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Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lesser" Quotes from Famous Books



... off unto Jesus' is the secret of triumph over the fascinations of the world. And if we will habitually so look, then the sweetness that we shall experience will destroy all the seducing power of lesser and earthly sweetness, and the blessed light of the sun will dim and all but extinguish the deceitful gleams that tempt us into the swamps where we shall be drowned. Turn away, then, from these things; cleave to Jesus Christ; and though in ourselves we may be as weak as a humming-bird before ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... him it was the day of battle, in which a man must strain all his powers to the uttermost if any laurels are to be won before evening. His whole soul was absorbed in the stress of it, in the hungry eagerness for fame, and—though in a lesser degree—for money. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that respectable persons should shun the company of people tempted to intemperance. "If," he said, "they believe as they profess that Omnipotence condescended to take upon Himself the form of sinful man, and as such die an ignominious death, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely lesser condescension, for the temporal and perhaps eternal salvation of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their fellow creatures! Nor is the condescension very great. In my judgment such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared more from the absence of appetite ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... limit the rights of the strong, it must increasingly guard and promote the well-being of those endowed with lesser gifts for the struggle for existence and success, it must strive in every way consistent with sane recognition of the realities to make life more worth living to those whose existence is cast in the mould of the vast average of mankind; it must give political equality, equality before ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... for eavesdropping and similar ungentlemanly actions renders it unadvisable to write anything here that I do not want read by others. Were it not for the aforesaid propensity and one or two lesser faults I could like the boy immensely. I have hopes, however, that when he realizes how contemptible and petty these things are he will cease doing them. He told me once that his favorite book was Froissart. I wonder if he thinks Froissart was ever guilty of listening behind ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... doth take me unaware, When most with lesser things my brain is wrought, As in some nimble interchange of thought The silence enters, and the talkers stare. Suddenly I am still and thou art there, A viewless visitant and unbesought, And all my thinking trembles into nought And all my being ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... to the American wilderness, I felt a bit of professional pride in reflecting that my first day in this new service was about to end so auspiciously. Yet even in that moment, being as yet unfamiliar with the room's lesser furniture, I stumbled slightly against a hassock hid from me by the tray I carried. A cup of tea was lost, though my recovery was quick. Too late I observed that the hitherto self-effacing Cousin Egbert was in range ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... however, certain rough uses. Our work as students of society begins in earnest when the individual has become equipped with his individuality. This stage of human growth is both cause and effect of the life of human beings side by side in greater or lesser numbers. Under those circumstances individuals are produced; they act as individuals; by their action as individuals they produce a certain type of society; that type reacts on the individuals and helps to transform them into different ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... fire could be seen, but with the sun now shining brilliantly its appearance was anything but terrible, the greater light completely dimming the lesser; but as I stepped out on to the beam from which the planks had been torn by the explosion, I was made fully aware of the danger being great, for a peculiar dizziness suddenly seized me, and I was caught by the ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... spell anything in Egypt twice alike), "The Lake of the Horns"; and we've been on the water in some very old boats, in order to see things which may have existed once, but don't now; and at present we're encamped near Medinet-el-Fayoum, a kind of lesser Cairo: originally named Medinet-el Faris, City of the Horseman, because of a Roman equestrian statue found in the neighbouring mounds of "Crocodilopolis." We have just arrived, hot and dusty, with more dust of more Fayoum than we had before Lake Moeris. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... task of reform. The civil and judicial jurisdiction of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission, the irregular jurisdictions of the Council of the North, the Duchy of Lancaster, the County of Chester, were summarily abolished with a crowd of lesser tribunals. The work was pushed hastily on, for haste was needed. On the sixth of August the two armies were alike disbanded; and the Scots were no sooner on their way homeward than the king resolved to prevent their return. In spite of prayers from the Parliament, he left London for Edinburgh, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... interest, foresight, economy, resource, industry, and all the characteristics that responsibility demands. Put the square peg in the square hole, the round peg in the round hole; show the man you have confidence in him, teach him to act on his own initiative in all the lesser matters that concern his job, coming only to the master in those larger considerations to which the latter are subordinate, and my experience is that your confidence will not be betrayed, and that he will save you an immense amount ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... necessary to tell her, making choice of the lesser of the two evils with which she ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... keep his engagements. Raymond had plenty of pluck and did not lack for a heart, so far as Waldron knew. Had Sabina been no more than engaged, he must strongly have urged Raymond to drop her and endure the harsh criticism that would have followed: for an engagement broken appeared a lesser evil than an unhappy mating; but since the position was complicated, he could not feel so and stoutly upheld the marriage on principle, while extremely doubtful of its ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... saw the Royal Standard of England, though indeed that did not prove much, for both sides used it alike, but there were many lesser banners and pennons of lords and knights, waving on the breeze, and as the Kentons peeped down into the lane below they saw plumed hats, and shining corslets, and silken scarves, and handsome horses, whose jingling accoutrements ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the present rate of duty by the use of the provisions for flexibility in the tariff act of 1922. Under the controlling statute all commissioners are agreed that a clear distinction exists between the bulk of the lower-priced hats coming from Italy and the lesser but considerable quantity of higher-priced hats imported from Great Britain. This feature of the commission's summarized data is particularly presented in Tables 5, 6, and 7, in which are shown the sources, volume, and foreign values ...
