"Singularity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... account for the phenomenon. Thus we have the wonderful birds of Paradise,[72] which agree in developing plumage unequalled in beauty, but a beauty which, as to details, is of different kinds, and produced in different ways in different species. To develop "beauty and singularity of plumage" is a character of the group, but not of any one definite kind, to be explained ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Devil's Bridge in Wales. It consists of one rude arch, thrown across a narrow, rocky chasm, which sinks nearly eighty feet from the level of the road. At the bottom of this channel the small river Lyd is heard rattling through its contracted course. The singularity of this scene is not perceived in merely passing over the bridge: to appreciate its character, and comprehend its awfully impressive effects, it is necessary to see the bridge, the chasm, and the roaring water, from different projecting crags which impend over the river. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... under the hands of hair-dressers, valets, &c. &c. &c. I hate those fellows about me:—but the singularity of this visit made me undergo their tortures with tolerable patience.—Now was the time when Vanity, under pretence of respect, love, and decorum, usher'd ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... beaver was up, regarded him with a look of vengeance, and the countenance, with that expression, struck Emily as resembling Montoni. She shuddered, and turned from it. Passing the light hastily over several other pictures, she came to one concealed by a veil of black silk. The singularity of the circumstance struck her, and she stopped before it, wishing to remove the veil, and examine what could thus carefully be concealed, but somewhat wanting courage. 'Holy Virgin! what can this mean?' ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... words were said, in connexion with this, touching the singularity of the fact, that it would seem as if England had something to do with the associations of the two families; but I do not think the remark was made by De Chavannes, and whatever it was, it was not sufficiently pointed to be in any way offensive ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... impressed his imagination; and she and Kirkup himself—mutatis mutandis—appear in Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, and again, in a somewhat different form, in The Dolliver Romance. There was even a Persian kitten, too, to bear little Imogen company. But no fiction could surpass the singularity of this withered old magician living with the pale, tiny sprite of a child of mysterious birth in the ghost-haunted rooms ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... friendship, as also of love, and of every other noble emotion of the soul, his expressions might inspire doubts concerning his sentiments and the goodness of his heart. The feeling of the moment regulated his speech, and besides, he liked to play the part of singularity,—and sometimes worse, more especially with those whom he suspected of endeavouring to make discoveries as to his real character; but it was only mean minds and superficial observers that could be deceived in him. It was necessary ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... calculated from the mysterious figures of Chinese astrology, and the whole without betraying themselves for a moment; and with such perfection as to impose on the most skilful men of letters, induced, of course, by the singularity of the discovery to dispute its authenticity. It could only have been done by one of the most erudite of Chinese scholars, joining with the missionaries to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... would receive, or had received, too little attention from the Roman commission, while the difficulties resulting from the fusion of public and private land in the same estates may have been as great in these communities as they were in the territory of Rome. Such grievances presented no feature of singularity; they were common to Italy, and one might have thought that a Latin protest would have been weaker than a Roman. But there was one vital point of difference between the two. The Roman could appeal ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... them with the sudden comprehension of the unprecedented singularity of their situation. Millions of miles away from the earth, confronted on an asteroid by these diabolical monsters from a maleficient planet, who were on the point of destroying them with a strange torment of death—perhaps ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... in Cavalieri, Cecchino, Febo, or Perini, except their singularity of youth and grace, good parts and beauty. The vulgar are offended when an illustrious man pays homage to these qualities, forgetful of Shakespeare's self-abasement before Mr. W.H. and of Languet's prostration at the feet of Sidney. In the case of Michelangelo, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... who had come here for one purpose only, and who carried this purpose deep in her heart. The company wore every imaginable attire. Most of them were in masks, but some of them had none; while Hilda, in her mournful robe, that spoke to all of death and funereal rites, was alone in the singularity ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the works of Chopin, we meet with beauties of a high order, expressions entirely new, and a harmonic tissue as original as erudite. In his compositions, boldness is always justified; richness, even exuberance, never interferes with clearness; singularity never degenerates into uncouth fantasticalness; the sculpturing is never disorderly; the luxury of ornament never overloads the chaste eloquence of the principal lines. His best works abound in combinations which may be said to form an epoch in ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the scarabaeus, and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupefied me for a time. This is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connection—a sequence of cause and effect—and, being unable to do so, suffers a species ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... who does contrive to pursue his philosophical points, however, dagger or no dagger, wherever they take him. By putting himself into the trick of singularity, and affecting to be a mere compound of eccentricities and oddities, neither knowing nor caring what it is that he is writing about, and dashing at haphazard into anything as the fit takes him,—'Let us e'en fly at anything,' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... more singularity of manners and inconstancy of life, than the conflict of opposite vices in the same mind. He that uniformly pursues any purpose, whether good or bad, has a settled principle of action; and as he may ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... whole of Tarascon. Two or three times a week there were parties where they were sung. The singularity was their being always the same, and that the honest Tarasconers had never had an inclination to change them during the long, long time they had been harping on them. They were handed down from ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... differed from him were disparaged and denounced so contemptuously, as to repress instead of stimulating inquiry. The celebrity he attained in his practice was due not only to his great professional skill, but also in part to the singularity of his manners. He used great plainness of speech in his intercourse with his patients, treating them often brusquely and sometimes even rudely. In the circle of his family and friends he was courteous and affectionate; and in all his dealings he was strictly just and honourable. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... altogether halcyon, I had a venerable great-uncle, a quaint specimen of human infirmity, the singularity of the parish. Though eccentric at times, he was not destitute of good qualities. These, had they been properly applied, might have served to distinguish him among men in what is pedantically called the higher walks of life. But he had a fault, and one that is very unpopular ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... most cordial and flattering; made me sit in the chair which Byron used to sit in, and remarked, as a singularity, that this was the poor fellow's birthday; he would to-day have been forty. On parting with Mrs. Pigot, a fine, intelligent old lady, who has been bedridden for years, she kissed my hand most affectionately, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... stranger is struck with the singularity of the names of many of the women of Lima. A child receives the name of the saint or of the festival whose celebration falls on the day of its birth. Those who happen to come into the world on the days on which the Romish Church celebrates the several manifestations of the Virgin ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... applying there will create, at each moment, fresh ideal wholes, formal unities which mind emanates from and represents. The result will accordingly always be unprecedented in the total impression it produces, in exact proportion to the singularity of the situation in hand. Mechanical processes are not like mathematical relations, because they happen. What they express the form of is a flux, not a truth or an ideal necessity. The situation ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... must even add that your Franco-Italian language is just the thing to enlist in your favour the sympathy of those who listen to you, because it is singular, new, and because you are in a country where everybody worships those two divinities—novelty and singularity. Nevertheless, you must begin to-morrow and apply yourself in good earnest, in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of our language, for the same persons who warmly applaud you now, will, in two or three ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... plays, I have added short strictures, containing a general censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which I know not how much I have concurred with the current opinion; tut I have not, by any affectation of singularity, deviated from it. Nothing is minutely and particularly examined, and therefore it is to be supposed, that in the plays which are condemned there is much to be praised, and in these which are ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of this paper the popular name of a class of beings, which, though simple in their organisation, are full of interest to the zoologist, and attractive to the common observer from the singularity or beauty of their forms, and, in many cases, the brilliancy of their colouring. The ocean, throughout its wide extent, swarms with myriads of gelatinous creatures—some microscopic, some of large dimensions—which deck it with the gayest colours by day, and at night light up ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... of San Ildefonso; but it seemed odd that these savages should have noticed the fact—for fact it was—that the cibolero was somewhat of an outcast among his own people. Just then he had no time to reflect upon the singularity of the circumstances, as ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... continues the essayist, "has had its day, and the antiquary must not despise us if we cannot peruse it with patience. He who delights in all such reading as is never read, may derive some pleasure from the singularity of his taste, but he ought still to respect the judgment of mankind, which has consigned to oblivion the works which he admires. While he pores unmolested on Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve, let him not censure ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... indeed, a novice amid scenes of fashion, and the genuine pleasure her countenance expressed, appeared a relief when compared to many around her. The name of Hamilton had never been entirely forgotten in London. Their singularity in living so long in unbroken retirement had been by many ridiculed, by others condemned, as an attempt to appear better than their neighbours; and many were the speculations as to whether the saintly Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton would really do such a wicked thing as introduce their daughters into society, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... by my dependence on the protection of Almighty God." Fanny Kemble was present at this memorable scene, and has given her impression of it. Her testimony, as a public speaker, is valuable. "The Queen was not handsome, but very pretty, and the singularity of her great position lent a sentimental and poetical charm to her youthful face and figure. The serene, serious sweetness of her candid brow and clear soft eyes gave dignity to the girlish countenance, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... reporters, that would have puzzled a whole bar of modern practitioners to controvert. The effect was ludicrous; the extraordinary appearance of the worthy sergeant, not in his bargown, but in what these adventurous mortals called a mere bedgown; the quaintness of his manner, the singularity of the occurrence, and the novelty of the incident, threw ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... struck the younger man that little more than an hour had elapsed since he gave his name to the letter clerk in the hotel. The singularity of his proceedings during that hour was thereby brought home to him. He knew nothing of newspapers, daily or weekly; but commonsense suggested that "The Firefly's" radiance was not over-powering. His native ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Dinah also wore a black velvet cap, like that in the portrait of Raphael, and below it her hair fell in thick curls. This attire showed off a rather pretty figure, fine eyes, and handsome eyelids somewhat faded by the weariful life that has been described. In Le Berry the singularity of this artistic costume was a cloak for the romantic affectations of ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Nave.—The nave suffered severely at the hands of the Puritans, who destroyed many of the early tombs and effigies. Especially noticeable is the lack of brasses; all these have disappeared, with the exception only of one in the Jesus Chapel. Another singularity is that the burial-place of most of the bishops who are known to have been interred in the cathedral is quite uncertain. The best of them seem to have been content with a plain slab and inscribed brass; only Nykke, of infamous memory, left ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... its apparent singularity this determined exclusion is to be easily explained. The Assyrian invented nothing. His language and his writing, his religion and his science, came from Chaldaea, and so did his art. When the kings of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... the peculiarity of her situation, yet not wanting in courage when it was to be called forth) an object well worthy of gaze and admiration. Her features thrown into broad light and shade by the candle which at times was half extinguished by the wind—her symmetry of form and the gracefulness and singularity of her attire—were matter of astonishment to Philip. Her head was without covering, and her long hair fell in plaits behind her shoulders; her stature was rather under the middle size, but her form perfect; her dress was simple but becoming, and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... bearing of a goddess. Her hair, of a soft blonde hue, was parted in the midst and flowed back over her temples in two rivers of rippling gold; she seemed a diademed queen. Her forehead, bluish-white in its transparency, extended its calm breadth above the arches of her eyebrows, which by a strange singularity were almost black, and admirably relieved the effect of sea-green eyes of unsustainable vivacity and brilliancy. What eyes! With a single flash they could have decided a man's destiny. They had a life, a limpidity, an ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... time In spinning reason into harmless rhyme, Or sometimes boldly venture to the play? 400 Say, where's the crime, great man of prudence, say? No two on earth in all things can agree; All have some darling singularity: Women and men, as well as girls and boys, In gew-gaws take delight, and sigh for toys. Your sceptres and your crowns, and such like things, Are but a better kind of toys for kings. In things indifferent Reason bids us ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... "The singularity of this fact," my colleague resumed, "made me look at the footprints yet more critically, and then I made another discovery. There was a double track of the nailed shoes, leading apparently from and back to the Shepherd's Path. But on examining these tracks more closely, I was astonished ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... opened a speech in the House of Commons with these words, "The majesty of the people of England would be wounded." The singularity of the expression occasioned a loud laugh; but this gentleman, so far from being disconcerted, repeated the same words with a resolute tone of voice, and the laugh ceased. In my opinion, the majesty of the people of England has nothing in common with that of the people ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... still wrapped in amazement at the singularity of the adventure, Peter's surprise was not diminished on observing a boy, who, without saying a word, silently beckoned him to follow. Peter mechanically obeyed the gestures of the lad, and ascended ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... graces of that kind. Now, without being very nice, I own I should rather choose a wife of mine to have the usual number of limbs, and a limited quantity of back; and though one eye may be very agreeable, yet, as the prejudice has always run in favor of two, I would not wish to affect a singularity in that article. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Colambre! all the Broadhursts!' said his mother, wakening him, as she passed by, to receive them as they entered. Miss Broadhurst appeared, plainly dressed—plainly, even to singularity—without ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... we met with cold salutations but without conversation. Ormond and the Dane, however, became exceedingly intimate. Indeed, the mulatto appeared to exhibit a degree of friendship for the Margaritan I had never seen him bestow on any one else. This singularity, together with his well-known insincerity, put me on my guard to watch his ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... unlearned save in the ancestral wisdom of his people, unheralded but by the village estimate of a sweet and innocent life, to finish the work of a long line of prophets, and to lift humanity nearer to God. And we are often so eager to prove the singularity of his mission, and to take him out of the category of other workers for God, as to miss the great lesson which is to be learned of the way in which the Father always trains and educates a faithful and victorious ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... autumnal, and a fire was quite indispensable to our comfort. There are no less than five glaciers in this valley, they are separated from each other by forests and by cultivated lands, and this intermixture presents an appearance which, from its singularity, cannot fail to astonish the beholder. These glaciers all lie at the foot of that vast chain of mountains, which supply the sources of many of the greatest rivers in Europe. I observed that the mountains in this vicinity ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... then, Hiero would seem to have been the only talking animal she had known. The singularity of this did not at first strike the young man. Gnulemah was the arch-wonder; yet she so fully justified herself as to seem very nature; and by dint of her magic reality, what else had been wonderful seemed ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... he was climbing, he never used his arms both together, but first one and then the other, and so on alternately. There is a singularity in his hair, different from that of all other animals, and, I believe, hitherto unnoticed by naturalists. His hair is thick and coarse at the extremity, and gradually tapers to the root, where it becomes fine as a spider's web. His fur has so much the hue of ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... for the quaintness and singularity of its form," said I; "it appears to be less adapted for real ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... would they be a whit more comfortable upon my night cap. Besides, my wife might object to them. It follows that if I would wear a cap and bells, I must have a cap made on purpose. But this would be rendering myself singular; and of all things, a wise man will avoid ostentatious appearance of singularity. Now I am certainly not singular in playing the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... over-arched by the sky, the floor of which was covered by the sea, and adorned with a garden of corals. The steep sides are thickly hung with lianas, ferns, and orchids, by help of which one climbs upwards to the cavern, sixty feet above the surface of the water. To