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Lack   /læk/   Listen
Lack

verb
(past & past part. lacked; pres. part. lacking)
1.
Be without.  Synonym: miss.  "There is something missing in my jewelry box!"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lack" Quotes from Famous Books



... roads, through the muddy aqueduct of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, hurried on over the roughly paved streets of Georgetown, and through the suburbs of Washington, they finally halted for the night, and, as it chanced through lack of orders, for the succeeding day also, near Meridian Hill. Under orders to join the Fifth Army Corps commanded by Major-General Fitz John Porter, to which the Division had been previously assigned, the march was resumed on the succeeding day, which ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... her dear voice was so odd; but, Mon Dieu! how wonderful in its courage! That, Heaven be praised! is no monopoly of intellect. Indeed, it is imagination that makes men cowards; and to the lack of this ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... any man of letters in Queen Anne's day who took the trouble to think a little about the laws of literature, and who thought about those laws strictly in accordance with the accepted conventions of his time. Pope is not in the least to be blamed for this lack of originality. Profound original criticism is perhaps the very last thing to be expected of a brilliant boy, and Pope was little more when he planned this work. But boy as he was, he had already accomplished an immense ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... all day long, traffic unbroken as usual. I should have imagined that a city, for generations taken possession of by English visitors, would by this time have fallen into our habit of respecting Sunday alike in the interests of man and beast. Of churches, both English and American, there is no lack. Let us hope that the Protestant clergy will turn their attention to this subject. Let us hope also that the entire English-speaking community will second their efforts in this direction. Further, I will put in a good word for ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... purification of fourteen days, during which they kept apart and did not attend to any household matters. The mistress of the house here inquires if the preparations are made for the feast on her return to household affairs; and hears then how the beer cannot be made for lack ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... The peculiar circumstances you refer to were that you caught him stealing platinum. Instead of turning him over to the police, you asked him why he stole. He told you his wife was dying for lack of things that money would buy and he stole for her. You allowed him to quit his position honorably and you gave him money for his immediate needs. For that act of mercy, I am here to ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... are in excellent hands, both of them well. They never ask for their mother, however, nor does she ask for them. It is a strange case—one almost of antagonism. They have shown the strangest lack of feeling in regard to their mother and she seems really to hate them. I can hardly blame her because while they are only little children their callousness ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... the hound to whom each trail is a plain record of every living creature that has passed within many hours. And though the first day after a storm has less to tell than the second, just as the second has less than the third, there was no lack of story in the snow. Here sped some antlered buck, trotting along while yet the white was flying. There went a fox, sneaking across the line of march, and eying distrustfully that deadfall. This broad trail with many large tracks not far apart was made by one of Skookum's friends, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... liked and admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately without singling out one for especial matrimonial consideration, just as one might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded his dilatory ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... The best used to be "the three days of July," but they were lost in the last scramble. Yet we still have no lack of holiday amusement; our puppets to admire, and greasy poles to climb for prizes by men who have been prudently required first to declare and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must be very useful. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... society was sadly crippled by the lack of funds. The hard times preceding the Civil War, and the absorption of public interest in that great national event, made it difficult for the society to continue its work with any degree of success. ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... in these futureless times, that so many of the former still remain. For the profession of pleasure is so easy, so remunerative; even of money it often has no lack. St. Clair came of a family that, from horse-racing, bar-keeping, betting, had found money easier to get than ever had Jamie's people, and (when they had chosen to invest it) had invested it in less reputable but more productive ways. One fears the spelling-books mislead in their promise of ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... infused by the Sovereign Creator, I have already proved, and now come to show that whatever immediately proceeds from Him, and participates of His nature, must be as immortal as its original; for, though all other creatures are endowed with life and motion, they yet lack a reasonable soul, and from thence it is concluded that their life is in their blood, and that being corruptible they perish and are no more; but man being endowed with a reasonable soul and stamped with a Divine image, is of a different nature, and though his body is corruptible, yet his soul ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... beasts—anything in the mass.[14] In the corresponding particles of the concord as applied to adjectives, verbs and pronouns, sometimes the first syllable, Ngu or Nga was taken for the concord and sometimes the second mu or ma. This would account for the seemingly inexplicable lack of correspondence between the modern prefix and its accompanying particle, which so much puzzled Bleek and other early writers on the Bantu languages. In many of these tongues, for example, the particle which corresponds at the present day to the plural prefix Ma- is not always ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... and go forth a wandering man and lonely, even as Cain did who slew his brother? Ah, my brothers, what an evil doom is this, to be an outcast from the Church, to have none to love you and to speak with you, to be without fellowship! Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell: fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death: and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them, and the life that is in it, that shall live on and ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... to Zion.' It is one great distinctive characteristic and blessedness of the Christian conception of the future that it takes away from it all the chilling sense of strangeness, arising from ignorance and lack of experience, and invests it with the attraction of being the mother-city of us all. So the pilgrims are not travelling a dreary road into the common darkness, but are like colonists who visit England for the first time, and are full of happy anticipations ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... I since I held spear and shield Given o'er to any man this mighty Danish hall, Save now to thee alone. Keep thou and well defend This best of banquet-halls. Show forth thy hero-strength, Call up thy bravery, watch for the enemy! Thou shalt not lack gifts of worth if thou alive remain ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... finally, cooling down a little, he demanded of them the reason for refusing to do duty. Some of them answered that they wanted their money. He scornfully asked them, if they came out to fight for the paltry sum of eleven dollars a month; upbraiding them with their lack of patriotism. One of the men remarked, that the officers could afford to be very patriotic, as they drew their pay regularly every month. The colonel then got wrathful again, and ordered out the rest of the regiment to quell the mutiny; but in the mean time they ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... me! his lordship among revellers! oh! the blest prodigy! well, well, I give no promise, mark; but should a certain damsel lack a partner, adod. I know not—sixty-live shows with an ill-grace in a rigadoon, but for a minuet: well, well, St. Vitus strengthen me, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... never acknowledged as chiefs, nor have they anything to say in the council. A chief would be deposed for any conduct causing general disgust or dissatisfaction, such as incest (marrying within his gens) or lack of generosity. Though crime in the abstract would not tend to create dissatisfaction with a chief, yet if he murdered, without sufficient cause, one whose kindred were numerous, a fight between the two bodies of kindred would ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey

... certain general arguments used in the debates which can be grouped into three classes on each side. For the regulating laws there was in the first place the purely sentimental argument, repulsion against the hard, unrelieved labor, the abuse, the lack of opportunity for enjoyment or recreation of the children of the factory districts; the feeling that in wealthy, humane, Christian England, it was unendurable that women and little children should work longer hours, be condemned to greater hardships, and more completely ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... coming general insurrection appeared on all sides; there was no lack of prodigies, visions, or popular rumours, and the Mohammedans became possessed with the idea that the last hour of their rule in Greece had struck. Ali Pacha favoured the general demoralisation; and his agents, scattered throughout ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... that. If the reader does not draw from a book the moral that should be found there, the reader is an imbecile or the book is false from the point of view of accuracy. For, the moment that a thing is true, it is good. Obscene books likewise are immoral only because they lack truth. Things are not "like ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... at Fred, barking, and, I suppose, with some lack of respect, for the old dog laid hold of him in a violent temper and sent him away yelping. We must have presented an evil aspect, for our clothes were torn and we were both limping with fatigue. The woman had a kindly face ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... they again proceeded to enjoy a snack, for appetites have a habit of growing rampant despite any lack of expenditure in the way ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... go together up into the woods, where under the old fir-tree was the small bench on which they could sit and tell each other all they knew; or to go down to the foaming Woodbach and there, sitting on the stones near the bank, watch the tossing waves rush down. They never seemed to lack topics of conversation. Erick told about his mother, and how they had lived together, and of her beautiful singing; and Sally never grew weary of hearing again and again the same stories, and would ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri

... medicine, appeared to me reasonable. I had noticed also that others, some of them grown men even, making wry faces, when drinking my mother's claret, and had concluded therefrom that taste for strong liquor was an accomplishment less easily acquired than is generally supposed. The lack of it in a young man could be no disgrace, and accordingly effort in that direction ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... not far to seek: the surreptitious nature of the operation and the lack of skill and surgical cleanliness so frequently shown by the operator make ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... now enter on a subject of profound interest. I had often spoken to Hannah More of S. T. Coleridge, and proceeded with him, one morning to Barley Wood, her residence, eleven miles from Bristol. The interview was mutually agreeable, nor was there any lack of conversation; but I was struck with something singular in Mr. Coleridge's eye. I expressed to a friend, the next day, my concern at having beheld him, during his visit to Hannah More, so extremely ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... swift, careless efficiency, Shoop's solid poise and lack of elbow motion showed in strong relief. Their methods were entirely dissimilar. But it was evident to the old-timers that Shoop shot with less effort and waste motion than his lithe competitor. And High Chin was the ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... The lack of credentials was practically supplied by the steam-yacht 'Emperor,' which he had to present to the Tycoon as a gift from her Majesty; and the duties of interpreter were discharged for him throughout in the most efficient manner by the gentleman above referred ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... painful lack of politeness in yours, Mr. Edgar. Oh dear, I meant to begin so nicely with you and astonish you with my new grown-up manners! Now, Edgar, let us begin as if we had just been introduced; if you will try your best not to be provoking, I won't ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... the heaviest charge I have to bring against you," replied the Colonel. "There is no lack of them; nor shall you be able to complain that they are not recent, as well as of longer standing. Your conduct in the case of poor honest M'Evoy here is black and iniquitous. He must be restored ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... into modern English, that of Dryden may still be said to stand first, in spite of its lack of fidelity. It owes its place to its sustained vigour, and the fact that the heroic couplet is in the hands of a master. In its way ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... cronies of his own before his absence was discovered. "My brother is far too lax in his discipline with Cary," said Mrs. Lawrence, in that profound disapprobation which most people have of other people's methods, especially when their own system, or lack of it, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... skill of Buck Duane, the craft of Cheseldine, the deviltry of King Fisher, the most notorious of Texas desperadoes. His nerve, his lack of fear—those made him stand out alone even among a ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... rod crossing the recess. At the ceiling their edges met, but, at a height of some two and a half feet from the floor, their folds were looped back to the wall in a style formally old-fashioned. And now, even before his mind became concerned, his eye was irritated by a lack of symmetry in the draping; for the drooping fold of the right-hand curtain was out of shape. Again, his thought ran, if thieves playing for so great a stake as Ambrotox had found a woman in their way, their best card was prompt murder. If they could abduct in silence, they could ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... or toes frost-bitten; of course he smashes his sled against another boy's; of course be bangs his bead on the ice; and he's a lad of no enterprise whatever, if he doesn't manage to skate into an eel-hole, and be brought home half drowned. All these things happened to me; but, as they lack novelty, I pass them over, to tell you about the famous snow-fort which we ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Bird agreed instantly, for at the bottom of his heart he weren't feeling it no wildgoose chase for him; because, though a simple man in some ways, he didn't lack caution, and he'd unfolded his feelings pretty oft to Milly, speaking, of course, in general terms; and he well knew that she felt high respect for his character ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... the two works, Sense and Sensibility was essentially the earlier, both in conception and in composition, and that no one could have sat down to write that work who had already written Pride and Prejudice.[213] There is, indeed, no lack of humour in the earlier work—the names of Mrs. Jennings, John Dashwood, and the Palmers are enough to assure us of this; but the humorous parts are not nearly so essential to the story as they become in her later novels: the ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... always leisurely in action. If he invited a guest to dine with him at seven o'clock, he was quite likely himself not to reach home until seven-thirty. A tall, calm man, he had the "British stare" to perfection, which in him was not an affectation, but arose from an entire lack of self-consciousness, and from moments of absent-mindedness. He could stare one out of countenance without intending rudeness; he could ignore the social amenities when he chose, without giving ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... are destroyed for lack of knowledge," and this is true concerning most boys who form habits that are harmful both to body ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum

... farther into the network of vines, the rank leaves and starry blossoms bobbing about her feet. The fruit and flowers of Cold Comfort did something toward filling the place left void in her heart by the lack of the children that had never come. She stood still and looked over the wide patch as if she had made every melon there, and meant to have the full ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... the points at issue. Uninitiated laymen may perhaps be pardoned for hearing in all this din of battle but the echo of the Schoolmen's guns. Whether the two-year-old baby who dashes his bread-and-butter on the floor, in wrath at the lack of marmalade, does it because of a prevailing effectual tendency in his nature, or in consequence of his federal alliance with Adam, or from a previous surfeit of plum-cake, is a question which seems to bear a general family likeness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... in medical, aerospace, and military equipment, although their advantage has narrowed since the end of World War II. The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market" in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get pay raises, health insurance coverage, and other benefits. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the stigmata from the point of view of history. And though in this field there is no lack of difficulties, small and great, the testimony appears to me to be at once too abundant and too ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... settle down again to work and study; the children, and probably the teachers also, found it so. However that may have been, there was certainly more than usual friction in the working of the school machinery: the teachers reproached the scholars with want of attention and lack of industry, and the latter grumbled to each other that the professor and Miss Diana snubbed them, and Mrs. Manton and the French teacher wasted neither patience nor ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley

... letter, in which he gave the latest bulletin of his school life. And Polly did the same thing to Ben's letter. Even Phronsie went into a long detail concerning the new developments of a wonderful kitten she had left at home, to take her visit to Badgertown, so the two recipients never missed the lack of information in regard to the household life, from which ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... fifteenth century in English literature is sometimes called "the age of arrest." Can you explain why? What causes account for the lack of great literature in this period? Why should the ruin of noble families at this time seriously affect our literature? Can you recall anything from the Anglo-Saxon period to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... For lack of other means of getting at their sweet delicacy the girls dipped lead-pencils into the condensed milk and ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... that of a nun, was not to her taste. She did not complain so much of her husband, who did not interfere with her reading and brewing of juleps, and was in no way a tyrant, as of being the slave of a given situation from which he could not set her free. The total lack of ready money was felt by her to constitute in our altogether factitious society an intolerable situation, frightful misery or absolute powerlessness. What she missed was some means of which she might dispose, without compunction and uncontrolled, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... task-work would allow no indulgence to such poor habits of study. Besides, this task would occupy my whole mind; that is, such shattered mind as I have at present to give to anything; I could do nothing else,—nothing to supply my lack of means to live upon. I could better take the "Christian Examiner;" it would cost me much less labor, and it would give me the necessary addition to my income, provided I could find some nook at the eastward where I could live as cheaply ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... between the three are hazy and undefined, and that they shade gradually into each other, are without doubt true, but after all play is different from work, and work from drudgery. Much of the disagreement as to the value of play is due to this lack of definition. Even to-day when the worth of play is so universally recognized, we still hear the criticism's of "soft pedagogy" and "sugar coating" used in connection with the application of the principle ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... lost control of your organization: you nearly died from lack of water—By the way, why didn't you push ahead with your Nubian, and find ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... handling. We can ruin it by stupid blundering at the very birth, and we can kill it by neglect. It is not every flower that has vitality enough to grow in stony ground. Lack of reticence, which is only the outward sign of lack of reverence, is responsible for the death of many a fair friendship. Worse still, it is often blighted at the very beginning by the insatiable desire for piquancy in talk, which can forget ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... and God-fearing man, for all his predial tithes were impropriated by his lord, that was an absentee and a sheriff in London—did little to stem that current of lewdness that had set in strong with the Restoration. And this was from no lack of virtue in himself, but rather from a natural invertebracy, as one may say, and an order of mind that, yet being no order, is made the sport of any sophister with a wit for paragram. Thus it always is that mere example is of little avail without precept,—of which, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... when they came home to stay, they "came out"—that feeble revival of an ancient custom offering the maiden to the ceremonial inspection of the tribe. Alice neither went away nor "came out," and, in contrast with those who did, she may have seemed to lack freshness of lustre—jewels are richest when revealed all new in a white velvet box. And Alice may have been too eager to secure new retainers, too kind in her efforts to keep the old ones. She had ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... beyond the frontiers was not caused by any lack of vital problems within them. The army was the most conspicuous object of public activity, but it was not an aggressive speculation, or an investment of national profits deliberately calculated to bring in one day a larger return. It was a necessity of life, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... this desolate country, where all the villages had been sacked and burned, and where it was no longer possible to find either horses or conveyances? Must they then let all these men perish after most horrible sufferings, for lack of means ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... there was no lack of food; and as, under the teaching of the captain, Charlie in time learnt to be able to keep his direction through the woods, he was often able to go out, either with Stanislas or alone, thus keeping clear of the close smoky hut ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... Julia, nevertheless she acknowledged that in one solitary way Noble was being improved by the experience. His two previous attacks of love (one at twelve, and the other at eighteen) had been incomparably lighter, and the changes in him, noted at home, merely a slight general irritability and a lack of domestic punctuality due to too much punctuality elsewhere. But, when his Julia Atwater trouble came, the very first symptom he manifested was a strange new effort to become beautiful; his mother even discovered that he sometimes worked with pumice ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... been, her nose was delicate, her lips blunt-cornered and rather full than thin; the whole expression of her face spirited and commanding. As for Archibald, he was a handsome vacancy, so to speak; a fine physical man wasted for lack of a spiritual man to carry him about and use him. His regular, finely moulded face, with its healthy pallor and its black eyes and hair, always had a dim, pathetic look of having forgotten something. His figure, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... appeared to afford some clue to M. Flourens' unhesitating, a priori, repudiation of all forms of the doctrine of progressive modification of living beings. He whose mind remains uninfluenced by an acquaintance with the phaenomena of development, must indeed lack one of the chief motives towards the endeavour to trace a genetic relation between the different existing forms of life. Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... senseless, egotistical fool, thinking I should be doing a fine thing, and could put everything right by asking you to become my wife in reality. I can see now what sort of a figure I made of myself, and how I must have appeared to you when I was bragging of my possessions. I suppose I lack a sense of humour, Joan, or there's something wrong with me somewhere. Believe me, senseless and crude as it all was, my intentions were good. I only succeeded in sinking a little lower, if possible, in your estimation, and now I wish to ask ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... dollars!" cried the teacher when Billie stopped for lack of breath. "Why, Billie, isn't that marvelous? It sounds like a story. What," she added, smiling down into the eager face, "do you intend to do with ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler

... whit better than the African slave- dealers, and such people are those who delude poor wretches with exaggerated accounts of the richness of America and her beautiful territories, of the over-abundance of the products of the soil, and the lack of hands to take advantage of them. These people, however, care little about the poor dupes; their object is to freight the vessels belonging to them, and to effect this they take from their deluded victim ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... make must be uttered only within the secret recesses of my own consciousness. Then Sophronia remarked that she had made up her mind to keep house in the country, at which information my heart sank still lower. Not that I lack appreciation of natural surroundings. I delight in localities where beautiful scenery exists, and where tired men can rest under trees without even being suspected of inebriety. But when any of my friends go house-hunting in the city, in the two or three square miles which contain ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... noticeable that these love-poems are all by females, and most frequently by deserted females. This does not speak well for the gallantry or constancy of the men. Perhaps they lacked those qualities to offset the feminine lack of coyness. In the first of our Maori stories the maiden swims to the man, who calmly awaits her, playing his horn. In the second, a man is simultaneously proposed to by two girls, before he has time to come off his perch ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... shot forth their dazzling rays—in a word; how often art and artifices have become alleged and accepted reality. Unfortunately, the characteristics of this literature and undergrowth of idol lore are monotony and lack of originality; for nearly all are copies of K[o]b[o]'s model. His cartoon has been constantly before the busy weavers ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... that?" asked the young lady, to whom the natural shrewdness of a woman explained the whole scene. "You have lost men, but there's no lack of others; the coach is bringing gold, and there's always a lack of that. We bury men, who go to heaven, and we take money, which goes into the pockets of heroes. I don't ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... his own ways. I looked up Douglas and asked his advice. As always, he was busy in politics. He was now master of his party's organization. But as I had tortures because of my position he had anxieties because of the lack of means. The law business did not bring him a great deal; it could not, for his mind was on other things. He was trying to be secretary of state in order to supplement his earnings as a lawyer. He was catching at whatever offered to float himself ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... would it stop? We are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack power to put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend or even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them. When much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources of God who thus sends a real ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... would seem to have arisen out of the Pains and Pleasures connected with natural nourishment; because, when people have felt a lack and so have had Pain first, they, of course, are pleased with the supply ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... in the bare, black paddocks. He cast a wild look round, and then made for the creek at a staggering run. The fire had died away for lack of material as it neared the banks, for great willows overhung them, a camping-ground for the stock all through the summer heat, and the ground was always beaten hard and bare. Wally uttered a shout of relief as he came to the trees. Below in the wide, shallow pools, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... from understanding him completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It was hard to see what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side—which was exactly the side she would have taken him most to lack. Was it a harmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it the last refinement of high culture? She trusted she should learn in time; it would be very interesting to learn. If it was provincial to have that harmony, what then was the finish of the capital? And she could put ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... possessed, but there can be no doubt that, in general, science had but meagre share in the curriculum. In so far as it was given representation, its chief field must have been Ptolemaic astronomy. The utter lack of scientific thought and scientific method is illustrated most vividly in the works of the greatest men of that period—such men as Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the hosts of other scholastics of lesser rank. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... as well to your gentle writing were added. So your comic force would in equal glory have rivaled Even the Greeks themselves, though now you ignobly are vanquished. Truly I sorrow and grieve that you lack this only, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... Democratic party. I do not think there are any Republicans who would not rejoice to see the South prosperous and happy. I know of none, at least. They will have to get over the prejudices born of isolation. We lack direct and constant communication. I do not recollect having seen a newspaper from the Gulf States for a long time. They, down there, may imagine that the feeling in the North is the same as during the war. But it certainly is not. The Northern ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... become locally famous; also, I was told by the superintendent, they become independent, and for that reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful part of this singing, aside from the fascinating harmonies made by the sweet, untrained negro voices, is the utter lack of prearrangement that there is about it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will come a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner, musical, yet seemingly meaningless; soon a faint humming will begin, and will be taken up by men and women all over the loft; ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... was regarded as one of the best known phrenological organs, but my unprejudiced study of heads soon assured me of its inaccuracy. The organ was small in Spurzheim, who was remarkably fond of children, and I have found it small in ladies who showed no lack of parental love, but generally well developed and active in criminal skulls. One which I obtained in Arkansas, of a man named Richmond, had this region large and active, although he was the one of a group of murderers by whom the children, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various

... Fork on a short trip, killed one hundred and five bears, seventy-five buffaloes, and eighty-seven deer, and brought the flesh and hides back to the stockades in canoes; so that through the winter there was no lack of jerked and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... from that especial class, or set, in our Society, whose ancestors and traditions go back to colonial times. They are not merely society characters, for, of course, people in society may lack all traditions. I mention this merely because my selection of characters from such a set of people gives the play a certain mellowness and a certain air which it otherwise would not have. If Jack and ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell

... this kind of story lack those features of gaiety and satirical observation of which French stories are full, and which are an important element of the novel. Some are mystical; others, in which the devil figures on whom the saints play rude tricks, are intended to raise a loud laugh; in both cases real life is equally distant. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... of the simplest kind, but both of them were prime cooks and they set such an abundant table that even the boys with their ravenous appetites were completely satisfied. They even found a certain pleasure in the lack of some of the "trimmings," as Teddy called them, that had surrounded them in their more elaborate homes. It gave them a sense of freedom, and the whole adventure became a sort of exalted ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... therefore, was practically the only one that remained; and in embracing it Peel was but carrying out the original principle on which the college was founded. It had been intended to be efficient; through lack of means it had proved inefficient. The obvious and just remedy was to supply such increased means as to create or bestow the efficiency originally aimed at. And it was a felicitous idea to place the charge for the future on such a footing as to combine with such an increase an avoidance of ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... offices of Carlis and Rockamore. Moreover, the ruse adopted to obtain positions for Miss Lawton's protegees had appeared on the surface to be a flawlessly legitimate one. He had counted upon their loyalty and zeal to outweigh their possible incompetence and lack of discretion, but the stolid German girl had apparently been so clumsy at her task as to bring ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... morning I had had to stop some necessary works through lack of means, I could scarcely restrain my indignation. But it was not the time to speak, and I contented myself with repeating my request. Ashamed of himself, he consented with a good grace, and bidding me go to his: closet, followed a few minutes later. He ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... directly to them and sat down beside Donna Isabella, for he had a tender heart and he guessed her trouble. "I also," he said, leaning over her and speaking low, "I also love the boy, and while I live will I care for him. He shall lack ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... said chalets raised on great stones. There are pine-trees up, up on either slope, into the clouds, and beyond the clouds I could not see. I left on my left a village called 'Between the Waters'. I passed through another called 'Ehringen', but it has no inn. At last, two miles farther, faint from lack of food, I got into Ulrichen, a village a little larger than the rest, and the place where I believed one should start to go either over the Gries or Nufenen Pass. In Ulrichen was a warm, wooden, deep-eaved, frousty, comfortable, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... out, good lack! And into her lodging would pop, sir; And often forgot to come back, Leaving master to shut up the shop, sir. Her beauty his wits did bereave - Determined to be quite the crack O, He lounged at the Adam and Eve, And call'd for his gin and tobacco. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... don't really know. I don't seem able to get enthusiastic about it—that's all. I wouldn't mind going down to Dad's office and toying with an adding machine or driving nails in packing cases, but I'm sure I'd fall asleep on the job, or something idiotic like that! You might say I lack the urge," he yawns and grins. "I guess I wasn't built to hustle. I haven't got the pep, as ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... small size (three villages), isolation, and lack of resources greatly restrain economic development and confine agriculture to the subsistence level. The people must rely on aid from New Zealand to maintain public services, annual aid being substantially greater than GDP. The principal sources of revenue come from sales of copra, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... a flashing question cross his mind, whether he had not missed something through lack of a hunter's patience the other night; but he was too much of a hunter to do anything but make the best of circumstances. He shook hands in precisely his usual manner; remarking that Mr. Falkirk had not had a ride of four miles; took his breakfast like a man who had; and only towards ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... developed none of that vain ambition which prompts the seeking of "the bubble reputation" at the cannon's mouth. All he ever knew of Southern men in ante-bellum days was what he heard from the lips of inspired orators or read from the pens of very earnest anti-slavery editors. Through lack of opportunity he had met no Southerner before the war, and carried his stanch, Calvinistic prejudices to such extent that he seemed to shrink from closer contact even then. The war was holy. The hand of the Lord would surely smite the slave-holding arch rebel, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... after midnight, in a final burst of imagination, he likened Germany to a bee—hive from which a swarm must soon emerge for lack of room inside. And he proved, then, that he knew he had made an impression on them, for he dismissed them with an impudence that would have set them laughing at him when he first ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... there is no difference between town and country. I have learnt to know more than a hundred different parishes, and in the most various localities, in the mountain and in the plain, on poor land and on rich land. But everywhere I find the same morals and lack of morals. There are everywhere the same men, though in the country there are often better Christians than ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... but it would never have occured to him that she should be studied, or that there was anything in her to study. To him she was quite an ordinary girl, rather nice-looking when she was neat, but with a most unfortunate lack of the sedate dignity and discretion that he considered essential ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... truce to this dull moralising, Let them drink while the drops are of gold, I have tasted the dregs — 'twere surprising Were the new wine to me like the old; And I weary for lack of employment In idleness day after day, For the key to the door of enjoyment Is Youth — and I've ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... quantity of food, insanitary surroundings, overwork, lack of exercise, drains on the system from acute or chronic diseases, worms; and can also be brought about by excessive heat, cold or pressure and lessening of the calibre of the arteries, poisons in the blood, suppurating wounds, repeated purging ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... a treat it was, good lack! Though my bench had ne'er a back, With a mild respectful glee There to ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... him felt that he carried in his bosom a dark secret. As to scholarship, he was unquestionably proficient. No white man in all the neighboring section, ranked with him intellectually. Despite the lack of all knowledge of his moral character and previous life, he was pronounced as much too good a man to fritter away his time ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... helmet on, The spear and falchion handles; But knights then, as thick as hops, In bushy bobs shall keep their shops, And deal, good lack! in figs and tripe, And soap, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... chapter. It was recognized that he had no right to demolish any house, except for the purpose of erecting a church on the site: this, although the narrowness and crookedness of the streets, as well as their foul and miasmatic condition owing to the lack of all paving and sewerage, were ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... be interesting to know how the use of the word "dumb" ever became applied to animals, for in reality there are very few dumb animals. Doubtless the word was originally employed to express a larger idea than that of dumbness, and implied the lack of power in animals to communicate successfully with man by sound or language. The real trouble lies with man, who is unable to understand the language spoken or ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... clinging half a minute to a hope made forlorn by his sheer human lack of endurance, drifted to ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... will become of our poor boy? I cannot write the rest—so violent is my outburst of weeping, and I will not reduce you to the same tearful condition. I only add this: if my friends remain loyal to me, there will be no lack of money; if not, you will not be able to effect our object out of your own purse. In the name of our unhappy fortunes, beware how we put the finishing stroke to the boy's ruin. If he has something ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... figure was beginning to waver slightly, and he knew that weariness and the lack of sleep were at last gaining the mastery over his daring young spirit. It gave him relief, as it solved a problem that had been worrying him. He rode up by the side of Billy, but he said nothing. The boy's eyelids were heavy and the youthful figure was wavering, ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... had determined to construct stout barricades, with no lack of ammunition.—Ibid., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... nothing but sit in the living-room, sipping bitter mate and taking part from time to time in the general conversation, speaking always in low but impressive tones. He would say something about the weather, the lack or superabundance of water, according to the season, the condition of his animals and the condition of the pasture—in fact, just what everybody else was saying but of more importance as coming from him. All listened to his words with the profoundest attention and respect, and no wonder, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... all morning how she should treat Ed Roberts and stood around so quiet and pensive that Nyoda rallied her on her lack of spirits. "Are you so anxious to see your troubadour that you forget to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... meantime the carriage had gone back for the bride, who in very simple raiment, but yet in bridal-white array, was taken up to the church. These Boltons were prosperous people, who had all their carriages, so that there was no lack of vehicles. Two of the girls from London and two from The Nurseries made up the bevy of bridesmaids who were as bright and fair as though the bride had come from some worldlier stock. Mrs. Robert, indeed, had done all she could to give to ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... every branch of the service, from the adjutant to the drumboy,—the same reckless, indolent, plunder-loving spirit prevailed everywhere. And although under fire they showed no lack of gallantry or courage, the moment of danger passed, discipline departed with it, and their only conception of benefiting by a victory consisted in the amount of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the tugging anxiety as to the journey's end, the journey itself must thus have counted for the best of holidays. My physical wellbeing was over-proof; effects of sea and sky kept me for ever busy with my pencil; and I had no lack of intellectual exercise of a different order in the study of my inconsistent friend, the captain. I call him friend, here on the threshold; but that is to look well ahead. At first I was too much horrified by what I considered his barbarities, too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... In that time we had experience of many kinds of weather. At first it was cold. Even in May ice was to be seen in the mornings. Then came heat, premature and burning, and all the more trying for ourselves and cattle on account of the lack of rain. Then we had a furious tempest, which raged for about thirty-six hours, overturning our covered cart and threatening to sweep ourselves and our tents away. We had to load down our tent ropes with bags of earth, stones, sod, the ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... him, lying back in the golden sunlight, the very personification of manly beauty. The absolute lack of self-consciousness, either for himself or for her, which allowed him to talk thus to the plainest woman of his acquaintance, held a vein of humour which diverted Jane. It appealed to her more than buying coloured air-balls, or screaming because ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... dilettante charmed by literary grace, a writer tormented by the passion to put a volume in a page, a page in a phrase, a phrase in a word. Plato in philosophy, Virgil in poetry, satisfy his feeling for beauty and refinement of style. From Voltaire and Rousseau he turns away, offended by their lack of moral feeling, of sanity, of wisdom, of delicacy. A man of the eighteenth century, Joubert had lifted himself into thin clear heights of middle air, where he saw much of the past and something of the future; but the middle air is better suited ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... town, content to permit his men to continue the search for Trevison, for he was convinced that the latter's visit to the courthouse had resulted in disappointment, for he had faith in Judge Lindman's declaration that he had destroyed the record. He had accused himself many times for his lack of caution in not being present when the record had been destroyed, but regrets ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... notice, and fortunate indeed is that child whose parent or teacher is sufficiently long-suffering to give satisfactory answers to his many and varied questions. To ignore the inquiries of the child, or to return impatient or grudging answers may inhibit the instinct and lead later to a lack of interest in the world about him. The imitative instinct is also still active and reveals itself particularly in the child's play, which in the main reflects the activities of those about him. He plays horse, policeman, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... I decided to base my answer to that question on personal investigation. I dressed myself as a working girl—it is to the working class that seven-eighths of the Irish people belong—and in a week in the slums of Dublin I found that lack of employment is continually driving the people to migration, low-wage slavery, or acceptance ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... and the embassy to China; the construction of three galleons, four brigantines, and one galleon which is being built—together with more than seven thousand pesos that the governor of Terrenate bought in food and clothing, in order to supply the lack of those which were in the flagship which was lost; and also the unavoidable expenses of this government, although the infantry have not received their entire pay. Your Majesty can easily see how we shall have passed this year. The relief ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... is rarely found in popular concert-rooms—Travellers who do not see and listeners who do not hear—Music is of all the arts that which is practised most and thought about least—Popular ignorance of the art caused by the lack of an object for comparison—How simple terms are confounded by literary men—Blunders by Tennyson, Lamb, Coleridge, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, F. Hopkinson Smith, Brander Matthews, and others—A warning against ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Yet what might weigh with others, would not weigh with her. There are qualities you lack which she has discovered ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... predictions for the future, but often lost their tempers in discussing his revolutionary ideas; or had you, in a spirit of temerity, entered his room armed with arguments for his overthrow, nothing that your good-breeding or the lack of it would have permitted you to have said could have ruffled his gentle spirit. With the tact of a man of wide experience among men, he would have turned the talk into another channel—music, perhaps, or some ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... much, at the office; because of the horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money. Which do trouble and perplex me to the heart; and more at noon when we were to go through them, for then above a whole hundred of them followed us; some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us. At night come two waggons from Rochester ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... long before their arrival; and they adopted the belief that the Gospel was preached there by St. Thomas. This furnished excellent material for the hagiologists of that age; but, like every thing else peculiar to these monkish romancers, it betrayed great lack of knowledge. ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... important barriers to intelligent social progress. One is the lack of organized knowledge concerning social matters. The other is the restriction of this knowledge to a tiny fraction of ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... consuming diseases, and manifold and entangled diseases made up of many several ones. And can the other world name so many venomous, so many consuming, so many monstrous creatures, as we can diseases of all these kinds? O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches! how much do we lack of having remedies for every disease, when as yet we have not names for them? But we have a Hercules against these giants, these monsters; that is, the physician; he musters up all the forces of the other world to succour this, all nature ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... grimy, it was the face no less than the gloves and boots that told Ben Tillson this was no needy seeker after a job. The boots were new and fine, laced daintily up the front, and showed their style even through the lack of polish and the coating of dust and ashes. The gauntlets also, though worn and old, were innocent of grease. This was no cub fireman, said Ben, resentfully, as he revolved in mind a scheme or two that should take the stuffing of conceit out of him, when suddenly ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... because it seemed non-conducting, upon which their best passages would break like spray against a rock. It was by nature the dullest you ever saw, with hair descending low upon the forehead, and preposterous whiskers dominating everything that remained, except a heavy mouth and brown, lack-lustre eyes. For a while Donald crouched in the corner of the pew, his head sunk on his breast, a very picture of utter hopelessness. But as the Evangel began to play round his heart, he would fix the preacher with rapid, wistful glances, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... for a roar of laughter shook the table from one end to the other; while Sparks, horror-struck at the lack of feeling and propriety that could make men treat such a matter with ridicule, glared around him on ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... manufactured to suit the convenience of others. There is a chemistry in nationalities which has laws of its own, and will not be ignored. Between the Hollanders and the Belgians there existed not merely a negative lack of homogeneity, but a positive incompatibility. The Hollanders had for generations been fighters and men of enterprise; the Belgians had been the appanage of more powerful neighbors. The Hollanders ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... its membership? You know as well as I do that the great failing of the American people has always been their lack of ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... Tom, "is ever gained By sighs for what we lack; Nor can it mend a vessel strained, To let our ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... We should have here in America some system of registration as they have in Germany. Tenants and travelers ought to be required to file reports with the police, giving their occupation and other details. If that plan were in use here enemy spies would lack most of the opportunities we have been ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... at the lateness of the hour struggled with wounded pride at the man's lack of respect. Half-past ten before any one could come to the rescue; three long hours of chill and darkness, with no one to speak to, and nowhere to go! Darsie threw the thought aside with the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... between my feet has grown tall again, I must make medicine for the sake of this war; and I have spent so much on you, the power goes from me. Now, you must put your hand upon my heart, and nurse it warm, so that the people lack nothing of their Chisera. ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin

... very confidently, as he stroked down his long beard, "that they are not merely shrewd because their faculties are early sharpened to make up by mental qualifications for what they lack in physical advantages; they are also witty, like AEesop the fabulist and Besa the Egyptian god, who, as I have been told by our old friend Horus, from whom we derive all our Egyptian lore, presided among those heathen over festivity, jesting, and wit, and also ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... what lack ye? What is it you will buy? Any points, pins or laces, Any laces, points or pins? Fine gloves, fine glasses, Any busks or masks? Or any other pretty things? Come, cheap for love, or buy for money. Any coney, coney-skins? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... uses the goods intrusted to him, and 'wise' inasmuch as he is 'faithful.' For a single-hearted devotion to Christ is the parent of insight into duty, and the best guide to conduct; and whoever seeks only to be true to his Lord in the use of his gifts and possessions, will not lack prudence to guide him in giving to each his food, and that in due season. The two characteristics are connected in another way also; for, if the outcome of faithfulness be taken into account, its wisdom is plain, and he who has been faithful even unto death will be seen to have been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... a year's revenue in a single day. The sleet storms were the worst. Wires were weighted down with ice, often three pounds of ice per foot of wire. And so, what with sleet, and corrosion, and the cost of roof-repairing, and the lack of room for more wires, the telephone men were between the devil and the deep sea—between the urgent necessity of burying their wires, and the inexorable fact that they did not know how to ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... Winter) by 10. or 12. miles a stage: in the meane while the grasse being sprung vp againe, to serue for their cattell as they returne. From the border of the Shelcan towards the Caspian sea, to the Russe frontiers, they haue a goodly Countrey, specially on the South and Southeast parts, but lost for lack of tillage. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... determined to understand you if he could; and there seemed to me, with my foolish way of seeing signs everywhere, something of tenderness about the droop of those long eyelashes, so that his interpretation was not likely to fail from lack of sympathy. Then there was the firm-set mouth of his brother the curate, and a forehead as broad as his, if not so high or so full of modelling. When we had taken our leave, I said ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... her lack of sympathy at once. "You startled me so. What are you going to do? You poor man—what can you do? Oh, I am so sorry for you!" and the pansy-eyes became ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... of which he was one of the executors, scarcely realized his loss; but when he returned to Rivermouth a heavy sense of loneliness came over him. The crowded, happy firesides to which he was free seemed to reproach him for his lack of kinship; he stood alone in the world; there was no more reason why he should stay in one place than in another. His connection with the bank, unnecessary now from a money point of view, grew irksome; the quietude ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... he did everything to create for Liubka a quiet and secure existence. Since he knew that they would have to leave their mansard anyway—this bird house, rearing above the whole city—leave it not so much on account of its inconvenience and lack of space as on account of the old woman Alexandra, who with every day became more ferocious, captious and scolding—he resolved to rent a little bit of a flat, consisting of two rooms and a kitchen, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... batteries is all right!" piped a weazened little man who had been grinning wisely at the lack of mechanical ability so shamelessly ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... the evening, as they sat and talked together, talked long and earnestly, there within that ruined place. Too eager for some knowledge of the truth, they, to feel hunger or to think of their lack of clothing. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... one result of a weak king's setting himself against the great powers of Europe. By his lack of political good sense and his obstinacy Sweden lost nearly half its territory and Gustavus lost his throne, for the bitter indignation of the Swedes against him was such that he was taken prisoner by conspirators and forced to sign a deed in which he renounced the throne of Sweden ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... and Germany's agents diminished their output steadily. In lieu of turning out, say, 30,000 poods of iron they would produce only 5,000, and offer instead of the remainder verbal explanations to the effect that lack of fuel or damage to the machinery had caused the diminution. Again, one of these ubiquitous banks buys a large amount of corn or sugar, but instead of having it conveyed to the districts suffering from a dearth of that commodity, deposits it in a safe place and waits. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... trail leading still farther to the northward, and dismounted and looked down at it in silence. No comments were made. No comments were necessary. Every one knew that for lack of water the horses were too ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... would regret the trousers. No juncture in her life had so much exercised her judgment. In the meantime the Doctor had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two of the summer boarders still lingered behind the rest, prisoners for lack of a remittance; they were both English, but one of them spoke French pretty fluently, and was, besides, a humorous, agile-minded fellow, with whom the Doctor could reason by the hour, secure of comprehension. Many were the glasses they emptied, many ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... see, for all the talk of enlightenment, how it can well be otherwise—most girls are married ignorant of the sexual side of life. Even if they know what it means they have not experienced it. That's the crux. It is this actual lack of experience, whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the difference and all the trouble. In a vast number of marriages-and your mother's was one—girls are not and cannot be certain whether they love the man they marry or not; they do not know until after that act ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... lack of places for pleasure or amusement. Besides the numberless walks of the Glacis there are the imperial gardens, with their cool shades and flowers and fountains; the Augarten, laid out and opened to the public by the Emperor Joseph; and the Prater, the largest and most ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... to feign a continued lack of consciousness in order to deceive the enemy. But fits of coughing, provoked by the smoke, exposed her true condition. As to me, I was very uncomfortable, and very tired. And ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... works is estimated at about nine dollars; but the contract-price to the private arms-companies is twenty dollars for those which equal the Government standard in every respect, nineteen dollars and ninety cents for those which lack a little in finish, nineteen dollars for the next grade, eighteen for the next, and sixteen for the lowest and poorest which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... be seen. In either case the Episcopal branch of the church might as well abandon its efforts to make headway among the colored race in that State. So far as we can see, the bishop has made a manly stand, however, and deserves commendation and sympathy. But the seceders have shown a sad lack of the ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various

... with my lover, the great judge. He was charming. He had that charm of manner which you English lack. Faithful? I do not know. Often we were together, and often we wrote letters when to meet was impossible. He kept my letters—they amused him so, he said—they were so French, so piquant, so different to English ladies' ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... something to which I shall return. The evident interests of William, representing here the borrowers, there are many Jameses and planes. In other words, lenders and capitals. It is very evident, that if William can say to James—"Your demands are exorbitant; there is no lack of planes in the world;" he will be in a better situation than if James' plane was the only one to be borrowed. Assuredly, there is no maxim more true than this—service for service. But let us not forget, that no service has ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... across the canal, and a steady "putt-puttr-putt-putt" in the direction of the strong point, that less than half an hour ago had fallen, told of a machine-gun duel in progress. It was not an inspiriting moment; and over us, like a pall, lay an atmosphere of doubt and apprehension, that lack of knowledge of what was ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... 'nothing newness'—a jargon which simply proves, in those who habitually use it, a coarse and feeble faculty of appreciation; an inability to discern the relative value of ORIGINALITY and NOVELTY; a lack of that refined perception which, dispensing with the stimulus of an ever-new subject, can derive sufficiency of pleasure from freshness of treatment. To such critics, the prime of a summer morning would bring no delight; wholly ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... at once a comprehensiveness and a particularity in Sophie's gaze which, while humbling and abasing Cornelia, brought a comforting feeling that full justice, upon all points, had been done her in Sophie's mind. There was no lack of charity for her trials and temptations, no vindictiveness. Cornelia felt no impulse to plead her cause, because aware that all she could say would be anticipated in her sister's forgiveness. Nay, she almost wished there had been some bitterness and anger against which to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate. Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspect A coward, who would burden the poor deuce With what ensues from his own slipperiness. I have just found a wanton-scented tress In an old desk, dusty for lack of use. Of days and nights it is demonstrative, That, like some aged star, gleam luridly. If for those times I must ask charity, Have I not any ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... several cases of murder under this penalty. Procuring the death of a husband is punished by it; even a fatal assault, as that on a pregnant woman who dies of miscarriage as the result. The need of an oath to establish lack of malice in giving a blow in a quarrel which led to death tends to show that murder was punished by death, and that it was regarded as death intentionally caused. An explicit statement was clearly not needed. We do not yet know how this sentence ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... by such things. I scarcely know what I intended to do. As I looked up at him there in his rough fur coat, for a moment, he seemed millions and millions of miles away from me. I stared at him, trying to comprehend his utter lack of comprehension. I seemed to view him across the same gulf which separates a meditative zoo visitor from some abysmally hirsute animal that eons and eons ago must have been its cave-fellow and hearth-mate. But ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... to their districts. Few improvements appear to have been made in the provinces by the initiative of the local Governors, nor did they seem to take any special interest in commercial and agricultural advancement. This lack of interest was somewhat excusable and comprehensible, however, seeing that after they were appointed, and even though they governed well within the strict limitations of their office, they were constantly expecting that a ministerial change or ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman



Words linked to "Lack" :   tightness, demand, stringency, exclude, have, need, shortage, dearth, shortness, absence, mineral deficiency, want, deficit, famine



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