— Men's Sewed Straw Hats - Report of the United Stated Tariff Commission to the - President of the United States (1926) • United States Tariff Commission

... master it. From lip to ear the truth has been handed down among the few. There have always been a few Initiates in each generation, in the various lands of the earth, who kept alive the sacred flame of the Hermetic Teachings, and such have always been willing to use their lamps to re-light the lesser lamps of the outside world, when the light of truth grew dim, and clouded by reason of neglect, and when the wicks became clogged with foreign matter. There were always a few to tend faithfully the altar of the Truth, upon which was kept alight the Perpetual Lamp of Wisdom. These ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... now about the lesser lights of that most musical family, the finches? Of course the cardinal and rose-breasted grosbeaks are not to be included in any such category. Nor will I put there the goldfinch, the linnet, the fox-colored sparrow, and the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... from a distance. It was truly terrible when this death was sent among us by the great God. Many families bowed their heads before it. The people were seized with a chill and then a fever; blood issued from the nose; there was a cough, and the throat and nose were swollen, both in the lesser and the greater pestilence. All here were soon attacked. These maladies began, O my children, on the day of the Circumcision, a Monday, and as I was writing, we also were attacked ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... it is stated, on the authority of a former President of this Society, the late Daniel Sharpe, that between 30 and 40 per cent. of the species of Silurian Mollusca are common to both sides of the Atlantic. By way of due allowance for further discovery, let us double the lesser number and suppose that 60 per cent. of the species are common to the North American and the British Silurians. Sixty per cent. of species in common is, then, proof ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... most of Oman, but Administrative Line in far north; claims three islands in the Persian Gulf occupied by Iran (Jazireh-ye Abu Musa or Abu Musa, Jazireh-ye Tonb-e Bozorg or Greater Tunb, and Jazireh-ye Tonb-e Kuchek or Lesser Tunb) ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... come into the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, common to all humanity, only by means of the sword. Witness the peasantry of Russia! Even in America so great a prophet as Henry Ward Beecher foresaw a tragic day when the bivouac of capital would be set against the camp of labor. And lesser seers are not lacking who freely predict, even for our democratic land, a desperate rebellion of a proletariat of poverty against an ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... with the purpose we have described, not a Glunamie of them all cocked his bonnet more briskly, or gartered his tartan hose under knee over a pair of more promising spiogs (legs), than did Robin Oig M'Combich, called familiarly Robin Oig, that is Young, or the Lesser, Robin. Though small of stature, as the epithet Oig implies, and not very strongly limbed, he was as light and alert as one of the deer of his mountains. He had an elasticity of step, which, in the course of a long march, made many a stout fellow envy him; and the manner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various

... Sunday duty and general superintendence, but my parents were urgent that they should not leave us until after Christmas, and they consented. Their larger possessions were to be stored in the outhouses, their lesser in our house, notably in the inner mullion chamber, which would thus be so blocked that there would be no question ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... order to command the gold of ignorant and confiding girls; and if love of money will lead to such baseness, we may surely expect it will hurry those, who devote themselves to gain, into acts of lesser fraud." ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... compound cause, the judgment we form from it leaves each particular case undecided or is necessarily imperfect. For how can I by the sight alone tell whether the angle which makes one object appear smaller than another is caused by the really lesser magnitude of the object or by ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... the globe, or lesser circles of the sphere, parallel to the equator, and at 23-1/2 deg. distance on each side of it; they touch the ecliptic at its greatest distances from the equator, and from the boundaries of the sun's declination, north ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... in the stunted growth of adolescents; in functional cardiac disorders; in intellectual sluggishness, loss of memory, and color blindness; in loss of appetite, and other neuroses of motion, and marked blunting of various functions of sensation, and in degeneracy of descendants; but that lesser evils are produced must be proved mostly by inference, circumstantial ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... to move slowly up and down, like the strong right arm of some automaton giant. Greater and lesser cog-wheels caught up the motive power, revolving slowly and majestically, and with steady, regular rotation, or whirling round so fast you could hardly see that they stirred at all. Of a sudden a soul had been put ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... of his eldest son, and the marrying of his eldest daughter, shall be imposed but by the great council of the kingdom: the prelates, earls, and great barons, shall be called to this great council, each by a particular writ; the lesser barons by a general summons of the sheriff. The king shall not seize any baron's land for a debt to the crown, if the baron possesses as many goods and chattels as are sufficient to discharge the debt. No man shall be obliged to perform ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... It may well have been due to want of perception on my part—but I could see nothing mad in him, nothing in any way repelling, as he now looked at me. The one defect that I could discover in his face was at the outer corners of his eyes, just under the temple. Here when he laughed, and in a lesser degree when he smiled, the skin contracted into quaint little wrinkles and folds, which looked strangely out of harmony with the almost youthful appearance of the rest of his face. As to his other features, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... details of scenery, lighting, and minor matters to his stage-manager. "Look after the little things," he would say, in business as in art, for he himself was interested only in the larger themes. The lesser people of the play, the early rehearsing of involved business, was shaped by his subordinates. The smaller faults and the mannerisms of the actor did not trouble him, provided the main thought and feeling were there. He ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... excitement of a wonderful piece of gossip; gossip so strange, sudden, and unprecedented, that it absorbed all lesser matters. It burst out before we had been in the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... dance was going on at the fort one August evening about a week later. The Leonards would not attend them now, but with five such belles as Mesdames Stone, Darling, Davies, Flight, and Plodder, to say nothing of other lesser lights of the garrison galaxy, there was no lack of womanly beauty, only the cavaliers were short. One officer, an infantry subaltern, represented the martial element, the other men were civilians. Courtenay had brought out two Eastern friends; ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... drub the faithful in to prayers. I never saw men more lazy and rosy than these reverend fathers, kneeling in their comfortable matted church, or sitting in easy devotion. Pictures, images, gilding, tinsel, wax candles, twinkle all over the place; and ten thousand ostrichs' eggs (or any lesser number you may allot) dangle from the vaulted ceiling. There were great numbers of people at worship in this gorgeous church: they went on their knees, kissing the walls with much fervour, and paying reverence to the most precious relic of the convent,—the chair of St. James, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... not for a single instant going to blame the authorities who would not listen to the offer of a motherly yellow woman to go to the Crimea and nurse her "sons" there, suffering from cholera, diarrhoea, and a host of lesser ills. In my country, where people know our use, it would have been different; but here it was natural enough—although I had references, and other voices spoke for me—that they should laugh, good-naturedly enough, at my offer. War, I know, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... back in the first, skipping dance, ever faster and brighter in dazzling group of lesser figures. And here is the golden note of fairy-land,—the horn in soft cheery hunter's lay, answered by echoing voices. For a moment the call is tipped with touch of sadness, then rings out brightly in a new quarter. Beautiful it sings between the quick phrases, with a ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... never lost is the Star of Truth to which the face is set, and while that shines all lesser lights may go. It was the long months of suffering through which I had been passing, with the seemingly purposeless torturing of my little one as a climax, that struck the first stunning blow at my belief in God as a merciful Father of men. I had been visiting the poor ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... Iceland coast to the Westmans and waited there to waylay Eric. They had spies on the land, and from them they learned of Brighteyes' coming, and sailed out to meet him in the channel between the greater and the lesser islands, where they ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... there looking at the flying landscape and sinking lesser hills, one by one the great snow peaks slowly arose behind them, lifting themselves, as if to take a last wondering look at the man they had triumphed ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... gradually became temporal lords of the city, and in 1295 the commune bought its freedom from Brissa di Toppo for two hundred marks. At this time the first communal palace was built. The first statute, however, dates from 1313-1319. It provides for a foreign podesta, a greater and lesser council, and the usual officials from the noble families. The title of Count of Trieste was first taken by Antonio di Negri (1350-1370). During his time Venice besieged the city for eleven months, conquering it in 1368, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... De Robeck came off to see me at 5.30, to have a final talk (amongst other things) as to the Enos and Bulair ideas before I send my final answer to K. If we dare not advertise the detail of our proposed tactics, we may take the lesser risk of saying what we are not going to attempt. The Admiral is perfectly clear against Bulair. There is no protection there for the ships against submarines except Enos harbour and Enos is only one fathom deep. After all, the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... had ever a free way with women of a class below his own, and he did not find it easy to relinquish it. When he was with the Lady Eva he felt that under those innocent, loving eyes a man could have no desire for a lesser thing than her love; but when he rode away, the first pretty girl he met on the road he held in chat that ended with a kiss. He was always for kissing a pretty face, and found the habit hard to break, though there were times when he stamped and swore great oaths to himself that he would ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... in Shakespeare's time we have the authority of Gerard, who, speaking of Gooseberries, says: "We have also in our London gardens another sort altogether without prickes, whose fruit is very small, lesser by muche than the common kinde, but of a perfect red colour." This "perfect red colour" explains the "currant ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... man or god could endure the sight: thence she stretches out all her six long necks peering and diving to suck up fish, dolphins, dog-fish, and whales, whole ships, and their men, whatever comes within her raging gulf. The other rock is lesser, and of less ominous aspect; but there dreadful Charybdis sits, supping the black deeps. Thrice a day she drinks her pits dry, and thrice a day again she belches them all up: but when she is drinking, come not nigh, for being once caught, the force of Neptune cannot redeem ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... calcareous fragments which the torrents carry down to the valleys, and, through them, in a state of greater or less disintegration, to the sea. The quantity of sand annually washed into the Red Sea by the larger torrents of the Lesser Peninsula, is probably at least equal to that contributed to the ocean by any streams draining basins of no greater extent. Absolutely considered, then, the mass may be said to be large, but it is apparently very small as compared with the sand thrown up by the German ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... feature of the Tyrol. When we next looked up we saw above us, on a wooded crag, a square gray tower, which, once a stronghold, appears, as if exhausted with old age, to be tottering into the midst of lesser ruins. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... sub-divisions of various shades amount to 18,000. This art is in a great degree mechanical, but requires ingenuity, attention, and some knowledge of painting. On the large pictures, such as those which are in St. Peter's, several men are employed at the same time, but on the lesser only one. It is very tedious, requiring years to copy one of the largest size. All the pictures in St. Peter's are in mosaic, except one, and they are at work on one which is to replace this single oil-piece. The studio appeared in good order, but there were only two men at work, as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... constantly on festive occasions, learn to know and love one another. The wife is not the slave, but the friend of her husband; the one supplies the deficiencies of the other. In weighty questions the stronger decides, but the lesser cares of life are left to her who is the greater in small things. The daughters grow up under careful guidance, for the mother is neither ignorant nor inexperienced. To be virtuous and diligent in her affairs ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was concrete and gross. Finer instincts lit up but momentary flickering fires in her, speedily dying out into the gloom begotten by the deplorable scene of yesterday with her husband, and shame at the conspiracy of silence into which, as the lesser of the two evils presented to her, she had entered, remembrances of which, on his first arrival, had made her feel unworthy and a traitor in the presence of Iglesias. This demoralisation worked in her to rebellion against ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... great work "De Principiis," Origen begins with the statement that only God Himself is fundamentally and by virtue of His essential nature, Good. God is the only Good—the absolute perfect Good. When we consider the lesser stages of Good, we find that the Goodness is derived and acquired, instead of being fundamental and essential. Origen then says that God bestows free-will upon all spirits alike, and that if they do not use the same in the direction of righteousness, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... the lump. Sometimes a group of merchants was to be seen, conducting loaded wagons; sometimes, a thane's pompous thane, ensheathed in his retinue; while occasionally, as they neared the New Gate, the crowd was swelled by squads of the lesser Cheapside dealers making the daily pilgrimage from their country dwellings to their stalls in the City. But these were as scattered islands in the stream of half drunken seamen, masterless thralls, ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... succeeded in any point which she wanted to carry, against previous inclination. She had been repeatedly very earnest in trying to get Anne included in the visit to London, sensibly open to all the injustice and all the discredit of the selfish arrangements which shut her out, and on many lesser occasions had endeavoured to give Elizabeth the advantage of her own better judgement and experience; but always in vain: Elizabeth would go her own way; and never had she pursued it in more decided opposition to Lady Russell than in this selection of Mrs Clay; ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... and weary to the quick Of heat and noise from dawn to dark. He will not even stoop to bark His protest, like the lesser bred. Would he might know, one gazer read The wistful longing in his face, The thirst for wind and open space And stretch of limbs to him begrudged. There came a little, dapper, fat And bustling man, with cane and spat And pearl-grey vest ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley

... silent. Even in his rage against Fate, against Joseph, and against us, he retained enough common sense to remember that 'tis well to choose the lesser ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... For two reasons. The lesser, but not negligible, reason is that we possess no convenient English word for the unknotting or disentangling of a complication. Denouement itself cannot be plausibly Anglicized, and no native word has as yet, by common consent, been accepted as its equivalent. I sometimes ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... wants, we should not be left in unnecessary dependence on external supplies. And whilst foreign governments adhere to the existing discriminations in their ports against our navigation, and an equality or lesser discrimination is enjoyed by their navigation in our ports, the effect can not be mistaken, because it has been seriously felt by our shipping interests; and in proportion as this takes place the advantages of an independent conveyance of our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson

... Bacchus enrich with their gifts. The Seine, that proud river which comes from the east, flows there through wide banks and with its two arms surrounds an island which is the head, the heart, and the marrow of the whole city; two suburbs extend to right and left, even the lesser of which would rouse the envy of many another city. These suburbs communicate with the island by two stone bridges; the Grand Pont towards the north in the direction of the English sea, and the Petit Pont which looks towards the Loire. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... something wrong kept fast hold of me. With an effort I raised my head from the pillow, and peered about me at the dark. What it was I could not conceive. I looked at the dim shapes around me, the greater and lesser darknesses that indicated curtains, table, fireplace, bookshelves, and so forth. Then I began to perceive something unfamiliar in the forms of the darkness. Had the bed turned round? Yonder should be the bookshelves, and something shrouded and pallid rose there, something that would ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... a proverb, "Love me, love my dog:" that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing,—any inanimate substance, as a keep-sake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and any ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... more honest advice," said Crosby, "but, my lord, you have to choose between two evils; I only counsel you to take the lesser. A few will suffer, doubtless, if you abandon your enterprise, but if you press on with it the whole of the West Country will be persecuted. King James does not know ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under his guidance she made the tour of the vast building: its greater court and lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, and their marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its immense rotunda, springing to the open dome, where the sky was like an inset plaque of turquoise; its "staircase of honour," guarded, in an ascending ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... caricatures of faded paltry lesser lights that confronted me from fly-blown frames on the purple walls ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... top of it, and three dark streaks running down the middle, whereof one was much thicker than the rest. 'Twas an open doorway; the speck, a star fram'd within it; the broad streak, a ship's mast reaching up; and the lesser ones two ends of a rope, working over a pulley above my head, and used for lowering the bales of ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... coming season in America was to strike two great blows at Canada, and a lesser one, which, if successful, would involve the conquest of that country. Wolfe, aided by a fleet, was to attack Quebec; Amherst with another force was to push through by the Lake Champlain route and unite with him if ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... due to this work can never be diminished. Time shall but increase it; for the world has yet to learn most of the wonderful details of his activity. We were present a few years since, when one of those lesser triumphs of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... majority of foreign bodies in the air passages occur in children. The right bronchus is more frequently invaded than the left because of the following factors: I. Its greater diameter. 2. Its lesser angle of deviation from the tracheal axis. 3. The situation of the carina to the left of the mid-line of the trachea. 4. The action of the trachealis muscle. 5. The greater volume of air going into the right ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... The lesser statesmen of the time, both Northern and Southern, still, as a rule, await proper treatment by detached biographers. Two Northerners have had such treatment, in Allen Johnson's "Stephen A. Douglas" (1908), ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... is health and freedom from disease, who is subject to desire and passions, who is free from the influence of desire and passions, who is Infinite as exhibited in species and forms, who is he that is chastised, who is he that is the chastiser, who is all the lesser sacrifices (like Agnihotra and others), who is all the larger sacrifices (like those called Brahma, etc.), who is all the Ritwijas, who is the origin of all sacrifices (viz., the Vedas), who is fire, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Gonfalonier of Justice. The eight priors were chosen, two for each quarter; the Gonfalonier, their chief, differed in no respect from his colleagues save in precedence of dignity; and as the fourth part of the honors pertained to the members of the lesser arts, their turn kept coming round to that quarter to which the Gonfalonier belonged. This magistracy remained for two whole months, always living and sleeping in the Palace; in order that, according ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... ravine, the word passed from man to man throughout the army, "Lyon is killed!" And soon after, hostilities having ceased upon both sides, the order came for the main part of the Federal force to fall back upon Springfield, while the lesser part was to camp upon the ground, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... past century other influences have established the permanence and independence of the smaller states of Europe. Through the Monroe Doctrine we hope to be able to safeguard like independence and secure like permanence for the lesser among ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... roar of the water being let into the lock. From the quiet swaying of the floor beneath me I soon sensed that we were afloat. I waited in the cabin until I felt the quiver of motors, now distinguished by the lesser throb and smoother running, from the drive on the wheeled ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... revelation or a dream?— That these bright birds as angels once did dwell In heaven with starry Lucifer supreme, Half sinned with him, and with him partly fell; That in this lesser paradise they stray. Float through its air, and glide its streams along, And that the strains they sing each happy day Rise up to God like ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... The lesser party went off in almost the opposite direction, south-westerly, leaving the Llano Estacado on their left, and journeying on, crossed the Rio Pecos at a point below and outside the farthest frontier settlement of New Mexico towards the prairies. Then, shaping their course nearly ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... a kingliness of nature—a loftiness of spirit, unabased by assaults levelled not against yourself, but your pride; your personal dignity, though singularly sensitive, though bitterly galled, stood proof. What might lower lesser men, lowered not you; Heaven left you that dignity, for it belongs alike to your intellect and your virtues—but suffered it to be a source of your anguish. Why? Because, not content with adorning your virtues, it was covering the fault against which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... one of the lesser opponents, every man in the brigade speculated with great interest, that night, on the probable outcome of ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... the Captain decided, as the lesser of two evils, to run round to Brogley's the Broker's: previously locking the door that communicated with the upper part of the house, and putting the key in his pocket. 'If so be,' said the Captain to Mr Toots, with not a little shame and hesitation, 'as you'll ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... but that he lacked a tongue, Yet did by signs his glad affection show, Making his stream run slow. And all the fowl which in his flood did dwell 'Gan flock about these twain, that did excel The rest, so far as Cynthia doth shend The lesser stars. So they, enranged well, Did on those two attend, And their best service lend Against their wedding day, which was not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... tired of hybrid design. This great scene-painter introduced into all Europe a new method in his voluptuous, vigorous work, a method especially adapted to tapestry weaving. It is not for us to quarrel with the art of so great a master. The critics of painting scarce do that; but in the lesser art of tapestry the change brought about by his cartoons was not a ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... because for a long time we noticed that every dawn was marked by a deluging shower, which began without warning-drops or thunder. I observed that the rain ceased suddenly on the 28th of April, and the lesser rains commenced about a fortnight before the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... attended the efforts of many of the States of the Union, who at an early period of our national history were encumbered by the same evil in a lesser degree but who have since been successful in removing it, induce a hope in your memorialists that slavery may be abolished in the District of Columbia. That if possible it ought to be, some interesting considerations of a local character, peculiarly dictate. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... worked out of the inside of the muscle shell. They are wove as broad as one's hand, and about two feet long; these they call belts, and give and receive them at their treaties, as the seals of friendship. For lesser motives, a single string is given; every bead is of a known value; and a belt of a less number is made to equal one of a greater, by so many as is wanted being fastened to the belt by a ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... does not need to be reminded. No, the earnest preacher preaches to himself as much as to any in the congregation; it is from the picture ever before him in his own weak and wayward heart that he learns to reach and describe the hearts of others, if, indeed, he do so at all. And it is the same with lesser things. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... They showed the same clear knowledge that it was not by its decorative parts, or what Burke styled 'solemn plausibilities,' that the community derived its strength; but that it rested for its real foundations on its manufactures, its commerce, and its credit. Even in the lesser things, in reading Sir Robert Peel's letters, those who in later years served under Mr. Gladstone can recognise the school to which he went for the methods, the habits of mind, the practices of business, and even the phrases ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... mak' fight wit' lesser dan two people. You've tol' me dat you are gentleman. Wal, I ain' nobody but trapper an' trader, but I don' spoil de name of no good girl, an' I don' quarrel in presence of lady, so mebbe, affer all, dere's mistak' somew'ere, an' I'm gentleman ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... way to the river when the wells of the plateau are dry. Along the short spring streams beavers are still busy, as is shown by the cottonwood and willow timber they have cut and peeled, found in all the river drift-heaps. In the most barren cliffs and gulches there dwell a multitude of lesser animals, well-dressed, clear-eyed, happy little beasts—wood rats, kangaroo rats, gophers, wood mice, skunks, rabbits, bobcats, and many others, gathering food, or dozing in their sun-warmed dens. Lizards, too, of every kind and color are here enjoying life on the hot cliffs, and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... soon enabled these lesser vocal organizations, to render the entire list of songs, with a mellow smoothness, an inspiring swing of rythm, and a well rounded tone of perfection, which was really quite surprising. These vocalists, scattered through the fifties ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... grim encounter seen Upon the seas that day. Who yields when there is strife between Britain and Brittany? Shall Lesser Britain rule the waves And check Britannia's pride? Not while her frigate's oaken staves Still ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... destruction of sin, - these are grave mistakes. We know that all will 291:6 be changed "in the twinkling of an eye," when the last trump shall sound; but this last call of wisdom cannot come till mortals have already yielded to each lesser call 291:9 in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... recklessly, but before he had covered half the distance he collided violently with a piece of machinery and went sprawling to the floor. A glance upward revealed the dim outlines of a "topper," and showed him farther down the building, silhouetted briefly against the lesser darkness of the windows, two struggling figures. As he regained his footing, something rushed past him—man or animal he could not tell which, for its feet made no more sound upon the floor than those of a wolf-dog. Then, as he bolted forward, he heard a man cry out, and ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... the great having been thus limited by the influence of the lesser holders, everybody tried to become the holder of land. Its possession then formed the basis of social position, and, as a consequence, individual servitude became lessened, and society assumed a more stable condition. The ancient laws of wandering tribes fell into ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... casual song of the lark in a fresh morning, of the blackbird and thrush at sunset, or the monotonous wail of the yellow-hammer, the silence of birds is now complete; even the lesser reed-sparrow, which may very properly be called the English mock-bird, and which kept up a perpetual clatter with the notes of the sparrow, the swallow, the white-throat, &c. in every hedge-bottom, day and night, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... family character not easily mistaken, and this similarity is especially observable in birds. As Agassiz says, "Compare all the sweet warbles of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking birds, the robins; they differ in the greater or lesser perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. Does not every member of the Crow family caw, whether it be a Jackdaw, the Jay, or the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long melancholy caw that seems ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... inch perpendicular may serve us in talking of a figure, of a rectilinear figure, of a regular figure, of a triangle, and of an equilateral triangle. AR these terms, therefore, are in this case attended with the same idea; but as they are wont to be applied in a greater or lesser compass, they excite their particular habits, and thereby keep the mind in a readiness to observe, that no conclusion be formed contrary to any ideas, which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... laugh comes slower; The courage is lesser to do and dare; And the tide of joy in the heart falls lower, And seldom covers ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... if I owned the Big House I'd live in the tower when I wasn't in the library. But it wasn't me in particular, Lol, that Alene wanted. To her I'm only a lesser planet when you're near—it's ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... twelve gods, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Mercury, Mars, Vulcan, Apollo, Diana, Minerva, Juno, Ceres and Vesta. Besides these there were other lesser gods, Bacchus, Isis, Hebe, the Muses and the Fates, etc.; also Sleep, Dreams and Death; and there were still others who had free will and intelligence, and having mixed forms, such as the Pegasus, or winged horse, the Centaur, half man and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... viz.: the Infantry, the Artillery, Aviation, and Chemical Warfare. All other forms of warfare are a combination, more or less complete, of these. The gases, smoke, and incendiary materials that make up chemical warfare are used to a greater or lesser extent by other arms, but wherever gas is used it compels precautionary measures that are found in no ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... chess-board—which was a large part of the world. The Man was Napoleon Buonaparte, at present, for lack of a better name, First Consul of the French Republic. The Man's eye, sweeping the world for a new plaything, had rested upon one which had excited the fancy of lesser adventurers, of one John Law, for instance. It was a large, unwieldy plaything indeed, and remote. It was nothing less than that vast and mysterious country which lay beyond the monster yellow River of the Wilderness, the country bordered on the south by the Gulf swamps, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... something, and those who don't. There lies the sole natural division; and not a law is framed, whether it be for a tariff or an appropriation or an army or a navy or a coinage or a bond issue or what you will, that does not, in lesser or greater degree, add to or take from the riches of some man or men. No government can go its clumsy necessary way without stepping on somebody's toes, and if one cannot have a currency because to have it will help this individual or hurt that one, by the same token one cannot ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... who were in their youth for hundreds of years, or of women who came to them in the likeness of hunted fawns, but of kings that lived brief and politic lives, and of the five white roads that carried their armies to the lesser kingdoms of Ireland, or brought to the great fair that had given Teamhair its sovereignty, all that sought justice or pleasure or had ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... and even contradictory. What it lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity, to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... as before, with the exception that Estelle had established a certain understanding with a little chocolate-coloured cupid of a boy of the size of her brother, and his lesser sister, by letting them stroke her hair, and showing them the mysteries of cat's cradle. They shared their gourd of goat's-milk with her, but would not let her give any to her companions. However, the Abbe had only to hold out his hand to be fed, and the others ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... such a distance as that. Such a station would require more power than they would be able to generate without heavy and complicated machinery. But it was thought they might establish a lesser station from which they could send wireless messages to any of their submarines or warships that might be sailing within a given distance ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... characteristics in him that he invested in a typesetting-machine which cost him nearly two hundred thousand dollars and helped to wreck his fortunes by and by. It was because of this characteristic that he invested in numberless schemes of lesser importance, but no less disastrous in the end. His one successful commercial venture was his association with Charles L. Webster in the publication of the Grant Memoirs, of which enough copies were sold ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... The lads were abaft the schooner's wheel, quite inseparable now, looking down through the eddying water at the fish, which seemed to have taken the swift vessel for some mighty companion of their own nature, in whose wake they could swim along in peace without fear of lesser enemies. ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... upon the lesser beauties of the natural world will find a very engaging specimen of the genus Baronet in Sir Barnet Skettles, who was so kind to Paul Dombey and so angry with poor Mr. Baps. Sir Leicester Dedlock is on a larger scale—in fact, almost too "fine and large" for life. But I recall a fleeting vision ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... you may bet your variegated socks on that! See, I'll drop it fur away on the outside so's not to go near her!' Thus saying, he leaned over and held his arm out at full length and dropped the stone. It may be that there is some attractive force which draws lesser matters to greater; or more probably that the wall was not plump but sloped to its base—we not noticing the inclination from above; but the stone fell with a sickening thud that came up to us through the hot air, right on the kitten's head, and shattered ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... many of the pillar-like stems were crowned with a red top. Under a small boulder stone there was an ants' nest. These boulders, or, as they are called locally, "bowlers," were scattered about the heath. Many of the lesser stones were spotted with dark dots of lichen, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burned pig, father, only taste—O Lord"—with such like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... cheese, leather, and wool or for sacrifices to the gods; the only animal commonly eaten, until luxury came in with increasing wealth, was the pig, and grain and vegetables were the staple food of the poor man, both in town and country. Among the lesser poems ascribed to Virgil there is one, the Moretum, which gives a charming picture of the food-supply of the small cultivator in the country. He rises very early, gropes his way to the hearth, and stirs the embers into flame: then takes from his meal-bin a supply of grain for three days and ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler



Words linked to "Lesser" :   lesser knapweed, lesser centaury, little, lesser wintergreen, lesser spearwort, lesser hemlock, lesser prairie chicken, lesser celandine, lesser peritoneal cavity, small, Lesser Antilles, lesser rhomboid muscle, lesser omentum, Lesser Sunda Islands, lesser scaup, lesser whitethroat, lesser yellow trefoil, greater, lesser duckweed, lesser butterfly orchid, lesser kudu, lesser burdock, lesser yellowlegs, lesser galangal, lesser twayblade, lesser scaup duck, lesser bullrush, lesser rorqual, lesser panda, to a lesser extent, lesser calamint



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