"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... The mere fact that the two detectives were in the company of Curly John was sufficient voucher for their personalities, and it did not occur to anybody, not even to Mike Grinnel himself, to ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... 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
... 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 on the Sabbath, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 |