add to the singularity of the situation, we also found at the entrance to the grotto, on a large block of rock projecting two feet above the ground, [A sea snake.] a sea-snake, which tranquilly gazed at us, but which had to be killed, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... larger in size. Almost every portion of the banana tree is useful. First of all, the nutritious fruit. The plantains when green and hard, are boiled in water or with meat like our potatoes, or they are cut in slices and fried in fat, when they are soft and ripe. There is a singularity about the boiled plaintain, worthy of being mentioned. Pork especially, and other meats are so exceedingly fat in the tropics that they would be most disgusting or even impossible to eat with either bread or potatoes, but the plaintain seems to neutralize or ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Caius Plautius your colleague, created under the same auspices, with the same privileges. Did not the people create him with the fullest privileges with which any censor ever was created? Or is yours an excepted case, in which this peculiarity and singularity takes place? Shall the person, whom you create king of the sacrifices, laying hold of the style of sovereignty, say, that he was created with the fullest privileges with which any king was ever created at Rome? Who then, do you ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... it, in the mere colors and lines which he uses. Thus Franz Hals has embodied the abundance and good cheer of his burghers in the boldness and brightness of the lines and colors with which he paints them; and Hogarth, in the "Shrimp Girl," through the mere singularity of line and color, has created the eerie impression which we attach to the girl herself. The best portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... named, for I believe it would be difficult to find any other epithet which might with propriety distinguish it, as it is without ornament, elegance, or any sort of singularity, and merely to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... nor in hearing the voices of my fellow-creatures. When people addressed me, I not unfrequently, especially if they were strangers, turned away my head from them, and if they persisted in their notice burst into tears, which singularity of behaviour by no means tended to dispose people in my favour. I was as much disliked as my brother was deservedly beloved and admired. My parents, it is true, were always kind to me; and my brother, who was good nature itself, was continually lavishing upon me every ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... For this omission we shall be blamed, as we perhaps have blamed other travellers; but the day was rainy, and the ground was damp. We had with us neither spades nor pickaxes, and if love of ease surmounted our desire of knowledge, the offence has not the invidiousness of singularity. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of the exertions of the officer from Torwich and his assistants, they were mounting the sides, and had spread themselves over the vessel like a pack of hungry wolves on the dead carcass of a horse, when I arrived. A scene of greater confusion and singularity cannot be described. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... raising of Lazarus, of the widow's son at Nain, as well as many of the cures which Christ wrought, come not within the compass of misrepresentation. I mean that it is impossible to assign any position of circumstances however peculiar, any accidental effects however extraordinary, any natural singularity, which could supply an origin or foundation ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... Breitenfeld he had never known a reverse. A bigoted Catholic, he had never hesitated at any act of cruelty which might benefit the cause for which he fought, or strike terror into the Protestants; and the singularity of his costume and the ugliness of his appearance heightened the terror which his deeds inspired among them. When not in armour his costume was modelled upon that of the Duke of Alva, consisting of a slashed doublet of green silk, with an enormously ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... in its prime differs altogether in character from that of every other part of Italy. The Venetian is the most marked and recognisable of all the schools; its singularity is such that a novice in art can easily, in a miscellaneous collection, sort out the works belonging to it, and added to this unique character is the position it occupies in the domain of art. Venice ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... speaking roughly, the form of a vast quadrangle, 2,000 miles on the side, and extends from the hottest tropical, to the middle of the temperate, zone. Setting aside the foreign colonists introduced within the last century, it is inhabited by people no less remarkable for the uniformity, than for the singularity, of their physical characters and social state. For the most part of fair stature, erect and well built, except for an unusual slenderness of the lower limbs, the AUSTRALIANS have dark, usually chocolate-coloured skins; fine dark wavy hair; dark eyes, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... pursuing their natural occupations, contrasted with the restless and apparently unmeaning motions of the dwarf soldier, added not a little to the general effect of this place, which is that of wild singularity, and the whole was aided by a blustering wind and a gloomy sky. Coleridge joined us, and we went up to ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... pride, saying that there is "pride of will, pride of speech, end pride of deed." Bernard [*De Grad. Humil. et Superb. x, seqq.] also reckons twelve degrees of pride, namely "curiosity, frivolity of mind, senseless mirth, boasting, singularity, arrogance, presumption, defense of one's sins, deceitful confession, rebelliousness, license, sinful habit." Now these apparently are not comprised under the species mentioned by Gregory. Therefore the latter would seem to be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... side as identical with All, make annihilating deprivation equivalent to universal bestowment, regard negation as affirmation, and, in the last synthesis of contradictions, see the abysmal Vacuum as a Plenum of fruition. As Oken says, "The ideal zero is absolute unity; not a singularity, as the number one, but an indivisibility, a numberlessness, a homogeneity, a translucency, a pure identity. It is neither great nor small, quiescent nor moved; but it is, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... this form of expressing singularity is common to Arabic and the Eastern languages, which it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of light, rather than organs of seeing. Their almost paradoxical number at least, and the singularity of their forms, render it probable that they impel the animal by some modification of its irritability, herein likewise containing a striking analogy to the known influence of light on plants, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... embrace them. And, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants: let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity: She thus advises thee that sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered. I say, remember. Go to; thou art made, if thou desirest to be so; if not, let me see ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... on the top, which serves instead of a brilliant stone. We pity a vain Gipsy whose eyes are taken, and whose heart delights in such vulgar pomp. Are not those equally pitiable, who estimate themselves only by the gaiety, singularity, or costliness of their apparel? The Saviour has given us a rule by which we may judge persons in reference to their dress, as well as in other ostensibilities of character—by their fruits ye ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... all that early, violent, not over-tilled beginning of his poetry was illumined by her face. But as to who she was, by name I mean, remained long a matter of doubt. Binet would have it that her true name was Cassandre, and that its singularity inspired Ronsard. Brantome called it "a false name to cover a true." Ronsard himself has written, "false or true, time conquering all things cannot efface it from the marble." There need have been no doubt. D'Aubigne's testimony is ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... a military term, I felt forced to frame "ex-centric;" the former—I ask Dr. Johnson's pardon—has, in America at least, become so exclusively associated with the secondary though cognate idea of singularity that it would not convey its restricted military ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... would if she saw it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling, indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till now she had stifled ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... down to the little Greek letters. I imagine his exclamation. He would at first doubt his eyes. I should inquire the cause of his consternation, and it would be hard to explain. He would ask me with a certain singularity of manner for "Orion," and I should not find him; for the Great Bear, and it would have vanished. "Where?" I should ask, and "where?" seeking among that scattered starriness, and slowly I should acquire ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... suddenly ill. He knew that immediately atter his recovery he had gone northward. He remembered how sad he had seemed after his return, neglecting to play with him as had been his wont, and when to this he added Joel's story, together with the singularity of his father's conduct towards 'Lena, he could not fail to ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... other passage which one would have thought must have gone home to every heart—that which describes the communing of the wanderer with nature [Footnote: Excursion, book i.]—is singled out for ridicule; while the whole poem is judged to display "a puerile ambition of singularity, grafted on an unlucky predilection for truisms". [Footnote: Edinburgh Review, xxiv. I, &c. It is but just to add that in the remainder of the essay the Reviewer takes back—so far as such things can ever be taken back—a considerable part of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... has still the same admiration for him, and it is sometimes fine fun to see the caresses she gives him before all the world, and the constrained gravity with which he receives them. The history of Cavoye would fill a volume, but this I have selected suffices for its singularity, which assuredly ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... must be often sent for to Court, that the king may hear them argue those points in which he is concerned; since how unjust soever any of his pretensions may be, yet still some one or other of them, either out of contradiction to others, or the pride of singularity, or to make their court, would find out some pretence or other to give the king a fair colour to carry the point: for if the judges but differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the world is made by that means disputable, and truth being once brought in question, the king may then take advantage to ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... earlier stages of her culture the whole of Europe had Latin for her learned tongue. That was in her intellectual budding time, when all her petals of self-expression were closed in one point. But the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by the singularity of her literary vehicle. When the great European countries found their individual languages, then only the true federation of cultures became possible in the West, and the very differences of the channels made the commerce of ideas ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... at this proposal, and then sank again. It seemed easier to paint a Meissonier on the spot than to win ten thousand dollars on that mimic stock exchange. Nor could I help reflecting on the singularity of such a test for a man's capacity to be a painter. I ventured even to comment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though soiled, is almost always sound; and one can see that the wash-tub will reveal many a comely face amongst them. The dusky damsels are "to the manner born," and as they walk about the streets, thoughtless of singularity, the Wigan people let them go unheeded by. Before I had been two hours in the town, I was put into communication with one of the active members of the Relief Committee, who offered to devote a few hours of the following day to visitation with me, amongst the poor of a ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... fertile in excuses for coming also, as soon as the duties of the ship would allow him. It was remarked that when he came Donna Julia took the opportunity of leaving her father's room, except when he went in to visit the old man. At last Ronald taxed him with the singularity ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... former times, every Family of Distinction was considered as incomplete in its establishment, if it did not possess a certain whimsical Character called a Fool; who was either to afford amusement to his witty Master by the real singularity of his Humour,—or to act as a foil to his foolish Lord by well-timed displays of affected Folly.—These appendages to Greatness have long been laid aside.—Indeed, the present Age, which is remarkable for its refinements, has, in the ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... utmost historic importance, is essentially unheroic in tone and circumstance,—the querulous complaint of a master against servants who have overmastered him,—an assertion of supremacy made by a man, who felt that he was not really supreme. But the singularity that attends the address to the recalcitrant officers is not yet exhausted. Surprise may well be felt that Carlyle, with this speech before him, ventured on the construction of his false image of Cromwell, the Hero. Judged even as an ordinary ruler, he must have been a very sorry Protector who, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... licence which exists among your women. To all such accusations, whether they are brought against the Tarentines, or us, or you, there is one answer which exonerates the practice in question from impropriety. When a stranger expresses wonder at the singularity of what he sees, any inhabitant will naturally answer him:—Wonder not, O stranger; this is our custom, and you may very likely have some other custom about the same things. Now we are speaking, my friends, not about men in general, but about the merits and defects of the lawgivers themselves. ...
— Laws • Plato
... "The singularity of the case, when mentioned among my friends and acquaintances, naturally made it the subject of conversation in London, and in consequence my friend, the late Mr. Rennie, was requested by some of the commissioners ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... from its novelty, extent, and singularity, demands the first notice: the Cholamoo lake lay 1500 feet below me, at the bottom of a rapid and rocky descent; it was a blue sheet of water, three or four miles from north to south, and one and a half broad, hemmed in by rounded spurs ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... so many eccentric characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity. In another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been favorable to the development of individual singularity during the latter half of the present century. It is easier to do that than fully to account for the numerous queer human types which have existed from time to time ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... collars. At other shops, he bought some boots and a Panama straw hat. Having completed their purchases, they walked for some hours about Calcutta; Will being delighted with the variety of the native costumes, and the newness and singularity of ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... of sensuality, and taught his art to be the handmaid of a soulless paganism. In these two men, therefore, we study two aspects of their age. How far both were exceptional, need not here be questioned; since their singularity consists not so much in being different from other Italians of the sixteenth century as in concentrating qualities ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... closed, a scene rendered peculiarly interesting by the personages who appeared in it, by the great events it recalled to the memory, and by the singularity of the circumstances under which it was displayed, the American chief withdrew from the hall of congress, leaving the silent and admiring spectators deeply impressed with those sentiments which its solemnity and dignity were ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... and his wife became silent for a time, musing in the firelight, their daughter's special convictions were far from coinciding with theirs, although she, likewise, was silent—a singularity they should have observed. So far were they from a true comprehension of her, they were unaware that she had more than a casual, young-cousinly interest in Julia Atwater's engagement and in those possible consequences to Noble Dill just sketched ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... first struck with the singularity of Caleb's appearance, and later by the expression of his eyes. A very tall, big-boned, lean, round-shouldered man, he was uncouth almost to the verge of grotesqueness, and walked painfully with the aid of a stick, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... assured him. "Nature guards her best men with some sort of singularity not attractive to others. Often she makes them odious with conceit or deformity or dumbness or garrulity. Dante was such a poor talker that no one would ever ask him to dinner. If it had not been so I presume his muse would have been sadly crippled by indigestion. If you ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... and was loudly cried out against by the polite journalism of Society. This fate is, I believe, the almost inevitable one of thoroughly genuine work in these days, whether poetry or painting; but what added to the singularity in this case was that coarse heartlessness was even ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... The singularity of the place, the earnestness of his gaze, and the extraordinary attraction I felt towards him, brought the warm, bright color to my cheeks, and I instinctively dropped the veil which I had raised ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of the institution, at this period, was a learned and Orthodox divine, whose fame was in all the churches. He was the author of several works which evinced much erudition and depth of research; and the public, perhaps, thought the more highly of his abilities from a singularity in the purposes to which he applied them, that added much to the curiosity of his labors, though little to their usefulness. But, however fanciful might be his private pursuits, Dr. Melmoth, it was universally allowed, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... about it. An explanation is the more necessary, because such good Catholics and distinguished writers as Count Montalembert and Father Lacordaire use the word in a favorable sense, and claim to be Liberals themselves. "The only singularity," says the former of the two in describing his friend, "was his Liberalism. By a phenomenon, at that time unheard of, this convert, this seminarist, this confessor of nuns, was just as stubborn a liberal, as in the days when he was a student and ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the devil, its lawful owner, and till something a little like Christianity takes its place. If parsons are to be Lords, it is but right and reasonable that the Queen should be Pope. Indeed, I have no objection to this, but I have to the other. What a singularity it is that those who profess a belief in Christ do not obey Him, while those who profess it in Mahomet or Moses or Boodh are obedient to their precepts, if not in certain points of morality, in all things ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... leave gods in profession and in thought, Than in her love and life; for therein lies Most of her duties and their dignities; And, rail the brain-bald world at what it will, That's the grand atheism that reigns in it still. Yet singularity she would use no more, For she was singular too much before; But she would please the world with fair pretext; Love would not leave her conscience perplext: Great men that will have less do for them, still Must bear them out, though th' acts be ne'er so ill; Meanness must pander be to Excellence; ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... inserting another Poem of Privacy, bolder in its openness of speech, more glowing in its warmth of colouring. If excuse should be pleaded or the translation and reproduction of this distinctly Pagan ditty, it must be found in the singularity of its motive, which is as unmedieval as could be desired by the bitterest detractor of medieval sentiment. We seem, while reading it, to have before our eyes the Venetian picture of a Venus, while the almost prosaic ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... covetousness, and the like, they do much harm amongst us. They are so different in their consultations, prescriptions, mistaking many times the parties' constitution, [4090]disease, and causes of it, they give quite contrary physic; [4091]"one saith this, another that," out of singularity or opposition, as he said of Adrian, multitudo medicorum principem interfecit, "a multitude of physicians hath killed the emperor;" plus a medico quam a morbo periculi, "more danger there is from the physician, than from the disease." Besides, there is much ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... this judgment; he was a Puritan, though he was sunny and gentle; and there were many others who more or less resembled him. The reason that the somber type is the better known is partly because of its greater picturesqueness and singularity, and partly because the early life of New England was on the whole militant and aggressive, and therefore brought the rigid and positive qualities more ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... return you all the things (PIECES) you had the goodness to communicate to me,—except Charles Douze, [Voltaire's new Book; lately come out, "Bale, 1731."] which attaches me infinitely. The particulars hitherto unknown which he reports; the greatness of that Prince's actions, and the perverse singularity (BIZARRERIE) of his fortune: all this, joined to the lively, brilliant and charming way the Author has of telling it, renders this Book interesting to the supreme degree.... I send you a fragment of my correspondence with the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... various grotesque dances, which are originals in their kind, being extremely difficult to execute, not only for the variety of the steps, but for the intricacy and uncommonness, or rather singularity of them. ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... enlightened by the Word of God. Shall we not then find, that substantially the same style of living that is proper in one latitude and longitude, is proper in another; substantially the same, paying only so much regard to the eyes of the world, as to avoid unnecessary singularity and remark; and that this rule, founded on the principles of the Gospel, makes a proper provision for health, mental cultivation, and a neat, sober and just taste? Are not these the real wants of men ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... criticism Mr. Thompson's nature was not picturesque nor lovable. His history, as imparted at dinner, one day, by himself, was practical even in its singularity. After a hard and wilful youth and maturity,—in which he had buried a broken-spirited wife, and driven his son to sea,—he suddenly experienced religion. "I got it in New Orleans in '59," said Mr. Thompson, with the general ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... shine in some.[1404] Hydrogen and helium account for a large proportion of their spectral rays. Thirty-two Wolf-Rayet stars were investigated, spectroscopically and spectrographically, by Professor Campbell with the great Lick refractor in 1892-94;[1405] and several disclosed the singularity, already noticed by him in Gamma Argus, of giving out mixed series, the members of which change from vivid to obscure with increase of refrangibility. It is difficult to imagine by what chromospheric machinery this curious result can be produced. Alcyone in the Pleiades ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... and those who saw the singularity of his appearance, scarce wondered at the fears of Caspar, the stall-master, when he found such a person in the stable, by what mode of entrance he was unable to conceive. When he reached the lighted hall to which the baron conducted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... though it was an aesthetic delight to see her move or pose, and the quality of her voice was music's self. But Freeman, after due meditation, came to the conclusion that this was the outcome of her recognition of her own singularity: in trying to be like other people, she fell into caricature. Freeman, somehow, liked her the better for it. Like most men of brain and pith, who have seen and thought much, he was thankful for a new thing, because, so far as it went, it renewed him. It ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... crescentic shape. The aperture is in consequence rendered somewhat pyriform, the inner curvature being very obtuse, and in some individuals distorted by an angle formed where the fold crosses the border of the lower palpebra. This singularity depends upon the variable form of the orbit during immature age, and is very remarkable in childhood, less so towards adult age, and then, it would seem, frequently disappearing altogether; for the proportion in which it exists among grown-up persons bears but a small comparison with that observed ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... singularity has your wisdom made?" said his friend. "I thought you and the world knew each other's ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Now the greatest singularity in this king's disease is, that it was instantly inflicted on him from heaven (which he himself acknowledged according to Josephus[148]) otherwise as to verminose putrefaction in human bodies, we have several instances of it. For this very king's grandfather, Herod, surnamed ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... nature of things, never be a displeasing object, you would not have pronounced this innocent Sabbath-breaker especially pretty. She was tall and pale, thin and a little awkward; her hair was fair and perfectly straight; her eyes were dark, and they had the singularity of seeming at once dull and restless—differing herein, as you see, fatally from the ideal "fine eyes," which we always imagine to be both brilliant and tranquil. The doors and windows of the large square ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... to repeat the words of a princess,[671] who is not less distinguished at court by the delicacy of her wit than by her high rank and personal charms. As they were conversing in her presence of the singularity of the adventure which here happened at St. Maur, 'Why are you so much astonished?' said she, with that gracious air which is so natural to her; 'Is it surprising that the son should have to do with spirits, since the mother sees the eternal Father three times every week? This woman is ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... acquaintances even there, and I believe that except myself, Jack Ashton, Henry Darton, and Will Church, he had no intimates. And we knew him only at the club. There, when he was alone with us, he sometimes partly opened up his mind, and we were charmed by his variety of knowledge and the singularity of his conversation. I shall not disguise the fact that we thought him extremely eccentric, although the idea of anything in the nature of insanity never entered our heads. We knew that he was engaged in recondite ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... follow so serious an innovation. I answered with a little story which I remember hearing from my father. He remembered the last clergyman in New England who still continued to wear the wig. At first it became a singularity and at last a monstrosity; and the good doctor concluded to leave it off. But there was one poor woman among his parishioners who lamented this sadly, and waylaying the clergyman as he came out of church she said, "Oh, dear doctor, I have always listened to your ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... black dog's face among the bushes thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me. It was Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an opening among the bushes—a black head which looked as if carved in ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze blossoms. The beauty and singularity of the sight made it impossible for me to be angry with him, though there's nothing a man more resents than being shadowed, or secretly followed and spied upon, even by a dog, so, without considering what I was letting myself in for, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... which so much perverted ingenuity had been expended that the prisoner could neither lie down nor stand erect, and the hour of release from weary torture was waited for with ardent longing, even if it led to the stake.[565] But the death of a nameless tailor has, by the singularity of its incidents, acquired a celebrity surpassing that of any other martyrdom in the early part of this reign. In the midst of the tourneys and other festivities provided to signalize the occasion of the queen's coronation and his own solemn entry into Paris, the desire ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... This suggests another singularity in which it doubtless reigns supreme. Probably no river in the world, of its length, has anything like the carrying power of the Colorado within its waters. Notice that I say "within its waters." It is useless for carrying ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... in a state of prolific produce till the eighth year in the interior, and the ninth in plantations on the coast. Yet, by a singularity which situation alone can explain, the crops of cacao commence in the ninth year in the valley of Goapa, and at the east of the mouth of the Tuy. In the vicinity of the line, and on the banks of Rio-Negro, the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... extraordinary manner. Meeting, on the day after, a brother barrister in the Hall of the Four Courts, the latter began to condole with him on his misfortune, mingling some expressions of surprise at the singularity of the thing. "It is extraordinary indeed, my dear friend," replied Bethel, "for without vanity, it is the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... and distorted expressions. If the thing can be obscured, he is sure to obscure it. He seems to say to the reader, 'Can you guess? do you give it up?' But then, less obliging than the maker of charades, he leaves the puzzled victim without an explanation at last. He studies a singularity of phrase at once crabbed and finical, and overloads his pages with far-fetched epithets, that are at once harsh and unmeaning. He seems to have been told that he has wit and humor, and—strange delusion!—to believe it. He writes as if he imagined that ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... groups along the sidewalks, leisurely chatting with one another, and often turning about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self; insomuch that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many reflections about him, must have imbued me with some of his own singularity of mien. If their great-grandfathers were such redoubtable starers in the Doctor's day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors to the little town, except for market purposes, and I question ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... go and see you.' On examining this person I was surprised to see her head tied up in a foulard, and along the temples a curious dark line; but I presently saw that her head was shaved. 'Have you been ill?' I asked, as I noticed this singularity. She cast a glance at a broken mirror in a shabby frame and colored; then the tears came into her eyes. 'Yes, monsieur,' she said, 'I had horrible headaches, and I was obliged to have my hair cut off; it came to my feet.' 'Am I speaking to Madame Mongenod?' I asked. 'Yes, monsieur,' she answered, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... the fort. The weather, as on the preceding day, was fine, and the river exhibited the same placidity of surface. Numerous bodies of Indians were collected on the banks, pointing to, and remarking on the singularity of the white flag which hung drooping at the stern of the boat. Presently the prisoners were seen advancing to the bank, accompanied by General Brock, Commodore Barclay, and the principal officers of the garrison. Major Montgomerie appeared pleased at the prospect of the liberty that ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... crest that trembled and shivered with the infirmities of his step. A heavy robe of fur reached almost to his feet, and a mantle, curiously wrought of the iridescent feathers of the neck and breast of the wild turkey, bespoke his consequence and added to the singularity of his aspect; for Indians seldom attained such age in those wild days, the warriors being usually cut off in their prime. It is to be doubted if Tscholens had ever seen so old a man, for this was Tsiskwa of Citico, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the status of millionaires possessed of houses in Park Lane and shooting boxes in Scotland. He liked to relate all that he knew about them, and sometimes even to mention certain facts which the individuals themselves would probably have preferred to be consigned to oblivion. But—and here comes the singularity to which I have referred—Rhodes would not allow anyone else to speak of these things, and he always took the part of his so-called friends when outsiders hinted at dark episodes which did not admit of investigation. He almost gave a certificate of good conduct to people whom he might ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, "Pray, Sir, do you know any good weather in the world?" After staring a little at the singularity of Swift's manner and the oddity of the question, the gentleman answered, "Yes, Sir, I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather in my time."—"That is more," replied Swift, "than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... rather jargon, composed of the pickings of nearly every idiom that ever did live, or is at present in existence, and sentiments which would be often of a highly mischievous tendency, if they were not rendered ridiculous by the manner in which they are expressed. The singularity of these productions excited a good deal of sensation, and, if we believe her own words, she was placed by them "in a definite rank among authors, and in no undistinguished circle of society." In some of the principal journals, however, the lady was severely ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various |
