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Prime   Listen
verb
Prime  v. i.  
1.
To be renewed, or as at first. (Obs.) "Night's bashful empress, though she often wane, As oft repeats her darkness, primes again."
2.
To serve as priming for the charge of a gun.
3.
To work so that foaming occurs from too violent ebullition, which causes water to become mixed with, and be carried along with, the steam that is formed; said of a steam boiler.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prime" Quotes from Famous Books



... The Prime Minister in rising said that he thought the time had now come when the House might properly turn its attention again to domestic affairs. The foreign world was so tranquil that there was really nothing of importance which need be brought to ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... somewhat remarkable that the enormous importance of this argument in favour of natural selection as a prime factor of organic evolution has not received the attention which it deserves. Even Darwin himself, with his characteristic reserve, has not presented its incalculable significance; nor do I know any ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... this article in September. Within a few days, and without much heralding, has occurred an event of prime importance to our country's future. This is the opening from New York to St. Louis of a continuous broad-gauge line under the title of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway. This line is twelve hundred miles long, and pursues the following route: By the New York and Erie Road, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Pope, were printed in Dublin and in London. But the first quarto and acknowledged edition was published in London early in "1728-9," as the editors choose to write it, that is, (without perplexing the reader,) in 1729. On March 12 of which year it was presented by the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, to the king ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... there with a fine yoke of oxen which won his admiration. He asked me as to their age and weight, and to whom they belonged. He recognized nearly all of his old acquaintances. I saw him many times during the following year. He was in the prime of life,—in personal ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... preserved his life in many actions; and, though he cannot stretch forth an arm without shewing an honourable testimony of the dangers to which he was exposed, he has still a hand left to wield a sword for the service of his country. As he is yet in the prime of life, there is nothing too great to be expected from him. He resembles the immortal Wolfe in his fire and fame. And oh, for the good of England, that Wolfe, in ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... conviction," said Obed Chute, after deep thought, "that this Gualtier gained your friend's affections, and he has been the prime mover in this. Both of them must be deep ones, though. Yet I calculate she is only a tool in his hands. Women will do any thing for love. She has sacrificed you to him. It isn't so bad a case ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... was despatched downstairs into the dining-parlour for that volume of the old Encyclopaedia which contained the nouns beginning with C, in order that Miss Pole might prime herself with scientific explanations for the tricks of the following evening. It spoilt the pool at Preference which Miss Matty and Mrs Forrester had been looking forward to, for Miss Pole became so much absorbed in her subject, and the plates by which it was illustrated, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... into which Napoleon must have voluntarily fallen at St. Helena. The Memorial states "that the celebrated singer Madame Grasaini attracted his attention at the time of the Coronation." Napoleon alleges that Madame Grassini on that occasion said to him, "When I was in the prime of my beauty and talent all I wished was that you would bestow a single look upon me. That wish was not fulfilled, and now you notice me when I am no longer worthy ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... Minister, Mr. John Jay, took charge of us—Forsyth was still with me—and the few days' sojourn was full of interest. The Emperor being absent from the capital, we missed seeing him; but the Prime Minister, Count von Beust, was very polite to us, and at his house we had the pleasure of meeting at dinner Count Andrassy, the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... she serves me. One charming prince was killed this morn, at six; Another's just arrived,—I'm in a fix, And worritted to death by constant butch'ry, Of lovers caught by my fair daughter's witch'ry; But yet I cannot break my oath. Fo-hi Has heard my vow; his wrath I dar'n't defy. Prime Minister, can't you some project form And be your ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... restaurant almost always has recourse. Here you beheld no piles of straw-stuffed game never destined to make the acquaintance of the spit, no fantastical fish to justify the mountebank's remark, "I saw a fine carp to-day; I expect to buy it this day week." Instead of the prime vegetables more fittingly described by the word primeval, artfully displayed in the window for the delectation of the military man and his fellow country-woman the nursemaid, honest Flicoteaux exhibited full salad-bowls adorned with many a rivet, or pyramids ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... much pleased by means of your introduction. 'Tell dear Mr. Kenyon how very very much I like Mrs. Leslie. She seems all that is good and kind, and to add great intelligence and agreeableness to these prime qualities.' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... of this diagnosis of the vagabond, for he was always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle criticism which was the young foreigner's prime claim to be "a most awfully interesting" and perhaps a rather ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... followers—for so Vlacco had pronounced the commander of the approaching brig to be,—continued for some time, till Nina observed upwards of fifty persons collected—some of them were very old men, and others were boys, but there were few in the prime of life—all such, it appeared, having been called away on some expedition with their thief. They were all armed to the teeth, but with a great variety of weapons: some had English muskets, others long Turkish matchlocks, some rifles ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Legislature passed an Act amending the charter of Lookout Mountain so as to give the women Municipal suffrage. The prime mover was Attorney James Anderson and Mayor P. F. Jones, and the other commissioners voted unanimously for it. Mrs. Ford, the State president, a lifelong resident, had the previous year registered there in order to call attention to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... gallant horseman, gay as a man in his prime, feeling life, drinking pleasure, plunging to the depths of joy as a swimmer into the Loire, wouldst thou not deny God, wouldst thou not spit ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... 1854, and regularly thereafter till 1885, his authority in the Storting and his power in public life steadily increased. From 1871 on he was President of the Storting, except in 1881 for reasons of health; from 1884 to 1889 he was Prime Minister. A consistent democrat, he created and led the party of the Left, or "Peasant- Left," and contended all his active life for the establishment of real government by the people, i.e., a constitutional democracy with parliamentary rule. This, the ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... bad, or good, clever, stupid, pleasant, and disagreeable; but superfluous ... no. Understand me, though: the universe could get on without those people too... no doubt; but uselessness is not their prime characteristic, their most distinctive attribute, and when you speak of them, the word 'superfluous' is not the first to rise to your lips. But I ... there's nothing else one can say about me; I'm superfluous and nothing more. A supernumerary, and that's all. Nature, apparently, did not reckon ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... The prime mover of the present mischief was one Francisco Roldan, a man under the deepest obligations to the admiral. Raised by him from poverty and obscurity, he had been employed at first in menial capacities; but, showing strong natural talents, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... Prime Minister—sent for him directly he arrived," Aaron Thurnbrein announced. "He is to see him to-night at his own house in Downing Street. It ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... cooperation taught by teamwork of any sort is a valuable schooling. One of the prime needs of our day is the development of the spirit of loyalty, the willingness to subordinate individual welfare to that of a group, and to look upon one's own work as part of a larger endeavor. The man who has learned ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... their conversation with pointed oaths. They are conversant with the business affairs of every planter in the State, know his liabilities, the condition of his negroes, his hard cases, his bad cases, his runaways, and his prime property. Their dilations on the development of wenches, shades of colour, qualities of stock suited to the various markets-from Richmond to New Orleans-disclose a singular foresight into the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... said Mr. Linden holding out his hand "do you never use anything but your eyes? Come here and speak to me. Who is prime ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... silken sofa, in a luxurious apartment, was a lady in the prime of youth and beauty. She was robed in a white, wrought-muslin gown, and her glossy ringlets lay in dark relief on its snowy folds. She was reading at intervals from a small gilt volume, but with a wandering listlessness of manner, as though ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... proof that he was watched. I had once some business to do for government, and I went to Lord North's. Precaution was taken that it should not be known. It was dark before I went; yet a few days after I was told, 'Well, you have been with Lord North.' That the door of the prime minister should be watched is not strange; but that a member of parliament should be watched, or that my door should be watched, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... winds, the vehicle of smells, the medium of sounds, the source of all the pleasures we derive from the harmonies of music, the cause of the universal light and splendor which is diffused around us, and of the advantages we derive from the morning and evening twilight. He contemplates it as the prime mover in a variety of machines, as impelling ships across the ocean, raising balloons to the region of the clouds, blowing our furnaces, raising water from the deepest pits, extinguishing fires, and performing a thousand other beneficent agencies, without ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... rise. Professions are open; the Diplomacy, the House of Commons. What! Percy Godolphin be ass enough to grow ambitious! to toil, to fret, to slave, to answer fools on a first principle, and die at length of a broken heart for a lost place! Pooh, pooh! I, who despise your prime ministers, can scarcely stoop to their apprenticeship. Life is too short for toil. And what do men strive for?—to enjoy: but why not enjoy without the toil? And relinquish Constance? Ay, it is ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 1911 and made a winning from a wretched start, the Mackmen apparently thought they could do it again and delayed starting their fight until it was too late. The loss of the services of Dan Murphy for more than half of the season also was a prime factor. ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... that the vitreous and resinous electricity of Du Faye were nothing more than the positive and negative states, which he had before observed, and that the glass globe charged positively, or increased, the quantity of electricity on the prime conductor, while the globe of sulphur diminished its natural quantity, or charged negatively. These experiments and observations opened a new field for investigation, upon which electricians entered with avidity; and their labors have added ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... and was admitted. He was delighted. He instantly wrote an ode to "Hallowed Misery," dated from the "House of Woe," sent it off to the Atlantic Monthly of Paris, and lay in bed dreaming he should find himself famous next morning, and receive the visits of all Paris, from Monsieur Guizot, then Prime-Minister, to the most callous poetaster of the Latin Quarter, and be besieged by every publisher, armed with bags full of money. He woke the next morning to find himself in perfect health, and to hear the physician order him to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... waggish rattler—and every other person become just what you would desire him. Because pleasant Ease is what every one seeks and loves; she hears not counsel, fears not punishment—if good, she will not recognise it—if bad, she will foster it of her own accord. She is the prime-temptation; the man who is proof against her tender charms, ye may fling your caps to—for we must bid farewell for ever to his company. Ease, then, is my terrestrial deputy, follow her to Britain, and be as obedient to her as to our ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... reproach. Personally, he was a splendid picture, full of health and vitality. He had been prosperous in his affairs. He was prominent in public life and overbore all opposition. His powers were in their prime. In his speech to his constituents he mentioned the fact that his opponents had criticised the manner in which he traveled (alluding to his fine horses and servants). He wanted the people to know that the money was his, and that he made $5000 a ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... poems known as the Einsiedeln fragments, were not genuine poets. They had little of the intimacy with nature and unsophisticated man that was demanded by their self-chosen task. That they possessed some real affection for the country is doubtless true, but it was not the prime inspiration of their verse. They had the ambition to write poetry rather than the call; a slight bent towards the country, heightened by a vague dissatisfaction and weariness with the artificial luxury of Rome, led them to choose pastoral poetry. They make ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... observed the wandering bands only in Patagonia, where they are on a very small scale compared with those of the tropical forests. In the Patagonia thickets the small tit-like creeper, Laptas-thenura, is the prime mover; and after a considerable number of these have gathered, creepers of other species and genera unite with them, and finally the band, as it moves through the thickets, draws to itself other kinds—flycatchers, finches, &c.—many of the birds running or ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... the same struggle that we have. The government conspiring against the people. This article from the pen of Lady Carlisle tells of the same vile plot the Prime Minister of England sustains, the brewer against the people, just as Roosevelt ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... the prime of life, Mr. Hanna has the satisfaction of knowing that he has been very successful, has built up a large fortune for himself and done a very important work in building up the material interests of the city, both commercial and manufacturing. Although well able to retire from active life, and ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... of a person in the family of Bishop Burnet, had great natural charms of voice, person, and manner. Playing with Nicolini, singing English to his Italian, she was the first of our 'prime donne' in Italian Opera. Mrs. Tofts had made much money when in 1709 she quitted the stage with disordered intellect; her voice being then unbroken, and her beauty in the height of its bloom. Having recovered health, she married Mr. Joseph Smith, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Gall and Washakie in the prime of their manhood, this chief had no peer in bodily perfection and masterful personality. No Greek or Roman gymnast was ever a finer model of physical beauty and power. He thrilled his men to frenzied action when he came upon the field. It was said of him that he sacrificed ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... circumstance gave rise, Bernadotte fancied that to his previous complaints against Napoleon he had to add others. When, in opposition to the king, and the majority of the members of the diet, he was proposed as successor to the crown of Sweden; when his pretensions were supported by Charles's prime minister, (a man of no family, who owed, like him, all his illustration to himself,) and the count de Wrede, the only member of the diet who had reserved his vote for him; when he came to solicit Napoleon's ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... and an active market we should have brought a good price; but this place was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed, every time I think of it. The King of England brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen. But that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull market, I don't care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. If ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... said—However, I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which I got on my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say that I am right glad to see that