly angry and disappointed with himself. Why, he had turned white and sick like a child, not at the pain of the rack, not even at the sight of it, but at the mere warrant! He threw himself on his knees, and bowed down till his head beat against ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... should say that we give them words only, and make mere specious assertions without any foundation, and desire to innovate without sufficient cause, three points present themselves for confirmation, which, being stated, I conceive that the truth I contend for ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... New York Society reported 90 complaints, 36 persons freed, 21 cases still in suit, and 19 under consideration. The Pennsylvania Society reported simply that it had been instrumental in the liberation of "many hundreds" of persons. The different branches, however, did not rest with mere liberation; they endeavored generally to improve the condition of the Negroes in their respective communities, each one being expected to report to the Convention on the number of freedmen in its state and on their property, employment, and conduct. From time to time also ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... the sacrificial ground of king Janaka and there defeated Vandin in a controversy. Worship, O son of Kunti, with thy brothers, the sacred hermitage of him who had for his grandson Ashtavakra, who, even when a mere child, had caused Vandin to be drowned in a river, after having defeated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in his skill with it. He seems to have behaved well after the arrest of the Kid's gang near Sumner, and is not known in connection with any further criminal acts, though he still for a long time wore two guns in the settlements. Once a well-known sheriff happened, by mere chance, to be in his town, not knowing Pickett was there. The latter literally took to the woods, thinking something was on foot in which he was concerned. Being reminded that he had lost an opportunity to show how bad he was he explained: "I don't want anything to do with ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... property. If he has slain a large pig or deer, too heavy for him to bring in unaided, he returns to camp and modestly keeps silence over his achievement until some question as to his luck is put to him; then he remarks that he has left some small piece of game in the jungle, a mere trifle. Three or four men will then set out and, following the path he has marked by bending down twigs on his way back to camp, will find the game and bring it in. If a present of tobacco is made to one member of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... white, and the moon gives light, I'll out to the freezing mere, And ease my heart with one little song, For none will be nigh to hear. And it's O my love, my love! And it's O my dear, my dear! It's of her that I'll sing till the wild woods ring, When nobody's ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... lasted long because of the ever-green credulity of our "public." In the ever-fresh stream of human life which daily flowed beneath our windows, there were sure to be one or more pedestrians who, with varying expressions of conscientious responsibility, unprincipled appropriation, or mere curiosity, would open our parcels, either to ascertain what trinket should be restored to its owner, or to keep what was to be got, or to see what there ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that one must have a large lot of curiosity to visit these one-fourth civilized regions (that are by far worse than any real wilderness), for, although they are getting settled at an incredible speed, they don't offer to the mere lover of the beauties of nature, or improvement of human civilization, any great charm. Here nature is rich, but, farmerly or businessly speaking, killingly prosaic—no romance—no Lake Superior water—no scenery—nothing, finally, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... that flattering illusion that our conditions should be regarded as the standard for all others and as surpassing them. Let it suffice that they are our institutions, that they have not become a part of ourselves by mere accident, and were not laid upon us like a garment; but that they are living monuments of important steps in the progress of civilisation, in some respects even the furniture of a bygone age, and as such link us with the past of our people, ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... more clearly between reward for service and mere one-sided gain, there occurs a parallel change in men's motives; they become more sensitive to social disfavor and to social esteem and less and less willing to devote their lives to activity by which no one but themselves is benefited. In this reaction of altruism with enlightened ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... stood staring about her she twisted them together feverishly. It was almost too much for her—you could see the pain of too great emotion in her face, and all the tremor of her form. She was so young—not quite sixteen—and small for her age, a mere child; and she had just been married—and married to Jurgis,* (*Pronounced Yoorghis) of all men, to Jurgis Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his new black suit, he with the mighty shoulders and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the "Stovepipes" were not mere street corner ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of syllables not accented, as historian."—Blair's Gram., p. 5. "Any word that will make sense with to before it, is a verb."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 44. "Verbs do not, in reality, express actions; but they are intrinsically the mere names of actions."—Ib., p. 37. "The nominative is the actor or subject, and the active verb is the action performed by the nominative."—Ib., p. 45. "If, therefore, only one creature or thing acts, only one action, at the same instant, can be ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... replied Philip. "There's nothing to cheer me up about. The question is simply this: Can I stand a period of several years' enforced inactivity as a mere pensioner?" ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... dense that, as the lads gazed down, they had but a mere glimpse of a shadowy animal, as it seemed to be running across the lawn, and directly after there was a faint, soft rustling in ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... clear Of all she needs Lamira offers here; Nor does she fear a rigid Cato's frown, When she lays by the rich embroidered gown, And modestly compounds for just enough, Perhaps some dozens of mere flighty stuff; With lawns and lute strings, blonde and Mechlin laces, Fringes and jewels, fans and tweezer-cases; Gay cloaks and hat, of every shape and size, Scarfs, cardinals, and ribands, of all dyes, With ruffles stamped and aprons of tambour, Tippets and handkerchiefs, at ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... consideration of the true meaning of the term 'style' as applied to painting. Is it not more than the mere ableness of method, still more than the audacity of brush work, that often passes for style? Is it possible to dissociate the manner of a picture from its embodiment of some fact or idea? For it to have style in the full sense of the word, surely it must embody an expression of life ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... chance of that. Whether you like it or no, my dear, this day has settled your fate. You can never be a mere acquaintance any more. You've done us a service which will bind us together as long as we live. Henceforth a bit of you belongs to us, and we'll see that we ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lead us to have no controversy respecting mere theories, but simply hold to the person and life of Jesus Christ Himself, and the privilege of being united to Him, and living in constant dependence upon ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Paris for many years successively, and his fame grew to colonial proportions. In 1828 his terms were forty thousand francs and a benefit, for four months. A few years later, Laporte, of London, paid Robert, of Paris, as much money for the mere cession of his services for a short season. In 1852 when Lablachc had reached an age when most singers grow dull and mechanical, he created two new types, Caliban, in Halevy's opera of "The Tempest," and Gritzonko, in "L'Etoile du Nord," ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... tales of the road which, if they were put in type, would make a book of compelling interest. The life of the traveling man has such variety, such a change of scene, that a great deal more comes into it than mere buy and sell. Yes, on this night of which I speak, the stories told were about tussles that my friends ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... the higher classes, while low pleasures and lamentable ignorance characterized the people. The dissenting sects were more religious, but were formal and cold. Their ministers preached, too often, a mere technical divinity, or a lax system of ethics. The Independents were inclined to a frigid Arminianism, and the Presbyterians were passing through the change from ultra ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... rigidly observed, of course they bought fish instead of meat. For a fortnight they kept up this practice, which to them seemed far more of a hardship than it would to us; they were accustomed to a number of elaborate dishes, with rich sauces, in most of which wine was used; and mere bread and meat, or even bread and butter, seemed very poor, rough eating. Perhaps, if our ancestors had been content with simpler cookery, their children in the present day would have had ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... if I have any, would term it, hinders me from calling out my name in a crowd. It has heretofore hindered me from making my appearance there, when impelled by the strongest of human considerations, and produces, at this time, an insuperable aversion to naming myself to my readers. The mere act of calling out my own name, on this occasion, is of no moment, since an author or editor who takes no pains to conceal himself, cannot fail of being known to as many as desire to know him. And whether my notoriety ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... volley of oaths let fall by the musketeers, feared he might have damaged the splendor of the belt, and struggled to unwind himself; but when he at length freed his head, he found that like most things in this world the belt had two sides, and while the front bristled with gold, the back was mere leather; which explains why Porthos always had a cold and could not part ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Leary came, endeavouring while coming to wear a manner combining an atmosphere of dignified aloofness and a sentiment of frank indifference to the opinion of this loutish busybody, with just a touch, a mere trace, as it were, of nonchalance thrown in. In short, coming out he sought to deport himself as though it were the properest thing in the world for a man of years and discretion to be wearing a bright pink one-piece article of apparel on a public highway at four A. M. or thereabouts. ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... libraries, and finding constant employment, and a never-ending pleasure, in researches for the simple investigation of the truth. There was in fact no retirement, no seclusion, no study. Every thing except what related to the mere daily toil of tilling the ground bore direct relation to military expeditions, spectacles and parades; and the only field for the exercise of that kind of intellectual ability which is employed in modern times in investigating and recording historic truth, was the invention and recitation of poems, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... mind which effects the derivation. But the God who is the result of this process, a God who is nothing but reason hypostatized and projected towards the infinite, cannot possibly be felt as something living and real, nor yet be conceived of save as a mere idea which will ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... remove all public property and then withdraw themselves. On our side I know officers and men of the Army of the Tennessee—and I presume the same is true of those of the other commands—were disappointed at the result. They could not see how the mere occupation of places was to close the war while large and effective rebel armies existed. They believed that a well-directed attack would at least have partially destroyed the army defending Corinth. For myself I am satisfied that Corinth could ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... which nevertheless constitute us. By means of their restlessness they produce innumerable currents which we call our passions, our thoughts, our joys, our sufferings, our desires, our fears, and our will. We believe that we are our own masters, while a mere drop of alcohol stimulates, and then benumbs the very elements by ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... possibly—though I greatly doubt it—be in some countries a wise policy. But this is not the point at issue. The question before us is not whether the Press shall be free, but whether, being free, it shall be called free. It is surely mere madness in a Government to make itself unpopular for nothing; to be indulgent, and yet to disguise its indulgence under such outward forms as bring on it the reproach of tyranny. Yet this is now our policy. We are ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Petronius knew already that he must fall in that struggle, and he understood why. As Caesar fell lower daily to the role of a comedian, a buffoon, and a charioteer; as he sank deeper in a sickly, foul, and coarse dissipation,—the exquisite arbiter became a mere burden to him. Even when Petronius was silent, Nero saw blame in his silence; when the arbiter praised, he saw ridicule. The brilliant patrician annoyed his self-love and roused his envy. His wealth and splendid works of art had become an ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... am an old man, broken by sickness, disheartened by misfortune, daunted by tribulation—a mere husk cast aside by Fortune, whilst you are lovely as one of the angels about the Throne ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... when I told him what I intended to do. "It is a long, expensive post journey; and part of the way you may not be able to post. Riga, on the gulf beyond Mittau, is a fine old town of pointed gables and high stone houses. But when I was in Mittau I found it a mere winter camp of Russian nobles. The houses are low, one-story structures. There is but one castle, and in that his Royal Highness the Count ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... plain distinctions of time, past, present, and future. With the past we have been acquainted. It has ceased to be. Its works are ended. The present is a mere line—, nothing as it were—which is constantly passing unchecked from the past to the future. It is a mere division of the past and future. The Hebrew, which is strictly a philosophic language, admits no present; only ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... an old one for him accustomed as he had been to carry on with guilty wives under the very noses of unsuspecting husbands, and on this occasion he acted admirably. He was very friendly with Kitty in public—evidently looking upon her as a mere child, although he made no difference in his manner. And this innocent intrigue gave a piquant flavour ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... be any prettier, it seemed to him; but her manner was more cordial, and she always asked after Sister and Mrs. Atterson, and showed that her interest in him was not a mere surface interest. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the dance; and you knew then who had taught those women. Theirs had been after all a mere interpretation: of her vision. ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... chain of denial to his bosom I have a good memory for forgetting I am only myself when I am drunk I should remember to forget it Importunity with discretion was his motto In all secrets there is a kind of guilt Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting It is good to live, isn't it? Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind Liquor makes me human Nervous legs at a gallop Pathetically in earnest Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do So say your prayers, believe all ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... the whole of this intricate process, is simply trial and error on a gigantic scale. Nature is such that thousands of varying individuals are produced in order that a mere handful or only one survivor may be chosen to bear the burden of carrying on the species for another generation. The effect of nature's process is judicial, as it were. We may liken the many and varied conditions of life to as many jurymen, before which every living ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... come by. Mauryeen in a pink cotton frock, with a spray of brown seaweed in her belt, might have passed for one of the young ladies who visited at the Hall. If the other girls copied her pretty tricks of decoration they carried the tame air of the mere copyist. But no one grudged Mauryeen her charm; she was so kind and gentle, and she had always the tragedy of that ghastly old mother of hers to stir pity for her. Then too she always seemed so ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... from knowing the Celt and things Celtic more thoroughly. It was impossible, however, to avoid touching on certain points of ethnology and philology, which can be securely handled only by those who have made these sciences the object of special study. Here the mere literary critic must owe his whole safety to his tact in choosing authorities to follow, and whatever he advances must be understood as advanced with a sense of the insecurity which, after all, attaches to such a mode of proceeding, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... of the city. The Committee of Public Safety disappeared and is heard of no more. Hoogvoort resigned his command. On receipt of this news Prince Frederick at Vilvoorde was ordered to advance upon the city and compel submission. But the passions of the crowd had been aroused, and the mere rumour that the Dutch troops were moving caused the most vigorous steps to be taken to resist a outrance their penetrating into ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... written to Lorrington, my dear Alice," said the Countess, "as head of the family, and your eldest brother, it is a compliment we must pay him—but it is mere compliment, remember." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... for a father and his family to be as fond of each other on a bright day in the Tuilleries, or at Versailles, with music and dancing, and fresh air, as they would be in a back parlour, by a smoky hearth, occupied entirely by le bon pere, et la bonne mere; while the poor little children sit at the other end of the table, whispering and shivering, debarred the vent of all natural spirits, for fear of making a noise; and strangely uniting the idea of the domestic hearth with that of a hobgoblin, and the association ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to have supported itself for the winter. But the difficulty with me is how this amphibius mus came to fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. Was it determined in its choice of that place by the mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there; or is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of the water ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... pious zeal of a devoted priest, eager to save the souls of the heathen, supplemented by the paternal care of a monarch solicitous for the welfare of his subjects. The political exigencies of the day are forgotten; military commanders and civil governors sink into insignificance and become mere executives of the priestly will, while the heroic efforts of Junipero Serra to convert the natives, his courage in the face of danger, his sublime zeal, and his unwearied devotion, make him the impelling factor in the ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... ask: If Bursley was offended, why did it not mark its sense of Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable, all were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a mere trifle of no importance. Besides, nobody could be so foolish as to imagine that goosedriving, though reprehensible in a Mayor about to ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... interfered with his programme, he resented and resolutely avoided. He became indeed aware that other people, to whom the value of his work was not apparent, were apt to regard the jealous arrangement of his hours as the mere whim of a self-absorbed dilettante. But that troubled Hugh little, because he realised that his only hope of doing sound and worthy work lay in making a sacrifice of the ordinary and trifling occupations of life, of forming definite habits, for the want of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... scientific interest and appeared grotesque rather than tremendous, fell upon the ignorant soul of Uncle Chirgwin in a manner far different. The mystery of madness, the sublimity and horror of it, rise only to tragic heights in the untutored minds of such beholders as the farmer, for no mere scientific manifestation of mental disease is presented to their intelligence. Instead they stand face to face with the infinitely more terrific apparition of God speaking direct through the mouth of one among ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... but a justification, not only of the Egyptian, but of all possible theurgies and superstitions; perhaps the best attempt of the kind which the world has ever seen; that which marks the third is a mere cloud-castle, an inverted pyramid, not of speculation, but of dogmatic assertion, patched together from all accessible rags and bones of the dead world. Some here will, perhaps, guess from my rough descriptions, that I ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... inordinately as they loathe him, and, personally, the writer suffered such tortures that her ankles became hot and swollen, and at last, in spite of lavender oil, ammonia and camphor baths, grew so stiff that walking became positively painful, and her ears and eyes mere distorted lumps of inflamed flesh! Therefore, dear lady reader, be prepared when you visit Midgeland to become absolutely hideous and unrecognisable. When a kindly servant brings a rug to wind round your legs under the dinner-table on the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... knew how to create the illusion that in them alone could be found the fulfillment of all aspiration and desire. No doubt they satisfied many women, but they could not satisfy me. They gave me little I did not find in the mere society of the many brilliant and accomplished men with whom I was surrounded. I had a rapacious mind, and there was ample satisfaction for it in the men who haunted my salon and were constantly ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... good news from anywhere. The morning after she had spoken with heart laid bare. Eglington had essayed to have a reconciliation; but he had come as the martyr, as one injured. His egotism at such a time, joined to his attempt to make light of things, of treating what had happened as a mere "moment of exasperation," as "one of those episodes inseparable from the lives of the high-spirited," only made her heart sink and grow cold, almost as insensible as the flesh under a spray of ether. He had been ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... withhold water as long as possible, and then to give it in abundance, watering only a small plot every day in order to saturate the ground, and taking a week or more to go over a piece which would be done in a day by mere ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Tories at the Battle of the Hanging Rock. It was a small affair so far as numbers went, and Davie's troopers were a handful of irregulars drawn as best might be from the hard-riding, sharp-shooting population of the South. Many of them were mere striplings; indeed, among them was a boy of thirteen, an incorrigible young rebel who had run away from school to take part in the fighting. In the course of this narration it will be necessary to refer to that boy again more than once. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... ministrations or of her mere presence, was a rapid recovery. He soon was well enough to go out; and now things seemed to wear a new colour in his eyes. He no longer thought of emigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having nothing to do made him more dreary than any other circumstance; and one day, with ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... will persist in giving these people even the smallest doubt as to your sentiments? When they decree you a civil and a military household, you, like young Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes, eagerly seize the sword and scorn the mere ornaments." The Queen persisted in her determination to have no civil household. "If," said she, "this constitutional household be formed, not a single person of rank will remain with us, and upon a change of affairs we ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... does not even mere sanity, call upon you to come back with me, Susannah, and spend your life where you can exercise the gifts God has given you among those who abide by ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... because she did not know she was writing a love-letter she wrote out of the fulness of an overflowing heart. Also the hour was the precise hour when consciousness of her presence had gone over Wayland in flood tides of fierce tenderness. That may have been a mere coincidence. I set it down because such coincidences ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... side; and children—he drew his breath hard at that. Her ways with children were divine. He had often watched her instinctive mothering of, and drawing them around her. And it should be much to him that he might look at and, touch her. There was life in her mere presence. ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the glittering world of stars; The poet's richest music only mars The rasping of the locust's strident sound. And yet I've never seen a wilder light Glow in the beauteous eyes of dawning love, Than flashes from this strange man's soul at sight Of some rare flower he finds in mountain cove: Mere fungus, or the poisonous, dank mushroom, Enchants him more than ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... nearly always builds upon the ground, but my little neighbor laid the foundations of her domicile a foot or more above the soil. And what a mass of straws and twigs she did collect together! How coarse and careless and aimless at first,—a mere lot of rubbish dropped upon the tangle of dry limbs; but presently how it began to refine and come into shape in the centre! till there was the most exquisite hair-lined cup set about by a chaos of coarse straws ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... who can never agree amongst themselves on the proofs which they adduce in support of their System; on the qualities or on the modes of action of their incorporeities, which by dint of negations they render a mere nothing; who either prostrate themselves, or cause others to bow down, before the absurd fictions of their own delirium: if, I say, by atheists, be denominated men of this stamp, we shall be under the necessity of allowing, that the world is filled with them: we shall ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of course. Miss King isn't the sort of woman to form an intimacy with another man until she is really a widow. It's quite natural that she should feel lonely just now, for instance. The mere absence of the excitement she's been accustomed to for so long would have a depressing ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Irish home, after the run of the stables and the kennels, and the freedom of the village, after the chats with the pedlars and the beggars, and the borrowing and blowing of the postman's bugle, after the queenship of a host of barefooted gossoons, her loyal messenger-boys. Now her mere direct glance under reproof was considered "hardi." "Droop your eyes, you bold child," said the shocked Madame Agathe. A fancy she took to a French girl was checked. "On defend les amities particulieres," she was told to her astonishment. But on this one point ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... talking of how sweet dishes are to be made it is necessary to provide the means by which they are to be redeemed from the commonplace of mere richness and sweetness. The flavorings and liqueurs keep indefinitely if well corked. Orange-flower water, it is true, will lose strength, but when a bottle is first opened, if it is poured off into small vials, and each one corked and ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... line. One of the lads jumped up and gave him a glass of raspberry voditchka, telling him that it was rare old wine. The man sipped it, looked through it, and pretended (I am sure that it was mere pretense) to believe that it was wine. He promised us all large estates when the Emperor should give him back his own, now wrongfully ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... to the rule! I look beyond the mere exterior, to the nobility of character which lies behind. Dear Tom's lack of beauty is nothing to me. I am prepared for it, ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Frier, Confessor to King James the Fifth, and afterwards Chaplain to the Duke of Suffolk in England;" which are printed in the Appendix to "The History of the House of Seytoun," pp. 113-118, Glasgow 1829, 4to. But Wodrow's account consists of little else than mere extracts from Knox, Foxe, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... in that way—to accentuate their sense of wild liberty. Latisan had been obliged to pitch in and quell riots where woodsmen had heaped their clothes and were making a bonfire of the garments they needed for decency's sake. And a mere liquid had been able to put them ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... impossible to satisfy. The downfall of Walpole was to be the beginning of a political millennium; and every enthusiast had figured to himself that millennium according to the fashion of his own wishes. The republican expected that the power of the Crown would be reduced to a mere shadow, the high Tory that the Stuarts would be restored, the moderate Tory that the golden days which the Church and the landed interest had enjoyed during the last years of Queen Anne would immediately return. It would have been impossible to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Poor knight, wouldst thou kill a little old man? Thou canst get nothing from the old." This did not please Yaroslav: he drew his sword to slay the man; but just as he was rushing at him the old man blew on him, and Yaroslav could not withstand even this mere breath of wind, and fell from his horse like a sheaf of corn. Then the old man took him by the arm and said: "Poor knight, wilt thou live or die?" Yaroslav was so terrified that he could not answer a word. Then the old man laid him ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man. Better is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith, than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,—barnacles on a dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... open was a small one,-a mere slit in the wall; but it let in a stream of zero air and I saw Hexford shiver as he stepped towards it and looked out. But I felt hot rather than cold, and when I instinctively put my hand to my forehead, it ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... religion in the religions of primitive peoples, but in the last century the orthodox mind was convinced that it possessed a complete and luminous ready-made revelation; the study of what was held to be a mere degradation seemed idle ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Michael Angelo is in a much higher vein, and teaches us to look to a far different aim in his work than the mere form represented:— ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... at last, her words issuing from her lips, as if they were mere utterances from some ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... suddenly stopped and began to dig wildly in the snow with her paws. The shepherd stooped down and pushed aside the dog, who was now quite contented to stand aside and watch, while her master took the case in hand. Very soon he extricated from the snow what seemed to be a mere bundle of clothing, but which, on closer inspection, proved to be the rigid form of a little old woman, poorly clad and quite insensible. It was only the work of a few minutes for the stalwart shepherd to lift her into his arms as gently and tenderly ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... reinforcing literature and working through literature and art, may dare to establish serenities in his soul. For surely no one who has lived, no one who has watched sin and crime and punishment, but must have come to realise the enormous amount of misbehaviour that is mere ignorance and want of mental scope. For my own part I have never believed in the devil. And it may be a greater undertaking but no more impossible to make ways to goodwill and a good heart in men than it is to tunnel mountains ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... through the voice of my officer. I should feel proud and honored to be able to serve my country by obeying its commands. No thought of self—no vulgar preoccupation with my own petty vanity could touch my mind at such a moment. To me my officer would not be a mere man: he would be for the moment—whatever his personal frailties—the incarnation of our ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... river, his mouth to the ocean.[4] Also, the world resembles the ball of his eye: the ocean that encircles the earth is like unto the white of the eye, the dry land is the iris, Jerusalem the pupil, and the Temple the image mirrored in the pupil of the eye.[5] But man is more than a mere image of this world. He unites both heavenly and earthly qualities within himself. In four he resembles the angels, in four the beasts. His power of speech, his discriminating intellect, his upright walk, the glance ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... impression of our life, etc. here to your mind, I trace in your very dearness and goodness about it, in your worrying more about discomfort for me in our moves than about your own hopes of our meeting at Home, how little able one is to do so by mere letters, I wish it did not lead you to the unwarrantable conclusion that it is because you are "weak and old" that you do not appreciate the uncertainties of our military housekeeping, and can only "admire" the coolness with which I look forward ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... granted that property has earning power, the effort will be made by the owners of property, and always successfully made, to have property receive the larger portion of the reward. The true order will be reversed; the laborer will be given a mere subsistence while the increase will be claimed for the capital; the very opposite of the true order, the mere preservation or subsistence of the capital, while all the increase ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... "Nothing—a mere scratch," said Jack hastily. Then he added with a bitter laugh, "I'm not in luck to-day. But come: we'll see what ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... carefully attended to the shews of things, and her opinions, I should have said prejudices, were such as the generality approved of. She was educated with the expectation of a large fortune, of course became a mere machine: the homage of her attendants made a great part of her puerile amusements, and she never imagined there were any relative duties for her to fulfil: notions of her own consequence, by these means, were interwoven in her mind, and the years of youth spent in acquiring a few superficial ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... its true principles. The present satisfactory condition of Freemasonry in England is owing not only to its established statutes, but to the character of the men who control it—men who are not, as in eighteenth-century France, mere figureheads, but the real directors of the Order. Should the control ever pass into the wrong hands and the agents of secret societies succeed in capturing a number of the lodges, this great stabilizing ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Boers came on with every confidence of victory, for they had a superiority in guns and an immense superiority in men. But after a day or two of fierce struggle their attack dwindled down into a mere blockade. On April 9th they attacked furiously, both by day and by night, and on the 10th the pressure was equally severe. In these two days occurred the vast majority of the casualties. But the defenders took cover in a way to which British regulars have not ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cases he had a mortal hatred of justice, even though his great object was to be accounted just and merciful: and as sparks flying from a dry wood, by a mere breath of wind are sometimes carried on with unrestrained course to the danger of the country villages around, so he also from the most trivial causes kindled heaps of evils, being very unlike that wise emperor Marcus Aurelius, who, when Cassius ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Owen to say that figurative language of this kind explains nothing; but it was little less than puerile in him to see no more in the theory of natural selection than such a mere figure of speech. To say that the liver selects the elements of bile, or that nature selects specific types, may both be equally unmeaning re-statements of facts; but when it is explained that the term natural selection, unlike that of "hepatic sensation," ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... loved, almost lost the sense of the unreality of past and present that made her feel quite detached and apart from the life she was leading, from the events in which she was taking part, from the persons most intimately associated with her. Now that sense of isolation, of the mere spectator or the traveler gazing from the windows of the hurrying train—that sense returned. But she fought against ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... is unprejudiced effort the death-rate among Negroes is affected favorably by improved living conditions. The chief health-officer of Richmond, Va., Dr. E.C. Levy, has sounded a note which is not mere prophecy.[22] He said, in 1906, "There is no doubt whatsoever but that the introduction of better sanitation among the colored people would have great influence on their high death-rate, but whether, after all, it can be brought ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... which should be kept for one alone, is squandered and parted upon many, and the bride at last comes in for nothing but the very last leavings and caput mortuum of her bridegroom's heart, and becomes a mere ornament for his table, and a means whereby he may obtain a progeny. May God, who has saved me from that death in life, save you also!" And as he spoke, he looked down toward his wife upon the terrace below; and she, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and shaking with passion, broke with a gasp. He had sat erect to speak, but now he sank back, and with his chin upon his hand looked again mere grey defeat. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... our fear. Now and then some boy asked, "What has become of the Preay Chamber?" But nobody answered. If an older boy asked Mr. or Mrs. Gray, they only smiled, and said nothing. The terror gradually died away, and the chamber of horrors became a mere legend. Long afterward it was known that it was all a kindly but deceitful understanding between Mr. and Mrs. Gray. If a young boy did wrong, and it was thought that reproof and the mere dread of punishment would ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... time the new 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. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
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