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More "Theme" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few recent novels which have come out of England will compare with this story in two points—absolute conciseness of form and analysis of motive.... Here is a theme of vital truthfulness and Mr. Louis Zangwill has dealt with it with the hand of a master ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... arena,' I still said to myself, 'were first fought out the chief destinies of the world'; and so, played upon by an unending theme, I ate and drank in a reverie, still wondering, and then lay down beneath the shade of a little tree that stood alone upon that edge of a new world. And wondering, I fell ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... consider the magnitude of the prize we contended for, the doubtful nature of the contest, and the favorable manner in which it has terminated, we shall find the greatest possible reason for gratitude and rejoicing. This is a theme that will afford infinite delight to every benevolent and liberal mind, whether the event in contemplation be considered as a source of present enjoyment, or the parent of future happiness; and we shall have equal occasion to felicitate ourselves on the lot which Providence ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Boundless luxury,' he thought, 'and thirst for excitement, have raised a set of writers who show a strong sympathy for all that is most opposite to the very foundations of English life.' The 'Saturday Review' articles enlarge upon the same theme. He will not accept legislators whose favourite costume is the cap and bells, or admit that men who 'can make silly women cry can, therefore, dictate principles of law and government.' The defects of our system are due to profound historical causes. 'Freedom and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... midst of one of his thoughtful moods, with Bob for his theme, and asking himself what he should do if Bob did begin to thrash him first time they were on shore; and he had just come to the conclusion that he would not let Bob thrash him if he could help it, when Bob suddenly ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... half-religious, half-courtier-like adoration, whether it be triumphantly successful or sighingly despairing. The man and the woman—or rather, I should say, the knight and the lady, for mediaeval love is an aristocratic privilege, and the love of lower folk is not a theme for song—the knight and the lady, therefore, seem always, however knit together by habit, nay, by inextricable meshes of guilt, somehow at the same distance from one another. Once they have seen and loved each other, their passion ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... say on his favorite theme, viz.: the settling of the immense interior and bringing its trade to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... in his eighteenth year has furnished the subject of a volume, which even the deficient animation of its writer has not deprived of attraction.[94] If the juvenile age of Prince Henry has proved such a theme for our admiration, we may be curious to learn what this extraordinary youth was even at an earlier period. Authentic anecdotes of children are rare; a child has seldom a biographer by his side. We have indeed been recently treated with "Anecdotes of Children," in the "Practical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Books (the Shadows of Them) Ventures, on an Old Theme British Literature Darwinism (then Furthermore) "Society" The Tramp and Strike Questions Democracy in the New World Foundation Stages—then Others General Suffrage, Elections, Etc. Who Gets the Plunder? Friendship (the Real Article) Lacks and Wants Yet ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... gardens, or of costly gardens whether great or only costly, we here say nothing. Our theme is such a garden as a householder may himself make and keep or for which, at most, he needs professional advice only in its first planning, and for its upkeep one gardener, with one occasional helper in pressing seasons or in ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... them, although we cannot pretend to render full justice to such a theme. And, returning for a moment to the considerations with which we started, we can truly say that, in the whole range of modern history, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a national life to compare with that of poor, despised ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... power to chant to rest that sombre past which memory kept as a funeral theme for ever on its vibrating strings? Was there at last a file for the serpent, that had so long made its lair in ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the division was encamped on the north side of Bull Run, near the Gainesville or Warrenton turnpike, where we remained undisturbed until the evening of the 18th, when the forward movement began which culminated on the 19th in the battle of Buckland Mills, which will be the theme ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by that time, learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no means of mixing it up with any other. If, for example, they were to give me a theme after the college fashion, they gave it to others in French; but to me they were to give it in bad Latin, to turn it into that which was good. And Nicolas Grouchy, who wrote a book De Comitiis Romanorum; Guillaume Guerente, who wrote a comment upon Aristotle: ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... sell at ten times their value they were for resistance to the death. Now that they have nothing more to sell, they talk of capitulating. Ah! when one thinks of these scandals one is almost inclined to blow one's brains out. (Laughter and applause.) A fourth citizen takes up the same theme with the same energy and conviction. He knows, he says, a restaurant which is frequented by bank clerks, and where last week there were eaten two cows and a calf, whilst the ambulance opposite was without fresh meat. (Violent murmurs.) This is a part of the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... same nature as that which is derived from pursuits which are commonly regarded as purely intellectual. I mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the same as in most of my problems in morphology—that you have the theme in one of the old masters' works followed out in all its endless variations, always appearing and always reminding you of unity ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... First Series of Jedediah Cleishbotham was, as Scott told me, to include four separate tales illustrative of four districts of the country, in the like number of volumes; but, his imagination once kindled upon any theme, he could not but pour himself out freely—so that notion ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... need your services." I recalled how in his last moments I had promised him I would carry out his wishes. There was nothing else left for me to do but to go into those dark places. But there was the rub; and every Sunday evening Mr. Washington thundered that same theme: "Go into the darkest places, the places where you are most needed, and there give your life with little thought of self." I knew about those dark places. I had been born in one of them. I had been spending ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... the thin, hard hand appreciatively. He knew more of Martin than Martin suspected, for Marcia Lowe had made it her first duty, after the Markhams' arrival, to get into touch with them. Not Sandy alone had been the theme of the little doctor's discourse; Martin's grim and self-sacrificing fight in her cabin was given in detail with ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... of the landscape around. As Antonina beheld the brightened fields and the shadowed woods, here mingled, there succeeding each other, stretched far onward and onward until they joined the distant mountains, that eloquent voice of nature, whose audience is the human heart, and whose theme is eternal love, spoke inspiringly to her attentive senses. She stretched out her arms as she looked with steady and enraptured gaze upon the bright view before her, as if she longed to see its beauties resolved into a single and living form—into a spirit human enough to be ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Wilts Journal the songs sung by the boys and girls of the Radstock National Schools on Empire Day included "Raise the Flagon High." We cannot but think this Bacchic theme a little unsuitable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... Great Play. He had urged Courtlandt, much against the latter's will this day, to come up with him, simply that he might set a little scene such as this promised to be and study it from the vantage of the prompter. He knew that the principal theme of all great books, of all great dramas, was antagonism, antagonism between man and woman, though by a thousand other names has it been called. He had often said, in a spirit of raillery, that this ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... admired and envied him. What qualities are there for which a man gets so speedy a return of applause, as those of bodily superiority, activity, and valour? Time out of mind strength and courage have been the theme of bards and romances; and from the story of Troy down to to-day, poetry has always chosen a soldier for a hero. I wonder is it because men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and lithe; and he had a certain indefinable grace of gesture and address which fits itself only to one who, by descent and breeding, has been "to the manner born." His hair was dark, and almost silky fine; and the poise of his head would be a theme for the pen or the pencil of Rossetti. His eye was dark as night, but it revealed an immense range of expression; a capacity for great tenderness, and passion without bound. His nose approximated the aquiline type; his firm mouth ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... difficult to overlook him even in the midst of a distinguished circle, had been conversing eagerly with the Arab, who, in the course of their two-days' acquaintance, had inspired him with a regard which was fully reciprocated. At last Orion had been the theme of their discourse, and the physician, a restless toiler who could not like any man whose life was one of idle enjoyment, though he did full justice to his brilliant gifts and well-applied studies, had judged him far more hardly than the older man. To the leech all forms of human ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... material, however, clustering around each period of developing life is so great that selection must be made. Therefore only those facts illuminating the chosen theme of ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... qualities, are so familiar to every native and inhabitant of Guernsey—they have, as it were, become so much the common property of the community—they have been so much the objects of their study—so constantly the theme of their praise and admiration—that it may seem almost a work of supererogation in us to make any observation on them on the present melancholy occasion. We cannot, however, allow the grave to close upon him without strewing it with some of those ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... selected a period to the romance of which other historical novelists have been singularly blind. The boyhood of Frederick the Great and the strange wooing of his charming sister Wilhelmina have afforded a theme, rich in its revelation of human nature and full of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Nature, both having for their theme "Skin-furrows on the Hand," solicit information on the subject from China.[1] As the subject is considered to have a bearing on medical jurisprudence and ethnology as well, this report is a suitable vehicle for responding to ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... sympathy in the United States, and its effect on religion there was largely to increase a sense of the worth of man. 'Universalism,' the final restoration of all, became a conspicuous doctrine with some. The need for practical measures to uplift the general life here was a theme more to the mind of others. The distinctly 'Unitarian' trend was from the first associated with this eager attention to the higher culture. Harvard College, in the very heart of New England, rapidly developed into a fruitful source of the ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... again Ballantyne is on familiar ground. The theme is the trials and tribulations suffered by the early settlers, the pioneers, in the lands to the east of the Rockies, in particular in the Red River basin, where it flows northwards into Lake Winnipeg. There ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... choice of his theme, and by the comprehensive manner in which he has treated it, Milton has been enabled by his poetic genius to give to the world in his 'Paradise Lost' a poem which, for sublimity of thought, loftiness of imagination, and beauty of expression ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... town, and Peak, unwilling to appear before strangers in a state of profuse perspiration, again moderated his friend's speed. They began to talk about the surrounding country, a theme which occupied them until the house was reached. With quick-beating heart, Godwin found himself at the gate by which he had already twice passed. Secure in the decency of his apparel, and no longer oppressed by bashfulness, he would have gone joyously forward but for the dread ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the life of our design: Were it not glory that we more affected, Than the performance of our heaving spleens, I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, She is a theme of honour and renown, A spur to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Twain touches upon one of his favorite fancies: that life should begin with old age and approach strong manhood, golden youth, to end at last with pampered and beloved babyhood. Possibly he contemplated writing a story with this idea as the theme, but He seems never ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the letter go through and leave the settlement of the matter until after the war. Such a situation would in ordinary times have provided a theme for a three-volume ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... monotonously. The sun was just beginning to show itself; but the morning was misty and dreary, which, together with the aspect of desolation which the country exhibited, had an unfavourable effect on my spirits. I got down and walked, entering into conversation with the old man. He seemed to have but one theme, "the robbers," and the atrocities they were in the habit of practising in the very spots we were passing. The tales he told were truly horrible, and to avoid them I mounted again, and rode ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... is to be able to write well upon a theme, he must no longer feel interest in it; the thought which is to be soberly expressed must already be entirely past and must no longer personally concern the writer. So long as the artist invents and is inspired, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... scene and the day. I preached on Rest in Christ, and the service was very comforting to us both. How well I recall the same drive and a similar service early in September of 1876, when prayer was my theme! What sweet talks and sweeter fellowship we had together by the way, going and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... barriers of nature, so the waves of trial and misfortune break on frail humanity in crushing proximity. The second and third billows of misfortune are fast undulating on the tide of time, and will sweep over the home of Cassier, leaving it a miserable wreck, a theme for the sympathy and the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... sterling veracity—the veracity which is faithful to the spirit and gambols only with the letter. The humor of that work lies in its sympathetic and creative insight quite as much as in the broad good-humor and imaginative whimsicality with which the author handles his theme. The caricature of a true artist gives a better likeness than ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... near, the activity of intrigue and the agitation of the populace increase; the citizens are divided into hostile camps, each of which assumes the name of its favorite candidate; the whole nation glows with feverish excitement; the election is the daily theme of the public papers, the subject of private conversation, the end of every thought and every action, the sole interest of the present. As soon as the choice is determined, this ardor is dispelled; and as a calmer season returns, the current of the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... quite at ease. Bouchette opened at once with an account of the great ball. He said that he had come purposely for that. He described all its phases in his own unconventional way, and especially dilated on the share that Pauline had taken in it. He grew eloquent on this particular theme. He assured M. Belmont that he ought to be proud of his daughter, as she had made the most favourable impression on all the guests ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... brings! But tell me, Master, what means this minor chord,—this undertone of sadness and of pathos that flows like a deep, unfathomable current throughout it all, and wailing, weaves itself about thy theme of love and happiness with its ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... earliest of these songs arose among the Breton followers of Hrodland or Roland; but they spread to Maine, to Anjou, to Normandy, until the theme became national. By the latter part of the eleventh century, when the form of the "Song of Roland" which we possess was probably composed, the historical germ of the story had almost disappeared under the mass of legendary accretion. Charlemagne, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... all in the singing, any more than the wit is all in the saying. It is in the occasion, the surroundings, the spirit of which it is the expression. My friend said that the bird did not fully let itself out. Its song was a brilliant medley of notes,—no theme that I could detect,—like the lark's song in this respect; all the notes of the field and forest appeared to be the gift of this bird, but what tone! what accent! like ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... reason which makes our theme appear paradoxical as we maintain it, is the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more complete intuition of reality than we really do. One often hears people say that they have in their minds many important thoughts, but that they are not able to express ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... sensitive. He was a man who knew no guile, and his sweet and artless nature is faithfully portrayed in the outpourings of an impressionable, poetic soul. To dance with rustic maidens on the lea; to sing by moonlight to the piper's strain; to be happy, always happy, such is the theme, delicate and refined, of these ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... other malady of Russia, both expressed in what M. Haumand terms his "Hamletisme." But in Virgin Soil he is easy and almost negligent master of his instrument, and though he is an exile and at times a sharply embittered one, he gathers experience round his theme as only the artist can who has enriched leis art by having outlived his youth without forgetting its pangs, joys, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... of course incapable of looking at history with the modern philosophic spirit, Livy was honest and candid, and possessed a wonderful command of his native language. His work enjoyed an unbounded popularity, not entirely to be accounted for by the fascinations of his theme, He realized his desire to present a clear and probable narrative, and no history of Rome can now be written without constant reference ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the firm's reorganized; it's Hunter, Hunter & Brauer. Thorny told me about it. And Miss Sherman's married, and Miss Cottle's got consumption and has to live in Arizona, or somewhere. However,—-" she returned to the original theme, "Peter seems to be still enjoying life! Did you see the account of his hiring an electric delivery truck, and driving it about the city on Christmas Eve, to deliver his own Christmas presents, dressed up himself as an expressman? ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... my review I said all the usual things. I said that Mr. Blank's attitude to life was "subjective rather than objective" ... and a little lower down that it was "objective rather than subjective." I pointed out that in his treatment of the major theme he was a neo-romanticist, but I suggested that, on the other hand, he had nothing to learn from the Russians—or the Russians had nothing to learn from him; I forget which. And finally I said (and this is the cause of the whole trouble) that ANTOINE VAURELLE'S world-famous classic—and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... result. The London Times, and other metropolitan, and many local, journals publish almost daily distressing accounts of the miserable tenements occupied by the men and women whose labor makes England the garden of fertility and beauty that it is. Editors are making the subject the theme of able and stirring articles, and some of the most eloquent members of Parliament are speaking of it with great power. It is not only generous but just to take the language in which the writers and orators of a country denounce the evils existing in it cum grano salis, or ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... which infects a man as a prolonged disease. There is something prodigious in Turgenev's insight into, and his inexhaustible richness, truthfulness, and freshness in the rendering of those emotions which have been the theme of all poets and ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... no scope for such a theme; and besides, painful as it is to pass to common topics, they claim their dues. Life, ay, common life, must go on as it ever did, and nothing shall tear that infinite web of mystery in which it walks enveloped. Ours, however, in these days, is rather a shaded life. Absence from home, a strange ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... fascination of the white way. Paga! There were dollars in the ground, and for the asking they could be made to grow. This lesson learned, Fetuao threw off her indifference and became as ardent a planter as her unwearied husband. Lying in his arms at night, her talk ran continually on the theme of which neither ever tired. Not a dollar was earned but was thus laid out in advance, with eager questioning and debate. The cow was bought, the horse, the chickens, the wire for fencing. It was a game in which each played a part with ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... there is a return to the theme or refrain of the piece, when the end is close upon us. One of the finest points in this play is, that after the successive episodes of the killing of Polonius, the madness and death of Ophelia, and the wild bout with Laertes at her burial, Hamlet reassumes his every-day nature, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the grace to blush. "Aw," he explained in some confusion, "my prof's full of hooey. He doesn't know a C theme from an A one. He makes me ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... of the Apostle Paul cease in the age of the Paraclete, is a view we find still more strongly emphasised in the Montanist writings than in Irenaeus. In ad uxor. 3 Tertullian had already said: "Quod permittitur, bonum non est," and this proposition is the theme of many arguments in the Montanist writings. But the intention of finding a basis for the laws of the Paraclete, by showing that they existed in some fashion even in earlier times, involved Tertullian in many contradictions. It is evident from his writings ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... felt that he dared not press her further. He could not doubt the truth of her first assertion; but, alas! it availed only for his own private consciousness,—it took no stain from him, in the eyes of the world. Yet, now that the painful theme had been opened,—not less painful, it seemed, since the suspected dishonor did not exist,—he craved and decided to ask, enlightenment on ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... prose. Swift, we are told (perhaps a little too frequently), could write beautifully of a broomstick; which may strike a common person as a marvel of dexterity. After a while, the journalist is apt to find that it is the perfect theme which proves to be the hardest to treat adequately. Clothe a broomstick with fancies, even of the flimsiest tissue paper, and you get something more or less like a fairy-king's sceptre; but take the Pompadour's ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... circumference of the globe. You say we have expelled Union families by thousands. The truth is, not a single family has been expelled from the Confederate States, that I am aware of; but, on the contrary, the moderation of our Government toward traitors has been a fruitful theme of denunciation by its enemies and well-meaning friends of our cause. You say my Government, by acts of Congress, has confiscated "all debts due Northern men for goods sold and delivered." The truth is, our Congress gave ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... that on Achaia's hills "Rove, was I seen; none closer beat than I "The thickets; none than I more skilful spread "Th' ensnaring net. Yet though no fame I sought "For beauty; though robust, I bore the name "Of beauteous. Whilst the constant theme of praise, "My features fair, to me no pleasure gave; "What other nymphs inspire with joyful pride, "Corporeal charms, did but my blushes raise. "To please I thought a crime. Once tir'd with sport, "The Stymphalidian forest I had left: "Warm was the day; I with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... love-lorn people in the Saturday Storyteller, which found its way into the homes of the ranchers, but he had always sworn or laughed at their sufferings as a part of the play. He felt quite differently about these cases. Love was no longer a theme for jest, an abstraction, a far-off trouble; it had become a hunger more intolerable than any he had ever known, a pain that made all others he had experienced transitory and ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... pacifying England by concession: this year you are for pacifying Ireland by coercion. How can you vindicate your consistency?" Surely my honourable friend cannot but know that nothing is easier than to write a theme for severity, for clemency, for order, for liberty, for a contemplative life, for a active life, and so on. It was a common exercise in the ancient schools of rhetoric to take an abstract question, and to harangue first on one side and then on the other. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... War is its theme but not its purpose. War breeds hatred, horror, pestilence and famine, yet from its tears and ashes eventually must rise the clean white spirit ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... heard much of you, Miss Paget," said Gustave presently, "and of your devotion to your father. He has no more favourite theme than your goodness." ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... be so; it may be that I am growing old, but it seems astonishing to me sometimes that the world does not grow a little weary of endless variations on the same theme.' ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know;—that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost ...
— Meno • Plato
... the pains to write down the proverbial or pithy phrases I have heard, or if I had sooner thought of noting the Yankeeisms I met with in my reading, I might have been able to do more justice to my theme. But I have done all I wished in respect to pronunciation, if I have proved that where we are vulgar, we have the countenance of very good company. For, as to the jus et norma loquendi, I agree with Horace and those who have paraphrased or commented him, from Boileau to Gray. I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of Preserving Health is the only production by which he is likely to be remembered. The theme which he has chosen is one, in which no man who lives long does not at some time or other feel an interest; and he has handled it with considerable skill. In the first Book, on Air, he has interwoven very pleasing descriptions both of particular places and of situations ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... perpetual Lectureship in connection with the School of Religion of the University, to be restricted in its scope to a defense and advocacy of the Christian religion. The lectures shall be delivered at such intervals, from time to time, as shall be deemed best by the Board of Trust; and the particular theme and lecturer will be determined by the Theological Faculty. Said lecture shall always be reduced to writing in full, and the manuscript of the same shall be the property of the University, to be published or disposed of by the Board of ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... will speak! The time has come for it. Besides, I'm quite ready to discuss this new theme; it is ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... personage has long been the theme, not only of children's early study and terror, it will be gratifying to peruse the character of that being who really existed, and who was distinguished in horror and derision by the strange ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... glad of such a companion, and such a theme," said the old gentleman, with a smile. "Well, Laurence, if our oaken chair, like the wooden Palladium of Troy, was connected with the country's fate, yet there appears to have been no supernatural obstacle to its ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tremens, directing all their remarks to him, and telling him what fearful objects, such as snakes and rats, were always seen by the victims of this horrible disease. When the conversation had waxed high on this theme, one of the number stepped out of the room, and from a trap which was at hand let a large rat into the room. None of his friends appeared to see it, but the young man who was to be the victim seized a chair and hurled it at the rat, completely ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Meissonier and Bouguereau. And a print, after all, is only a print. He's slightly ashamed to admire beauty as mere beauty, contending that at the core of all such things there should be a moral. So we pow-wowed for an hour and more over the threadbare old theme and the most I could get out of Gershom was that the lady in The Old-fashioned Gown reminded him of me, only I was more vital. But all that talk about landscape and composition and line and tone made me momentarily homesick ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... And so, while she did not repel him, or offend his sensitive spirit, she, in some way which he could not exactly define, made him feel that he must defer the thing to him so important, and talk on other subjects. There was one theme on which she was always eager to talk and to get him to talk, and to her it never grew stale or threadbare. It was about what he and she had learned or could remember of the book of heaven, and the good white ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... documents, he was cordially received by Sir Peregrine. He dined and spent the evening at the Cottage. In the course of conversation he referred to the project of establishing a Court of Equity—which by this time was no secret—and was surprised to find that the theme was distasteful to his host, who, in a tone not to be misunderstood, remarked: "Sir, you have not got your Court of Equity yet." "The words," wrote Mr. Willis,[96] "made some impression at the time, and subsequent ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the people of color in Louisiana might be written. It is a theme too large to be treated save by a master hand. It is interwoven with the poetry, the romance, the glamour, the commercial prosperity, the financial ruin, the rise and fall of the State. It is hung about with garlands, like the garlands of the cemeteries on All Saints Day; it may be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the last words that he uttered will forgotten be by few: "I have bravely fought them, mother—I have bravely fought for you!" Let his memory be green in the hearts who love the South, And his noble deeds the theme that ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... subject has been given out to the public, while separate phases of it have been minutely discussed by competent critics, so that at every point there is new temptation for the biographer to expand the theme where the scope of his work ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... regard to this subject, and a hundred years later, in our own time, Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, following up the work of various intermediary observers, has given the subject much attention, making it the central theme of his work on The Dawn of Astronomy.(1) Lockyer's researches make it clear that in the main the temples of Egypt were oriented with reference to the point at which the sun rises on the day of the summer solstice. The time of the solstice had peculiar interest for the Egyptians, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... appointed, who spoke nothing but Magyar and some words of German.... However, by taking in this way a few examples of Magyar methods, one may be accused of having chosen merely those which illustrate one's theme. It would be hazardous to draw conclusions as to Magyar officers in general because a certain Lieutenant Chaby, who, during the War, found himself quartered on a Serbian family of the name of Stejvovi['c] at Priboj ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... an icy and death-like constitution, that he neither loved his friends nor hated his enemies. But, be this as it may, I see no reason that a difference between Mr. Washington and me should be made a theme of discord with other people. There are those who may see merit in both, without making themselves partisans of either, and with this reflection I close ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... weakness and incapacity, he only acted, when he did act, behind the scenes. Ministerial exertions were also paralysed by another cause. A prevalent notion existed that there was a mysterious power about the court which worked to the detriment of the public good. This was a constant theme of invective among the opposition, and, it would seem, not without good reason. But there was another cause of obstruction to the measures formed by government. This was found in the democratical spirit, which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not know in what order the chapters of The Parts Men Play were written, but it seems to me that as Mr. Baxter gets to grip with the realities of his theme, he begins to lose a certain looseness of touch which marks his opening pages. If so, he is showing the power of development, and to the artist this power is everything. The writer who is without it is a mere static consciousness ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... immediately evinced him to be the author of the distich, and Bathyllus became the theme of public ridicule. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... a great stroke. He went back to the original theme. "You ask me where my duty lies!" His great voice rose and rang through the hall magnificently: "I reply—'first to my State and her needs'! Is that answer enough? If it be necessary that I should answer for my personal loyalty to one man or another then I ask you: Shall it go to the friend ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... the theme of mutual felicitation were we assured of experiencing similar moderation and justice from the French Republic, between which and the United States differences have unhappily arisen; but this is denied us by the ultimate ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... being in a passion Mr Sadler will not disclaim. His is a theme, he tells us, on which "it were impious to be calm;" and he boasts that, "instead of conforming to the candour of the present age, he has imitated the honesty of preceding ones, in expressing himself with the utmost plainness and freedom throughout." If ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... codified our evolving strategic doctrine in a number of interrelated and mutually supporting Presidential Directives. Their overarching theme is to provide a doctrinal basis, and the specific program to implement it, that tells the world that no potential adversary of the United States could ever conclude that the fruits of his aggression ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... almost without a place in our literature. Other rivers, historically lesser rivers, have had their stories told again and again, their beauties lauded, and their praises sung. But this great pioneer waterway, fit theme for an ode, is to-day our ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... who sate for Salisbury, especially distinguished himself. He had always, he said, looked with dread and aversion on standing armies; and recent experience had strengthened those feelings. He then ventured to touch on a theme which had hitherto been studiously avoided. He described the desolation of the western counties. The people, he said, were weary of the oppression of the troops, weary of free quarters, of depredations, of still fouler crimes which the law called felonies, but for which, when perpetrated ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... defiance, were a constant interruption, and stones thrown against the windows a warning of coming danger. But through it all this brave Southern woman stood unmoved, except by the intense earnestness of her own great theme. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... since in the Christian Church the rise of error has been the means of calling forth the clearest statements of doctrine. The ruling impulse, however, of his thinking, as of his life, was ever Christ, and it was his lifelong devotion to this exhaustless theme that made ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... times he was on the point of speaking on the subject. Once, indeed, he made a playful allusion to the flautist of the bower that was provocative of no more than a reddened cheek and an interlude of silence. But tacitly the lover was a theme for strict avoidance. Not even the Baron had a word to say on that, and they were numberless the topics they discussed in this ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... particular gratitude. My one concern was that grandmother should keep every one away from me. If the story once got abroad, I would never hear the last of it. I could well imagine what the old men down at the drug-store would do with such a theme. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... brightly, but there was in her tone, an undercurrent of feeling which touched Helen, and betrayed the fact that this return to the old theme was not wholly without a cause. Mrs. Greyson divined that Edith was not happy, and with the keenness of womanly instinct she divined also that there was not perfect harmony between Mrs. Fenton and her husband. She looked ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... that in speaking of his troubles we were led on to this heart-stirring theme? Yes, I have seen them, the sweet angels; and I tell you also that I have seen their mother. I insisted on going to her when I heard her history ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... to whose genius we owe the obese robin perched upon a horse-shoe, or the churchyard by moonlight after (apparently) a severe spangle-storm. Here again a poet, whose eye in a fine frenzy rolling proclaims an inspiration, or at least some subtle variant upon a familiar theme. He stoops and, even as I watch, has traced swiftly, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... admiring the diligence and erudition of M. Martin, we cannot for a moment suppose that the tale was told to Solon by an Egyptian priest, nor can we believe that Solon wrote a poem upon the theme which was thus suggested to him—a poem which disappeared in antiquity; or that the Island of Atlantis or the antediluvian Athens ever had any existence except in the imagination of Plato. Martin ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... talk of glory and the guards, Of fighting heroes, and their great rewards! Our eyes behold you glow with martial flame, Our ears attend the never-ceasing theme. Fast from your tongue the rousing accents flow, And horror darkens on your sable brow! We hear the thunder of the rolling war, And see red vict'ry shouting from ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... subjects present themselves even in other countries. The end of it all surely no man can see, unless it be that collective humanity is destined to perish from a rupture of its tympanum. That is a theme for a later hour, and meanwhile perhaps it is well not to be too frightened. Some of the items I just spoke of are, after all, larger than others; and if, as a general thing, it is a mistake to pull up our reputations to ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... unnatural; but if we survey the whole human race, it has been as influential and as widely spread as the other. In the Phaedrus it is really a figure of speech in which the 'spiritual combat' of this life is represented. The majesty and power of the whole passage—especially of what may be called the theme or proem (beginning 'The mind through all her being is immortal')—can only be rendered very inadequately ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... Hard-Shell Baptist Church the congregation had assembled and services had begun before Mr. Meech arrived. He appeared singularly flushed and breathless, and caused some confusion by giving out the hymn which had just been sung. It was not until he became stirred by the power of his theme that he ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... lost interest when India was not the theme; and, as the elders fell into an undercurrent of talk, his eyes sought Tara's face. Her answering smile spurred him to a bold move; and he leaned towards her, over the edge of the boat. "Miss Despard," he said under his breath, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... said of the effect of fine scenery upon the development of genius. And as this is the theme of one-half of the "Minstrel," we must be permitted a few remarks on it. The finest scenery in the world cannot, then, 'create' genius. A dunce, born in the Vale of Tempe, will remain a dunce still. And, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... on one side, and rested with their ends on the ground. The means which had been used for this end, the reason why one only was broken, and that one the uppermost, how a pair of horns could be so managed as to effect that which the hands of man would have found difficult, supplied a theme ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... it more commonplace ideas. The white and juicy flesh of the iguana was quite a feast for us all. Our meal we sat over a longer time than usual; for in conversation we entered upon the subject of our native countries, and the theme appeared inexhaustible. I reminded my friend that, only a few days before, he had shown as much emotion as the Indian on seeing two butterflies which he fancied belonged to a Swiss species; and I brought forward these feelings to oppose the intention he so often expressed of taking up his ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... said Mr Pluck, 'when I see so much sweetness and beauty on the one hand, and so much ardour and devotion on the other, I—pardon me, Pyke, I didn't intend to resume that theme. Change ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... more aggressive, he would have none of it. Perhaps if Edward had been willing to concede that the Bumpuses had been brought to their present lowly estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex Chris might conditionally have accepted the theme. Hannah, contemptuously waving a tattered palm leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took away the barber's breath by suddenly observing:—"You never seem to think of the women whose lives are ruined ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the fourteenth century, a French monk, Robert Langlande, wrote the "Vision of Piers Plowman," an account of a dream he is supposed to have had when among the Malvern Hills. It is possible that the sight of the grand old abbey may have suggested his theme, for he inveighs not only against the laity, but especially against the ecclesiastics for their neglect of the poor. The poem is remarkable for being without rhythm, but alliterative, such as was ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... after His Ascension (see the Latin Form). The Saviour's Existence, from the Eternal Beginning on to the Eternal Future, is the central thought of the Hymn. The dual form of each line in this Middle Stanza proves it to be a separate Stanza. The Incarnation is its theme—The Incarnation and its ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... about twenty years of age,—in the full splendor of loveliness, and endowed with charms which presented to the gaze of those around a very incarnation of the ideal beauty which forms the theme of raptured poets. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... becoming indignation of an ill-used man; and as Mr. Bumble felt that it rather tended to convey a reflection on the honour of the parish; the latter gentleman thought it advisable to change the subject. Oliver Twist being uppermost in his mind, he made him his theme. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the unpromising theme of mail-order merchandising, the Great Gaines afterward said that it was a kaleidoscopic panorama set moving to the harmonic undertones of a song of winds and waters, of passion and the inner meanings of life, as if Shelley had rhapsodized ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cannot give a panoramic view of a great historical epoch. They do not require that sustained attention that relates to-day's readings with that of yesterday, and that takes a wider survey of many parts in their relation to a central theme. The larger work gives a culture and a liberal education, when it is treated in the proper manner, that is very different from the fragmentary knowledge of an author that would be gained by even the intensive study of many short extracts. The treatment of the extract, as we have said, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of the pantheist poetical philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which Christ and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the former is classed with Prometheus. This book of "Spiridion" is a continuation of the theme, and perhaps you will listen to some of the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... talking of Netta. It was Mrs Prothero's one theme when alone with him or Gladys. They could comfort her aching heart by assuring her that they believed her child's repentance to have been sincere, and her faith, if at times troubled and confused by the wandering mind and puzzled brain, placed on ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... words my estimation thereof."—G. P. B., M. D. "It seems that since our beloved Denton's departure you are almost left alone to fight the great battle of Psychometry. If you will make Psychometry the leading theme in your JOURNAL, you will do more to hasten that dawn of a higher civilization that your noble science is destined to usher in than all other sciences combined."—DR. A. B. D. "I am delighted with it. I send for ten more copies for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... fact that he had no other object or purpose than to do justice to his subject. He is entirely free from self-reference. There is not in the remotest corner of his mind a wish to magnify his office and draw attention from the theme of the biography to the biographer himself. He permits himself no digressions, he obtrudes no needless reflections, enters into no profitless discussions: he is content to unfold the panorama of Mr. Choate's life, and do little more than point out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to work, and for a week they toiled to put up a mast of steel, and hang from it a gridiron of copper wires two hundred feet by twelve. The theme of all that time was work, work continually, straining and toilsome work, and all the rest was grim hardship and evil chances, save for a certain wild splendour in the sunset and sunrise in the torrents and drifting weather, in the wilderness about them. They built and tended a ring of perpetual ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... communion with God, I abode in those high thoughts of Him. There flowed into my soul so powerful a delight from these reflections upon God, that I took no further thought for all the anguish I had suffered, but rather spent the day in singing psalms and divers other compositions on the theme of His divinity. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... influence on the thought of the day. Isabella, whose vast correspondence with the foremost painters and scholars of the age has been preserved almost intact, was probably the most remarkable lady of the Renaissance. The story of her long and eventful life—a theme of absorbing interest—yet remains to be written. The present work is devoted to the history of her younger sister, Beatrice, Duchess of Milan, who, as the wife of Lodovico Sforza, reigned during ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... enduring fascination to their sterling veracity—the veracity which is faithful to the spirit and gambols only with the letter. The humor of that work lies in its sympathetic and creative insight quite as much as in the broad good-humor and imaginative whimsicality with which the author handles his theme. The caricature of a true artist gives a better likeness than ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Dr. Cairns used to tell that on one occasion, long after he had got well used to the sound of the Berwick speech, he was under the belief that a man with whom he was conversing was talking about a boy until he discovered from the context that his theme was a brewery.] ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... communities and in varying phrase—always earnest and eloquent—King returned to the central theme of all his thinking and speaking, the greatness and glory of the Union,—"one and indivisible." The following but illustrates the constant tenor ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... extraordinary personage has long been the theme, not only of children's early study and terror, it will be gratifying to peruse the character of that being who really existed, and who was distinguished in horror and derision by the strange ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... fell Maria makes up her mind to among us is in nine cases out of ten the thing that is done. Maria still takes, in spite of her partial removal to a wider sphere, the most insidious interest in us, and the beauty of her affectionate concern for the welfare of her younger sisters is the theme of every tongue. She observed to Lorraine, in a moment of rare expansion, more than a year ago, that she had got their two futures perfectly fixed, and that as Peggy appeared to have "some mind," though how much she wasn't yet sure, it should be developed, what there was ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... brave and able pretender, Sigurd Slembe, in his struggle with the vain and mean-spirited king, Harold Gille, is the theme of the dramatic trilogy. Bjoernson attempts to give the spiritual development of Sigurd from the moment he becomes acquainted with his royal birth until his final destruction. From a frank and generous youth, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... his troops, and only escaped destruction by the dashing exploit which his admiring subjects seem to have been never weary of commemorating, and which furnished Penta-our, the court poet, with a brilliant theme. A few extracts from the recital shall be given, based upon M. de Rouge's version, from which I venture in a few respects to deviate. The papyrus begins in the middle of a sentence, at the moment when the ...
— Egyptian Literature
... for a better spiritual condition. There is more to be written on this subject of world-pain—to exhaust the theme would require a book. And certain it is that I have no wish to say the final word on any topic. The gentle reader has certain rights, and among these is the privilege ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... than solve. But the blow which had shattered my life had been dealt by the hand of a fool. Here, there were no mystic enchantments. Motives the most commonplace and paltry, suggested to a brain as trivial and shallow as ever made the frivolity of woman a theme for the satire of poets, had sufficed, in devastating the field of my affections, to blast the uses for which I had cultured my mind; and had my intellect been as great as heaven ever gave to man, it would ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... must be obliged to translate half his works; of which I may say more truly than, in my opinion, he did of Homer, "Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, plenius, et melius Chrysippo, et Crantore dicit." I shall content myself upon this particular theme with three only, one out of his Odes, the other out of his Satires, the third out of his Epistles, and shall forbear to collect the suffrages of all other poets, which may be found scattered up and down through all their writings, and ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... diamonds; fountains of melted moonbeams, throwing their spray over crystal vases, which sang with voices like a harmonica the arias of the greatest singers. A symphony of perfumes followed this first enchantment, which vanished in a shower of spangles at the end of a few seconds; the theme was a faint odor of iris and acacia bloom which pursued, avoided, crossed and embraced each other with delicious ease and grace. If anything in this world can give you an approximative idea of this exquisitely ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... almost entirely derivative and imitative, of an unequaled mediocrity and depressingness. One wonders whether indeed there has ever been a respectable composer who has utilized ideas as platitudinous as the ones employed in the first movement of the First Symphony, or the brassy, pompous theme that opens the Eighth, or the tune to which in the latter work the mystic ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of Anglicanism as it once was, but will never be again, I have wandered far from my theme. I began by saying that all one has read, all one has heard, all one has been able to collect by study or by conversation, points to the close of the eighteenth century as the low-water mark of English religion ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... very moment an invited guest at Bourhill? She made some little alteration in her dress, and went down, perfectly calm, and outwardly at ease, to a tete-a-tete dinner with her son. When they were left alone at the table she suddenly changed the subject from the commonplace to the engrossing theme occupying both their minds, and, leaning towards ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... a glass of water. Her hand trembled as she drank. Widdowson fell into gloomy abstraction. Later, as they lay side by side, he wished to renew the theme, but Monica would not talk; she declared herself too sleepy, turned her back to him, and ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... is so well known as to require no citations to verify it, that this love, or charity, or, in other words, regard to the welfare of others, runs in various forms through all the preceptive parts of the apostolic writings. It is the theme of all their exhortations, that with which their morality begins and ends, from which all their details and enumerations set out, and ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... over those measures which finally took shape as the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise was the last instance of the leadership of Clay. The famous Seventh of March speech in defense of it was Webster's last notable oration. These voices stilled, many others took up the pregnant theme. Davis and Toombs and Stephens and other well-trained Southern statesmen defended slavery aggressively; Seward and Sumner and Chase insisted on a hearing for the aggressive anti-slavery sentiment; Cass and Buchanan maintained for a time their places as leaders in the school of compromise. ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... them, then, the curious ones," the younger man of the two who lounged on cushions underneath the felza remarked, as if to prolong the theme. "To the gates of Paradise," he continued, while his companion motioned to the gondolier. "And they broke them open, but they could never take the ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... respected, X. having now returned from leave, has commissioned a chronicler to write about what he saw in Java, though it would be an easier task were the latter allowed to write about the community. But that must not be—at any rate now. Java is the theme—that, ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... change the theme, he led the astounded locksmith back to the night of the Maypole highwayman, to the robbery of Edward Chester, to the reappearance of the man at Mrs Rudge's house, and to all the strange circumstances which afterwards ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... that his admirable and masterly work on The Diseases of Women—the first then written on a theme so large, so deep, so tender—came forth from his special experience of those women to whom others went for aid; of the witches, namely, who always acted as the midwives: for never in those days was ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... undertook to stay at the house that night, in case of any relapse on the part of Mark, and to the tutor's great satisfaction, for he had fallen into a nervous state, wandering about the place and giving the pupils a fresh theme of conversation to ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... the English people, is the sort of solemn relish which they have for talking of their own misfortunes. To be the objects of a calamity of any kind, seems to raise them in their own estimations. With a dreary enjoyment of his miserable theme, the servant expatiated on his position as a man deprived of the best of masters; turned adrift again in the world to seek another service; hopeless of ever again finding himself in such a situation as he had lost. He roused me at last into speaking to him, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... formidable. At last he thinks the stake worth the play, at last the prize is worth the risk, and because it is so he will play and risk to the end, hazarding all, not yielding while he breathes. Having opened the theme which alone, of all themes, shall transform his irresolution into action, he will, Hamlet like, "fight upon this theme until" his "eyelids will no longer wag." So was Colden aroused, transfigured, as he stood ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... by food-poisoning, and his father would not have been a mental wreck, nor his own career cut short, had she only known what wives and mothers of this generation should know, and set a table which was not a laboratory of poison. These ideas, once accepted, never left him. They formed a theme which, after finding expression, recurred with ominously increasing frequency. A year before, Harold Weston was a kindly fellow, almost retiring, but with a peculiar lighting of his face in response which endeared him to feminine hearts. On a variety of subjects he was well-informed, his ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... want you to be happy, Betty," Allen had written once upon this theme, "but I'd like to feel that you missed me, a little anyway. It makes a fellow feel as though it wouldn't make any difference if he disappeared off the face of the earth. If you missed me one-tenth as much as I miss ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... apparently inexhaustible topic of talk was the refusal of the Hersheys to receive the new teacher into the bosom of their family. A return to this theme again and again, on the part of the various members of the Wackernagel household, did not seem to lessen its interest for them, though the teacher himself did not take a very animated part in its discussion. Tillie realized, as with an absorbing interest she watched ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... was a rare and natural soldier, the embodiment of courage and, had not death interrupted his career, must have come near the head of the list of cavalry officers. The battle in which he distinguished himself and lost his life will be the theme of a ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... the evening closing in quickly, and, what with the dying man's queer talk and the boatswain harping on the same theme immediately afterwards, I confess I felt far from comfortable, my nerves being in a state of constant tension from the painful scene in the cabin that I had just witnessed, while the gloomy shades of the night that were fast enwrapping us, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... inveterate joker, and his jokes were, for the most part, of the practical kind. He had a valuable tortoiseshell cat, whose beauty was not only the theme of praise with all the old maids in the neighbourhood, but her charms attracted the notice of numerous feline gentlemen dwelling in the vicinity, who were, nocturnally, wont to pay their devoirs ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... has been said and so much has been written on the subject of the man who works and the woman who weeps, the man who fares forth and the woman who waits at home, that it hardly seems necessary to begin a chapter with another dissertation upon this theme. Lovers are proverbially discontented in the adverse conditions of separation. Peter Ogilvie would have given much to be at home in the winter following his mother's death, and there is no doubt that Jane Erskine felt that ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... philosophers have to refute.[852] I need not say that the Roman poets too continually use the imagery of Tartarus; but they use it as literary tradition, and in the sixth Aeneid it is used also to enforce the idea of duty to the State which is the real theme of the poem. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... infantry, for the most part levied in Thrace and Isauria, yielded to the more prevailing use and reputation of the cavalry; and the Scythian bow was the weapon on which the armies of Rome were now reduced to place their principal dependence. From a laudable desire to assert the dignity of his theme, Procopius defends the soldiers of his own time against the morose critics, who confined that respectable name to the heavy-armed warriors of antiquity, and maliciously observed, that the word archer is introduced by Homer [8] as a term of contempt. "Such contempt might perhaps be due to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... ever have been brought to this point without the violent pressure of her sister's supposed interests? This is one of those questions which wise men will not ask, because it is one which the wisest man or woman cannot answer. Upon this theme, an army of ingenious authors have exhausted their ingenuity in entertaining the public, and their works are to be found at every book-stall. They have decided that any woman will, under the right conditions, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... determined finally to assume the position of a star. "Art has always been my sweetheart," exclaims Jefferson, "and I have loved her for herself alone." No observer can doubt that who has followed his career. It was in 1859 that he reverted to the subject of Rip Van Winkle, as the right theme for his dramatic purpose. He had seen Charles Burke as Rip, and he knew the several versions of Washington Irving's story that had been made for the theatre by Burke, Hackett, and Yates. The first Rip Van Winkle upon the stage, of whom there is any record in theatrical annals, was ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... he thought. "Perhaps I may follow your advice some day. If so, you, Marcolina, shall be the theme of the ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... purports to be history rather than romance. Layamon represents the first great step from the old literature to the new; and he is the first to give an English home to that ideal king who was to be the chosen theme of Spenser and of Tennyson. We will quote the death of Arthur and his ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... down all his turbulence in worship, then he is most strong. Rubens, in the "Descent from the Cross," is still the supreme drawing-master; and painters flocking to him for lessons pay homage to him. But, in his "Crucifixion," it is Tintoret himself who pays homage, and we forget the master in the theme. We may say of Rubens's art, in a new sense, "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." The greatest art is not magnificent, but it is war, desperate and without trappings, a war in which victory comes ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... people, you must give them the boon which they ask,—not what you may think better for them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act may be a wise regulation, but it is no concession; whereas our present theme is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... And upon circumstance Disaster strikes with the blind sweep of chance. And this our mimic action was a theme, Kinsmen, as life ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... only begin to understand the wonderful theme of redemption. With our finite comprehension we may consider most earnestly the shame and the glory, the life and the death, the justice and the mercy, that meet in the cross; yet with the utmost stretch of our mental powers we fail to grasp its full significance. The length and the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... purchaser. There is also a large import trade in agricultural implements, steam-machinery for the sugar-mills and the silver mines, besides heavy importation of silks and wines from France and Spain. With this hasty notice we are compelled to quit a subject which is the theme of a ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... different from those which the older masters met, that our latter-day painting offers fewer examples of the Mother and Child. Dagnan-Bouveret, in France, however, has treated the subject in such a way as to show that there yet remains new presentations of the world-old theme. To-day the painter has to retain the sentiment of his subject through a network of technical difficulties, and the gracious virginal figure which Monsieur Dagnan-Bouveret has painted does this measurably ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... The universal theme at the cover-side was, of course, the declaration of war; but even that absorbing subject sunk to silence as the first low whimper, taken up more confidently by hound after hound, proclaimed that poor Reynard was being bustled ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... his own, James Calhoun was always greatly interested in those of the persons about him. Judith's doings, on account of her reticence, beauty and high spirit, proved a theme of unending, mild interest. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... lastly the events speak for themselves and give their own lesson. The author meant to teach adults as well as children. The graphic history of the Doasyoulikes is rather a clear-cut study in degeneracy for older people, as well as a lively warning for youngsters. But what is the author's main theme? Is his real text in the advice the poor Irishwoman gives to Grimes and Tom? "Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be. Remember." (page 225). Perhaps a second text or at least ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... have been quite six years of age, when my brother Will and I were taken to chapel on one very well-remembered Sunday evening. The preacher was the grandfather of a gentleman who now lives in a castle, and does an enormous trade in soap. His theme was the omniscience of the Deity, and he told his simple audience how the same God who made all rolling spheres made the minutest living things also, and all things intermediate. It was a very impressive sermon for a child to listen to, and ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... that Lady Webling was shocked—by the vulgarity, no doubt. "Swine" do not belong in dining-room language—only in the platters or the chairs. Marie Louise caught an angry look also in the eye of Nicholas Easton, though he, too, had been incisive in his comments on the theme of the dinner. His English had been uncannily correct, his phrases formal with the exactitude of a book on syntax or the dialogue of a gentleman in a novel. But he also was drinking too much, and as his lips ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... interlocutor. For a second time I regret to say that Mr. Gashwiler succumbed. The Roman constituency at Remus, it is to be hoped, were happily ignorant of this last defection of their great legislator. Mr. Gashwiler instantly forgot his theme,—began to ply the lady with a certain bovine-like gallantry, which it is to be said to her credit she parried with a playful, terrier-like dexterity, when the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... some preparing breakfast, others looking carelessly to the condition of their arms and accoutrements, against the inevitable inspection; still others were chatting with indolent dogmatism on that never-failing theme, the end and object of the campaign. Sentinels paced up and down the confused front with a lounging freedom of mien and stride that would not have been tolerated at another time. A few of them limped unsoldierly in deference to blistered feet. At a little distance in rear of the stacked arms were ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... nature in the first place, and later by the training of experience and practice. When he was out on a canvass, his name was a lodestone which drew the farmers to his stump from fifty miles around. His theme was always politics. He used no notes, for a volcano does not need notes. In 1862, a son of Keokuk's late distinguished citizen, Mr. Claggett, gave ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prison, or a fortress. It is thus with the 'Tower of London,' 'Windsor Castle,' 'Old St. Paul's.' Scarcely less ability, or, rather, we should say, perhaps more correctly, scarcely less adroitness in the choice of a new theme, in the instance of one of his latest literary productions, viz., the 'Star Chamber.' But the readers of Mr. Ainsworth—and they now number thousands upon thousands—need hardly be informed of this: and now that a uniform illustrated edition of his works is published, we do not ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... wouldst be loved?—then let thy heart From its present pathway part not; Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... and want news is tantalising, is it not? Pray agree with me, and then you will allow that I have acted very kindly in not writing till I had something to tell you. Something, of course, means Wilkes, for everything is nothing except the theme of the day. There has appeared a violent North Briton, addressed to, and written against Lord Mansfield, threatening a rebellion if he continued to persecute Mr. Wilkes. This paper, they say, Wilkes owned to the Chevalier de Chastelux, a French gentleman, who went ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... value that has been seldom equalled in the later decadent period. The fourteen large central bosses on the main longitudinal ribs present in themselves an epitome not only of Bible history, but of the connecting incidents forming the theme of Christian teaching. In the tenth bay, on the longitudinal rib, there is, in place of a boss, a circular hole through the vault. It is supposed to have been formed to allow a thurible to be suspended therefrom ...
— 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
... so far as they are truly talkable, more than the half of them may be reduced to three: that I am I, that you are you, and that there are other people dimly understood to be not quite the same as either. Wherever talk may range, it still runs half the time on these eternal lines. The theme being set, each plays on himself as on an instrument; asserts and justifies himself; ransacks his brain for instances and opinions, and brings them forth new-minted, to his own surprise and the admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose follies might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained a woman still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite justified in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse, a young man of eighteen, handsome as Antinous, poor as Job, who ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... remarked that he could not better open up his theme than by explaining what was meant by disinfection. He would do so by an illustration from Greek literature. When Achilles had slain Hector, the body still lay on the plain of Troy for twelve days after; the god Hermes found it there and went and told ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... linnet sat upon a thorn At evening chime. Its sweet refrain fell like the rain Of summer-time. Of summer-time when roses bloomed, And bright above A rainbow spanned my fairy-land Of hope and love! Of hope and love! O linnet, cease Thy mocking theme! I ne'er picked up the golden cup In all my dream! In all my dream I missed the prize Should have been mine; And dreams won't die! though fain would I, And ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... murderous onslaught, attacked their settlements and destroyed them; but being attacked and defeated in turn by Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman governor, she put, in her despair, an end to her life by poison, A.D. 61. Cowper made her the theme of one of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that procured for his namesake the seat at Wendover. Burke made his first speech in the House of Commons a few days after the opening of the session of 1766 (January 27), and was honoured by a compliment from Pitt, still the Great Commoner. A week later he spoke again on the same momentous theme, the complaints of the American colonists, and his success was so marked that good judges predicted, in the stiff phraseology of the time, that he would soon add the palm of the orator to the laurel of the writer and the philosopher. The friendly Dr. Johnson wrote to Langton that Burke had gained ...
— Burke • John Morley
... though we shall have to notice hereafter the parallel development of the representation of the gods in Hellenistic sculpture. The Alexandrian poets expressed in elegant language their learning on matters of religion and mythology, but there was no living belief in the subjects which they made their theme; and the art they inspired could only show the same qualities of a correct and academic eclecticism. The idylls of Theocritus find, indeed, a parallel in the playful treatment of Satyrs and other subjects of a similar character; but these belong to what may be called mythological ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... and Scottish ballads concerning fairies, none of much importance touching our present theme. They may be best studied in Child's collection, Nos. 35-41, where under Tam Lin he has put together the main features of fairy-lore revealed in traditional ballads.[68] One or two such points may ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... known that a piece of one hundred and six pounds weight had been disembowelled from the earth, at one time. This immense quantity was the discovery of a native, who, being excited by the universal theme of conversation, provided himself with a tomahawk, and explored the country adjacent to his employer's land. He was attracted by a glittering yellow substance on the surface of a block of quartz. With his tomahawk ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... a wonderful, wonderful theme—a voyage into the dark—a battle to be fought, a victory to be won, a mountain to be climbed, or perhaps no mountain at all, but just a long, long road, on a dead level plain. Work and effort, and failure and success, sorrow ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Paul, encouraged to talk and stimulated by precious memories, grew interesting. The Princess managed to secure a set of listeners at the opposite side of the table. Suddenly, as if carrying on the theme, she said in a deliberately loud voice, compelling attention: "Your Royal Highness, I ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of the first canoe, which was painted black, was seated Laea, surrounded by her women attendants, who joined in the wild singing whenever the name of their mistress formed the singers' theme. ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... this book betokens the personal attractiveness of its author and the dignity and importance of its theme. It was written by Luke, "the beloved physician," and it concerns the life and saving work of our Lord. The phrase which describes the writer as "the physician, the beloved one," is full of significance. It was penned by Paul, when a prisoner ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... criticism or descriptions, but what may be called the general literature of art—the lives of artists, the history of the various schools, even mythology and the lives of the saints; which last were the favorite theme during the best period everywhere except in England, whose native art is not much over a century old. This is within the reach of every one on this side the Atlantic, and to know what a picture is about is to have one source ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... dwelling on this theme, I was thinking of the parting look she gave her boy; a look which had some strange promise in it. What had that look meant and why did my flesh creep and my mind hover between dread and a fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas! There was reason for all these sensations ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... shoot upward in deep, livid lines along the neck and face, and wreathe his forehead. All eyes were turned upon him, and each hearer began to feel the kindlings of a strange inspiration. But the speaker was lost to everything except his theme. He dashed on from one burning thought to another, carrying his audience with him, in such storms of eloquence as had never before enchanted the walls of ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... a certain Dr. Raffay was appointed, who spoke nothing but Magyar and some words of German.... However, by taking in this way a few examples of Magyar methods, one may be accused of having chosen merely those which illustrate one's theme. It would be hazardous to draw conclusions as to Magyar officers in general because a certain Lieutenant Chaby, who, during the War, found himself quartered on a Serbian family of the name of Stejvovi['c] at ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... who saw them not. "He is working out that passage in the Politics that your tutor makes such a pother about," said the other. "Not a bit of it," cried Brunson, "for that would pay." But they gave him credit, at all events, for some classic theme, and not for the discoveries he was making in that other subject which is not classic, though universal; whereas the only text that entered into his dreams was that past tense, opening up so many vistas of thought which he had not realised ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the door, she muttered, "That gal don't never show no gratitude fer favors;" to which Bud rejoined that he didn't think she had no great sight to be pertickler thankful fer. To which Mrs. Means made no reply, thinking it best, perhaps, not to wake up her dutiful son on so interesting a theme as her treatment of Hannah. Ralph felt glad that he was this evening to go to another boarding place. He should not hear the rest ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... net, and the brooding sadness began to fade from her face. The preacher had come down from the pulpit with a certain exhilaration, as of duty done. He was inspired to hope, and even certainty, by the greatness of the theme. Helen should see the truth, his silence should no longer mislead her, she should believe in the justice of God. He had forgotten his sin of cowardice in the onward-sweeping wave of his convictions; he seemed to yield himself up to the grasp ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of its highest general problems. It must be regarded, therefore, with satisfaction that the speaker on such an august occasion as this—the seventy-fifth anniversary of your Society—has selected as the subject of his address a theme of the highest general importance. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more the custom on such occasions, and even at the general meetings of the great "Association of German Naturalists and Physicians," ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... Convert more than half inspir'd, Strait to his Closet and his Books retir'd. There for all needful Arts in this extreme, For knotty Sophistry t'a limber Theme, Long brooding ere the Mass to Shape was brought, And after many a tugging heaving Thought, Together a well-orderd Speech he draws, With ponderous Sounds for his much-labour'd Cause. Then the astonisht Sanedrim he storm'd, And with ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... those misty nights of murky gloom, common in early spring to this latitude. Its form was unique and exaggerated, with flaming eyes, and mouth of huge proportions, with long, pointed teeth, white and sharp. For weeks, this gorgon of my imagination constituted the theme of neighborhood gossip. Several negroes had seen it, and fled its fierce pursuit, barely escaping its voracious mouth and attenuated claws, through the fleetness of fear. The old hardshell Baptist ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... morn long before, And then forgotten. Now, as he paused to gaze, A ray of inspiration seemed to dart Straight from those eyes to his. He took the sketch, Placed it before his easel, and with care That seemed but pleasure, painted a fair theme, Touching and still re-touching each bright lineament, Until all seemed to glow with life divine— 'Twas innocence personified. But still The artist could not pause. He needs must have A meet companion ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... to the world, even if successful. But the man who is born with the insatiable desire to do something, to see what other men have not seen, to push into the waste places of the world, to make a new discovery, to develop a new theme or enrich an old, to contribute, in other words, to the fund of human knowledge, is always something more than a mere seeker for notoriety; he belongs, however slight may be his actual contribution to knowledge, however ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... element of background for Jean Valjean is poverty. The people of this drama are named "the miserable ones." And poverty is modern and a modern question. All socialists, anarchists, and communists talk of poverty; this is their one theme. Superficial social reformers make poverty responsible for the total turpitude of men. Men are poor, hence criminal. Jean Valjean is poor—miserably poor; sees his sister's children hungry, and commits crime, is a thief; becomes a galley slave as punitive result. Ergo, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... refused to declare who was her intended murderer; and though, by his having been known to be her sweetheart, and his flight from the country where he never more appeared, people were sufficiently convinced who the man was, yet her pertinacious theme was—she would never be his accuser: if God ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of the matter as can be found is in a casual phrase of Stedman's in the Introduction to his "American Anthology." This true poet and master-critic, in pursuit of another idea, alludes to poetry as "being a rhythmical expression of emotion and ideality." Here at last we have form, spirit, and theme combined in one terse utterance. In poetry we look for the musical metre, the recurrent refrain of rhythm; while that which inspires it arises from the universal motives which Coleridge names ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... that I am one of those who agree with the missionary writer in regarding "the smile of a Chinese woman as inexpressibly charming." I have seen girls in China who would be considered beautiful in any capital in Europe. The attractiveness of the Japanese lady has been the theme of many writers, but, speaking as an impartial observer who has been both in Japan and China, I have never been able to come to any other decision than that in every feature the Chinese woman is superior to her Japanese sister. She is head and shoulders above the Japanese; ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... with renewed ardour to the theatre, with which, even at this time, my family was in close touch. Den Freischutz in particular appealed very strongly to my imagination, mainly on account of its ghostly theme. The emotions of terror and the dread of ghosts formed quite an important factor in the development of my mind. From my earliest childhood certain mysterious and uncanny things exercised an enormous influence over me. If I were left alone in a room ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... intended to strike somewhere between a temperance lecture and the "Bartender's Guide." Relative to the latter, drink shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to the former, not an elbow ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... taking up apparently a thought which Paoli, as reported by Boswell, had thrown out in conversation, proposed to Cowper the Mediterranean for a topic. 'He replied, "Unless I were a better historian than I am, there would be no proportion between the theme and my ability. It seems, indeed, not to be so properly a subject for one poem, as for a dozen."' Southey's Cowper, iii. 15, and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... title was hit on a hap-hazard, and retained because it was singular, but as it has given a poet a theme, and a painter a name for pictures of a peculiar size, its etymology has become important. Some say that the pastry cook in Shire Lane, at whose house it was held, was named Christopher Katt. Some one or other was certainly ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... pen of a romancer I might enlarge on this sensational theme. But I am a man of action, whose business it is to record facts, not to comment ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... experiences preparatory to industrial life. The first two methods secure skill, but the schools secure learning. The first two might be said to educate the hands and the latter the head. The comparative advantages of these contrasted systems is the theme of unceasing debate. The man skilled in one thing can at least do that one thing well. The man who is learned but not skilled in any activity of his chosen occupation is unable to compete with the boys who at the expense of schooling, "went to ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... one theme of conversation was Emma. Everybody said to him, "Have you seen Emma?" and when he said "Yes," everybody demanded, "Have you heard her?" and when he said "No" everybody said, "Just ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... game was being played out, one of Walpole's most valued neighbours, Pope, was dying of dropsy, and every evening a gentle delirium possessed him. Again does Horace return to the theme, ever in his thoughts—the Carterets: again does he recount their triumphs and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... gave tangible proof of this in a lengthy treatise on 'Instrumental Music,' which appeared in Kolatschek's German monthly journal. He also sent to me another strictly theoretical work on the 'Structure of Musical Theme and Phrase.' In this he showed the originality of his ideas about Mozart's and Beethoven's methods, to an extent which was only equalled by the thoroughness with which he had mastered the question, especially where he discussed their highly characteristic differences. This clear and ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... "Herr Beyerlein's theme is the decadence of the German Army. That it is decadent he has no doubt at all, and he is a close, careful and not unfriendly observer. But the writer who deals boldly and broadly with the German ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... place of the old. I believe it to be, however, a far fuller version of Marie's "Lays" than has yet appeared, to my knowledge, in English. Marie's poems are concerned chiefly with love. To complete my book I have added two famous mediaeval stories on the same excellent theme. This, then, may be regarded as a volume of French romances, dealing, generally, with ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... method of exposition, beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into a dissertation on Grushenka's "first lover," and brought forward several interesting thoughts on this theme. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Baron Hugo von Reischach, at that time a very handsome lieutenant of the "Garde-du-Corps," but who afterward became gentleman-in-waiting to the widowed Empress Frederick, and married one of the princesses of Hohenlohe. This flirtation between Baron Reischach and Princess Victoria formed the theme of quite a number of the anonymous letters, in which the princess was charged with every kind of indelicacy, while the unfortunate baron was ridiculed in connection with the modernity of his nobility. Other love affairs of "poor Vicky" were likewise ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... the domains which he is to inherit, I shall never perhaps set foot again: in the halls where he will one day preside as master, I shall never more be sheltered. Let me now quit the subject of my elder brother, and turn to a theme which is nearer to my heart; dear to me as the last remembrance left that I can love; precious beyond all treasures in my solitude and my exile ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... am not aware of it, indeed, in any poets but our own. All others, from Homer, with his catalogue of leaders and ships, down to Metastasio himself, though he wrote for music, appear to have overlooked this opportunity of playing a voluntary of fine sounds, where they had no other theme on which to modulate. Its inventor, as far as I am aware, is that great ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... mosaics and of the most costly marbles, and the splendid effects produced by the mode of introducing light, which is admitted much as at Santa Sophia, are perhaps its greatest charm; but there is beauty in every aspect of its interior which has furnished a fit theme for the pen of the most eloquent writer on art and architecture of the present or perhaps ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... this is a very solemn subject! No theme of earth could be more so. All our earthly benefits, and no small part of our spiritual privileges and hopes are wrapped up in it. Religion cannot prosper, if Law is not potential—if the minds of the people are to be perpetually agitated, ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... different nature were the "Inventions from the Book of Job," which are pronounced the most remarkable series of etchings on a Scriptural theme that have been produced since the days of Rembrandt and Albrecht Duerer. Of these drawings we have copies in the second volume of the "Life," from which one can gather something of their grandeur, their bold originality, their inexhaustible and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... that the turnback was gone, the main theme of conversation was the discovery and exposure of ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... we find, in the half-random and wholly scurrile slander of womankind, a touch of real humour, of the humour that has feeling behind it, as here, where a sufficiently ribald variation on the theme of the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of the Spanish Armada, a chapter in English history which has usually occupied a large space in the chronicle of Raleigh and his times. Mrs. Creighton's excellent little volume on the latter and wider theme may be recommended to those who wish to see Raleigh painted not in a full-length portrait, but in an historical composition of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. I have to thank Dr. Brushfield for the use of his valuable Raleigh bibliography, now in the press, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... that, according to the opinion of some ladies, there is no domestic theme, during a certain period of their married lives, more fraught with vexation and disquietude than that ever-fruitful source of annoyance, "the Nurse;" but, as we believe, there are thousands of excellent wives and mothers who pass through life without even a temporary embroglio in the kitchen, or ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... was still talking of me. The room was crowded, for Rodenard alone had brought with him my twenty followers. One of these looked up as I brushed past him, and uttered a cry of surprise upon recognizing me. But Rodenard talked on, engrossed in his theme to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... a high turn, as it often does on such occasions. The ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the frustration of many a promising youth's high aims and hopes and the extinction of his energies by an early imprudent marriage, was the theme. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... chance came. Then I chose my own theme, and on the subject of "Modern Oracles'' poured forth my views to a church full of people; many evidently disgusted, but a few as evidently pleased. I dwelt especially upon sundry utterances of John Quincy Adams, who had died not long before, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... attentive, listening with breathless interest as he enlarged upon the awful events of the Judgment. Many a tear fell, many a heart throbbed, many a soul stretched forth her wings toward the kingdom and glory which had been the clergyman's theme. ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... insensibly into a Theme, that requires rather a Volume, than a Page or two; I hasten therefore to present you a Paraphrase on the Six Days Work of the Creator, as described to us by Moses, in the First Chapter of Genesis, which, you know, ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... former gave him some influence among the young women of the valley; while the latter was no less the admiration of the young men, and at fair and dance, and at bridal, happy was he who touched but her hand, or received the benediction of her eye. Like all other Scottish beauties, she was the theme of many a song; and while tradition is yet busy with the singular history of her brother, song has taken all the care that rustic minstrelsy can of the gentleness of her spirit and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Gertrude, who had always held an attraction for the child Irene. Wealthy, beautiful, and accomplished, she had married a man who had already made for himself a name in statesmanship, a cultured and polished gentleman, and her bridal had been the theme of the day. But the fiend of intemperance had wrought destruction of her brilliant prospects, and made her life an open scandal. When it could no longer be borne, she gathered up the wreck of her fortune and her two little girls, and opened a boarding-school in a quiet, aristocratic ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... been said of the effect of fine scenery upon the development of genius. And as this is the theme of one-half of the "Minstrel," we must be permitted a few remarks on it. The finest scenery in the world cannot, then, 'create' genius. A dunce, born in the Vale of Tempe, will remain a dunce still. And, on the other hand, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... inheritance of every American citizen; and I felt, as I looked upon it, and remembered how many voices of patriotic fervor have filled it—how here the first movement originated from which the Revolution sprang; how here began the system of town meetings and free discussion—that, though my theme was more humble than theirs, as befitted my humbler powers, I had enough to warn me that I was assuming much to speak in this sacred chamber. But, when I heard your distinguished orator say that words uttered here could never die, that they lived and became ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... were conducted to a large cabin, built of palmetto leaves and bamboo, and requested not to leave it until their arrival had been announced to the king. The peculiar courtesy and good breeding of these islanders was the constant theme of remark of Philip and Krantz; their religion, as well as their dress, appeared to be a compound ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... upon this theme, the cunning precautions taken by mankind and their utter confusion by "Fate and Fortune." In such matters the West remarks, "Ce que femme ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the strength, which constitute permanent power,—that it is so saturated with life, with literary allusion, with the symbolism of Nature, as to make us dwell on the mere sentences with delight, apart from all thought of argument or theme. This it is to be a literary artist; and as Miss Prescott may justly claim to rank among these favored ones, she must be tried by the code which befits her station. There is not, perhaps, another individual among us who could have written the delicious descriptions of external Nature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Billie very tightly, and did not notice her gasp of amazement. He went forward to assist Dona Jocasta, whose hesitating half glance about her only enhanced the wonder of jewel-green eyes whose beauty had been theme ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... cable was a theme of inspiration for innumerable sermons and a prodigious quantity of doggerel. Among the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Househill (a seat in the vicinity) to Cruikston Castle, the country is rich, and the scenery delightful. The castle itself might be the subject of volumes, as it has been the theme of many a poet, and the subject of many a painter's pencil. Its name is known all over the world, or may be so, from the circumstance of its once having been the residence of Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Lord Darnly; and though the famed yew-tree decks not now the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... to smell his wine; but he knows full well also that these two preliminaries ought to be immediately followed by the taking of the fluid into the front part of the mouth. Colour and smell are merely two notes introductory to a gastronomic theme; if they are only by themselves they lose their relative value, and the theme ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... theme I must not linger now. Not only because "the time would fail me," but because we have to remember that the main incidence of the Apostle's thought here is not upon the blessedness of death but upon the joy of duty, the "fruit of labour," in continued life. He looks in through the gate, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... the most important is undue movement of the affected part. "The first and great requisite for the restoration of injured parts is rest," said John Hunter; and physiological and mechanical rest as the chief of natural therapeutic agents was the theme of John Hilton's classical work—Rest and Pain. In this connection it must be understood that "rest" implies more than the mere state of physical repose: all physiological as well as mechanical function must be ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... migration of the Dorians, in their Thessalian territories; and thence splitting into various hordes, descended as warriors and invaders upon the different states of Greece. They appear to have attached themselves to maritime situations, and the wealth of their early settlements is the theme of many a legend. The opulence of Orchomenus is compared by Homer to that of Egyptian Thebes. And in the time of the Trojan war, Corinth was already termed "the wealthy." By degrees the Aeolians became in a great measure blended and intermingled with the Dorians. Yet so intimately connected ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... emetic'd, too, and clyster'd, And con amore, bled and blister'd, In the old Hospital, which stood Unscathed by tempest, fire, or flood, For fifty years, to be down cast, By chance, or carelessness, at last, Theme for conjecture, most prolific, Another phase of the Pacific Railway which will cause a broil, Unless 'tis built on British soil! And there, too, Joseph Coombs was found, With solemn step his march around Among the patients, pacing slowly— ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... I know of the "as" I have gathered from the French satirical paper, a child of the War, La Baionette. This paper comes out every week and devotes itself, as its forerunner, L'Assiette au Beurre, used to do, to one theme at a time, one phase or facet of the struggle, usually in the army, but also in civil life, where changes due to the War steadily occur. In the number dedicated to the glory of the "as" I find recorded an incident of the French Army so moving that I want to tell it here, ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... Without accompaniment he played the little song, "Beware," that Patty had sung, and, improvising, he made a fantasia of the air. He was clever as well as skilled, and he turned the simple little melody into thrilling, rollicking music with trills and roulades until the original theme was almost lost sight of, only to crop up again with ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... and shuffled out, and then the tongues were once more loosened, the husband attendant had been ordered home with his two charges, and the chief subject of their converse was Doctor Heath, and the strange influence he had exerted upon John Burrill; and a fruitful theme they ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... after a little, the talk about this theme died out, and things settled down, not without some of the reaction Mr. Dillwyn had predicted; but they settled down, and all was as before in Shampuashuh. Mr. Dillwyn did not come again to make a visit, or Mrs. Marx's aroused vigilance ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... end of October. D'Ache arrived there the same evening while they were at dinner. They talked rather vaguely of the great project, but much of their old Chouan comrades. In spite of his decided German accent Flierle was inexhaustible on this theme. He and d'Ache slept in the same room, and this intimacy lasted two whole days, at the end of which it was decided that Flierle should be employed as a messenger at a salary of fifty crowns a month. That same night, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... magistrates: they rejected it, asking, like the notables, for a communication as to the state of finance. "It is not states of finance we want," exclaimed a councillor, Sabatier de Cabre, "it is States-general." This bold sally became a theme for deliberation in the Parliament. "The nation represented by the States-general," the court declared, "is alone entitled to grant the king subsidies of which the need is clearly demonstrated." At the same time ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... joy, kept bobbing back into our minds as we saw other lovers in other lands, married and single, crossing our paths. And there was the Young Doctor, diffident and reticent, who had his heart set on the girl, and the contest furnished us with a deathless theme for speculation. And here at Milan came this letter—just a note forwarded from Paris—telling us that the Gilded Youth could "stand and wait" no longer; he was going to hit back. He had quit the Ambulance service for aviation. And he was in a training camp ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... chapter civ 30 THE FOSSIL WHALE > From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights he .. should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist; only think ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the full the titanic character of the struggle between man and nature in the forest, and has reproduced it in his pages with an enthusiasm and strength of insight worthy of his theme."—The St. James Gazette. ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... part of our history which tells of the military achievements which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valour with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it by. But what was the road by which we reached our position, what the form of government under which our greatness grew, what the national habits out of which ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... to go on the stage,' went on Mr Warden, pursuing his theme. 'With that face he would make his fortune. You can't help laughing when you see it. One ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Dr. Middleton, this time hastily. He tingled to say, "what it was": he had it in him to solve perplexity in their inquiry. He did say, adopting familiar speech to suit the theme, "You know, ladies, we English come of a rough stock. A dose of rough dealing in our youth does us no harm, braces us. Otherwise we are likely to feel chilly: we grow too fine where tenuity of stature is necessarily buffetted by gales, namely, in our self-esteem. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook-side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject" are depicted by the truly original pencil of this said Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. i., p. 126, edit. 1804. But our theme is Bibliomania. Take, therefore, concerning the same author, the following: and then hesitate, if thou canst, about his being infected with the BOOK-DISEASE. "What a catalogue of new books all this year, all this age (I say) have our Frank-furt marts, our domestic marts, brought out! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose follies might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained a woman still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite justified in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse, a young ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... made acquaintance very rapidly. The Exposition was a theme of great and common interest, discussed at every meal, and on the days when they stayed at home to rest; for all found it necessary to do so occasionally, while some of the ladies and little ones could scarcely endure the fatigue of attending ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... man can speak upon his theme with more familiarity. I have lived the gentleman, the soldier, the out-law, and the convict, living the best twenty-five years of my life in a felon's cell. I have no desire to pose as a martyr, for men who sin must suffer, but I will punctuate my remarks with bold ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... my theme I rightly think, There are five reasons why men drink,— Good wine, a friend, because I 'm dry, Or lest I should be by and by, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Mr. H.C. BAILEY called his latest story The Young Lovers (METHUEN) he was doing it something less than justice. For the width and variety of the plot make it far more than a mere love-tale. Arma virique are quite as much Mr. BAILEY'S theme as Cupid, who indeed makes a rather belated appearance at the tag end. Before that we have a vast deal of agreeable adventuring. The scene is set in the period of the Peninsular War; all the characters, lovers, parents and hangers-on, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... not leave his listeners long in doubt as to his personal history. He enjoyed talking about himself. He was a Professor of archaeology, and had written various learned books on the subject. But his studies had by no means been confined to the one theme. History had also interested him profoundly. He had published a work on the old houses of England. The Priory figured among them. It was not difficult to discover from the conversation of this singular man, whose subtle and secretive instincts were contradicted, at times, by a strange ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... to explain the secret meanings of his art, whether he would not burst out laughing? Such is the fate of men of genius: every one holds that he has understood them better than his neighbor, and restores them in his own way. They are like a beautiful theme given by God which men distort into a thousand different meanings—a canvas upon which the imagination of man paints and embroiders after its ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which Christ and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the former is classed with Prometheus. This book of "Spiridion" is a continuation of the theme, and perhaps you will listen to some of the author's ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... developed his theme of the "American invasion." Winnipeg was one danger spot, British Columbia another. The "peaceful penetration," both of men and capital, was going on so rapidly that a movement for annexation, were it once started ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... positions, if well established, might seem to supersede the necessity of discussing the hypothesis at all in connection with our present theme. But such a discussion of it as has been offered may be useful to those—and they are not a few—who, superficially acquainted with Science in its more popular form, are exposed to the danger of being seduced by the authority of a few distinguished names which have unfortunately become identified ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... he said—"Love is the subject,—Love the theme! We are taught that we must love God and love our neighbor—but we don't, because we can't! In the case of God we cannot love what we don't know and don't see,—and we cannot love our neighbor because he is often a person whom we DO know and CAN see, and who is extremely offensive. Now ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... has drawn attention to the great similarity between the theme of John Gabriel Borkman and that of Pillars of Society. "In both," he says, "we have a business man of great ability who is guilty of a crime; in both this man is placed between two sisters; and in both he renounces a marriage of inclination ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... but we are not arguing a case—we are recording facts. They did cheer, and cheer with a will, too. It was not, perhaps, taking the view of either side, Federal or Confederate, but in admiration of the skill, pluck, and daring of the Alabama, her captain, and her crew, who now afford a general theme of admiration for the world ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... such cases put on a serious face and began speaking with killing irony on the theme of weakness of character, of the animal delight of intoxication, and on such subjects as suited the occasion. One must do him justice: he was captivated by his role of mentor and moralist, but the lodgers dogged him, and, listening sceptically to his ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... recommend to others a new and delightful hobby, and possibly bring to bear upon my theme an accumulation of knowledge and combination of light. Gravestone hunting implies long walks in rural scenes, with all the expectations, none of the risks, and few of the disappointments of other pursuits. From ten to fifteen miles may be mapped out for a fair day's trudge, and will probably ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... expressly for this book, as well as Chapter XIII, "Hints on the Ancestry of Insects." The scientific reader may be drawn with greater interest to this chapter than to any other portion of the book. In this discussion of a perhaps abstruse and difficult theme, his indulgence is sought for whatever imperfections or deficiencies may appear. Our systems of classification may at least be tested by the application of the theory of evolution. The natural system, if ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... nights of murky gloom, common in early spring to this latitude. Its form was unique and exaggerated, with flaming eyes, and mouth of huge proportions, with long, pointed teeth, white and sharp. For weeks, this gorgon of my imagination constituted the theme of neighborhood gossip. Several negroes had seen it, and fled its fierce pursuit, barely escaping its voracious mouth and attenuated claws, through the fleetness of fear. The old hardshell Baptist preacher, of the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Here was a theme for a sermon from the patriarch, who now leaned upon his hoe and shook his head with a slow ruminative motion, as if he hoped by this action to disengage from it some profound moral reflections, and then ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... o'clock. Frau Bornsted says one always does that in the country here when invited to afternoon coffee. I won't tell you any more of what they said, because it was all on exactly the same lines, the older men singling me out one by one and very loudly telling me variations of Pastor Wienicke's theme, the women going for me in twos and threes, more definitely bloodthirsty than the men, more like Frau Berg on the subject of blood-letting, more openly greedy. They were all disconcerted and uneasy because nothing more has been heard of the Austrian assassination. The silence from Vienna ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... falling'). I now returned with renewed ardour to the theatre, with which, even at this time, my family was in close touch. Den Freischutz in particular appealed very strongly to my imagination, mainly on account of its ghostly theme. The emotions of terror and the dread of ghosts formed quite an important factor in the development of my mind. From my earliest childhood certain mysterious and uncanny things exercised an enormous ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... in 1663, who comforted him in his closing years; a man of fervent, impulsive temperament, and a lover of music, he was sincere in controversy, magnanimous in character, and of deep religious faith; the richness, melody, and simplicity of his poetry, the sublimity of his great theme, and the adequacy of its treatment, place him among the greatest poets of the world; in later years he leaned to Arianism, and broke away from the restraints of outward religious practice; his last prose work, a Latin ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... threatens the Silver Fox Patrol when on one of their vacation trips to the wonderland of the great Northwest. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of the story, which abounds in plenty of humor, and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... everywhere replaces the isolated shop by the syndicated enterprise, irrationally conceited about it; a man perhaps ultimately to be pitied—with this young goddess finding herself.... Mr. Brumley's mind sat down comfortably to the more congenial theme of a young goddess finding herself, and it was only very gradually in the course of several days that the personality of Sir Isaac began to assume its proper importance in ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... produce the events, that enchant the imagination, and ennoble the page of history: infancy must always pass away in the unimportance of mirth, and the privacy of retreat. That government however is a theme so much superior to education, is not perhaps so evident, as we may ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... combination, the little allegro in 3/8, of which a whole bar represents one-third, or one beat of that of the minuetto, and the other allegro in 2/4, of which a whole bar represents two-thirds, or two beats, correspond with each other and with the principal theme; while the whole proceeds without the slightest confusion. All that is requisite is to make them ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... throw aside the green baize that has held his piccolo so long, and before the middle of the month there will not be a tuft of grass nor a shelter of low-lying leaves that is not alive with the shrill, complaining sweetness of his theme. The goldenrod has lighted the candles in the candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, and the aster has already hung out her purple gown and her yellow laces upon the bushes that follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... translation of the text, though that of course was admirably done, as in the copious notes and explanations which he had gathered together for the purpose of annotating the book. He had made this subject a study of years, though his actual translation of it only took him eighteen months. The theme of The Scented Garden is one which is familiar to every student of Oriental literature. Burton, who was nothing if not thorough in all he undertook, did not ignore this. In fact, one may say that from his early ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... Pearce Ripley was only the boatswain's son; and hearing this, Bonham took great care to recount to them his gallant act on the 1st of June, and to speak otherwise in his praise. Dick forward did not fail to make the young midshipman his theme, and there the fact of his parentage was undoubtedly in his favour. "We shall be, no doubt, alongside an enemy some day soon, and then will be seen what stuff the youngsters are made of," was the remark of several on board. They were not wrong ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... wrote for him, and in many ways was his hands and eyes. He in turn talked to her of the things that filled his mind. The betterment of man was an ever-present theme with them. It pleased him to trace for her the world's history from its early beginning when all was misty tradition, down through the uncertain centuries of early civilization ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... type of chameleon-like girl whose vagaries and "sweet uncertainties" form the theme of many short stories, in most of which she is pictured as ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... a theme that I really hesitate to touch it; and yet it is so true and so useful that I will. It is true all the time, and it is particularly useful at this season of the year to men in cities: to all repetitive men: to the men that read these words. What is more, true as it is and useful as it is, no ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... have large recourse to "big names," not because of inbred snobbishness on the part of the editors but because the "big name," besides carrying advertising value, is more likely than a little one to stand for material with a "big" theme, handled by a writer of experience. A surer touch in selecting and handling topics of nation-wide appeal is what counts most heavily in favor of the writer with an established reputation. Often enough it is not his vastly superior craftsmanship. I know of several ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... heretical at the time when it was made, is now little more than a commonplace. We have long recognized that Pope's Homer is not the real Homer; it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, as does Mr. Andrew Lang, "It is almost as if he had taken Homer's theme and written the poem himself."[458] Yet it is surprising to see how nearly the eighteenth-century ambition, "to write a poem that will live in the English language" has been answered in the case of Pope. Though the "tinsel" of his embellishment is no longer even "modern," his translation ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... and place. Writers therefore have tried to remedy this by introducing different people of the same name. Hence Dionusus is multiplied into as many [861]personages as Hercules. His history was looked upon as very interesting; and therefore was the chief theme of all the antient [862]bards. His flight, styled [Greek: phuge Dionusou], was particularly [863]recorded. He was the same as Osiris; and many of the later mythologists acknowledged this truth. [Greek: Aiguptioi ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... claimed that because Vergil was essentially a poet of rural life, he was especially fitted to be the national poet, since the Roman life was founded on the agricultural country life. He also chose a theme which particularly appealed to the patriotism of the Romans. For this reason, the poem was immediately received into popular favor, and was made a text-book of the Roman youths. It is often said of Vergil by way of reproach, that his work was an imitation ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... 'neath crowns be now my theme? Shall I boast, ye princes, that ye dream?— While the worm the monarch's heart may tear, Golden sleep twines round the Moor by stealth, As he, at the palace, guards the wealth, Guards—but ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... conversational gifts, Mr. Carlyle wrote: "They were the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts, from the gracefullest allusions of courtesy to the highest fire of passionate speech, loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... needed Hamish more than they knew. It was the anxiety for the mother, the sleepless nights and unoccupied days, that, all together, unnerved Shenac Bhan. It was the dwelling on the same theme, the going over and over the same thing—"nothing would happen to him?"—"he would be sure to come?"—till the words seemed to mock her, they made her so weary of hoping ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the Baron, warming with his theme, which seemed to be a congenial one; "just look here; see the position of this Roman court. They can actually levy taxes on the whole world. Voluntary contributions, Sir, are a wonderful power. Think of our missionary societies—our Sabbath-school organizations in the States. Think ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... of what he left untold, and it seemed to her that one who knew how men lived in the lonely logging camps through the iron winter, or drove the new track across the prairie through the thaw slush in spring, could make an epic of such a theme. It was toil that taxed man's utmost strength of body and mind, under the Arctic frost, and, what was even worse to bear, in half-thawed mire. She had once seen the track-graders trooping back, wet to the skin, worn out, and clogged with soil to the knees, to the reeking shanty ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... patriotism should exclude partisanship. Magnifying their difficulties will not take them off our hands nor facilitate their adjustment. Distrust of the capacity, integrity, and high purposes of the American people will not be an inspiring theme for future political contests. Dark pictures and gloomy forebodings are worse than useless. These only becloud, they do not help to point the way of safety and honor. "Hope maketh not ashamed." The prophets of evil were not the builders ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... most important part of his task is to explain the long course of events that prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his theme. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... which at once attracts and repels readers, attracts all those who are, in however small a degree, kindred spirits, and repels, perhaps, others. The quaintness, oddity, flippancy, are wrought together with deep thought, poetry, and feeling to a wonderful degree. The very diversity of theme and manner—this varying change from grave to gay, from lively to severe—is indeed but a reflection of life itself, which with the most fortunate of us dashes our smiles with tears, and even to the most unfortunate imparts something ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... and Health. New York: Devin Adair, 1947. Also published in London by Faber & Faber, titled Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease. A full development of Howard's theme that humus is health for plants, animals and ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... knew so many sciences was acquainted with music? Alfarabi made no reply, but merely requested that a lute should be brought him. The lute was brought; and he played such ravishing and tender melodies, that all the court were melted into tears. He then changed his theme, and played airs so sprightly, that he set the grave philosophers, sultan and all, dancing as fast as their legs could carry them. He then sobered them again by a mournful strain, and made them sob and sigh as if broken-hearted. The sultan, highly delighted with his powers, entreated him to stay, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... in "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," but he reached perfection only in some compositions intended as sequels to that book, namely, "Suspiria de Profundis," and "The English Mail Coach," with its "Vision of Sudden Death," and "Dream-Fugue" upon the theme of ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... our semi-anniversaries calls for a variation in our thankful expressions to the public for their continued patronage. Yet we are prone to confess ourselves puzzled to ring the changes even on so pleasurable a theme as gratitude—although it is equally delightful to the donor and receiver. We will, however, persevere, to keep our friendship with the public in constant repair, and to gain new friends; for it is in the course of a periodical work as elsewhere in the world: "if a man does not make ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... day we went up the hill, but no ship was to be seen, and we began to form all sorts of conjectures as to her whereabouts; and the theme of every evening's conversation at the different houses, and in our afternoon's paseo upon the beach, was the ship,— where she could be, had she been to San Francisco, how many hides she would bring, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... lasted. Those were days when Methodism was at its most harsh; the pure, if fierce, white flame of Whitefield and Thomson and Wesley had become obscured by the redder glare and smoke of that place whose existence seemed the chief part of these latter-day Methodists' creed. Hell was the theme of sermon and hymn—a hell of concrete terrors enough to scare children in their beds at night. Thanks to the Parson, Ishmael had hitherto been kept out of this maelstrom of gloomy fears, but now that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... as capable of romantic treatment, but in the hands of Miss Dougall it has yielded results which are calculated to attract the general public as well as the student of psychology.... Miss Dougall has handled a difficult theme with conspicuous delicacy; the most sordid details of the narrative are redeemed by the glamour of her style, her analysis of the strangely mixed character of the prophet is remarkable for its detachment and impartiality, while in Susannah Halsey she has given us a really beautiful ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the biggest thing in the whole created world was a big scoop—an exclusive, world-beating, bottled-up scoop of a scoop. Nothing that could possibly come into a reporter's life was one-half so big and so glorious and satisfying. He warmed to his theme: ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... be still another theme wrought out by iron hands upon the old, the world-old, world-wide keynote? How far were the consequences of that dreadful day's work at the irrigating ditch to reach? To what length was the tentacle ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... proud Potowmac's stream, Might sages still pursue the flattering theme Of days to come, when man shall conquer fate, Rise o'er the level of his mortal state, Belie the monuments of frailty past, And plant perfection in this world at last! "Here," might they say, "shall ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of our globe, and the division of its surface into land and water, was a fertile theme for conjecture; and many learned and otherwise sagacious writers, assigned imaginary causes for the results ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... terrible. Why, in reading the Decalogue from the altar, Mr. Meekin was accustomed to soften one indecent prohibition, lest its uncompromising plainness of speech might offend the delicate sensibilities of his female souls! He turned from the dangerous theme without an instant's pause, for wonder at the strange power accorded to Hobart Town "free" ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... considers himself a profound theologian, and by the pine logs at night discourses to me on the mysteries of the eternal counsels and the divine decrees. Colorado, with its progress and its future, is also a constant theme. He hates England with a bitter, personal hatred, and regards any allusions which I make to the progress of Victoria as a personal insult. He trusts to live to see the downfall of the British monarchy and the disintegration of the empire. He is very fond of talking, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... board their vessel. The object of their remarks, meanwhile, stood once more quietly leaning over the monkey-rail on the weather side of the quarter-deck, quite unconscious that he was supplying a theme of entertainment ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... and then, full of heavy pain, "Drink ye all of this," followed by the famous Grail motive—an old chorale also used by Mendelssohn in the Reformation Symphony. Then comes the noble Faith and Love theme. ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... trouble seemed to be the lack of experience among the officers, which led them after a certain time to simply quit, without being particularly whipped, but because they had fought enough. Their authorities of the present day grow enthusiastic over their theme when telling of these victories, and speak with pride of the large sum of money they forced us to pay in the end. With us, now twenty years after the close of the most stupendous war ever known, we have writers —who profess ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, upon his favourite topic of the advantages of quiet, and contentedness in the state, whatever it may be, that we are placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe in one of those short stages that ply for the western road, in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of John Murray's street—where you get in when it is empty, and are expected to wait till ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of the western members, John Windham, who sate for Salisbury, especially distinguished himself. He had always, he said, looked with dread and aversion on standing armies; and recent experience had strengthened those feelings. He then ventured to touch on a theme which had hitherto been studiously avoided. He described the desolation of the western counties. The people, he said, were weary of the oppression of the troops, weary of free quarters, of depredations, of still fouler crimes which the law called felonies, but ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and they have always been—ha—unfortunately acceptable; but I never was more pleased than with this—ahem—this particular Testimonial.' Arthur was in the act of saying the little he could say on such a theme, when a bell began to ring, and footsteps approached the door. A pretty girl of a far better figure and much more developed than Little Dorrit, though looking much younger in the face when the two were observed together, stopped in the doorway on ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... have never been punished," continued Mrs. Holmes, now auspiciously launched upon her favourite theme. "It has never been necessary. I rule them entirely through love, and they are so accustomed to my methods that they bitterly resent any interference by outsiders. Why, just before we came here, Ebbie, young as he is, put out the left eye of a woman who tried to take his dog away from ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... American journalism for a number of years. He conceived the topic "Should America Have a Westminster Abbey?" and induced some twenty of the foremost men and women of the day to discuss it. When the discussion was presented in the magazine, the form being new and the theme novel, Edward was careful to send advance sheets to the newspapers, which treated it at length in reviews and editorials, with marked effect upon the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... language, so with their folk-lore, which largely shows itself adopted from the Japanese. In the present collection the stories of the Salmon-king (xxxiv.), the Island of Women (xxxiii.), and others, are based on episodes of Japanese tales, sometimes belonging to world-wide cycles of myth, as in the theme of the mortal who eats the deadly food of Hades (xxxv.), which has its typical example in the story of Persephone. On reading the short but curious tale (xvi.), How it was settled who should rule the World, one sees at once that the ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... this interview; and, seeming to think he had ventured far enough for one experiment on their credulity, he dropped that subject and struck off on to others. But the next time he met them he contrived to turn the conversation upon the same theme; when, telling them with a confidential air that, a few days before he left camp, he discovered, on a stream coming in at the upper end of the Megantic, a succession of freshly-constructed beaver dams, which, from the number of houses and other indications around each, he thought must ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... so long intent on one object, was new deprived of its centre of thought. She recurred again and again to the old theme, only to say to herself a hundred times, "Jamie is safe." Had she lived so much upon this child that the secret of her interest had been self-forgetfulness? Her search was ended, and she was ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... the 'cellos' pleading, passionate strain The yearning theme, and let the flute reply In placid melody, while violins complain, And sob, and sigh, With muted string; Then let the oboe half-reluctant sing Of bliss that trembles on the verge of pain, While 'cellos plead and plead again, With throbbing ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... lineage, this Parisian viveur, his intrigues, his jealousies, his practical ungodliness and underlying superstition, his outbursts of temper, his shrewd economy in respect of others, and extensive personal extravagance, offered fit theme, with aid of little romancing, for such a discourse as it just now suited his very ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... perhaps, when under the patronage of Major Carbonnell, and the universal rapture from my supposed wealth, I had treated with hauteur, glad to receive the intelligence, and spread it far and wide. My imposition, as they pleased to term it, was the theme of every party, and many were the indignant remarks of the dowagers who had so often indirectly proposed to me their daughters; and if there was anyone more virulent than the rest, I hardly need say that it was Lady Maelstrom, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Roberto were left alone at the table, they continued talking, and from the general theme as to whether young folk should or should not be ambitious, they passed on to the student's hopes of ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... which were sung by the poet. The theme was Krishna, the lover god, and Radha, the beloved, the Eternal Man and the Eternal Woman, the sorrow that comes from the beginning of time, and the joy without end. The truth of these songs was tested in his inmost heart by everybody ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... praise, Fair Dian, virgin-goddess of the skies! And myriads will raise Their songs, as time yet onward flies, To thee, chaste prompter of the lover's sighs, And of the minstrel's lays! Yet still exhaustless as a theme Shall be thy name— While lives immortal Fame— As when to people the first ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... artisans, laborers, peasants, jostled the princes and nobility, nor met reproof. Rank was forgotten. Democracy, for the first time on earth, had arrived. All were equal who held equal numbers of these shares. The mind of each was blank to all but one absorbing theme. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... good to-night, Herr Guest. Oh, he has talent, great talent, has young Schilsky! This is not the usual work of a pupil. It has form, and it has ideas, and it is new and daring. I know one of the motives from hearing Franz play it," and she hummed a theme as she replaced on the shelf, the scrupulously cleaned pot. "For such a young man, it is wonderful; but he will do better still, depend upon it, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... which had had so many variations, however, like a piece of music, was to return to the original theme before it closed. It had been a day of forebodings and anxiety. Fate never permitted Elizabeth Farnshaw more than a short snatch at happiness, and as John Hunter drove away after he had helped her deposit her trunk in a dusty corner, the girl wanted to run after him and implore him not to leave ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... papers, and for several weeks the topic was kept conspicuously before the little world of western Canada. Nowhere was the interest in the subject more keenly manifested than at the Royal Oak, where it furnished the theme of frequent and all-but-interminable discussion. Not a day passed but mine host Lapierre publicly congratulated himself upon his acumen in having all along believed and declared that Savareen was still in the land of the living. This landlord shared the prevalent opinion that the family should ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... steadier theme pursue, Mark the grim savage scoop his light canoe, Mark the fell leopard through the forest prowl, Fish prey on fish, and fowl regale on fowl; How Lybian tigers' chawdrons love assails, And warms, midst seas of ice, the melting whales; Cools the crimpt ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... my mother. My father died when I was in my last year at Cambridge. I'd been having a most awfully good time at the 'varsity,'" said Ginger, warming to his theme. "Not thick, you know, but good. I'd got my rugger and boxing blues and I'd just been picked for scrum-half for England against the North in the first trial match, and between ourselves it really did look as if I was more or less of a ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... us drop the tone of attempted criticism, which ill becomes an embryo writer at any time, and still less so when Shakspeare is the theme. Having mentioned Bacon, perhaps the following authenticated dialogue may not be uninteresting to the reader, especially as it is only to be met with in one or two ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... orchestral prelude, less than twenty measures in length, introduces the opening scene of the first act. Divided and muted 'cellos, double-basses, and bassoons intone, pp, a solemn and brooding theme[6] designed to evoke the thought of the forest, which, sombre, mysterious, and oppressive, forms the background against which the events of the drama are projected (page ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... this time reach impressive dimensions. And the wonder is that A Thorn in the Flesh (STANLEY PAUL) betrays absolutely no evidence of staleness. If the outlook here is a thought less romantic than in certain novels that drew sighs from my adolescent breast, this is a change inherent in the theme. For the matter of the present work is a study in conjugal tedium. Parthenope (name of ill-omen) was one of those unhappy and devastating beings who go through life fated to bore their nearest and dearest to the verge of lunacy. So that her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... nest without cackling over it, or that a man in charge of a benevolent enterprise should have a hundred-dollar check mysteriously and unexpectedly dropped into his hat without talking about it. Such a gift smacks of special divine favor, and offers a good theme for an address calculated to animate those engaged in the work. The very next Sunday, when the Testaments had been shut up and the lesson papers had all been put away, Phillida and the others heard from the superintendent some very inspiriting remarks on the subject of the encouragements ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... breadfruit. It was in connection with this nutritious food, one of nature's richest gifts to the Pacific, that Bligh undertook a mission which involved him in a mutiny, launched him upon one of the most dangerous and difficult voyages in the annals of British seamanship, and provided a theme for a long poem by one of the greatest of English authors. Byron it was who, writing as though the trees sprouted quartern loaves ready baked, said of it (The Island ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... right of immediate jurisdiction, but it may become the channel of an influence which shall make itself felt in the conduct of this University. It invites us to take counsel concerning her wants and her weal. I therefore pursue the theme which this crisis in our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... influenced by fear than by love. In beginning to speak on religious subjects with those who have never heard of Christianity, the great fact of the Son of God having come down from heaven to die for us is the prominent theme. No fact more striking can be mentioned. "He actually came to men. He himself told us about his Father, and the dwelling-place whither he has gone. We have his words in this book, and he really endured punishment in our stead from pure love," etc. If this fails to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Only one half of the cycle is completed by the conquest of the hostile city; the second half is the restoration. For this disjunction from Hellenic life, brought about by war, is not only physical but has become spiritual. The theme, therefore, deals with the wise man, who, through his intelligence, was able to take Troy, but who has now another and greater problem—the return out of the grand estrangement caused by the Trojan expedition. Spiritual restoration ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... SCOUTS THROUGH THE BIG TIMBER; or, The Search for the Lost Tenderfoot. A serious calamity threatens the Silver Fox Patrol. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of the story. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... Court, Edinburgh, when he first learned it, now nearly thirty years ago, from a passenger in the mail-coach. With Mr. Clerk's consent, I gave the story at that time to poor Mat Lewis, who published it with a ghost-ballad which he adjusted on the same theme. From the minuteness of the original detail, however, the narrative is better calculated for prose than verse; and more especially as the friend to whom it was originally communicated is one of the most accurate, intelligent, and acute persons whom I have known in ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... fashion of hashing up the author's production, taking all its facts from me with out disclosing that one fact to the reader and then proceed to "butter" or "slash." The worst, "fulfyld with malace of froward entente," would choose for theme not the work but the worker, upon the good old principle "Abuse the plaintiff's attorney." These arts fully account for the downfall of criticism in our day and the deafness of the public to such literary verdicts. But a few years ago a favourable review in a first-rate ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... soul and of its doings are entirely consistent with the direction which is required by this audacious assertion. That the soul is an originator in most of its activities is his perpetually asserted theme. To maintain this he is ready almost to question the reality, as he more than questions the necessity, of the existence of matter, verging occasionally, on this point, upon Berkeley's views and style of thinking. The constructive capacities of the intellect are inferred from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... dance composed of nearly three hundred people, two hundred of whom form the dance contingent, the other third a chorus, probably the largest singing chorus in the entire redman population of America. In a small pueblo like Tesuque, the theme is beautifully represented by from three to a dozen individuals, all of them excellent performers in various ways. The same quality and the same character, the same sense of beauty, prevails in ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... McElvina, whose marriage had not been blessed with a family, felt towards our hero as if he was his own child; and Susan was delighted with the handsome exterior and winning manners of the lad, whose boyish days had often been the theme of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... feeling, Nicias, or (shall I say?) two feelings, about discussions. Some would think that I am a lover, and to others I may seem to be a hater of discourse; for when I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre, or any pleasant instrument of music; ...
— Laches • Plato
... have you all staying with me always," I cry, warming with my theme, and beginning to dance, "all except father: he should come once a year for a week, if he was good, and not at all, if ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... straw left by Talfourd, Fitzgerald, Canon Ainger, and others, in the hope of discovering something new about Charles Lamb. In this quarter, at least, the wind shall be tempered to the reader,—shorn as he is by these pages of a charming letter or two. So far as fresh facts are concerned, the theme may fairly be considered exhausted. Numberless writers, too, have rung the changes upon "poor Charles Lamb," "dear Charles Lamb," "gentle Charles Lamb," and the rest,—the final epithet, by the way being one that Elia, living, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... that they will arouse his hearers to enthusiasm. The speaker or singer who would successfully interpret the thoughts of others must first make those thoughts his very own. When this is attained, then the voice, action, and the whole spirit of the performer, responding to the theme, will beget a like responsiveness in ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... his attention to the question of the coming Presidential election, and was not unwilling to exchange with all whom he might the ideas to which he had arrived. He then began to show the fallacy of some of the arguments against Gen. Taylor, making his chief theme the fashionable statement of all those who oppose him ("the old Locofocos as well as the new") that he has no principles, and that the Whig party have abandoned their principles by adopting him as their candidate. He ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... of our conference: In bed, he slept not for my urging it; At board, he fed not for my urging it; Alone, it was the subject of my theme; 65 In company I often glanced it; Still did I tell him it was vile ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... firm grasp of the theme, inspired by ample knowledge, and made attractive by a vigorous and resonant style, the book will receive much attention. It is a great theme the author has taken up, and he grasps it with the confidence of a ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... virulently bold!— Attend! ye skilled to coin the precious tale, Creating proof, where innuendos fail! Whose practised memories, cruelly exact, Omit no circumstance, except the fact!— Attend, all ye who boast,—or old or young,— The living libel of a slanderous tongue! So shall my theme as far contrasted be, As saints by fiends, or hymns by calumny. Come, gentle Amoret (for 'neath that name, In worthier verse is sung thy beauty's fame); Come—for but thee who seeks the Muse? and while Celestial blushes check thy conscious smile, With timid grace, and hesitating eye, The ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... have acknowledged the gratification with which I read Miss Kavanagh's 'Women of Christianity.' Her charity and (on the whole) her impartiality are very beautiful. She touches, indeed, with too gentle a hand the theme of Elizabeth of Hungary; and, in her own mind, she evidently misconstrues the fact of Protestant charities SEEMING to be fewer than Catholic. She forgets, or does not know, that Protestantism is a quieter creed than Romanism; as it does not clothe ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the guest of the evening, and the principal theme of conversation. Your unwonted situation has led you on to drink more than was advisable. For some time you have been feeling uncomfortable effects from your host's light, eager wine. To get up before the rest would be bad ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the courtyard at Hampton Court, with the purple bullet-marks on his white forehead, and a great crimson stain on his bosom, just below his bands. This was the one she most loved to look upon, although her father sorely pressed her to put it by, and not dwell on so uncivil a theme, the more so as, in Crimson Characters, on the background she had painted the words "Blood for Blood," But whatever she did was now taken little account of, for all thought ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of the twenty-four coloured plates of varying merit which enrich the original edition has not been considered desirable. The map shows clearly the route taken by the Author in the journey the description of which is the leading theme of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... page of Greek; he tried a theme occult,— A message and an errand,—every time the same result! Then Cyrus knew that somehow his machine had missed its aim; For though the works ran smoothly it was always ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... mortal maidens whom he visited under various disguises, as it was supposed that if he revealed himself in his true form as king of heaven the splendour of his glory would cause instant destruction to mortals. The mortal consorts of Zeus have been such a favourite theme with poets, painters, and sculptors, that it is necessary to give some account of their individual history. Those best known are Antiope, Leda, Europa, Callisto, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... not? Pray agree with me, and then you will allow that I have acted very kindly in not writing till I had something to tell you. Something, of course, means Wilkes, for everything is nothing except the theme of the day. There has appeared a violent North Briton, addressed to, and written against Lord Mansfield, threatening a rebellion if he continued to persecute Mr. Wilkes. This paper, they say, Wilkes owned to the Chevalier ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... who had so nobly assisted her in defending the fort. The poor lady did not long survive this tragedy, as she died a prisoner a few weeks later. All the acts of her adventurous and tragic career prove her to have been a good woman and a courageous wife, and may well be an inspiring theme for ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... spat upon Him?... O my friends, far, far be all this from you and from me! Never imagine, because this day we have thus spoken, that such discussions are congenial to us; or that we deem them the proper theme for addresses from the pulpit; although the coincidence of this day's Collect seems, for once, to lend a kind of sanction to our present endeavours. Look through the whole range of patristic homilies, and you will not find one ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... sat upon a thorn At evening chime. Its sweet refrain fell like the rain Of summer-time. Of summer-time when roses bloomed, And bright above A rainbow spanned my fairy-land Of hope and love! Of hope and love! O linnet, cease Thy mocking theme! I ne'er picked up the golden cup In all my dream! In all my dream I missed the prize Should have been mine; And dreams won't die! though fain would I, And ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... vpon him to make vnto them certeine collations or sermons, taking for his theme, Haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus saluatoris, that is to saie: [Sidenote: His oration to the people.] Ye shall draw in gladnesse waters out of the founteins of your sauiour. And hereto he added, "I am (said he) the sauiour of poore men; ye be the poore, and haue assaied the hard hands ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... suit his players, He would have sought a theme less grim, For tragedies are doubtful payers; Revue would be the stuff for him, Scanty in dress and plot, With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... inquiry as to the truth of my engagement and been quietly assured, how true it was, informed me to my face that any man situated as happily as I am was an infernal fool to entangle himself with a wife, and bade me a curt and everlasting good-morning on the spot. Yet every day the theme of this old troubadour's talk around the hotels is female entanglements—mendacious, ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... when quaffing his mead, Delighted to boast of his "ocean steed;" The British tar, in his foaming beer, Drinks to his ship as his mistress dear. The war-horse good is the trooper's theme— But what are all these to the horse of steam? Such a riotous, rollicking roadster is he— Oh!—the Iron Horse is the steed ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... read the papers. You must have known, before you left Santa Fe, of Mrs. Fairbrother's foul and most mysterious murder in New York. It has been the theme of two continents for the ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... a few representative illustrations of a great theme. When we consider the changefulness of living creatures, the transformations of cultivated plants and domesticated animals, the gradual alterations in the fauna of a country, the search after new haunts, the forming of new habits, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... was that this merry, reckless, impulsive young dare-devil, whose very talk, as he jumped from one theme to another, made him smile in spite of himself, could not be expected to bear in mind the record of his whole remarkable accomplishment. ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel, does he content himself with stating 'that some apologetic writers' are 'satisfied by the analogies which could scarcely fail to exist between two works dealing with a similar (!) theme,' [15:3] without mentioning for the benefit of the reader some of these analogies, as for instance, that our Lord is styled the Word of God in these two writings, and these alone, of the New Testament? ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... composition is not a new one; its value has been proved. Modern Prose and Poetry aims to make the most of such correlation, at the same time drawing upon the personal experience of the students, to the elimination of all that is perfunctory and formal. Typical outlines (suggestions for theme writing) are provided; these, however, cannot serve in all cases, and the teacher must help the pupils in planning their themes, or give them such training as will enable them ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Incarnate Dead with the Unconscious Living. Important Fact, without trifling Fiction, by HIM." I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I must concede to HIM, that he writes like a man of extreme sobriety upon his extravagant theme. He is angry with Swedenborg, as might be expected, for his chimeras; some of which, however, of late years have signally altered their aspect; but. as to HIM, there is no chance that he should be ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the infant church and gives us all the light we have in regard to its further organization and development, but it does not claim to be a complete history of the work of the early church. As a history it is as remarkable for what it omits as for what it narrates. The central theme is the triumph and progress of the gospel in spite of all the opposition and persecution which its advocates met. The chief purpose seems to be to show the progress of Christianity among the Gentiles and only so much of the work among the Jews is given as will authenticate the other. The whole ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... Ausonia's shore, And trace the rising of the war's dark tide. Fierce feuds I sing—O Goddess, be my guide,— Tyrrhenian hosts, the battle's armed array, Proud kings who fought and perished in their pride, And all Hesperia gathered to the fray, A larger theme unfolds, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... last excursion into political fiction was a description of an opera-bouffe Labour Government in action, addresses himself, in The Monster (HEINEMANN), to a more serious theme. His monster is the factory system, and if I say that this witty novel will provide the ignorant and comfortable with instruction as well as entertainment I hope I shan't have done him any harm. The author, while making his points against the system, notes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... to the opposite extreme, and shuts herself up within high stone walls to avoid the society of the other sex, she equally sins against her own nature, and not only brings misery upon herself, but inflicts upon society the evils of a pernicious example, and furnishes a theme for ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... "And I have a theme to finish," added Dave. "Let us do all the studying we can," he went on. "Then, if it clears off, we'll have so ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... contrast, in subject and in colouring, is presented in the great West Window, by Mr. Henry Holiday. This window also consists of three lancet lights, which, though considerably longer than those at the east end, scarcely afford room for the many details of the extensive theme that has been chosen. It is a combination of the six "Days" of Creation with the Benedicite omnia opera as a hymn of praise from created nature. In some respects the treatment of the subject suggests the influence of the school that we associate with the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... the relief of Ladysmith forms the theme of one of the most powerful romances that have come from Mr. Henty's pen. When the war breaks out, the hero, Chris King, and his friends band themselves together under the title of the Maritzburg Scouts. From first to last ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... full, true, and particular account of the late remarkable revolution in Gloria, which ended in the deposition and exile of the alien tyrant. My dear aunt, it would take a couple of weeks at the least computation to do the theme justice.' ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... its eyes: Ojos de la Guadiana; and following it to Portugal, to the Salto de Lobo, so called because a wolf might leap across the deep but narrow chasm between the overhanging rocks, he named the noted places on its banks, and quoted many a ballad of which it was the theme. Presently, finding themselves almost alone they followed their companions, to the bridge head, and joined the large company assembled in this outwork. The Spanish officers had provided music for their entertainment, and oranges ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... cavalierly were at least something actual while they lasted and made good their momentary claim to our interest; but what is this new ideal figment, unseizable yet ever present, invisible but indispensable, unknowable yet alone interesting or important? Strange that the only possible object or theme of our knowledge should ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... played among one of the basket making tribes of California. As not infrequently occurs in Indian games, there is in this pastime a reflection both of the environment and of the vocations of the people who used it. The drama or theme of the play is the search for a particular reed, which for the purpose of the game is marked ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... packed his valise, and, leaving a note for the McDonalds when they should return, started for Rouen. Daisy did not know him, and in her delirium she said things to him and of him which hurt him cruelly. Guy was her theme, and the letter which went "too late, too late." Then she would beg of Tom to go for Guy, to bring him to her and tell him how much she loved him and how good she would be if ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
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