Doctor Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life; and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble and infirmities of mind and body, I hope it may be a very long time yet before any one can truthfully ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... had charms, was young, And he in manhood's prime, She sad beside her cradle sung, And sigh'd ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... clothes the Russian came down the hotel steps. He was tall, serious, upright, rich. His face beneath his wide, black hat was grave and well cared for. The sombre glitter of his eye was grave, his small dark beard shone in the well-controlled prime of its growth. From the narrow line of white collar to the narrower thread of French watchchain—from the lean, long feet to the lean, white hands she took him in, and braced herself, adjusted herself, to meet his stately gravity. If there ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... Repealers who had a stake in the country, and who was likely to lose by the disruption of social order. If foolish, he was at least disinterested, and had the courage of his opinions. This was in the days when Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister, and when Irish Radicals looked to him as the one man who could and would ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... sense and goodness. In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped with inimitable grace, she assured them that her [2] heart was entirely Irish, and that she did not intend any longer to go in leading-strings, as a proof of which she immediately declared her nurse prime-minister. The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiums than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of usquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was her royal ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole

... chiefship rights, he had smiled at Van Horn, given royal permission to his young men to sign on for three years of plantation slavery, and exacted his share of each year's advance. Aora, who might be described as his prime minister and treasurer, had received the tithes as fast as they were paid over, and filled them into large, fine-netted bags of coconut sennit. At Bashti's back, squatting on the bunk-boards, a slim and smooth-skinned maid of thirteen had flapped the flies away from his royal head with the royal ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... the latest election in which I was engaged, your dear mother, in the same spirit of personal devotion to her husband, wrought and laboured in the political cause. I have put her love for me as the prime motive for her efforts in politics; but she had too much intelligence not to form a judgment of her own on public issues. Her sympathies were instinctively on the side of the people, in opposition to the old-fashioned Toryism, so ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... grass itself has such a prime; Man prizes most spring's flowery time, When first the verdure decks earth's bosom, And the ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... to matches, and some unnamed modest individuals had apparently decided that the travel tax must and forthwith would be dropped. The story of the evacuation of Gallipoli had grown old and tedious. Cranks were still vainly trying to prove to the blunt John Bullishness of the Prime Minister that the Daylight Saving Bill was not a piece of mere freak legislation. The whole of the West End and all the inhabitants of country houses in Britain had discovered a new deity in Australia and spent all their ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... repeated those words several times. It was then I saw that his self-control arose from the fact that although he was terrified he did not appear to be so greatly surprised. Surprised he was, but not in the way I had expected. His prime difficulty seemed to be to get out of his head the identity by which he had known me. 'You are Ravenshaw—Dr. Ravenshaw,' he said. 'How can you be Remington?' He brought out this with an effort, like a man trying to shake off an ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... Cavan, and his breast was filled with new aspirations. Enmity, the bitterest enmity to everything English, was the one lesson taught him. But he himself had other feelings. What if he could talk over that Speaker, and that Prime Minister, that Government generally, and all the House of Commons, and all the House of Lords! Why should not England go her way and Ireland hers,—England have her monarchy and Ireland her republic, but still ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... September is the prime month of the year in tropical Queensland. Many of the trees are then in blossom and most of the orchids. Nocturnal showers occur fairly regularly in normal seasons, and every sort of vegetable is rampant with the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... has carried off, in the prime of early manhood, their staunchest friend among our colleagues. He was not one who took any but a very small part in the actual conduct of the experiments. He once lectured to The Politics Class on "Liberalism." But he had a genius for sympathy, and always, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... certainly past the prime of life; longer past it, as I afterward discovered, than she really was. But I never remember, in any other face, to have seen so much of the better part of the beauty of early womanhood still remaining, as I saw in hers. Sorrow had evidently passed over the fair, calm countenance ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... I never went in for it myself—worse luck; never had the time. But my friend 'Bias, now! He's past his prime, o' course; but if only you'd seen him strip—in ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... of good quality is bought, and, as has been suggested, this should be done whenever it is possible, the next thing to do is to care for it in such a way that it may be fed to the family in the same condition as it was when delivered. It is, of course, of prime importance that the dairyman deliver clean fresh milk, but this is not sufficient; the milk must remain in this condition until it is used, and this can occur only when the housewife knows how to care for it ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... and, starting with a basis of two a week, sat trying to solve the mathematical chances of selecting the same as Kate Nugent; calculations which were not facilitated by a long-winded account from Mr. Wilks of certain interesting amours of his youthful prime. ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... and prickly prime of youth ought chastisement to have, But thou, dear daughter, needest not, thyself doth show ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... loveliness which cannot be disjoined from goodness. But Correggio is contented with bodies 'delicate and desirable.' His angels are genii disimprisoned from the perfumed chalices of flowers, houris of an erotic paradise, elemental spirits of nature wantoning in Eden in her prime. To accuse the painter of conscious immorality or of what is stigmatised as sensuality, would be as ridiculous as to class his seraphic beings among the products of the Christian imagination. They belong to the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... grew in beauty side by side Three fishers went sailing out into the west Tiger, tiger, burning bright 'Tis the last rose of summer Toll for the brave Turn, gentle hermit of the dale 'Twas in the prime of summer time ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... into his own hands the vast work begun by Richelieu; but that was the merest nothing compared to this. This was, apparently, as if Louis XIII, immediately after the triumphs of Richelieu, had dismissed him and declared his purpose of henceforth being his own prime minister. The young Emperor had found himself at the parting of the ways, and had deliberately chosen the right path, and this in spite of almost universal outcries at home and abroad. The OLD Emperor William could let Bismarck have his way to any extent: ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if naught so bright may live, All earth can take or ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... writer, nor has he posthumous praise for those of the generation immediately preceding. Southey, indeed, he commends with what most would regard as exaggerated warmth, but for the rest he who lived when Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson were all in their glorious prime, looks fixedly past them at some obscure Dane or forgotten Welshman. The reason was, I expect, that his proud soul was bitterly wounded by his own early failures and slow recognition. He knew himself to be a ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... president, a tall, fine-looking gentleman in the prime of life, arose as the detective entered. Mr. Silby was one of those persons who instinctively impress the beholder, with a confidence closely approaching to veneration. Of a commanding presence, a broad noble face surmounted with a wealth of hair in which ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... England and America, Gardiner is highly esteemed. But the critics must have their day. They cannot attack him for lack of diligence and accuracy, which according to Gibbon, the master of us all, are the prime requisites of a historian, so they assert that he was deficient in literary style, he had no dramatic power, his work is not interesting and will not live. Gardiner is the product solely of the university and the library. You may visualize him at Oxford, in the British ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... the Son (who "now, in 1788, lectures in Gottingen"); not these only, nor Schmucker Head Army-Surgeon, and the ever-memorable HERR GENERALCHIRURGUS Madan, who had both been in the operation; not these only, but by degrees all that was distinguished in the Berlin world, Ramler, Busching, Sulzer, Prime Minister Herzberg, Queen's and King's Equerries, and honorable men and women,—bore him "on angel-wings" towards complete recovery. Talked to him, sang and danced to him (at least, the "Muses" and the female Meckels danced and sang), and all lapped him against eating cares, till, after twelve ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of her husband or the departure of her son; and, oftener still, she had feared lest Bassompierre should compromise himself. She had touched him many times, glancing at the same time toward M. de Launay, of whom she knew little, and whom she had reason to believe devoted to the prime minister; but to a man of his character, such warnings were useless. He appeared not to notice them; but, on the contrary, crushing that gentleman with his bold glance and the sound of his voice, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... had also been very disastrous. Twelve or thirteen towns had been entirely ruined and many others partially destroyed. Six hundred houses had been burned, near a tenth part of all in New England. Twelve captains, and more than six hundred men in the prime of life, had fallen in battle. There was hardly a family not in mourning. The pecuniary losses and expenses of the war were estimated at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... body requires incessant attention to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the inner man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious or unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its progress. This is the real meaning of contemplation. The prime factor in the guidance ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... flatter him enough. I have known for a long time I was not a favorite of his, and now I know why. You know what a little bunch of mischief Alice Barnes is. She whispers more than any other girl in school, and makes more fun of him, and yet she is one of his prime favorites. Well, one day last week, at noontime, while she was talking with three or four of us girls, he came along, and she up and asked him if he wouldn't read 'The Raven' the next Wednesday afternoon when, you know, we all have compositions, and then she winked ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... them. It would be unfair to represent him as maintaining that the conscious economic motive is the only one of importance; it is rather that economics molds character and opinion, and is thus the prime source of much that appears in consciousness to have no connection with them. He applies his doctrine in particular to two revolutions, one in the past, the other in the future. The revolution in the past is that of the bourgeoisie against feudalism, which finds its expression, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... younger men, for Lentulus was at that period already past his prime, and these—two more especially who looked mere boys—had scarcely reached youth's threshold; though their pale withered faces, and brows seared deeply by the scorching brand of evil passions, showed that in vice at least, if not in years, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that Al-Hayfa walked forth with Yusuf and led him to the saloon of session where they passed their day in privacy, he and she, and right joyous was the joy of them twain. After this the Prince abode with her thirty full-told days in merriment prime and pleasure and wine. But when that time had elapsed, she said to him, "O light of my eyes, do thou arise and go up with me to the highmost post of the Palace that we may look upon this flow of stream and command a view of these mounts and mountains and these wilds ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Scots Trio, which has given us so many attractive "turns," has been violently dissolved. Mr. PRINGLE, whose ample supply of vitriolic invective was always at the service of the PRIME MINISTER, has been left by an ungrateful constituency at the bottom of the poll, and Mr. WATT has shared his fate. It is true that Mr. HOGGE managed to save his bacon, but without the support of Harlequin and Pantaloon I fear his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various

... of vanity no doubt in the boy's resolve, but the antagonism had struck roots deeper than his vanity; and at an age when other lads were vaguely dreaming themselves into Admirals and Field-Marshals and Prime-Ministers Henry Thresk, content with lower ground, was mapping out the stages of a good but perfectly feasible career. When he reached the age of thirty he must be beginning to make money; at thirty-five he must be on the way to distinction—his name must be known beyond the immediate circle of ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... was the seat of government, with its numerous dependencies, such as kitchens, smoke-house, work-shops, and stables. In this mansion the planter moved supreme; his steward, or overseer, was his prime minister and executive officer; he had his legion of house negroes for domestic service, and his host of field negroes for the culture of tobacco, Indian corn, and other crops, and for other out-of-door labor. Their ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... price and putting up Jones's. With the best will in the world to pay justly, he cannot. Smith, who has been boring his readers to death for a year, may write tomorrow a thing that will please them so much that he will at once be a prime favorite again; and Jones, whom they have been asking for, may do something so uncharacteristic and alien that it will be a flat failure in the magazine. The only thing that gives either writer positive value is his acceptance with the reader; but the acceptance ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... in their prime, it would be thought an ample filling up of any week to address three large Meetings on the Sunday, and one each week night; but The General, at seventy-four, saw that, travelling by motor, and visiting in the daytime such smaller ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... right fitting of one's self to his surroundings. Modern science has learned that for every creature the condition of success is adaptation to its environment. We may use that way of speaking to express the prime necessity of man. His environment is a vast complexity of material, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic. He was then past his prime, being twenty-eight years and three quarters old, of which he had reigned about seven in great felicity, and generally victorious. For the better convenience of beholding him, I lay on my side, so that my face was parallel to his, and he stood but three yards off: however, I have had him since ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... Caesar, speed his name Through ages, countless as to Caesar's self From the first birth-dawn of Tithonus old. If eager for the prized Olympian palm One breed the horse, or bullock strong to plough, Be his prime care a shapely dam to choose. Of kine grim-faced is goodliest, with coarse head And burly neck, whose hanging dewlaps reach From chin to knee; of boundless length her flank; Large every way she is, large-footed even, With incurved horns ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... thousand livres, which brought him only three cases in four years and obliged him to hang on to the skirts of his father-in-law, he would have gone to Pondicherry or to the palace of some indigenous rajah or king as agent, councilor or companion of his pleasures; he might have become prime-minister to Tippoo Sahib, or other potentate, lived in a palace, kept a harem and had lacs of rupees; undoubtedly, he would have filled his prisons and occasionally emptied them by a massacre, as at Paris in September, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... secret—to each other. This at once causes a rivalry amongst certain of the mock courtiers, and the dissatisfaction spreads, culminating in an open rebellion. The children take sides. Things now look serious; the prime minister tells the king he fears rebellion, and for safety his little majesty, attired in royal robes, and wearing a paper crown, retires to his palace—one of those places "built without walls." The soldiers, the king's bodyguard, are summoned, ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... meantime, meditations that show how sad and sick at heart he was, and how little comfort philosophy gave him, while his eyes were blind to the truth. He died of a fever in his camp, while still in the prime of life, in the year 180, and with him ended the period of good Emperors, which the Romans call the age of the Antonines. Aurelius was indeed succeeded by his son Commodus, but he was a foolish good-for-nothing youth, who would not bear ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... island of Cuba, he sent two men into the interior, who reported that "they traveled twenty-two leagues, and found a village of fifty houses, built like those before spoken of, and they contained about one thousand persons, because a whole generation lived in a house; and the prime men came out to meet them, led them by the arms, and lodged them in one of these new houses, causing them to sit down on seats ... and they gave them boiled roots to eat, which tasted like chestnuts." ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... The Prime Minister said one day, "The world is suffering from shell-shock." That was true. But it suffered also from the symptoms of all that illness which comes from syphilis, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... supreme in the exacting details of national finance; master of the parliamentary arts; yet always living in the noble visions of the moral and spiritual idealist. This opulence, vivacity, profusion, and the promise of it all in these days of early prime, made an awakening impression even on his foremost contemporaries. The impression might have been easier to reproduce, if he had been less infinitely mobile. 'I cannot explain my own foundation,' Fenelon said; 'it escapes ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... In May, 1840, the hoard was accidentally found, near Cuerdale Hall, within forty yards of the stream, by men who were repairing the southern bank. A willow tree, still in its prime, was planted to mark the spot. We do not know how much bullion was scattered by the finders, but there was recovered a mass of ingots, armlets, chains, rings, and so on, amounting to 1000 oz., with over 7000 silver coins. They lay in a crumbling ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... would not have hurt a fly, except inadvertently, should he happen to have to treat the animal professionally; so, instead of being dissected, 'Jocko,' as he was christened, was made free of the ship, and presently became a prime ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... for his establishment. Several young ladies of the highest birth were thought of; and, perhaps, he would have been made a Duke, but his turn of mind indisposed him for schemes either of marriage or ambition. Ten times he might have been made Prime Minister, yet he never aspired to it. "That is a man," said Quesnay to me, one day, "who is very little known; nobody talks of his talents or acquirements, nor of his zealous and efficient patronage of the arts: no man, since Colbert, has done so much in his situation: he is, moreover, an extremely ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... in the spring of 1885, and in June of that year the work was energetically begun in accordance with the plans submitted. The preparation of this work, which to a great extent underlies and is the foundation for every field of ethnologic investigation among Indians, was considered of such prime importance that nearly all the available force of the Bureau was placed upon it, to the suspension of the particular investigations in which the several officers had ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... procure which had been the prime motive that had lured her out of her retreat that afternoon, caught her eye now, and she shivered a little as, from where it lay on the floor, the headlines seemed to leer up at her, and mock, and menace her. "The White Moll....The Saint of the East Side Exposed....Vicious ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... chance. Preparation for the chosen field of effort, an industry that increasing, a hope that never flags, a patience that never grows weary, a courage that never wavers, all these, and a trust in God, are the prime requisites of the man who would win in this age of specialists and ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... to the doors, with keyholes inside and out, and a boot for luggage, also provided with a safe fastening. It was no easy matter to find exactly what the Bravi wanted, without paying a high price for a perfectly new carriage, and it was a prime necessity that the one Tommaso was to buy for them should be able to stand a rather unusual journey ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... dewy ray [Epode 1. Ere dawn be slain of day The fresh crowned lilies of discrowned kings' prime Sprang splendid as of old With moonlight-coloured gold And rays refract from the oldworld heaven of time; Pale with proud light of stars decreased 39 In westward wane reluctant ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... incidentally to deliver some nations, and especially the English, from the depressingly ugly postage stamps they are now condemned to use, this reform would possess a further advantage almost as great as its practical utility. An international coinage is, again, a prime necessity, which would possess immense commercial advantages in addition to the great saving of trouble it would effect. The progress of civilization is already working towards an international coinage. In an interesting paper on this subject ("International ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... the fact that amateurs usually begin by writing strictly true stories, and they always consider it of prime importance that they had the tale from grandmother, or that it actually occurred to John's wife's second cousin's great aunt; forgetting, in their unconscious egotism, that the reader cares only for the narrative, and nothing for the narrator. Stories told to interested ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... mountains, the highest in Europe, runs the frontier line of Russia and Turkey and Russia and Persia, winding in and out among the Trans-Caucasian Mountains. About two hundred miles from the Russo-Turkish frontier stands Tiflis, the rich and ancient capital of Georgia, and one of the prime objectives of any Turkish offensive. One of the few railroads of this wild country runs from Tiflis through the Russian fortress of Kars, forty-five miles from the Turkish frontier, to Sarikamish, thirty ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... near my billet were stationed the horse lines of our Divisional Train, and it used to give me great pleasure to pass the long rows of wagons which by the constant labour of the men were kept in prime condition. The paint was always fresh, and all the chains were polished as if they were merely for show. It would be hard (p. 209) for people at home to realize that the wagons which had been used for years under such rough conditions always looked as if they had just come out of the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... encouraged Dr. Jebb to transfer much of the pulpit service to the young man. Subsequently, he had a long talk with him and pointed out some of the defects as Belle had done; also a number of lapses which, though purely academic, he considered of prime importance. Thus, more than a month elapsed before Jim was again called ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... had drawn its robe of green over all the earth, but Daniel Poe, the commander of the wagon train, paid little attention to its beauty. He was nearly sixty years of age, but in the very prime of his strength—a great, square-shouldered man, his head and face covered with thick, black beard. His eyes had their habitual look of watchful care. They had seen no Indian sign as they crossed the mountains, but he knew ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... distinction of having blackballed, without political prejudice, a Prime Minister of each party. At the same sitting at which one of these fell, it elected, on account of his brogue and his bulls, Quiller, Q. C., who was then a ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... Us fellows went back one day and fed it logs bigger than I am, and it sucked them down like Peter does a plate of noodles. Then Junior thought curling a big dead rattler in the path, and shunting me so I'd step right on it, would be a prime joke; but he didn't figure on the snake he had fixed for me having a mate as big and ugly as it was, that would follow and coil zipping mad over the ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... and the fact that many races have adopted Buddhism and refashioned it to their liking does not indicate that their mental texture is identical. The cause of this superficial uniformity is rather that Buddhism in its prime had no serious rivals in either activity or profundity, but presented itself to the inhabitants of Eastern Asia as pre-eminently the religion of civilized men, and was often backed by the support of princes. Yet one cannot help thinking that its success in Eastern Asia and its failure in the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... ground of dispute, and thus dispose men's minds to gentleness and concord; whereas the contrary is the effect of the controversies of the schools, which, as they insensibly render those who are exercised in them more wrangling and opinionative, are perhaps the prime cause of the heresies and dissensions that now harass the world. The last and chief fruit of these Principles is, that one will be able, by cultivating them, to discover many truths I myself have not unfolded, and thus passing by degrees from ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... the rumour said to be current in Manchester to the effect that the PRIME MINISTER was contemplating publishing a Northern edition of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... legates and embassies, all anxious to wait upon his holiness the pope and gain some special privilege or concession. At this time the cardinals, too, were not mere ecclesiastics, but rather men of great wealth and power; often they became prime ministers in their several countries,—as Richelieu, for example,—and the great and influential houses of Savoy, Este, Gonzaga, Farnese, Barberini, and many others, always possessed one or more ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... the year of the Hegira 173, since the founder was a posthumous child of a descendant of Ali, who fled from Mecca in the year 168. 2. This founder, Edris, the son of Edris, instead of living to the improbable age of 120 years, A. H. 313, died A. H. 214, in the prime of manhood. 3. The dynasty ended A. H. 307, twenty-three years sooner than it is fixed by the historian of the Huns. See the accurate Annals of Abulfeda p. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... compelled to bear the hardships and mortifications which poverty brings in its train. But true friends still remained to her in her misery; friends who, with true delicacy, furnished her with the prime necessities of life—with food and clothing for herself and children. In general, it was characteristic of this period that no one felt humiliated by accepting benefits of this kind from his friends. Those who had lost all had not done so through their own fault; and those who had saved their ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach



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