"Finer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humiliation and Amazonian fury, to confront her with her husband. But this last scene no doubt is more in Scott's way. He can always paint women in their more masculine moods. Where he frequently fails is in the attempt to indicate the finer shades of women's nature. In Amy Robsart herself, for example, he is by no means generally successful, though in an early scene her childish delight in the various orders and decorations of her husband is painted with much freshness and delicacy. But wherever, as in the case of queens, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... there was developed in the gigantic four-handed Saurians such a change in the mother-pouch of the female animals as the ever finer organized brain created, so that in the course of thousands of years, a creature was gradually developed which overstepped the last stage of the sense-developed understanding and comprehension, and was in a position, through the putting into activity of the upper ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... entirely of a steely grey. In all cases, the grizzly hairs give a somewhat white appearance to the surface of the fur. When the animal is young, his fur is of a rich brown, and often very long and thick, and much finer than that of the adult animal. When the creature walks, he swings his body in an odd fashion, rolling his head, at the same time, from side to side, which gives him a remarkably awkward look. Although the grizzly occasionally satisfies himself with vegetable ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... glanced at me gravely over its pages, and the next instant my education in the ancient languages and the finer graces ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the devout and beautiful fables of the "dispensation of paganism," there is nothing finer than the fable of blind Tiresias and his staff. By some sad calamity this old prophet had lost the sight of his eyes, and to compensate their servant for that great loss the gods endowed him with a staff with eyes. As Aaron's rod budded before the testimony and bloomed blossoms and yielded ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... that Mr. Lewis was a man of high, if ill-directed, capacity. No mere blunderer could have stirred the depths of the House of Commons as from time to time he did. He was, in truth—and here is the pity of it—a man of great ability, an admirable speaker. If his instincts had been finer and his training more severe he would have made a position of quite another kind in Parliamentary annals. Vain, restless, with narrow views and strong prejudices, he was his own worst enemy. But he will not have lived in vain if new members, entering the House from whatever quarter, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... at the third croft; and when he came there, finer wheat had there never been seen, and this also was ripe. "Evil betide me," said he, "if I watch not here to-night. Whoever carried off the other corn will come in like manner to take this, and I will know who it is." And he told Kieva all that had befallen. "Verily," ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... reed hut with a bedstead outside it, standing in the little glade that he had eroded. Two dogs and a baby slept on the bedstead. So I fancied Naboth had taken a wife. He said that he had, by my favour, done this thing, and that I was several times finer than Krishna. Six weeks and two days later a mud wall had grown up at the back of the hut. There were fowls in front and it smelt a little. The Municipal Secretary said that a cess-pool was forming ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... feet; and who knew but that in each of the stars was a being whose steed bounded beneath him as intelligently as mine? Would not these sometimes speak each other, as the passing ships? Perhaps they do now, I thought, in a way as much finer as the ocean on which they all sail is larger than ours; and by listening attentively perhaps my ear will become fine enough to hear them. Now, what ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... of Israel—Sanballat by name—purveyor for the army; residence, Rome; vastly rich; grown so as a contractor of furnishments which he never furnishes. He spins mischiefs, nevertheless, finer than spiders spin their webs. Come—by the girdle of Venus! ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... delicate. She wore her glistening black hair in bands, and dressed in vapory white muslin. She sang her own words to her harp, and they commonly insinuated that she was alone in the world,—that she suffered some inexpressible and mysterious heart-pangs, the lot of all finer geniuses,—that though she lived and moved in the world she was not of it, that she was of a consumptive tendency and might look for a premature interment. She even had fixed on the spot where she should lie: the violets grew there, she said, the river ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but laid hold of in a manner which enabled him to speak of his own conduct towards the King and the Prince, and towards the country in the present moment, and to contrast it with that of his opponents. I never heard a finer burst of eloquence, nor witnessed such an impression as it produced. But you will know all this ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Receptacles by thin membranes, with passages from one to the other, which were fill'd with an aerial substance, not much unlike that which was in the first Receptacle, only the first was something finer; and in each of these three Ventricles,which were all taken out of one, were plac'd some of those Faculties, which were subject to this governing Spirit, and were appointed to take care of their respective Stations, and to communicate every thing, both great and small, to that Spirit, ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... building, then, as a master motive, establishes the country weekly newspaper publisher securely in his position of leadership. It assures added community prosperity and the local development of the finer satisfactions of life in which he must share, and no other agency can take this from him, neither the city daily, coming in from a distance and concerned with the larger affairs of the larger community, nor the school, nor the church, nor ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... chief-of-police, I heard laughter and the clink of glasses. Bauda halted me with a leveled revolver, thinking we were a rum-smuggling gang. That brave African soldier was ever dramatic, and D'Artagnan could not have struck a finer attitude as he thrust the gun in my face and called ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... in the village with his sack, quite at his ease, and demanded of Broadway certain canned delicacies, his appetite seeming to have a finer edge to correspond with his rising courage. He even hinted that Broadway's stock was not very complete, and that some early strawberries might soften a few of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... unknowing, so unlettered, so blind! Whither went this ethereal investiture of life?—for it was not mere being; one might exist hardily enough without it. Did the darkness close over it, too, or was it not the germ of the soul, the budding of that wider knowledge and finer aspiration to flower hereafter in rarer air? He did not know; he only vaguely cared, and he reproached himself dully that he cared no more. For he—his life was threatened! With the renewal of the thought he experienced ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... would naturally be looked upon as of little value, and would be subject to loss and decay if not to deliberate destruction. Owing to these and perhaps other causes it is almost entirely the religious manuscripts that have survived, except those preserved in royal libraries and museums from the finer ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... never forget their responsibility to the Most High. Wuczicz, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the Prince,—and now uprose from every tongue, and every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... of Artificial Engins, and that of Natural ones, by one and the same Cause; endeavouring among other things to shew, that the Body of an Animal is moved after the same manner with a Watch. That cause of motion he makes the Materia Subtilis; and the finer or subtiler that is, the better and fitter he conceives it to be to ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... good-sized house, and though he appreciated Jan's understanding of the fact that he wouldn't exactly choose to be a fellow-guest with such a thoroughly bad hat as Hugo Tancred, still he considered it was laying too much stress upon the finer shades of feeling to ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... the afternoon Marishka's thoughts were of Hugh Renwick. Perspective had given him a finer contour, for she had Goritz to compare him with. She loved Hugh. She knew now how much. Her happiness had been too sweet to have had such a sudden ending. She had been unkind—cruel—broken with him ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... fairly well. I have been making a long study of De Musset, with the result that the poems seem to me far finer than I had remembered, and the Confessions d' un Enfant du Siecle a miserable performance. How was it it impressed me so much when I read it first? His poems have reminded me of you at every step. Do you remember how you ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... promontory, and the slopes and level ground facing the Golden Horn. In each division a great street ran through the city from east to west, generally lined with arcades on one side, but with arcades on both sides when traversing the finer and busier quarters. The street along the ridge formed the principal thoroughfare, and was named the Mese ([Greek: Mese]), because it ran through the middle of the city. On reaching the west of the 3rd hill, it divided into two branches, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... reply, "I've never be'n able to git that wave out. But her hair's be'n took good care of, an' there ain't nary gal in town that's got any finer." ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... When I give up I won't have to depend on charity, and the city won't have to bury me either when I'm dead. And I've got a heap of satisfaction out of my red geraniums too. I don't reckon you ever saw finer blooms—not even in a greenhouse. Naw'm, I ain't been the complaining sort. I've got a lot to be thankful ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... is something that is much scarcer, something finer far, something rarer than this quality ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... large as the same varieties standing neglected, to grow up to weeds, in the usual way. Mulching with clean, dry straw, or with charcoal, is a preventive of mildew. It is the easiest method of taking care of strawberries after they are in blossom; the vines will bear much more and finer fruit, and it will be clean and neat. Mulching vines is a great means of insuring a crop. Every crop that can be mulched will be greatly benefited by it; hence, all the straw and litter that can be saved is money in the pocket; ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... these, necessity became the mother of achievement. There is nothing finer in American history than the dogged fortitude and high-hearted endeavor with which the merchant seamen returned to their work after the Revolution and sought and found new markets for their wares. It was ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... deferential Violet, "as a member of the British aristocracy, it is not to be supposed that you would view financial matters with the same eye as those of us of the Middle Classes, who, unhappily perhaps for our finer feelings, have been obliged to experience the harsh contacts of common life. Your devotion to Mr. Shaw has a romantic ardor which I can not but admire. But permit us also our enthusiasm for the perspicacity of Mr. Tubbs, to which we owe the wealth ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... of larger box work than any seen before and very heavily covered with calcite crystal, colored a bright electric blue and glowing with a pearly lustre. This is the Centennial Gallery, and leaving it with reluctance we passed on into the Blue Grotto to find it finer still. It is somewhat wider and higher, while even the extremely rough, uneven floor shows no spot bare of heavy box work of a ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... in a shaking voice, "this is the finest moment of my life, finer than even the day of my election, should I consent to allow myself to be presented to the suffrages of my fellow-citizens" ("You must! you must!"); "for I feel myself much worn down by thirty years of public ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... with a flourish and held it out on his open palm toward Lucy. A tiny robot Statue of Liberty climbed from the cylinder, walked across Ben's hand, smiled, curtsied and reached out to light the reducegar with her torch, piping in a high, thin voice, "Amalgamated reducegars are cooler, lighter, finer." ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... gets the leastest bit finer, us shan't be able to see mun," answered Bill Odgers, who was reckoned a wit. "I have heerd tell as Trojans was cousins an' hail-fellow-well-met all the world over; but the hayleet o' this place es ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... know him; and there is not a finer man or a truer patriot in the South than Colonel Passford. He is loading a schooner with cotton, and he offered me the command of it. Then you are his nephew, ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... different thing to the following of trade or mercantile business. In buying or selling, in undertaking the work of import or export, a good head for figures, and an average quantity of shrewd common sense, are all that is necessary in order to win a fair share of success. But in the finer occupations, whose results are found in sculpture, painting, music and poetry, demands are made upon the imagination, the emotions, the entire spiritual susceptibility of man. The most delicate fibres of the brain are taxed; the subtle ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... it," put in the Comte de Born. "No one wears his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace. It is Maxime's gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully than any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and pictures. All the women lose their heads over him. He always spends something like a hundred ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... of the Grand Army of the Republic is a certificate of merit. The cross of the Legion of Honor opens the door to social and political and business prosperity. Battle is regarded as a supreme test of sturdy manhood, and the harsh discipline of the camp as education for the finer arts of the council. War creates a heroism which later devotes itself to ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... chief characters were Hamlet, Uriel Acosta (in Karl Gutzkow's play), Marquis Posa (in Schiller's Don Carlos), and Goethe's Torquato Tasso. He acted several times in London, where his Hamlet was considered finer than Kemble's or Edmund Kean's. He died on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... was most amenable to strong impressions, that the policy of the mighty outlaw was in many respects pure and lofty. It was this same influence, though, which won for Father Claude his only enemy in Torn; the little, grim, gray, old man whose sole aim in life seemed to have been to smother every finer instinct of chivalry and manhood in the boy, to whose training he had devoted the past ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... achieved, as any man may achieve, a considerable degree of wit, though to the last his ignorance of the audience whom he served and despised, prevented him from judging the effect of his sallies without experiment. But try as he might the finer jewel lay far beyond his reach. Strong men fight themselves when they can find no fitter adversary; but in all the history of literature there is no stranger spectacle than this lifelong contest between Dale, the intellectual anarch and pioneer of supermen, and Dale, the ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... leaves in dream, and its perfect bloom is unfolded only where another sun shines in another heaven: there it feels what celestial dews descend on it, and what influences draw it up to its divine archetype: here in the shadow of earth root intercoils with root and the finer distinctions of the blossom are not perceived. If we knew also who they really are, who sometimes in silence, and sometimes with the eyes of the world at gaze, take upon them the mantle of teacher, an unutterable awe would prevail; for underneath a bodily presence not in any sense ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... we pass Peterhead. At Aberdeen and southward it may be still finer, and you might have a grand sail along the east coast of Scotland and take a look at some of ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... could reveal to himself. What was it? She wanted far more than love-making and mental correspondence. What was it? He wished he knew. Tenderness? He could give her that in full measure. Sentiment? He was no sentimentalist, but he believed that he possessed the finer quality. Fidelity? That was not worth consideration. Appreciation of the deepest and best in her, sympathetic understanding of all her mistakes and of all that she had suffered? She knew the answer as well as he did. The ability to meet her in many ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... you got the better of me once, you played me false once, but it is my turn now.' He should sue for mercy, and I would grant it—or refuse it—as it pleased me; but he should feel that he was in my power; that my hand was finer than his, my strength greater!" He shot a glance at her, and his great rugged face ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... did not understand. His finer senses, however, told him that the air was suddenly electric, charged with suspense. Virginia was ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... was a finer touch, so to speak, in this yer robbery that wasn't in the old-fashioned style. Down in my country they hed crude ideas about them things—used to strip the passengers of everything, includin' their clothes. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... singular attitude toward human life, which cannot be rightly described as either ascetic or mystical, but seems rather to have been based upon some self-preservative instinct, bidding him sacrifice lower and keener impulses to what he regarded as the higher and finer purpose of his being, is a certain clash and conflict of emotions, a certain sense of failure to attain the end proposed, which excuses, though I do not think it justifies, the psychologists, when they classify him among morbid subjects. Had he yielded ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... spread out about 2 or 3 nuts deep on trays to dry. The frames of the trays are made of 1x3 inch lumber and are 1-1/2 feet wide and 3-1/2 feet long; 3/4 inch mesh galvanized chicken wire netting forms the bottoms of the trays. Walnuts dried indoors in the shade produce lighter colored and finer flavored kernels than do those dried outdoors in the sun and rain. When nuts are being dried indoors, care should be taken to see that they have a good circulation of air or the nuts may start molding ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... finer in its way than the wide panorama of forest-clad hills and rolling vales, dotted here and there with towns, villages, and chateaux, over which you gaze from the terrace in front of this unique establishment. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... except of course to bat when their turn comes and try to score runs. Baseball has become a very scientific game in recent years and the sustained interest in it year after year is largely due to the fact that the regular attendants at a game have learned to understand and to appreciate the finer points of the game almost as well as the players themselves. While it might appear to a beginner that the battery does all the work in a game, as a matter of fact every man on the nine is supposed to do his part in ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... trenches than it had ever been before; and the new method of locating hostile batteries by tests of sound enabled our gunners to put many of them out of action. Nor throughout the war was there a finer achievement than the Canadian capture of the Vimy Ridge or the British five-mile advance in a few hours to Fampoux. The German losses in men and guns also exceeded any that the British had yet inflicted in a similar period; in ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... finer," said Brown. "I should think, from its deep red colour, that it is chiefly decomposed lava. The island is evidently volcanic in its origin. I hope we shall find fresh water. We've not seen much yet, but it's sure to be found somewhere, for such magnificent ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Theodosia was blissfully happy. A boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston. The Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake unreservedly into his heart. "If I can see without prejudice," he said, "there never was a finer boy." ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we be the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us. The reason is, that its nature is more perfect, its body finer and more finished than ours, that ours is so weak, so awkwardly conceived, encumbered with organs that are always tired, always on the strain like locks that are too complicated, which lives like a plant and like a beast, nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs and flesh, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... rearing of her family, the economizing of the family means, the supplying of the family wants. But the factory takes her from all these duties. Homes become no longer homes. Children grow up uneducated and neglected. The finer affections become blunted. Woman is no more the gentle wife, companion, and friend of man, but his fellow-labourer and fellow-drudge. She is exposed to influences which too often efface that modesty of thought and conduct which is one of the best safeguards of virtue. Without judgment ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... who had survived the early days of Arizona, New Mexico, and the later ruffianism of the border on Old Mexico. His habit was at all times alert. Now, in especial, behind his casual conversation, he had been straining his finer senses for the first intimations of danger. For perhaps six seconds before Amy cried out he had been aware of an unusual faint sound heard beneath rather than above the cheerful and accustomed noises of the forest. It baffled him. If he had imposed silence on his companion, and had set himself ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... passions are let loose and charges made by the combatants against each other which are usually exaggerated, but one thing is certain, that our soldiers and sailors have always had the well-deserved reputation of being the cleanest fighters in the world. There have never been finer examples of this than during the present war. But in justice to ourselves and to the French during the Napoleonic wars, I think it was grossly impolitic to engender vindictiveness by unjustifiable acrimony. Up to the time that Nelson left the Mediterranean ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... do in science or literature.' And this was unfortunate, because 'a thorough English gentleman—Christian, manly, and enlightened—is more, I believe, than Guizot or Sismondi could comprehend; it is a finer specimen of human nature than any other country, I believe, could furnish'. Nevertheless, our travellers would imitate foreign customs without discrimination, 'as in the absurd habit of not eating fish with a knife, borrowed from the French, who do it because they have no knives ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... hands full of grapes, her eyes wandering about the green, well-kept double acres called diversely in the family "the grounds" (Mrs. Emery's name) and "the yard." Lydia always clung to her father's name; she had very little inborn feeling for the finer shades of her mother's vocabulary. Mrs. Emery rejoiced in the careless unconsciousness of the importance of such details, but she felt that Lydia should be cautioned against going too far. It was one of the girl's ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Florentines took counsel together, as Giovanni Villani relates in his History, to build a principal church for their city, and to make it so grand and magnificent that nothing larger or finer could be desired by the industry and power of man; and thus Arnolfo prepared the plans for the church of S. Maria del Fiore, a building which it is impossible to praise too highly. He provided that the exterior ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... went on all day, skill against keener cunning, instinct against finer instinct, through the white wonder of the winter woods, till, late in the afternoon, it swung back towards the starting point. The deer had undoubtedly intended to begin their yard that day on the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... choose another figure, it is sad that hearts which have their wellspring in the infinite, and contain inexhaustible sympathies, should ever be doomed to pour themselves into shallow vessels, and thus lavish their rich affections on the ground. Strange that the finer and deeper nature, whether in man or woman, while possessed of every other delicate instinct, should so often lack that most invaluable one of preserving itself front contamination with what is of a baser kind! Sometimes, it is true, the spiritual fountain is kept pure by a wisdom within ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... BEYOND IT. Any way you look at it, I do not see that I am much to blame. As I never have been Colonel Innes's wife there can be no harm in leaving him, though if he had ever been sympathetic, or understood me the LEAST LITTLE BIT, I might have felt bound to him. But he has never been able to evoke the finer parts of my nature, and when this is the case marriage is a mere miserable fleshly failure. You may say, "Why try it a third time?"—but my union with Val will be different. I have never been fond of the opposite sex—so far as that goes I should have made a very ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... singer," said Warner. "I heard grand opera once in Boston, just before I started to the war, but I never heard anything that sounds finer than this. Maybe time and place help to the extent of fifty per cent, but, at any rate, the effect is ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... he said, 'This one is worth a thousand and the other two thousand dinars.' Quoth the folk, 'This [horse that thou judgeth the lesser worth] is an evident thoroughbred and he is younger and swifter and more compact of limb than the other, ay, and finer of head and clearer of skin and colour. What token, then, hast thou of the truth of thy saying?' And the old man said, 'This ye say is all true, but his sire is old and this other is the son of a young horse. Now, when the son of an old horse standeth still [to rest,] his ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... like white-winged argosies, sail high amid the blue, or, finer spun, like a lady's veil, are drawn, gauzelike, across the sky, through which the stars peep out with twinkling brilliancy. The scent of new-mown hay laden with falling dew comes floating up from the valley with an intoxicating sweetness, a sweetness ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... to be good to that English gentleman." As with most of the men of his race whom I have made the acquaintance of, his native faculties were of a high order. The Albanians are quick, ingenious, and industrious, and are the best workmen in the finer industrial arts of the Balkans, gold and silver workers of remarkable skill, dividing the blacksmithing with the gypsy, but the best and indeed the only armorers of that world. We had a number of them in the camp at Niksich, refugees from the tribes on our frontier, and I found ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... an old jewel that I have had reset for you. I preferred it to a diamond, because it is a finer stone than any diamond in my possession, and because of the meaning, as I said. In the description of John's vision in the Revelation, it is said "there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like to an emerald."In Ezekiel's vision the word is, "as the appearance of the ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... dinner that night we had to content ourselves with revising the menu for the meal which was to celebrate the two-hundred-mile depot. But now it was all pretty well mapped out, having been matured in its finer details for several days on the march. Hors d'oeuvre, soup, meat, pudding, sweets and wine were all designed, and estimates were out. Would we pick up the depot soon enough to justify an ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... lady of high breeding, he was apt to pay too much attention to the formal part of her character, and to make her a mere bundle of cold proprieties. But when he places his heroines in some situation in life which leaves him nothing to do but to make them natural and true, I know of nothing finer, nothing more attractive or more individual than the portraitures he ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... said the man, "why you should not have a house in all points similar to this, and finer, if you wish. You ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of treasure was brought into a common heap, as in Caxamalca; and after some of the finer specimens had been deducted for the Crown, the remainder was delivered to the Indian goldsmiths to be melted down into ingots of a uniform standard. The division of the spoil was made on the same principle as before. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young man to be something much finer than stout fighting. Heroes, he thought, could find excuses in that long seething lane. They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... himself. And then what would be the effect on his prospects? On the people at Lewisburg? On Hannah? It is astonishing how much instruction and comfort there is in a bulldog. This slender school-master, who had been all his life repressing the animal and developing the finer nature, now found a need of just what the bulldog had. And so, with the thought of how his friend the dog would fight in a desperate strait, he determined to take hold of his difficulties as Bull took hold of the raccoon. Moral questions ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... with red, fringed curtains—now you know what I mean. I—[breaks off a lilac sprig and holds it under MISS JULIA's nose]—I had never been inside the manor, and I had never seen anything but the church—and this was much finer. No matter where my thoughts ran, they returned always—to that place. And gradually a longing arose within me to taste the full pleasure of—enfin! I sneaked in, looked and admired. Then I heard somebody coming. There was only one way out for fine people, but for me there was another, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... fine their filigree, Can hidden spirits in it be? There haunts me something awing ... You finer birch, you snow unstained, You purer air,—a soul you've gained? Who ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the unpromising details without a quiver of the extravagant lashes. These, indeed, and the eyes pertaining to them, seemed rather to sweep the fine roof, and a certain minstrel's gallery and staircase, than which nothing could have been much finer, with the look of an appreciative admirer of architectural features and old oak. She had not journeyed to Stornham Court with the intention of disturbing Rosy, or of being herself obviously disturbed. She had come to observe situations and rearrange them with that intelligence ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were forced to choose for themselves between the patronage of the Liberals on the one hand or the Royalists on the other. And Love, moreover, had come to David's heart, and with his scientific preoccupation and finer nature he had not room for the dogged greed of which our successful man of business is made; it choked the keen money-getting instinct which would have led him to study the differences between the Paris trade and the business of a provincial printing-house. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... to be a great scientist, but it is a yet finer thing to be a great man. The one element in Huxley's life that makes his character stand out clear, sharp and well defined was his steadfast devotion to truth. The only thing he feared was self-deception. When he uttered his classic cry in defense ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... be called "the splendid family of Drummond," even if we regard only its proud antiquity, or the singular "faithfulness of the family, or the accomplishments and virtues which characterised many of its members." Nothing can be finer than the manner in which the claims of birth are placed before us, in the address of William Drummond of Hawthornden to "John Earle of Perthe," in his manuscript "Historie ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Hemmlings I have ever seen,—finer than those at Munich: lovely Madonnas, meek and saintly; superb adoring Kings, all glowing with cloth-of-gold and velvets and splendid jewels; beautiful quiet landscapes, seen through the arches of the stable; and angels, with wings of dazzling green and crimson. The real love with which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... had so large an influence in the conversion of the Irish as the personal character of her Apostle. Where others, as Palladius, had failed, he succeeded. By nature, by grace, and by providential training, he had been specially fitted for his task. We can still see plainly even the finer traits of that character, while the land of his birth is a matter of dispute, and of his early history we know little, except that he was of noble birth, that he was carried to Ireland by pirates at the age of sixteen, and that after five ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... latter doctrine, even were it as true as it is in fact false, would not in any case justify a man in taking advantage of a woman's ruin: but experience shows that there is no form of sin or indulgence which so effectually degrades a man's moral outlook, blunts his finer perceptions, and destroys the instinct of chivalry within him, as does the sin of fornication. The majority of those who practise promiscuous sexual intercourse are found to greet with frank and obviously genuine incredulity the assertion that there exists a not inconsiderable proportion ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... to his idle hours. At the same time, he was frequently under the Creator's exaltation: the deep delight of one who knows the quality of that which he is doing, and is, for the moment, satisfied therewith. And the climax of this ecstasy—than which there is nothing finer known to man—came when, on the evening of March 29th, he carried to his room, from the little parlor of the "Cucumber," one more finished manuscript—that of his tone-poem, "Day Dreams," which had been written, rewritten, added to, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... to be done. I believe I can carry her through with it if I can carry myself. She's a finer thing than I am.... On the whole I am glad it's only one more day. Belinda will be about.... Afterwards we can write to each other.... If we can get over the next day it will be all right. Then we can write about fuel and politics—and ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the difficulty by specialising, you produce a brain bulging out inordinately on one side, on the other cut flat down and mostly paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold that ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... muddy, said you'd find More sand than gold in what he leaves behind. And you, sir Critic, does your finer sense In Homer mark no matter for offence? Or e'en Lucilius, our good-natured friend, Sees he in Accius nought he fain would mend? Does he not laugh at Ennius' halting verse, Yet own himself no better, if not worse? And what should hinder me, as I peruse Lucilius' works, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... General's aide de army) used to bring with them their ration bread, which was black, and mixed with bran. I was sorry to observe that all this bad bread fell to the share of the poor aide de camp, for we provided the General with a finer kind, which was made clandestinely by a pastrycook, from flour which we contrived to smuggle from Sens, where my husband had some farms. Had we been denounced, the affair might have cost us ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and cheap, which supplied a vent for the manufactured article, and opened for it materially a way to the outer world. Lastly, here is a man who found his country dependent upon others for its supplies of all the finer earthenware; but who, by his single strength, reversed the inclination of the scales, and scattered thickly the productions of his factory over all the breadth of the continent of Europe. In travelling from Paris to St. Petersburg, from Amsterdam to the furthest point of Sweden, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... dinner at Cotenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what happiness! Gustave the lord of Cotenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a finer mansion than the old chateau, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and long dreary salon and salle-a-manger. She could picture to herself nothing ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... shore, parallel to it, as it appeared. He noticed, however, that he was now farther away from it than when he started; but as yet the distance did not seem excessive; in fact, it seemed on the whole preferable, since it gave him a finer view. Before him the shore ran on until it terminated on a headland, and David thought that this would be a good place to fix as the limit of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... here so pleasant as our own, where the harp goes round the hall, and every man takes his turn to sing, or if he has no turn for song, tells tale or asks riddle that shall please the guests. Certainly, these Welsh folk were readier to talk than we, and maybe the meats were more dainty and the wines finer than ours, and in truth the Welsh mead was good and the Welsh ale mighty, but men seemed to care little for the sport that should come after the meal was over. Yet these harpers sang well, and from them I learnt more about my foster father than he had ever cared to ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... severe wrench of his finer feelings, the boundary man's hostility to the bullock driver, and was cultivating the same with all the energy of his race. His title, after all, was no more quizzical in its application than that of Ivan the Terrible; and to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... to wish that there might be a universal religion, but Ideala did not share my feeling on this subject. "I suppose it is a fine idea," she said; "but while minds run in so many different grooves, it seems to me far finer for one system of morality to have found expressions enough to satisfy ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... had a consuming curiosity to understand the differences that you haughty Southerners believe to exist between 'you all' and the people of the North. Of course, I know that you consider yourselves made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a collateral branch of your ancestry; but I don't know why. I never could ...
— Options • O. Henry
... loiterers, too, were treated even worse than this. One of them I saw whom the shows and lights of that town led on from street to street, until he came quite to its farther end; and then he thought that he saw before him, beyond some lonely palings, still finer sights than any he had left; and so he set out to cross over those fields, and see those sights. And when he was half over, some wicked robbers, who laid wait in those desolate places, rushed out ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... Lord Marquis," cried the King, "and does this castle also belong to you? There can be nothing finer than this courtyard and all the stately buildings which surround it; let us see the interior, ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... had never been patronised. Recently with six young people in the Study, I suddenly thought of the relation of teacher to student in a finer light. I was impelled ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... their lives has given them many other points of physical perfection. Their way of life has never been acted on by anything much more artificial than the nests and burrows of the creatures that live round them, and they seem, in a certain sense, to approach more nearly to the finer types of our aristocracies—who are bred artificially to a natural ideal—than to the labourer or citizen, as the wild horse resembles the thoroughbred rather than the hack or cart-horse. Tribes of the same natural development are, perhaps, frequent ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... whom loved him well, Browne is the subtlest adept in the recondite mysteries of rhythmic prose who can be enjoyed in our language. Not to catch the cadences of his peculiar music is to confess oneself deaf to the finer harmonies of words. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... are the descriptions of quiescent objects, it is in his treatment of events,—of the visible operations of man, or of the elements,—that the author displays most power. What have we finer of its kind, than the storm in the Antiquary? The sullen sunset—the advancing tide—the rocks half hidden by the rising foam—the marks of promised safety fading from sight, and with them the hope they nourished—the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... occurring to me that I have done the Lord Giovanni an injustice. I have misgauged his character. I held him to be a shallow, unlettered clown, devoid of any finer feelings. Yet his verses have a merit that is far above the common note of these writings, and they breathe such fine and lofty sentiments as could never spring from any but ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... is a mere child who is the little housekeeper. One thinks that perhaps this early training in the art of haggling may not be good for her. Already there is a hard expression in the childish eyes, mean lines about the little mouth. The finer qualities of humanity are expensive luxuries, not to ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... things. If you have seen the best old brick mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings and fixtures within—as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis—you will gather something of the flavor of these old Southern ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... at present wasting her sweetness on the desert air of Yeovil. You had better sit out and watch us, Phyllis. Tennis in this sort of weather is no job for the delicately nurtured feminine. I will explain the finer points of my play as we go on. Look out particularly for the Doherty Back-handed Slosh. A winning stroke ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... wise silence sometimes to be preferred to the wisest speech? Is there not often a finer eloquence in an answering silence than the cleverest words ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... the utterance of what seemed the perfection of an evening hymn. Indeed, in that bleak, dim March evening, with the long, chill night fast falling and the stormy weeks yet to come, it would be hard to find a finer ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... heathen kings. It fell before the Danes, but was rebuilt by Earl Leofric and his wife Godiva. A second time it fell, and was again rebuilt; this time by Norman masons, in greater splendour than before. Of the architecture of this period the present ruins show some fine examples, and none finer than the chapter- house, the clustering arches of which are shown in ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... blue cloth. Temples and rooms are measured by the number of mats they contain, and rooms must be built for the mats, as they are never cut to the rooms. They are always level with the polished grooves or ledges which surround the floor. They are soft and elastic, and the finer qualities are very beautiful. They are as expensive as the best Brussels carpet, and the Japanese take great pride in them, and are much aggrieved by the way in which some thoughtless foreigners stamp over them with dirty boots. Unfortunately ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... shirts and three pairs of trousers, which are cut out of three pieces of guinara, at two reals, and a salacot (hat), generally home made, worth half a real; while a woman uses yearly—four sayas, value six reals; and a camisa, with a finer one for the festivals, eight reals. Underskirts are not worn; and the clothing of the children may be estimated at about half of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... description, went to the creation of Ariel and Caliban, Oberon and Puck, the possession of Latin, Greek, and learning generally, incapacitates the proprietor for the same happy exercise of the finer and more gracious faculties of wit and fancy. Of this nonsense Jonson's masques are the best refutation. Marvels of ingenuity in plot and construction, they abound in "dainty invention," animated dialogue, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... observed, the special point of the praise conferred, by the great German poet should be no less sufficient to dispose of the vulgar misconception yet lingering among sciolists and pretenders to criticism, which regards a writer than whom no man was ever born with a finer or a stronger instinct for perfection of excellence in execution as a mere noble savage of letters, a rough self-taught sketcher or scribbler of crude and rude genius, whose unhewn blocks of verse had in them some veins of rare enough metal to be quarried ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... finer manners than Fido. He was maturer, with a deeper sense of noblesse oblige. He never forgot that even if he had been born a Dalmatian, privilege entails ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... red man had ever betrayed his trust. His cowboys took advantage of him, his neighbors imposed upon him, but none were there who did not make good their debts of service or stock. Belllounds was one of the great pioneers of the frontier days to whom the West owed its settlement; and he was finer than most, because he proved that the Indians, if not robbed or driven, would respond ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... out of the groups, his ruddy, handsome face radiant with the joy that welled up in his heart, moved St. George Temple. Never had he been in finer form or feather—never had he looked so well—(not all the clothes that Poole of London cut came to Moorlands). Something of the same glow filtered through him that he had felt on the night when the two lovers had settled their difficulties, and he had swung back through ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... light, became the god of truth and justice in the religion of Zoroaster and retained that character in the Occident. He was the Mazdean Apollo, but while Hellenism, with a finer appreciation of beauty, developed the esthetic qualities in Apollo, the Persians, caring more for matters of conscience, emphasized the moral character in Mithra.[48] The Greeks, themselves little scrupulous in that respect, were struck by the abhorrence in which their Oriental neighbors ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... delicately formed; but her face is marked, and the eyes are brilliant, dark, and full of character. She has far more ability than she ever can display on the stage; but I have no doubt that, by practice and self-culture, she will be a far finer actress at least than any one since Mrs. Siddons. I was at Charles Kemble's a few evenings ago, when a drawing of Miss Kemble, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, was brought in; and I have no doubt that you will shortly see, even in Dublin, an engraving of her ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... mother were here in the mountains when I came. They lived up there at the old place where Myra and Sibyl are camping now, and I never expect to meet finer people—either in this world or the next. For twenty years I knew them intimately. Will Andres was as true and square and white a man as ever lived and Nelly was just as good a woman as he was a man. They and my wife and I were more like brothers and ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... palanquin, she saw the palace standing by its tank in a beautiful garden. "I never saw that palace before," she said. "It was not here last night." She went into the garden, and servants met her and made her salaams. The palace was far finer than her father's; and when she went into it she found it full of servants. "To whom does this palace belong?" she asked. "To you," they answered. "God made all this for you last night, and he sent us to wait on you and be your servants." (Now, they ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... followed. They had not advanced more than a mile when another mound was discovered, with another seaman below it, whom they buried in the same way, and close to it a third, whose costume being in some parts a little finer, they correctly ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... order to give him time to feed on this pleasing variety. Good God! said he, is this Philadelphia, that blessed city of bread and provisions, of which we have heard so much? I am told it was founded the same year in which my father was born; why, it is finer than Greenock and Glasgow, which are ten times as old. It is so, said my friend to him, and when thee hast been here a month, thee will soon see that it is the capital of a fine province, of which thee art going to be a citizen: Greenock enjoys neither such a climate ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... story the other day against Douglas Kinnaird. [6] As you know, he is a wonderful linguist, but Werry, who is now secretary to Lord Cathcart, is yet finer. The latter boasts that he met Douglas at a dinner-party in London once, and, for a wager, entered the lists against him, and beat him in every language in Europe. But Werry admits that, in order to accomplish this, he never ceased talking from the moment he sat down ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... is above three degrees south of the English, yet the former is colder in the winter, only that it is dryer, consequently more wholesome and the cold weather is of much shorter duration, as the springs are always finer and forwarder than in England, which is proved by the vegetables being much earlier in Paris, peas being sold cheap about the streets on the 20th or 25th of May, and other leguminous crops in proportion. The autumns are often very fine, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the less noble in me—all that the blow had not killed—only a lesser part of a finer and perfect passion that might perhaps have moved you ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... come to them, to be simple, direct, and natural, like the trees or the beasts of the field, and then to have the native honesty of such a life illuminated and ennobled by a mutual intelligent purpose to make their young something finer and better than the things in Nature by the intelligent use of their own good minds and bodies. In the shops and on the streets the hurrying men and women took on a new significance to him. He wondered what secret mighty purpose might be in their lives, and read a newspaper report of an ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... so, and to my great surprise found them of an exquisite flavor, finer even than the cultivated fruit of Persia, sweeter and more delicate, of a different nature from the wild grapes we have been eating. My astonishment appeared to delight him, and he said with ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... enjoyed by him. Their personal appearance differs much from the English. Cooper says, "the American physiognomy has already its own peculiar cast"—so it has, and can easily be distinguished—in general they are handsomer than the emigrants—darker in complexion, but finer in feature and more graceful in form—not so strong, and fading sooner. Many of the children are perfectly beautiful, but the cherub beauty changes soon, and the women particularly look old and withered while yet young in years. Infantine ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... the same situation. I knew it to be the queen, by the crown of gold on her head, and a necklace of pearls about her neck, each of them as large as a nut; I approached her to have a nearer view of it, and never beheld a finer objets. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... low evergreen edgings on the turf, for carpeting banks, the covering of bare walls and the old tree stumps, we have no other evergreen shrub so fresh and variable, or so easily cultivated as are these forms of the ivy green. Perhaps one reason why the finer kinds of ivy are comparatively uncommon is the fact that a strong prejudice exists against ivy in many minds. It is an erroneous notion that ivy injures buildings against the walls of which it is planted; it never injures a good wall, nor a sound house, but on the contrary, hides ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... return in a year with larger and finer stones, he was allowed to leave for India. Before he left, however, the Court Treasurers had deposited to his credit, in American banks, the sum of fifteen million dollars—under four ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... generations of lawyers in my veins," Francis declared, "but I have read many a divorce case in which I think it would have been better and finer if the two men had met as you ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not very far from the garboard-strake. "I rejoice to think that I am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para rubber facings. Five patents cover me—I mention this without pride—five separate and several patents, each one finer than the other. At present I am screwed fast. Should I open, you would immediately be swamped. ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... of Paradise are polygamous. Have you been a large collector of caterpillars? I believe so. I inferred from a letter from Dr. Wallace, of Colchester, that he would account for Mr. Stainton and others rearing more female than male by their having collected the larger and finer caterpillars. But I misunderstood him, and he maintains that collectors take all caterpillars, large and small, for that they collect the caterpillars alone of the rarer moths or butterflies. What ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Here, in these words of Innocent, the clerical claim to control of peace and war touches its highest point. In the name of a Christian principle, permeating all things, and reducing all things to unity, the dread arbitrament of war is itself to be submitted to a higher and finer arbitration. The claim was too high to be sustained or translated into effect. It is not ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... sweet, fine, beautiful woman—are you not?" he said, gently drawing the child higher up on his shoulder, until her face touched his, and still keeping his eyes from the face of the older man. "She does not look like her mother," he said; "she has her father's auburn hair and straight nose and finer-cut lips and chin. She looks very much like her father. It seems a pity," he added, abruptly. "She will grow up," he went on, "without knowing him, or who he is—or was, if he should die. She will never speak with him, or see him, or take his hand. She may pass him some day on the street ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... be claimed for Mr. Wentworth that in the more illicit parts of his preference there hovered the vague adumbration of a belief that his cousin's final merit was a certain enviable capacity for whistling, rather gallantly, at the sanctions of mere judgment—for showing a larger courage, a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded. Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero; but this is small blame to him, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... house, to see if any of the hens had laid since gloaming, and fetch what he could get. In the middle of the mean time, I was expatiating to Mungo on what taste it would have, and how he had never seen anything finer than it would be, when in ran Benjie, all out of breath, and his face as ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... leaders. Those of one band seldom travel in the territory of the other. The Navaho of the west, formerly commanded by old Ganamucho (now deceased), have all the advantages in regard to location, and on the whole are a finer body of men ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... intensely proud of them. He was never happier, never more nearly jovial, never more erect, more military, more alert, and buoyant than when in the company of his two sons. He honestly believed that no finer examples of young manhood existed throughout ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... be changed. Only last week Dinky-Dunk wrote to the Department of Agriculture for information about courtai fiber—that's the kind used for point-lace and is worth a dollar a pound—for my lord feels convinced his soil and climatic conditions are especially suited for certain of the finer varieties. He even admitted that flax would be better on his land at the present time, as it would release certain of the natural fertilizers which sometimes leave the virgin soil too rich for wheat. But what most impressed ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Armada," will not like "Cassandra," or "Sir Nicholas at Marston Moor," or the "Covenanter's Lament for Bothwell Brigg," or "Arminius." Nevertheless they are fine in their way. "Arminius" is too long, and it suffers from the obvious comparison with Cowper's far finer "Boadicea." But its best lines, such as ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Chinese merchant is generally a fat round-faced man with an important and business-like look. He wears the same style of clothing (loose white smock, and blue or black trousers) as the meanest coolie, but of finer materials, and is always clean and neat; and his long tail tipped with red silk hangs down to his heels. He has a handsome warehouse or shop in town and a good house in the country. He keeps a fine horse and gig, and every evening ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and under more favourable conditions than prevail to-day. We see in them samples of the productions of an earlier and a better world, from an animal point of view; and this probably gives a greater variety and a finer display of colour than would have been produced, had conditions always been what they are now. The temperate zones, on the other hand, have recently suffered the effects of a glacial period of extreme ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... like, drove him still north and west. Bill was a modest man; he considered these statistics purely personal in character; to see them blazoned publicly on the walls of post-offices, and in the corridors of county buildings, outraged his finer feelings, so he went away from there, in ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... would it be to know that a poem of finer quality and more splendid fire than any we have ever read had once been written, if the modesty of its author had led him to keep it always in his pocket and it had finally vanished into the limbo of ignored ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... Evangeliary of Abbat Angilbert of Centula (now St. Riquier), near Abbeville, Charlemagne's son-in-law. This MS., executed about the year 793, is still preserved in the Town Library of Abbeville. In the same rank, but somewhat finer in execution, comes a third Evangeliary, that of St. Mdard of Soissons, now in the National Library, Paris ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... believe it was any finer than the one which brought my grizzly down," Glen challenged. "You should have seen that, daddy. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... is laid in the crib, so hearty and so rare! My little Hans would be nothing by His side, were he finer than he is. Coal-black as cherries are His eyes, the rest of Him is white as chalk. His pretty hands are right tender and delicate, I touched Him carefully. Then He gave me a smile and a deep sigh too. If you were mine, thought I, you'd grow a merry boy. At ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... was on the night when she took her leave, in the character of Ninetta. "Nothing can be imagined finer than the spectacle afforded by the immense Theatre of San Carlo, crowded to the very ceiling, and ringing with acclamations," says a correspondent of one of the English papers at the time. "Six times after the fall of the curtain ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... and crispness. Such an air,—bracing, stinging, as it sometimes was,—could never turn really harsh and easterly; neither, perhaps, could it ever take on the soft languor of the summer sea. And Amy Lovejoy's nature would always have the finer, more individual quality of the high, pure altitude in which she had been reared. Possibly Stephen Burns had yet something to learn about that agreeable climate with which he was so ready to compare his love. The weather had been perfect since he came to Colorado. How could he suspect the meaning ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller |
