"Disproportionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [Disproportionate prices.] I have lost my special notes, but I remember that in two cases at least the price of the sugar in these loaves was cheaper than by the picul. Moreover, the Government of the day anticipated the people in setting the example, by selling cigars ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... is the fact that certain nationalities or races seem to have natural inclinations and desires to follow in disproportionate numbers one kind of activity or occupation and are content to let other people rise to those positions which make them "the best-known men and women of the United States." As Dr. Woods states, the Jews could not be expected to show as large a percentage, since they largely turn their attention ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... probable that the promptitude of the few regulars in the country, including such officers as Brock, was its salvation at the outset. Most of De Salaberry's own men had withdrawn a month previous at the attack on the camp at Four Corners, though so disproportionate an enterprise was no fair test of recruits. The Sedentary Militia, when drafted, deserted in great numbers, and the duty assigned to the newly raised Voltigeurs by their commander at Chrysler's Farm just afterwards was that merely of making ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... history, Jews gathered with nothing in common save blood—artists, lawyers, writers, doctors—men who in pre-emancipation times might have become Christians like Heine, but who now formed an effective protest against the popular conceptions of the Jew, and a valuable antidote to the disproportionate notoriety achieved by less creditable types. At the Asmonean Society, brilliant free-lances, each thinking himself a solitary exception to a race of bigots, met one another in mutual astonishment. Raphael ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial souls—they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice which the female is called upon to make—these arguments, which you have urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that I suppose it to be likely that I shall directly be called upon to evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert to ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... sunlight took its deepest gold the tea-tray was brought in. Hester had left the room a short time before the footman appeared with it, carrying it with the air of disproportionate solemnity with which certain male domestics are able to surround the smallest service. The tea had been frequently served in Hester's boudoir of late. During the last week, however, Lady Walderhurst's share of the ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... getting into the state which Roman jurisprudence was in before it was reformed by Justinian. Philosophic criticism has not yet reached the point at which it may serve as a natural codifier. We must read laboriously and expend a disproportionate amount of time and pains in winnowing the chaff from the wheat. This tends to make us "digs" or literary drudges; but I doubt if the "dig" is a thoroughly developed man. Goethe, with all his boundless knowledge, his universal curiosity, and his ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... book had excited was out of all proportion to its merits, Johnson's unqualified condemnation was more than equally disproportionate to its defects. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... roads of the same description constructed by Napoleon, the means of communication between distant parts was almost entirely confined to inland seas and the larger rivers. It is for this reason that the maritime cities and provinces attained such disproportionate wealth. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Nonconformists known as Baptists; and the profession of faith was the curious rite of baptism by complete immersion, the importance claimed for which by this sect is, perhaps, from a Christian point of view, made the less disproportionate by another condition attaching to it,—the condition that not till years of individual judgment have been reached is one eligible for the sacred rite. With that rationalism which religious sects are so skilful in applying to some unimportant ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... said, and so will do, That to some infernal sprite I would offer with delight (And the pledge I now renew) Even my soul for her I woo. But my offer is in vain, Hell rejects it with disdain, For my soul, it may allege, Is a disproportionate pledge For the interest ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... a good-looking young man of twenty-two, of whom any mother, not too exacting, might be proud. Very blond—with well-chiselled features and waving hair—not so tall as to make his excessive slimness seem disproportionate—there was something in the perfection with which he was "turned out" that gave him the air of a "creation." Mrs. Wappinger's joy in him was the more satisfying because of the fact that, relative to herself, he was in the line of ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... in the Tupi language, macaw or large- headed (Acain, head and Arara macaw), to the disproportionate size of the head compared with the rest of the body. It is very frequently kept as a pet in houses of natives. I kept one myself for about a year, which accompanied me in my voyages and became very familiar, coming to me always on wet nights to share my blanket. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... his cows as large as the houses, his blades of grass waving above the tops of the trees, and all things similarly disproportionate. Or, worse, imagine a disease of the retina which caused a like curious change in the landscape itself wherein a mountain appeared to be a mole-hill, and a mole-hill ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... of office-holders who can be used by an unscrupulous Administration to debauch political conventions and fraudulently overcome public sentiment, especially in the "rotten borough" districts—those where the party is not strong, and where the office-holders in consequence have a disproportionate influence. This was done by the Republican Administration in 1912, to the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are numbers of States and municipalities where very little has as yet been done to do away with the spoils system. But in the National Government ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... a growing disapprobation, both in Great Britain and America, of the disproportionate length of time devoted by the youthful student to the acquisition of the dead languages; and therefore nothing will tend so effectually to the preservation of the Greek and Latin grammars as their judicious union (the fruit ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... small creature who had moved him to a trivial charity which had resulted in so strangely disproportionate a disaster. Doubtless, however, the squaws would never have been able to return to their accustomed place but for the food which he had given them, sustaining them on the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Lady Carbery had, at first, directed towards me occasional glances, expressing a comic sympathy with the thoughts which she supposed to be occupying my mind. But these glances ceased; and I was recalled by the gloomy sadness in her altered countenance to some sense of my own extravagant and disproportionate frenzy on this occasion: from the indulgent kindness with which she honored me, her countenance on this occasion became a mirror to my own. At night she assured me, when talking over the case, that she had never witnessed an expression of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... such a tariff, legitimate imports are of so small account, and that the smuggler intervenes to redress the enormously disproportionate balance, and administer to the wants of the community? Can we wonder that the powers of native production should be so bound down, and territorial revenue so comparatively diminutive, when exchanges are so hampered by fiscal and protective rapacity? Canga Arguelles, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... a desire to amuse her, Michael introduced into her room a fat mongrel puppy with disproportionate legs and an alarmed expression. His wish to provide her with what he was pleased to call a "divarsion" was, like many of his other good intentions, not entirely successful. He had deposited the excited animal on the bed, and in the course of its frantic gambols ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... said the reigning wit anent the administration which Amber's Salon held together, and in which her husband occupied a position quite disproportionate to his nominal office, and still more so to the almost unparalleled brevity of his ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... sight. I beheld my son - Augustus George - in Mrs. Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee, being dressed. He was at the moment, comparatively speaking, in a state of nature; having nothing on, but an extremely short shirt, remarkably disproportionate to the length of his usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. Prodgit's lap, on the floor, was a long narrow roller or bandage - I should say of several yards in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit tightly roll the body of ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... unless his own personal interests, his likings and hatreds, his sufferings and enjoyments, are concerned. He was a kind of actor-manager in his Comedie Humaine; and perhaps, like other actor-managers, he took rather disproportionate care of the parts which ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... in danger of his life. Poor Prince, what a lot had he achieved for himself!" reflects Wilhelmina, as we often do. He was soft, humane, affable; had the gift of captivating hearts. Not without talent either; but then of an ambition far disproportionate to it. "Would have shone in the second rank, but in the first went sorrowfully eclipsed," as they say! He could not be a great man, nor had about him any one that could; and he needed now to be so. This is the service a Belleisle ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate his real proper nature. Suppose a brute creature by any bait to be allured into a snare, by which he is destroyed. He plainly followed the bent of his nature, leading him to gratify his appetite: there is an entire correspondence between his whole nature and such ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... through that channel but they flow from a depth far below these physical or magnetic agitations. And it is only the abysmal cunning of the inert malice, which opposes itself to creation that tempts philosophers and artists to lay such a disproportionate stress upon this thing. The great artists are always known by their power to transcend sex and to reduce sex to its relative insignificance. In the greatest of all sculpture, in the greatest of all music, in the greatest of all poetry, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... of Gowanus, had been selected for his trust on account of his pre-eminent goodness, which, as seems to be invariably the case, was associated with an absence of personal beauty trenching upon the scarecrow. Possibly an excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may help account for the otherwise rather curious coincidence ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... presents should be received except such articles as are appropriate for souvenirs and marks of courtesy and appreciation, and having an intrinsic value not disproportionate to such a purpose. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... 'The Idyl of Iced Gulch', he asked, "Why, is that an azalea?" To be sure, this might have been less from his ignorance or indifference concerning the quality of the bush he had sent Sandy to sleep under than from his willingness to make a mock of an azalea in a very small pot, so disproportionate to uses which an azalea of Californian size could easily lend ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Old Congregation of Belfast. The synod assigned him to Dublin. After careful consideration he declined to accede, and remained at Antrim. This refusal was regarded then as ecclesisstical high-treason; and a controversy of the most intense and disproportionate character followed, Abernethy standing firm for religious freedom and repudiating the sacerdotal assumptions of all ecclesiastical courts. The controversy and quarrel bears the name of the two camps in the conflict, the "Subscribers'' and the "Non-subscribers.'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... nobody could. They simply and freely and sentimentally worship them. The strength of the aristocracy is not in the aristocracy at all; it is in the slums. It is not in the House of Lords; it is not in the Civil Service; it is not in the Government offices; it is not even in the huge and disproportionate monopoly of the English land. It is in a certain spirit. It is in the fact that when a navvy wishes to praise a man, it comes readily to his tongue to say that he has behaved like a gentleman. From a democratic point ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... sides were disproportionate. Navarre, Montmorency, and Guise were at the head of sixteen thousand foot and two thousand horse, in addition to a considerable number of German mercenaries. Montgomery,[173] who commanded the Protestants, had barely eight hundred trained soldiers.[174] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... a manuscript from his pocket and read from it as follows: "The quantity of light decreases with disproportionate rapidity by reduced consumption; for, as experiments have shown, when consuming only two feet per hour, eighty-five per cent. of the gas is lost; with two and a half feet the loss is sixty per cent.; and with three and a half feet it is thirty-four per cent. of that derived from the gas when burning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... examination, that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the greater, of course, the probability that a small change will disconcert him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Sixth Form master once said to me, 'You may give up Latin Verse for this term, if you will: but I warn you, no one can be a real scholar who does not constantly practise verse.' He was mistaken, belike. I hold, for my part, that in our Public Schools, we give up a quite disproportionate amount of time to 'composition' (of Latin Prose especially) and starve the boys' reading thereby. But at any rate we do give up a large share of the time to it. Then if we insist on this way with the tongues of Homer and Virgil, why do we ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... my way to. The coercion of native rulers, I explained, was a difficult and a dangerous art, and to insist, for example, that one of them should recognize his own complexion might be to run up a disproportionate little bill of our own. I did, however, compound something with Kauffer; I hope it wasn't a felony. 'Look here,' I said to Kauffer, 'this isn't official, you know, in any way, but how would it do to write that scamp Kandore a formal letter ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Hughes supposed him serious; and, undertaking the supplement, brought in a few days some scenes for his examination; but he had in the meantime gone to work himself, and produced half an act, which he afterwards completed, but with brevity irregularly disproportionate to the foregoing parts, like a task performed with reluctance and hurried to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... in the preface to his seventh volume, "not from an unwillingness to subject every statement of fact, even in its minutest details, to the severest scrutiny; but from the variety and the multitude of the papers which have been used and which could not be intelligently cited without a disproportionate commentary." Again, Blaine's "Twenty Years of Congress," a work which, properly weighed, is not without historical value, is only to be read with great care on account of his hasty and inaccurate generalizations. There are evidences of good, honest labor ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... flavor, pungent yet mellow, which gives New England country life a distinctive charm unlike anything else either in this or the mother-country. Even the Sunday is pleasant to look back upon to E.H. Arr; which is probably one instance of the fact that retrospective pleasure is sometimes totally disproportionate to present enjoyment. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... hung three immense oil paintings. One depicted a setter-dog with a blue collar, bearing the inscription: 'This is my consolation'; at the dog's feet flowed a river; on the opposite bank of the river a hare of quite disproportionate size with ears cocked up was sitting under a pine tree. In another picture two old men were eating a melon; behind the melon was visible in the distance a Greek temple with the inscription: 'The Temple of Satisfaction.' The third picture represented ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... there are many chances, for we must always allow for the part played by absurdity in the most logical and commonplace events. But, of course, it is impossible to see things as they are and not to take account of the absurd and the disproportionate. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... themselves off at an inflated value. No process is more familiar than that by which words in the course of a long life lose all their original power, and yet they will sometimes continue to exercise a disproportionate authority. Then comes the original mind, which, looking straight at the thing instead of accepting the specious title, discovers the incongruity between the pretence and the reality, and in the first shock of the disclosure annoyingly overturns our settled ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... man of business and of talents, who was always prepared. For the manner in which he was brought forward and distinguished by the chief justice he was truly grateful. This was a species of patronage honourable both to the giver and the receiver. Here was no favour shown disproportionate to deserts, but here was just distinction paid to merit, and generous discernment giving talents opportunity of developing themselves. These opportunities would only have been the ruin of a man who could not show himself equal to the occasion; but this was not the case ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... there was invariably one such. In "Little Women," as we all recall, it was Jo. No doubt the persons who say that little girls no longer play with dolls count among their childish acquaintances a disproportionate number of Jos. Playing with dolls would seem to be too fundamentally little-girlish ever to fall ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... her, but the majority accepted her return with local pride as a practical compliment to the educational facilities of Indian Spring. The Tuolumne "Star," with a breadth and eloquence touchingly disproportionate to its actual size and quality of type and paper, referred to the possible "growth of a grove of Academus at Indian Spring, under whose cloistered boughs future sages and statesmen were now meditating," in a way that made the master ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... who are likely to enter the occupations named, because they do not take into account the fact that a considerable number of the workers in Cleveland came to this country after they reached adult manhood and that a disproportionate number of these foreign born workers enter the industrial occupations. For this reason the total adult working population is not strictly comparable with the school enrollment, which is approximately ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... interest of the time; of not having looked all round and thought out the difficulties before them; of having embraced opinions without sufficiently knowing their grounds or counting the cost or considering the consequences. There was the danger of precipitate judgment, of ill-balanced and disproportionate views of what was true and all-important. There was an inevitable feverishness in the way in which the movement was begun, in the way in which it went on. Those affected by it were themselves surprised ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... than an injury to the lateral ligament of the coronary joint wherein there had occurred only a slight sprain, and though crepitation is not recognized, the diagnostician is not justified in excluding the possibility of fracture, if the lameness seems disproportionate to the ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... unexpected passion of the speaker, the incomprehensible change in his voice, and the utterly disproportionate exaggeration of his attitude towards his daughters, enforced an instantaneous silence. The rain began to drip audibly at the window, the rush of the river sounded distinctly from without, even the shaking of the front part of the dwelling by the distant gale ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... on the doctrine of the Spirit, which lie before us as we write, an eminent professor of theology remarks on the disproportionate attention which has been given to the person and work of the Holy Spirit, as compared with that bestowed on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is affirmed, moreover, that in many of the works upon the subject now extant there is ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... the association which existed in the minds of the inhabitants between the Board of Customs and an American revenue. The Declaratory Act of 1766, the Revenue Act of 1767, together with the pomp and expense of this Board, so disproportionate to the small income of the present duties, conspired to convince not only the few who were benefitted by smuggling, but the great body of enlightened freemen, that further and greater impositions of parliamentary taxes were intended. In proportion as this opinion gained ground, the inhabitants ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... doctor a most deliberate one; his brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his hand obey, as though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep between life and death. It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate concentration; even the Turk's head was only lit to be laid aside as an obstruction. Pocket's one chance was to hit hard and trust to the fortune that accrues on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy forgot everything when he actually succeeded ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... one else, and it is only the result that proves their wisdom and far-sight. Moreover, their temptations and their sins are on a larger scale than those of other men, and some of the actions that they perform make a disproportionate impression by the cry that they occasion—the evil is remembered, not the good ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... They still retained their enormous fortunes, originally acquired as governors of provinces, and continually increased by fortunate marriages and speculations. Indeed, nothing was more marked and melancholy at Rome than the disproportionate fortunes, the general consequences of a low or a corrupt civilization. In the better days of the republic, property was more equally divided. The citizens were not ambitious for more land than they could conveniently cultivate. But the lands, obtained by conquest, gradually fell into the possession ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... compromise on representation it might be pleaded, that by it no license was given to wrong; there was only a concession of disproportionate power to one section, fairly outweighed in the scale of the public good by the establishment of a great political order. But the action on the slave trade was the deliberate sanction for twenty years of man-stealing of the most flagitious sort. It was aimed at the strengthening ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... of life often shows us the importance of little acts which so frequently have an entirely disproportionate result. Mrs. Parrish found this true in her hospital ministrations. Little gifts and attentions often opened the way to the closed hearts of those to whom she ministered, and enabled her to reach the innermost ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... this kind, in which the grand desideratum has always been to produce POSITIVE PROOF OF HAVING REACHED BOTTOM by bringing up a portion of its substance, hitherto unattempted on account of the great length of time required for the experiment, and the disproportionate strength of the line to the enormous weight employed, should any sudden jerk ensue from the heave of the sea. Captain Stanley had at length succeeded in contriving a very ingenious apparatus by which, upon striking soundings, the eight 32 pounds ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... the matter we are now considering, in discussing the origin of a proverb, "which, differently worded, is to be found in all the languages of Europe," viz., "Fortune favors fools." He ascribes it partly to the "tendency to exaggerate all effects that seem disproportionate to their visible cause, and all circumstances that are in any way strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons under them." Omitting some explanations which would refer the error to mal-observation, or to the other species of non-observation (that of circumstances), ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the lay press. Neither is Kraepelin's dictum that Kleptomania is a form of impulsive insanity, necessarily correct. It is obviously, however, a form of abnormally conditioned conduct. Healy's criterion of Pathological stealing is the fact that the misconduct is disproportionate to any discernible end in view. In spite of risk, the stealing is indulged in, as it were, for its own sake, and not because the objects in themselves are needed or intrinsically desired. This definition at once excludes all cases of stealing from cupidity, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... Should I act on Davies's 'querry' and go to Bremen after Bhme? I soon dismissed that idea. It was one to act upon if others failed; for the present it meant another scramble. Bremen is six hours from Norden by rail. I should spend a disproportionate amount of my limited time in trains, and I should want a different disguise. Besides, I had already learnt something fresh about Bhme; for the seed dropped at Emden Station yesterday had come to life. A submarine ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... with which they are recorded by contemporary chroniclers. That the Moors were guilty (though not so generally as pretended) of the alleged conspiracy, is not in itself improbable, and is corroborated indeed by the Arabic statements. But the punishment was altogether disproportionate to the offence. Justice might surely have been satisfied by a selection of the authors and principal agents of the meditated insurrection;—for no overt act appears to have occurred. But avarice was too strong for justice; ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... proposed a solution of the difficulty about imposing a tariff against England by means of a Conference between the two nations. Other suggestions will be made. Protection may be found for Ulster by giving to them disproportionate representation. It may be found in the power of the Senate, it may be found in the power to suspend. If we are agreed somewhat on the general lines of the Primrose Report, the outstanding difficulty ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... these stockades were really very defensible against men unprovided with artillery, and there is no reason for supposing that any troops could have carried them by fair charging, without suffering altogether disproportionate loss. The red tribes acted in relation to the Cumberland settlements exactly as they had previously done towards those on the Kentucky and Watauga. They harassed the settlers from the outset; but they ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the heroines of the English tragic drama; the incidents of which, infinitely more startling than any they were used to, invested their fair victim with an amazing power over her foreign critics, and she received from them, in consequence, a rather disproportionate share of admiration—due, perhaps, more to the astonishing circumstances in which she appeared before them than to the excellence of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of devoting to the Ameto an altogether disproportionate amount of the space at my disposai I must before passing on attempt to give some notion of the kind of narrative contained in the romance, all the more so as it is little known except to students. With this object I have translated ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... chamber in just the same way. The present room was much humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books lying everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that supported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must have been recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy in reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so extensively in proportion to the narrowness ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... chance to assert itself. The tree grew much as it would, for there was no one to lop off a branch here, to bend one there, or to graft upon this stem a shoot from some other variety. Of course the growth was often very peculiar; luxuriant on the sunward side, starved on the northern aspect, disproportionate, maybe, though often on those curious branches fruit was abundant for those who sought. Probably we would train those oaks, and cedars, and apple-trees in the midst of the wood to more conventional shapes if we had them to-day. Hugh Bourne might have to overcome that habit of putting his hand before ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... shall conclude this notice of Port Phillip with mentioning two important items in the estimates of its expenditure for 1842:—Police and jails, 17,526l. 8s.; clergy and schools, 5350l.;[152] and, as a commentary upon these disproportionate estimates, which are by no means peculiar to Port Phillip, the words of Sir George Arthur may be added:—"Penitentiaries, treadwheels, flogging, chain-gangs, and penal settlements," says the late governor of Tasmania, "will all prove ineffectual either to prevent or to ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... we find the statements of Doctrines, and even of the facts from which the Doctrines were afterwards inferred." (p. 160.) "In the patristic writings, theoretics assume continually an increasingly disproportionate value. Even within the compass of our New Testament, there is to be found already a wonderful contrast between the words of our LORD and such a discourse as the Epistle to the Hebrews." (pp. 160-1.) [What a curious discovery, by the way, that an argumentative ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... people's heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last word was uttered—'Remember.' And think of their joy when each crossing sweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All Alones ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but she wondered why God had made woman's strength so disproportionate to man's, and looking up, she saw that it was George Halkett who held her. At the same moment he would have loosed her hand, but she clung to his because she ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... civilization. But with peace and prosperity were idleness, luxury, gambling, dissipation, extravagance, and looseness of morals of which we have no conception, and which no subsequent age of the world has seen. It was the age of most scandalous monopolies, and disproportionate fortunes, and abandonment to the pleasures of sense. Any Roman governor could make a fortune in a year; and his fortune was spent in banquets and fetes and races and costly wines, and enormous retinues of slaves. The theatres, the chariot races, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... in 1208. The whole History was in that case probably finished by about 1208. As to the order in which its parts were composed, it is likely that Absalon's original instruction was to write a history of Absalon's own doings. The fourteenth and succeeding books deal with these at disproportionate length, and Absalon, at the expense even of Waldemar, is the protagonist. Now Saxo states in his Preface that he "has taken care to follow the statements ("asserta") of Absalon, and with obedient mind and pen to include both his own doings and other men's doings of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... multiplied preparations into which the United States are at length driven for maintaining their violated rights have caused this augmentation of business to press on the Department of War particularly, with a weight disproportionate to the powers of any single officer, with no other aids than are authorized by existing laws. With a view to a more adequate arrangement for the essential objects of that Department, I recommend to the early ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... ornamental architecture, such as magnificent columns supporting a portico, or expensive pilasters supporting merely their own capitals, 'because it consumes labour disproportionate to its utility.' For the same reason he satyrised statuary. 'Painting (said he) consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... is, that a colony or district is not to be taxed which is not represented; not that its number of representatives shall be ascertained by its quota of taxes. If three-fifths of the slaves are virtually represented, or their owners obtain a disproportionate power in legislation, and in the appointment of the President of the United States, why should not other property be virtually represented, and its owners obtain a like power in legislation, and in the choice of the President? ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... can have their pick, rarely marry good-looking men, but generally give preference to those who are homely; because that {173} exquisiteness in which beauty originates naturally blends with that power which accompanies huge noses and disproportionate features. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... have helped it—she could not have stayed the words, though a suspended sword were to fall with the saying. It was the cry of tradition and religion, and every home-bred, convent- nurtured habit, the instinct of heredity, the wail of woman, for whom destiny, or man, or nature, has arranged the disproportionate share of life's penalties. It was the impotent rebellion against the first curse, that man in his punishment should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow—which he might do with joy—while the woman ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of convincing the doubter. Etzooah lost his mask. His mouth dropped open; he stared at Stonor with wild eyes; a yellowish tint crept into the ruddy copper of his skin. This agitation was wholly disproportionate to what Mary was telling him. Stonor wondered afresh. Etzooah stammered ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... that foreign commercial relations are so limited. The total of exports and imports together for 1841, represents only, in round numbers, a commercial movement to the value of 165,811,000 silver rubles, or in sterling, about L.25,907,300. The matter which most concerns this country, is the very disproportionate interest which results to its share in the export and import trade of Russia. Taking the latest British returns of the value of Russian products imported into England, for the Board of Trade tables give quantities only, as we find them stated by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... before, having gradually acquired them in her initiation into the sentimental character. To maintain that character with dignity and propriety, it is necessary she should entertain the most elevated ideas of disproportionate alliances, and disinterested love; and consider fortune, rank, and reputation, as mere ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... recommending, others would be supplied for its action, in the proportion of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off, by the process of voluntary manumission or sale. This effect must result inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their disproportionate multiplication. The depreciation would be relieved and retarded at the same time by the process. The two operations would aid reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... presses on me for days together, so as to deprive me of all my cheerfulness. It is probable that a man's private and personal connexions and interests ought to be uppermost in his daily and hourly thoughts, and that the dedication of much hope and fear to subjects which are perhaps disproportionate to our faculties and powers, is a disease. But I have had this disease so long, and my early education was so undomestic, that I know not how to get rid of it; or even to wish to get rid of it. Life were so flat a thing without ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... at all if you can help it. The life is too harassing and the remuneration altogether disproportionate to the ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... me to," he returned, with a disproportionate joy in their nonsense. The white glitter of the trees filled the air with its own mysterious brightness, and as they walked on over the snow the ground seemed to ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... you one in a moment,' said Theodora; with so little encouragement as would have deterred a person bent on gaining the entree. Violet stood meekly waiting till she brought the book, and received it with gratitude disproportionate to the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... greatest delight at the three broods of downy little chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate black ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of natural ability is requisite to make you a good physician, but by no means that disproportionate development of some special faculty which goes by the name of genius. A just balance of the mental powers is a great deal more likely to be useful than any single talent, even were it the power of observation; in excess. For a mere observer is liable to be too fond of facts for ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... even the Company's own subordinate zemindars have found better treatment, probably because they were more rich; those of Nizanagoram have been permitted, contrary to your pointed orders, to hold their rich zemindaries at the old disproportionate rate of little more than a sixth part of the real revenue; and my zemindar of Tanjore, though he should have regarded himself equally concerned with us in the event of the war, and from whose fertile country many valuable harvests ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... transacta." But he does not the less add, "A militibus, propter curam exercitus nimiam, multum amatus est."] he made no new conquests; and he retired from the old ones of Trajan, where they could not have been maintained without disproportionate bloodshed, or a jealousy beyond the value of the stake. In this point of his administration he took Augustus for his model; as again in his care of the army, in his occasional bounties, and in his paternal solicitude for their comforts, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... manufacturing that poverty or want is scarcely known; while the development of the popular demand, as a result of the supplied need, is so great that there is no visible limit to the diversification of industry or the possibilities of the arts. "It may seem strange to some that apparently so disproportionate a number of inventions have been made in the last century. There are several reasons. Since every discovery or advance in knowledge increases our chance of obtaining more, it becomes cumulative, and our progress is in geometric instead of arithmetical ratio. Public interest and ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... military resources. The characteristics of the theater, alone, will exact their due toll, even if no enemy be present. In the presence of the enemy, such expenditures may increase with great rapidity. The fundamental consideration here is whether the resultant losses are disproportionate to the gains. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... Behind the house, a thick plantation of beech and sycamore served to make its square blank whiteness visible for a quite considerable distance out to sea. Built upon the site of some older and larger structure, it was blessed—or otherwise—with a system of vaults and cellars wholly disproportionate to its existing size. One of these, by means of a roughly ceiled and flagged passage, gave access to a heavy door in the sea-wall opening directly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Nelson again lived in the minister's house, bearing a large, if not a disproportionate, share of the expenses. When they returned to England in 1800, Hamilton was L2,000 in his debt. The intimacy and the manner of life, in the midst of the Neapolitan court, whose corruptness of manners both Nelson and Troubridge openly ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the memory of the darling minister, has been placed at the south side of Hanover Square. It is of bronze, and stands on a granite pedestal, of size disproportionate to the height and bulk of the figure. The artist is Mr. Chantrey: the work being at the cost of the nobility of the land, and a few ardent admirers of "the system" introduced by Mr. Pitt into the government of this country. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... and the true in natural religion. It is not a question of clear separation and abstraction, but of distinction, emphasis, and proportion. I believe that things not characteristically Christian have acquired a disproportionate place in our religion as ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... as the elevator bounced up, flashing, and settled to the level of the floor; but the quick drop through the long shaft seemed to do the stage-manager a disproportionate amount of good. Halfway down he emitted a heavy "Whew!" of relief and threw back his shoulders. He seemed to swell, to grow larger; lines verged into the texture of his face, disappearing; and with them went care and seeming years. Canby had casually taken ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... of the earliest violinists in France, is perhaps associated with the violin in a manner disproportionate to the part he actually played in its progress. He was a musician of great ability, and his compositions are occasionally heard even to this day. Lulli was born near Florence about 1633. When quite young he was taken to France by the Chevalier de Guise, and entered ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... whenever a finite is contemplated in reference to the infinite, whether consciously or unconsciously, humour essentially arises. In the highest humour, at least, there is always a reference to, and a connection with, some general power not finite, in the form of some finite ridiculously disproportionate in our feelings to that of which it is, nevertheless, the representative, or by which it is to be displayed. Humourous writers, therefore, as Sterne in particular, delight, after much preparation, to end in nothing, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... contrast to the narrow forehead and low vault of the skull, the face of the criminal, like those of most animals, is of disproportionate size, a phenomenon intimately connected with the greater development of the senses as compared with that of the nervous centres. Prognathism, the projection of the lower portion of the face beyond the ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... the national Church, with its disproportionate wealth and its selfish, incompetent, and often degraded officials, could not but be a growing offence to the developing intelligence of the nation; and to quicken this feeling there were minor grievances ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... at which I am coming is the effect wrought upon Mr. Emerson's mind by the history of that club. It seemed to us disproportionate to the occasion that he should feel and manifest so much surprise at our existence. This he did, more than once, and with a genuineness not ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... Chinese fire-cracker; and the comically disappointed face which the clown turns to the audience is precisely the same that each individual of that audience is continually turning to another audience surrounding him, when the great and small rockets of his daily life go off with such disproportionate effect. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... You are not going, I hope, to annex to that most splendid ornament of Southey's poem all this cock-and-a-bull story of Joan, the publican's daughter of Neufchatel, with the lamentable episode of a wagoner, his wife, and six children. The texture will be most lamentably disproportionate. The first forty or fifty lines of these addenda are no doubt in their way admirable too; but many would ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... thousand less than under Louis XV.); and of this number six thousand were distributed in Paris, and in a circle of four leagues around it, including Versailles. You will undoubtedly ask me, even allowing for our extension of territory, what can be the cause of this disproportionate increase of distrust and depravity? I will explain it as far as my abilities admit, according to the opinions of others compared with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... little details impressed themselves on Marguerite's mind, as she stood there, placidly waiting until she should once more be told to move along. The table, the chair, that unseen window, trivial objects though they were, assumed before her overwrought fancy an utterly disproportionate importance. She caught herself presently counting up the number of boards visible on the floor, and watching the smoke of the tallow-candles rising up ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... seems to me, an altogether disproportionate value has been assigned to Bacon's share in the movement. At most, I think, he deserves to be regarded but as a literary exponent of the Zeitgeist of his century. Himself a philosopher, as distinguished from a man of science, whatever influence his preaching ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... Insight at the Surface, of the Arrangement of Rocks at great Depths. Why the Height of the successive Strata in a given Region is so disproportionate to their Thickness. Computation of the average annual Amount of subaerial Denudation. Antagonism of Volcanic Force to the Levelling Power of running Water. How far the Transfer of Sediment from the Land to a neighbouring ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... question of education, M. Labitte told his hearers of three instances in which small communes had been made to expend sums inordinately disproportionate to their resources upon what he called 'scholastic palaces,' although a great majority of the people in each instance distinctly refused to send their children to the lay schools established in these 'palaces.' One case was that of a commune of some seven hundred souls compelled to expend ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... endeavored to combine healthy moral lessons with a sufficient amount of exciting interest to render the story attractive to the young; and he hopes he has not mingled these elements of a good juvenile book in disproportionate quantities. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... needs"—these great economists discover that they have forgotten something, the needs of the producers, which they now admit. Only it is for the State to estimate them, for the State to verify if the needs are not disproportionate to the work. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... startling as the discovery of a new world. She was being taken along the boundary of an exciting existence, and she looked into it through the guileless enthusiasm of the narrator. The heroic quality of the feelings concealed what was disproportionate and absurd in that gratitude, in that friendship, in that inexplicable devotion. The headlong fierceness of purpose invested his obscure design of conquest with the proportions of a great enterprise. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... rigorous measures, which are contemplated in the latter part of the speech of his Royal Highness, this House will take into their early consideration the propriety of abolishing sinecures and unmerited pensions and grants, the reduction of the civil list, and of all salaries which are now disproportionate to the services, and especially, that they will take into their consideration the Reform of this House, agreeably to the laws and constitution of the land, this House being decidedly of opinion that justice and humanity, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the kindly-disposed observer and vex him a little; that is, the capricious and disproportionate manner in which oaths are paid for, the inequality of the prices that M. Bonaparte places on this commodity. For example, M. Vidocq, if he were still chief of police, would receive six thousand francs per annum, M. Baroche receives eighty thousand. It follows, then, that the oath of ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... both cheeks with the utmost kindness; and I turned away with Antoine. Looking round as we quitted the court, I had my last glimpse of his tall, meagre figure, as he stood with his hand on his hip, looking after me; and I thought how strange and disproportionate a return his kindness to me had been for mine to him, in lifting him up and saving him from a kicking horse on the way to Beaucaire. The whole scene at once started up before me—our family party in the wagon—the girls' ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... expense, comfort, and society. If there is one thing in this world about which we can entertain any degree of moral certainty, it is that we must pay our tailor's bills. If, therefore, our means are disproportionate to our wants, we must remember the old proverb, "Cut your coat according to your cloth," and dress as well as you possibly ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... until I have fulfilled the month at sea mentioned in my instructions, and known to all the captains. Till then I will not fly before Admiral Keppel, whatever his strength; only, if I know him to be too superior, I will avoid a disproportionate action as well as I can; but if the enemy really seeks to force it, it will be very hard to shun." These words explain his conduct through the next ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... collecting suitable extracts from the great body of our literature was fairly entered upon, it soon became apparent that little aid could be had from the earlier manuals. Besides being in great measure obsolete, they were from the beginning disproportionate, and geographically too local in subject and spirit; both of which may be ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... deny that the economic factor has often been powerful in conquering man's liberty, or a motive in its exercise. But Chesterton regarded the present age as a diseased one precisely because the money motive held so disproportionate a place in it. He looked back to the past and saw the world of today as almost unique in that respect. He looked forward to the future and hoped for a release ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... for New France, it was but the response to a secret longing of the fervent heart. The letters of these priests, departing for the scene of their labors, breathe a spirit of enthusiastic exaltation, which, to a colder nature and a colder faith, may sometimes seem overstrained, but which is in no way disproportionate to the vastness of the effort and the sacrifice ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... on Dr. Ryerson was entirely disproportionate to the cause of offence. Were it not that the moral effect of what he wrote—more than what he actually said—was feared, because addressed to a people who had always listened to his words with deep attention and great respect, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... all, going before the wind in a frigate, in such a tempest, has its annoyances and drawbacks, as well as many other blessings. The disproportionate weight of metal upon the spar and gun decks induces a violent rolling, unknown to merchant ships. We rolled and rolled on our way, like the world in its orbit, shipping green seas on both sides, until the old frigate dipped and went ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... privileges, extra fatigue, and restriction to certain specified limits, but shall not include forfeiture of pay or confinement under guard. A person punished under authority fit this article who deems his punishment unjust or disproportionate to the offense may, through the proper channel, appeal to the next superior authority, but may in the meantime be required to undergo the punishment adjudged. The commanding officer who imposes the punishment, his successor ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... gained great influence over him; and were it not that the presence of the tutor, who seldom quitted the house, had proved a check, that there was little doubt but, as far as the young man was concerned, the disproportionate match would be readily acceded to; that the only person she had ventured to consult was her dear friend Mrs St. Felix, who had promised her, if the persecution did not cease, that she would make Mr Sommerville ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... great antagonisms were formulated, which were to rend the two great Continental monarchies for forty years to come. Thus in order to follow the subsequent story efficiently even from the purely English point of view, we must devote what may seem somewhat disproportionate attention to foreign affairs, which do not appear at first sight to have a very intimate connexion with events in England. For France these events may be summed up as the opening of the set struggle between Catholics and Huguenots; for Spain, as the preliminaries ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... possessed by them in happier days; and though packages of such things have been sent by the charitable for distribution by Father Damiens, it is not possible for island benevolence fully to meet an emergency and needs so disproportionate to the population and resources of the kingdom. Besides the two Catholic churches, there are a Protestant chapel, with a pastor, himself a leper, who is a regularly ordained minister of the Hawaiian Board, and two school-houses, where the twenty-two children of the settlement receive ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... for, and yet commit, the error. Shakespeare has represented this character in a very peculiar manner. He has not made him amiable with counterbalancing faults; but has openly and broadly drawn those faults without reserve, relying on Richard's disproportionate sufferings and gradually emergent good qualities for our sympathy; and this was possible, because his faults are not positive vices, but spring entirely from ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... the servant's first speech, were common popular instruments. The tabor, of course, was a small drum, which was used as accompaniment to the pipe, a small whistle with three holes, but with a compass of 18 notes. (See Frontispiece.) In its curiously disproportionate compass, it may be compared to the modern 'Picco' pipe of the music shops. Mersennus (middle of 17th century) mentions an Englishman, John Price, who was an accomplished player. It is played on by Ariel, see a subsequent quotation from The Tempest III, ii, 126 ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... them, and, especially in the later work where he is more or less free from reminiscences of Remizov, they produce the impression of mosaic laboriously set together. They are overloaded with pointedly suggestive metaphor and symbolically expressive detail, and in their laborious and disproportionate elaborateness they remind you of the deliberate ugliness of a painting by some German "Expressionist." [Footnote: Zamyatin was during the war a shipbuilding Engineer in the Russian service at Newcastle. He has written several stories of English ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... looked at that picture in just that way. He had known longing before it, and he had known bitterness quite as misplaced and quite as disproportionate. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of Mirah changing; and however he might protest that the change would not happen, the protest kept up the unpleasant image. Altogether poor Hans seemed to be entering into Deronda's experience in a disproportionate manner—going beyond his part of rescued prodigal, and rousing a feeling quite ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... reason to infer that he will govern us vindictively in another. The true argument from analogy is not, 'This life is a mixed state of justice and injustice, of great waste, of sudden casualties, of disproportionate punishments, and therefore the like inconsistencies, irregularities, injustices are to be expected in another;' but 'This life is subject to law, and is in a state of progress, and therefore law and progress may be believed to be the governing principles of another.' All the analogies of ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... believe such a Cataian] [Theobald and Warburton had both explained "Cataian" as a liar.] Mr. Theobald and Dr. Warburton have both told their stories with confidence, I am afraid, very disproportionate to any evidence that can be produced. That Cataian was a word of hatred or contempt is plain, but that it signified a boaster or a liar has not been proved. Sir Toby, in Twelfth Night, says of the Lady Olivia to her maid, "thy Lady's a Cataian;" but there is no reason to think he ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... insignificant body of men, as it now seems, and a period of time not sufficient to change them from civilians into soldiers. Yet for the work immediately visible the demand seemed adequate. Moreover, as the law stood, a much longer term could not have been named,[133] and an apparently disproportionate requisition in point of numbers might have been of injurious effect; for nearly every one was cheerfully saying that the war would be no such very great affair after all. In his own mind the President may or may not ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... necessary to employ ships of war to guard against pirates in the West Indies and to protect British commerce in that quarter against French privateers. For all these purposes speed was of more importance than strength, and the British force in the west contained a disproportionate number of smaller vessels as compared with line of battle ships. The actual numbers of British warships in North American waters at the beginning of 1812 were three ships of the line, twenty-one cruisers and frigates, and fifty-three small craft. The United States navy ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... at this rather disproportionate length on the structure and teaching of Culture and Anarchy, partly because it was to men who were young in 1869 a landmark in their mental life, and partly because it gives the whole body of Arnold's political and social teaching. He pursued this line of thought for twenty ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... Roman empire left the nations of Europe in circumstances similar to each other; and their consequent rivalship prevented any disproportionate refinement from appearing in any particular region. The principles of government, firmly rooted in the Feudal System, unsocial and unphilosophical as they were, laid the foundation of that balance of power which discourages the Cesars and Alexanders ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... price does not seem disproportionate to you, as I am pleased to think it will not, and if it suits you to publish other pieces of my composition, I shall have the pleasure of sending you in the course ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... complimentary address. This letter was the great thing at the meeting, had been mentioned in the papers two days running, and heard of all over Europe, giving to the name of Astier, to his collection, and to his work, that astounding and disproportionate echo with which the Press now multiplies any passing event. Now Baron Huchenard might do his best to bite, might mumble as he pleased in his insinuating tones, 'I ask you, my dear colleague, to observe.' But ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... anchor dropped before Albuquerque declared his ultimatum. Although the forces under his orders were very disproportionate in numbers, the Capitam mor imperiously demanded that Ormuz should recognize the suzerainty of the King of Portugal and submit to his envoy, if it did not wish to share the same fate as Mascati. The King, Seif-Ed-din, who was then reigning over Ormuz, was still a child, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... for her remaining guests came in all together; and in another five minutes Audrey was suffering from that kind of nightmare in which some grave issue—you don't know precisely what—hangs on the adjustment of trifles, absurdly disproportionate to the event, and which disarrange themselves perversely at the dramatic moment. Everything seemed to go wrong. She had relied on Knowles and Miss Gladys Armstrong for a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks; ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... for science, and the worship of power, go hand in hand: that knowledge is power has been esteemed the grandest incitement to study. Yet the antidote to the disproportionate cultivation of science, is simply power in its crude form—breaking out, that is, as brute force. When science, isolated and glorified, has produced a contempt, not only for vulgar errors, but for the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... that indestructible life-property or organizing power which characterizes kind through kind from everlasting to everlasting. In this consolation we seemed well on our way back to the encounter of a human spirit such as used to be rapt to heaven or cast into hell for very disproportionate merits or demerits; but we were supported for the meeting by the probability that in the fortunate event the spirit would be found issuing from all the clouds of superstition, and when it was reconstituted in the universal belief, that the time, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... emotionally and volitionally well-balanced. They will take wrong steps in life, they may be unsuccessful, their stupidity may lead them to the poorhouse, their recklessness may lead them to the penitentiary. And yet we do not speak of them as patients because their disproportionate mental features may be sufficiently corrected by other mental states which are ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... paid for the taking of the woods and for repeated attacks where initial attacks had failed might seem to the observer—unless he knew that the German losses had been equally heavy if not heavier since July 1st—disproportionate not only to the ground gained but also to general results up to this time which, and this was most important, had demonstrated, as a promise for the future, that the British New Army could attack unremittingly and successfully against seasoned German troops in positions ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 'prentice from the town of Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the midnight desecrators of the stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her sensitive, emotional mind, and thereby on her enfeebled body. The fragility of her appearance had always struck strangers. So far back as 1851, Bayard Taylor remarked that 'her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul.' Her 'fiery soul' did, indeed, with a far more literal truth than can often be the case, fret her 'puny body to decay, and o'er-informed its tenement of clay.' Her last illness—or, it may more truly be said, the last phase of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... audience prepared to be harrowed and shocked will greedily listen to broad hints about abominations-the word is a very favourite one—which the author could disclose, but mercifully withholds in pity for the shuddering hearts of a too sensitive assembly. The consequence was that an altogether disproportionate amount of declamation was wasted up and down the country by gentlemen on the stump, in girding at monks and nuns, their vices and crimes, till some men's minds were not a little exercised, and some, horrified by what they were told, asked in their perplexity, "Can these things be?" The ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... lanterns; amainu, or heavenly dogs, in stone on stone pedestals; stone sarcophagi, roofed over or not, for holy water; a flight of steps; a portico, continued as a verandah all round the temple; a roof of tremendously disproportionate size and weight, with a peculiar curve; a square or oblong hall divided by a railing from a "chancel" with a high and low altar, and a shrine containing Buddha, or the divinity to whom the chapel is dedicated; an incense-burner, and a few ecclesiastical ornaments. The symbols, idols, and adornments ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... it now. It was a matter of no importance, in itself. I've exaggerated it, by my silence, into disproportionate significance." His tone changed to curiosity. "Who ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... forth; but such things as are conducive to health and good condition of body, being also pleasant, these he will grasp at in moderation and as he ought to do, and also such other pleasant things as do not hinder these objects, and are not unseemly or disproportionate to his means; because he that should grasp at such would be liking such pleasures more than is proper; but the man of Perfected Self-Mastery is not of this character, but regulates his desires by ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... restrained a sharp giggle. Gheta's grief and their mother's anxiety at first seemed so foolishly disproportionate to their cause. Then a realization of what such an occurrence meant to Gheta dawned upon her. To an acknowledged beauty like Gheta Sanviano the marks of Time were an absolute tragedy; they threatened her on every plane ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling more the chaos of some primary elementary upheaval than the work of man; while, halfway down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their shallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a clandestine union with the great yellow torrent ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte |
