"Gratuitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that we might follow Holiness. Lastly, We call him King, because we hope for the Reward of a heavenly Kingdom, from him who sits at the Right-Hand of God the Father. And all this Felicity we owe to his gratuitous Bounty, that we have Jesus Christ for our Lord, rather than the Devil to be a Tyrant over us; that we have Innocence and Sanctity, instead of the Filth and Uncleanness of our Sins; and instead of the Torments of Hell, the Joys ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... been his practice. But to-day he could not settle into his chair. That self-contained position he had lately occupied, in which the only attention demanded was the concentration of the inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an interest outside the house. He walked from one window to another, and became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Europe before the discovery of America. The Unknown, breaking in surf on his very shores, did not invite him, but dimly repelled. Thought about it, attraction toward it, would seem to him far-fetched, gratuitous, affected, indicating at best a feather-headed flightiness of mind. The sailors of Columbus probably regarded him much as Sancho Panza does Don Quixote, with an obscure, overpowering awe, and yet with a very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Kimball and Mrs. Hoffman, who furnished the car, made one trip of 1,000 miles in the fifth district and Miss Clay was then placed in charge of the sixth district offices, where she rendered valuable service for two weeks longer, all gratuitous. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... it out of Mother Earth, and there's plenty more where it came from. Seeing that I deprived you of access to your own money and all your personal belongings, you are entitled to this any way you look at it. And I want to throw in a bit of gratuitous advice—in case you should conclude to go back to the Meadows. They probably looked high and low for you. But there is no chance for them to learn where you actually did get to unless you yourself tell them. The most plausible explanation—and if you ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty—he may have embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's books and things—the material evidence ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... freedom of the apparently original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a large range of examples, if our observation is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Conseil general. No such proposition was ever made to me before. I could not submit to it. The prefect has been unusually busy of late. The schoolmaster has been required to send in a list of the peasants whose children, on the plea of poverty, receive gratuitous education. The children of those who do not vote with the prefect are to have ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... body's wheels? Why they came down is to me all a riddle, And left Hallelujah broke off in the middle: Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut— To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged and silly, Pouring a watering-pot over a lily, Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf, Leave her to water her lily herself, Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it: Remember the loss is her own if ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... man like Polk Lynde at this stage of Aileen's affairs was a bit of fortuitous or gratuitous humor on the part of fate, which is involved with that subconscious chemistry of things of which as yet we know nothing. Here was Aileen brooding over her fate, meditating over her wrongs, as it were; and here was Polk Lynde, an interesting, forceful Lothario of the city, who was perhaps as well ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... virtue that is sublimely good at another's expense." What shall we answer to such criticism? Upon what ground can we read the play from beginning to end, and doubt the angel-purity of Isabella, or contemplate her possible lapse from virtue? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a sin against the light ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... monkeys that forms so large a part of the population of the Jardin d'Acclimation in Paris; and yet, as this curious account has not been questioned, so far as we are aware, by those who ought to know the facts, it is hardly gracious in us to begin the relation of it by gratuitous skepticism. A Bordeaux ship-owner, who is noted for insisting on a strict obedience to instructions on the part of his captains, some time ago gave written orders to one of the latter to bring back from Brazil, whither he was going, one or two monkeys—"Rapportez-moi 1 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... at such a reception, and Mr. Brown began to mutter something about "gratuitous insults," when Mr. Wright pointed to a remarkably large parrot that was roosting on the back of a chair, surveying us with quiet dignity, and ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... tools for themselves, and used every exertion to lessen the demand for, or supply the deficiency of their European food. They had also to collect and bring home firewood for their domestic purposes—no small labour; and to fell timber and build boats for the purposes of barter, as they took nothing gratuitous from the natives, ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... sufficient to say that there are pains and penalties attached to the infraction of certain laws, and that I choose to risk them. But Lord B—- was not empowered by Government to attack me; it was a gratuitous act; and had I thrown him and all his crew into the sea, I should have been justified; for it was, in short, an act of piracy on their part. Now, as your father has thought to turn a yacht into a revenue-cutter, you cannot be surprised at my retaliating, ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... discretion, may direct the bounty of the Government in aid of innocent and peaceful strangers whose maltreatment has brought discredit upon the country, with the distinct understanding that such action is in no wise to be held as a precedent, is wholly gratuitous, and is resorted to in a spirit of pure generosity toward those ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... almost entirely occupied in filling appointments previously made through letters from Brother Kline. We have to wonder a little when he found time to write them. But he was his own secretary on gratuitous service, and he never even so much as presented a bill for ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... open, disdaining to reply in words to a gratuitous taunt I could soon answer by deed. The doctor having handed me his lantern, I held it in one hand, the letter in the other. The writing was that of Philip Winwood, and the letter read ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... pointed, with his unerring self-criticism, to the main defect of his book: 'The pedestal is too large for the statue.' There should have been, as he says, a hundred pages more about Salammbo. He declares: 'There is not in my book an isolated or gratuitous description; all are useful to my characters, and have an influence, near or remote, on the action.' This is true, and yet, all the same, the pedestal is too large for the statue. Salammbo, 'always surrounded with ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... they would have seized the opportunity presented by this measure to declare it void and by doing so would have made good their censorship of acts of Congress with the approval of even the Jeffersonian opposition. Instead, they enforced the Sedition Act, often with gratuitous rigor, while some of them even entertained prosecutions under a supposed Common Law of the United States. The immediate sequel to their action was the claim put forth in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that the final authority in interpreting the National ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... opened her eyes in some surprise at this thirst for gratuitous information; it did not accord with Patty's reputation: and ever after, when it was affirmed in her presence that Patty Wyatt was brilliant but superficial, she stoutly maintained that Patty was deeper than people thought. She pondered a moment, and then returned, "Lucille Carter takes ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... they must come to beggary. But we are glad to hear that they are making an effort in New Haven to reform. The grocery men there say that their customers taste so much before they can make up their minds to buy anything, that what with gratuitous slices of cheese and specimen mouthfuls of sugar and sample spoonfuls of molasses, the shop-keeper's profits are most dolefully diminished. A particularly BLUE LAW against this economical custom will have the effect of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... propagated the use of the name America throughout the world. There is no reason to suppose that this application of the name was in any wise suggested by Amerigo Vespucci. It appears to have been entirely gratuitous on the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the medium of his own character, and he proved mistaken. Perhaps the most terrible ironical retribution which could have fallen upon his strange egomania, would have been, had such a thing been possible, the revelation of how gratuitous had been that terrible vision of Mme. d'Albany's life after his death; the revelation of how little difference, after the first great grief, his loss had made in her life; the revelation that, unnoticed, unconsciously, a successor ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... despicably small. I had great temptations to write up certain speculative enterprises, and never accepted one. Our circulation sometimes reached 150,000. And if the publishers (excepting Barnum) had ever shown me anything like thanks or kindness for gratuitous zeal and interest which I took, I could have greatly aided them. One day, for instance, I was asked to write a description of a new ferry. I went there, and the proprietor intimated that he would pay a large sum for an article which would point out the advantage or ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... be, that Paoli was again leaning toward an English protectorate. French imperialist writers hint without the slightest basis of proof that both Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo were in the pay of England. Many have believed, in the same gratuitous manner, that there was a plot among members of the French party to give Buonaparte the chance, by means of the Sardinian expedition, to seize the chief command at least of the Corsican troops, and thus eventually to supplant Paoli. If this conjecture be true, Paoli either knew nothing ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... he had just taken from an insolvent circus. I mounted the noble animal to go to the Bois, but at the Place de la Concorde he began to waltz around it, and I was obliged to get rid of this dancing quadruped at a considerable loss. So your contribution to La Guepe would have to be gratuitous, like those of all the rest. You will give me the credit of having saluted you first of all, my dear Violette, by the rare and glorious title of true poet. You will let me reserve the pleasure of intoxicating you with the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... course of which, the scorbutic youth intimated a burning desire to pull the nose of the gentleman with the emblems of hope; in reply to which, that individual expressed his decided unwillingness to accept of any 'sauce' on gratuitous terms, either from the irascible young gentleman with the scorbutic countenance, or any other person who was ornamented ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... is opposed to the source of spiritual things, since they flow from the gratuitous will of God. Wherefore Our Lord said (Matt. 10:8): "Freely have ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... good report. The question of according or of withholding rights of belligerency must be judged in every case in view of the particular attending facts. Unless justified by necessity, it is always, and justly, regarded as an unfriendly act and a gratuitous demonstration of moral support to the rebellion. It is necessary, and it is required, when the interests and rights of another government or of its people are so far affected by a pending civil conflict as to require a definition of its relations to the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... society. I would lay a guinea that many a lady who has just been kind enough to read the above lines lays down the book, after this confession of mine that I am a smoker, and says, 'Oh, the vulgar wretch!' and passes on to something else." He goes on to prophesy—and for once the "most gratuitous of follies" has been justified by the event—that tobacco will conquer. "Look over the wide world," he says to the ladies, "and see that your adversary has overcome it. Germany has been puffing for three score years; France smokes to a man. Do you think you can keep the enemy ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... widow has left a most touching and graphic description. I wish I could have found room for the whole of her account of those days. The circumstances of his physical constitution and the mental struggle he had suffered are quite sufficient to account for his death without the gratuitous assumption of suicide, which there is nothing in the family papers to support. There is no doubt that this idea was prevalent at the time, and allusions to it are to be found in many subsequent accounts, down to that in Sir George Trevelyan's ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... further reward. Even if he could have been guilty of such impertinence, indeed, he must have forborne for very shame. After all (he told himself) he hadn't figured very creditably, permitting petty prejudice to sway him as it had. He felt singularly sure he had played the gratuitous ass in this affair, and he didn't in the least desire to see the reflection of a like conviction in the eyes of a pretty young woman with a flair for ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... in top form. A four-handed game of snooker is in as rapid progress as is reasonably possible. Every easy-chair is filled with a would-be player offering gratuitous advice in order to speed things up. A young war-scarred Captain is balanced on a rickety side-table, offering odds on the game in a raucous voice. The Mess-waiter strives to be in three places at once. Through all, the players, totally unnerved, play with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... if nothing had happened, just to say that he wished he could have seen her for a few minutes. It would have been so easy to do that instead of sending a superfluous apology for having been rude on purpose! She read the note again and grew angry over it. It was so gratuitous! If he really meant to avoid her always, he need not have written at all. 'Superfluous' was the word; it was superfluous. She tore the letter into little bits and threw them into the basket; and then, by an afterthought, she fished up Logotheti's note, which she had not ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... expedition as an autocrat of sixteen. He went to free the Papacy from the bondage of a Roman faction, the party of the infamous John XII, again rearing its head under a new leader. The boy-ruler suppressed the rebels with some gratuitous cruelty. But he was not without noble ambitions or the capacity of appreciating finer natures than his own. Called upon to nominate a Pope he selected his cousin Bruno, a youth little older than himself, but a statesman and an idealist, who set himself to assert the authority ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... for the general interest and instruction of our readers, not for gratuitous replies to questions of a purely business or personal nature. We will publish such inquiries, however, when paid for as advertisements, at 50 cents a line, under the head of "Business ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... In despite of the gratuitous ideas which man has formed to himself on his pretended free-agency; in defiance of the illusions of this suppose intimate sense, which, contrary to his experience, persuades him that he is master of his will,—all his institutions are really founded upon necessity: on this, as on a variety of other ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Creek. Natives kept much aloof today, I suppose in consequence of my finding their piece of gratuitous information false. Self and all the party affected with griping and vomiting with the exception of Middleton and Davis. Cannot make out the cause; I wish it would rain that I could start through the desert out of ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... sacred, no act of revenge or mortal retaliation was permitted to take place within their gates. Into the six cities of refuge, properly so called, the manslayer could demand admittance, whether the Levites were disposed to receive him or not; and on the same ground he was entitled to gratuitous lodging and maintenance, until his cause should be determined by competent judges. It is added, that they could exercise a discretionary power as to the reception of a homicide into any other of their cities, and even in respect to the hire which they might demand for the house ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Luckily for me, I was, for the present, exempted from temptation. I had formed an acquaintance with a young American captain. On being partially informed of my situation, he invited me to embark with him for his own country. My passage was gratuitous. I arrived, in a short time, at Charleston, which was the place ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... of the passengers, and they were free to proceed farther inland. The field-cornet of the district was one of the few Boers at the station, and he performed the duties of his office by introducing himself to certain passengers whom he believed to be foreign volunteers, and offering them gratuitous railway tickets to Pretoria. No effort was made to conceal the fact that the volunteers were welcome in the country, and nothing was left undone to make the foreigners realise that their ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... I continued, to some few that remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where they left gratuitous ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... looked into are gratuitous," he continued. "For what you beheld in them there is no charge. But a sight of the visions in the other two or in either one of them must be paid for. So far, you are welcome as my guest; but if you wish to see any more ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... supposed to spend his time in sanitary work rather than in treating sick individuals, but it is, of course, impossible for him always to refuse to treat such persons, and we encourage gratuitous work for the poor when it can be carried on without interfering too seriously with ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... skilled in pugilism, enjoyed no pleasure so much as giving gratuitous instructions in his favorite art. A peer paying him a visit, they had a sparring-match, in the course of which he seized his lordship behind, and threw him over his head with a violent shock. The nobleman not relishing this rough usage, "My lord," said the baronet, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... I waited for the train at Narni. There was time to stroll far enough from the station to have a look at the famous old bridge of Augustus, broken short off in mid-Tiber. While I stood admiring the measure of impression was made to overflow by the gratuitous grace of a white-cowled monk who came trudging up the road that wound to the gate of the town. Narni stood, in its own presented felicity, on a hill a good space away, boxed in behind its perfect grey wall, and the monk, to oblige me, crept slowly along and disappeared within the aperture. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... indulgence to human frailty may have drawn over them; accordingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the spurious ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... defence of the city. And now this new proof was given of the love of Netherlanders, even in the midst of their misery and their warfare, for the more humane arts. The new college was well endowed from ancient churchlands, and not only was the education made nearly gratuitous, while handsome salaries were provided for the professors, but provision was made by which the, poorer scholars could be fed and boarded at a very moderate expense. There was a table provided at an annual cost ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that the magazine is supported altogether by gratuitous contributions?" said Beulah, unable to ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... but his notes are always associated with ideas." The youth who were educated at the public schools of ancient Mexico—for that realm, so far from neglecting the cause of popular education, established houses for gratuitous instruction, and to a certain extent made the attendance upon them obligatory—learned by rote long orations, poems, and prayers with a facility astonishing to the conquerors, and surpassing anything they were accustomed to see in the universities ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... means certain that a man's business is the most important thing he has to do. To an impartial estimate it will seem clear that many of the wisest, most virtuous, and most beneficent parts that are to be played upon the Theatre of Life are filled by gratuitous performers, and pass, among the world at large, as phases of idleness. For in that Theatre, not only the walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and diligent fiddlers in the orchestra, but those who look on and clap their hands from the benches, do really ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as now), balls, dances, and evening parties,.... Seemed like a sort of unnatural up-in-the-air balloon work,.... As mere gratuitous trifling in presence of business and duty As does the turning aside of the tourist to look at a landscape Seem in the steamer or coach to the merchant in haste for the city." ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... wish you not wholly to lose him from your notice, but to recommend him to such acquaintance as may best secure him from suffering by his own follies, and to take such general care both of his safety and his interest as may come within your power. His relations will thank you for any such gratuitous attention: at least they will not blame you for any evil that may happen, whether they thank you or not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the house; another, in accents as to which Maisie's criticism was still intensely tacit, characterised her appeal as such a "gime," such a "shime," as one had never had to put up with; a third treated with some vigour the question of the enormous sums due belowstairs, in every department, for gratuitous labour and wasted zeal. Our young lady's consciousness was indeed mainly filled for several days with the apprehension created by the too slow subsidence of her attendant's sense of wrong. These days would become terrific like the ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... competent salaries: the sciences taught are Mathematics, Medicine, Natural and Experimental Philosophy, and the Fine Arts. The best quality, however, of these institutions is that the instructions, such as they are, are gratuitous; the doors are open to all who choose to enter them; those only who can afford it ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... exclusion. Talk—giving the term a wide application—is one thing, and a proper inexperience another; and it has never occurred to a logical people that the interest of the greater, the general, need be sacrificed to that of the less, the particular. Such sacrifices strike them as gratuitous and barbarous, as cruel above all to the social intelligence; also as perfectly preventable by wise arrangement. Nothing comes home more, on the other hand, to the observer of English manners than ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... though sealed, were eloquent, for they bore in great black letters on staring white muslin the shibboleth of the day, "1776—International Exhibition—1876." The enthusiasm of those very hard and unimpressible entities, the railroad companies, thus manifesting itself in low rates and gratuitous advertising, could not fail to be contagious. Nor was the service done by the interior lines wholly domestic. Several large foreign contributions from the Pacific traversed the continent. The houses and the handicraft of the Mongol climbed the Sierra Nevada on the magnificent highway his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... of effort alive by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be heroic, do every day something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need comes, it may find you nerved and trimmed to stand the test. The man who practices self-denial in unnecessary things ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... eulogium of the professional skill and successful [30] agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of success, our author informs his readers, was brought ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... object is somewhat perplexing, and differs much from the usual raid to which the Scots were so well accustomed. So far as appears from all the authorities, his invasion was a sort of promenade of defiance or bravado, though it seems unlike the character of that astute prince to have undertaken so gratuitous a demonstration. He penetrated as far as Leith, and lay there for some time threatening, or appearing to threaten, Edinburgh Castle; but all that he seems to have done was to make proclamation by his knights ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... making fun of me!" vociferated the General as, turning to the Frenchman, he declared that my bringing about of the incident had been gratuitous. De Griers smiled contemptuously, ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for use if any recompense is received or agreed upon for the service; for where this is the case, the use of the thing is held to be hired, and the contract is of a different kind, for a loan for use ought always to be gratuitous. ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... this was a fault which Dryden, with all his taste, never was able to discard, might easily be proved from various passages in his translations, where the transgression is on his own part altogether gratuitous. Such is the well-known ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... who makes this confession! Let us render justice to his impartiality on this occasion. Such a confession ought to cause some regret to those who go to seek engravings in London." CRAPELET, vol. ii. p. 89. The reader shall make his own remark on the force, if there be any, of this gratuitous piece of criticism of the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Majesties has, for many years, been devoted to public education is well known; but that every person of rank or wealth or high position educates students at his private expense, is not generally known. In the majority of cases this help is entirely gratuitous; in a minority of cases, the expenses of the student are advanced only, to be repaid by instalments at some future time. The reader is doubtless aware that the daimyo in former times used to dispose of the bulk of their incomes in supporting ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... since anything had happened to rouse Griggs into thinking about any individual human being as anything more than a bit of the world's furniture, to be worn out and thrown away in the course of time, out of sight. But something in the absolutely gratuitous nature of Stefanone's advice moved his suspicions. He saw, with his intimate knowledge of the Roman peasant's character, the whole process of the old wine-seller's mind, if only, in the first place, the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... director of her destiny and of ours. My father had been a Wykamist and a fellow of New College, and Winchester was the destination of my brothers and myself; but as he had friends among the masters at Harrow, and as the school offered an education almost gratuitous to children living in the parish, he, with a certain aptitude to do things differently from others, which accompanied him throughout his life, determined to use that august seminary as "t'other school" for Winchester, and sent three ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... the advantage of Radstowe, regretting the greater gaiety of the past, when Sophia and she were belles, was adding gratuitous advice on the management of husbands and some information on the ways of men. Mrs. Sales laughed and glanced now and then at Francis, but whether he responded Rose could not see, unless she turned her head. He ought certainly to have been smiling at so pretty a person, wrinkling his eyes in the ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... withdrew his trunk, but just in time to save it from being mangled. For an instant he stood with the member held high in air, bewildered by what seemed to him such a gratuitous attack. Then his twinkling little eyes began to blaze, and he trumpeted shrilly with anger. The next moment, reaching over the fence, he brought down the trunk on Last Bull's hump with such a terrible flail-like blow that the great buffalo ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... upon a chisel belonging to one of the missionaries, and to obtain it he had brought some fish on board, which he presented to the owner of the chisel with so much apparent generosity and friendliness, that the other could not help considering it a gratuitous favour, and, receiving it as such, told him he felt very ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... there is also a sprinkling of smart and Superior Persons, prosperous City Merchants, who regard pictures with respect, as a paying investment, young Commercial Men, whose feeling for Art is not precisely passionate, but who have turned in to pass the time, and because the Exhibition is gratuitous, earnest Youths with long hair, soft hats, and caped ulsters, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... of trying to get or hold a job in my condition. So I prepared to go home. I didn't want to do it, because I knew the neighbors and friends round about would be ready for me with, "I told you so" and "I knew it couldn't be done" and a lot of gratuitous information ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... aristocracy he defended, in spite of the political marriages by which it tried to secure breeding for itself, had its mind undertrained by silly schoolmasters and governesses, its character corrupted by gratuitous luxury, its self-respect adulterated to complete spuriousness by flattery and flunkeyism. It is no better to-day and never will be any better: our very peasants have something morally hardier in them that culminates occasionally in a Bunyan, a Burns, or ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... of pity which he cast on the misery of the vanquished. Instead of a rigorous exaction of his debt, he accepted a sum of thirty thousand byzants, for the ransom of seven thousand poor; two or three thousand more were dismissed by his gratuitous clemency; and the number of slaves was reduced to eleven or fourteen thousand persons. In this interview with the queen, his words, and even his tears suggested the kindest consolations; his liberal alms were distributed among those who had been made ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... handful of sagebrush and used it as a makeshift currycomb, while Kate, a little surprised at the action, picked up the bridle reins when he had finished the gratuitous grooming and ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... conscious. When it becomes so, a man soon tires. Thorpe resented the inequalities, the stones, the roots, the patches of soft ground which lay in his way. He felt dully that they were not fair. He could negotiate the distance; but anything else was a gratuitous insult. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... free gemmules is a gratuitous assumption, yet can hardly be considered as very improbable, seeing that cells have the power of multiplication through the self-division of their contents. Gemmules differ from true ovules or buds inasmuch as they are supposed to be capable of multiplication ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... to so immense an extent, under the administration of supposed infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever cease to be, is a pure assumption for the nonce; but if it will one day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it might ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... scrupulous in embalming their dead and storing them in repositories of eternal stone, because they believed that the departed souls would at some future time come back and revivify their former bodies, if these were kept from decay. This hypothesis seems to us as false as it is gratuitous. In the first place, there is no evidence of it whatever, neither written testimony nor circumstantial hint. Herodotus tells us, "The Egyptians say the soul, on the dissolution of the body, always enters into some other ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... firemen, needlewomen, &c., while the inventory of objects used by this formidable array of workpeople comprises no fewer than 1,500 distinct heads. A medical man attached to the establishment gives gratuitous advice to all those employed, and a chemist dispenses drugs and medicines without charge. While suffering from illness the men receive half-pay, but should they be laid up by an accident met with in the course of their work full salary is invariably awarded to them. As may be supposed, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... the high-born dame. "Do ye na ken, woman, that ye are bound to be liege vassals in all hunting, hosting, watching, and warding, when lawfully summoned thereto in my name? Your service is not gratuitous. I trow ye hae land for it.—Ye're kindly tenants; hae a cot-house, a kale-yard, and a cow's grass on the common.—Few hae been brought farther ben, and ye grudge your son suld gie me a day's service ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... character. He is said to have received one fee of twenty talents, about eighteen thousand dollars of our money, for a speech that he wrote for Nicocles, king of Cyprus. Still, from all that appears, the compensation thus received was honorary or gratuitous merely. Among the early institutions of Rome, the relation of patron and client, which existed between the patrician and plebeian, bound the former to render the latter assistance and protection in his lawsuits, with no other return ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... During the first years of the new regime a keen reaction was produced against the political system of the imperial government in Africa. The civil territory was considerably enlarged at the expense of the military. An effort was made to attract French colonists to Algeria by gratuitous concessions of land. Some lands were granted in particular to natives of Alsace-Lorraine, who preferred to retain French nationality after the war. Peasants from the south of France, whose vines had been destroyed by the phylloxera, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that such abuse would manifest itself in a change of the law which would authorize an excessive issue of paper for the purpose of inflating prices and winning popular favor. To that it may be answered that the ascription of such a motive to Congress is altogether gratuitous and inadmissible. The theory of our institutions would lead us to a different conclusion. But a perfect security against a proceeding so reckless would be found to exist in the very nature of things. The political party which should be so blind ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... zigzag. As all non-sleeping leaves are incessantly circumnutating, we must conclude that a part at least of the upward and downward movement of one that sleeps, is due to ordinary circumnutation; and it seems altogether gratuitous to rank the remainder of the movement under a wholly different head. With a multitude of climbing plants the ellipses which they describe have been greatly increased for another purpose, namely, catching hold of a support. With these climbing ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... there, knew very well that it could be of no practical assistance to him. Not a picture sold; and next day there were altogether seven people in the gallery, of whom five were the relations of men to whom he had given gratuitous teaching at one period ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to have lost their authority, when weighed in the balance against the vote of the majority. Very recently the members of an honourable and useful profession represented to a minister that his extension of a scheme of more or less gratuitous relief to a class which hitherto had been able and willing to pay its way, was likely to deprive them of their livelihood. His reply, inter alia, contained the argument that the class in question was very numerous and ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... till the early hours of the morning, when exhausted nature could resist no longer, and be fell asleep on a little iron bed in the studio. There were days when he told me he had worked twenty hours out of the twenty-four. All this was a perfectly gratuitous expenditure of time and health that could not possibly ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... State—no matter how firm its previous adherence to the Democratic party—was aroused to a strenuous opposition. Nearly every Northern State pronounced by a stupendous majority against him and against his cause. Nothing but a systematic disguise of the true questions at issue by his own party, and a gratuitous complication of the canvass by means of a foolish third party, saved his followers from the most complete and shameful rout that had been given for many years to any political array. Men of every class, of every shade of faith, joined in that hearty protest against the spirit which animated the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Further, what a man gives, he gives either as being due, or as not due. But a benefit conferred as being due belongs to justice while a benefit conferred as not due, is gratuitous, and in this respect is an act of mercy. Therefore every benefit conferred is either an act of justice, or an act of mercy. Therefore it is not an act ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... crowd, of which the legate was the central figure, he raised his arm with a gesture of indignation, and protested vehemently that the assassination of Maximilian's father had been iniquitously charged upon himself.—"And yet," said he, "upon that one gratuitous assumption have been built all the other foul ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Bob-cat!" chanted Curly, in gratuitous insult of which only bantam shamelessness is capable. "Stop, will I? Who'll make me? You? You ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Jeffson looking very ill—he having recently had a severe attack of the prevailing complaint, but "Company" had recovered completely, and was very busy with the duties of his store, which ("Company" being a warm-hearted man) included gratuitous attendance on, and ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... grace—which is as much as to say that the divine order will be everywhere re-established. Love will be more potent than hatred; God will save his glory, and his glory is in his goodness. But it is very true that all gratuitous wickedness troubles the soul, because it seems to make the great lines of the moral order tremble within us by the sudden withdrawal of the curtain which hides from us the action of those dark corrosive forces which have ranged themselves in battle ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there was something extremely odious in this sudden offer of money. It was the first time any one had offered to pay him, and it seemed to put him on a level with a common day-laborer. His first impulse was to resent it as a gratuitous humiliation, but a glance at Mrs. Van Kirk's countenance, which was all aglow with officious benevolence, re-assured him, and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... time to time. The settlers in Hispaniola were to have their passage free; to be excused from taxes; to have the absolute property of such plantations on the island as they should engage to cultivate for four years; and they were furnished with a gratuitous supply of grain and stock for their farms. All exports and imports were exempted from duty; a striking contrast to the narrow policy of later ages. Five hundred persons, including scientific men and artisans of every description, were sent out and maintained ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... should be subject to principalities and powers and ready to every good work (Titus iii. 1), not that they may be justified by these things—for they are already justified by faith—but that in liberty of spirit they may thus be the servants of others and subject to powers, obeying their will out of gratuitous love. ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... the French in this War, and those following, in which his Britannic Majesty played chief counter-tenor. From 1741, in King Friedrich's First War, onwards to Friedrich's Third War, 1756-1763, the volunteer French found a great deal of work lying ready for them,—gratuitous on their part, from the beginning. And the results to them came out, first completely visible, in the World-Miracles of 1789, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... De Marsay, with a laugh. "My dear fellow, discretion is the best form of calculation. Listen—however, no! I will not say a word. You never teach me anything; I am not disposed to make you a gratuitous present of the treasures of my policy. Life is a river which is of use for the promotion of commerce. In the name of all that is most sacred in life—of cigars! I am no professor of social economy for the instruction of fools. Let us breakfast! It costs less to give you a tunny omelette than to ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... Porphyry and the first propositions of Euclid. But the pupil soon found his teacher to be but a charlatan, and betook himself, aided by commentaries, to master logic, geometry and the Almagest. Before he was sixteen he not merely knew medical theory, but by gratuitous attendance on the sick had, according to his own account, discovered new methods of treatment. For the next year and a half he worked at the higher philosophy, in which he encountered greater obstacles. In such moments ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... stories, due perhaps as much to the wonder of her sorrowful beauty, as to any justification in knowledge, of her boundless extravagance, her magnificent fantasies, her various perversity, rumour pointing specially at those priceless diamonds, the favours not altogether gratuitous it was said of exalted personages. And with all deductions made, for malice, for the ingenuity of the curious, the impression of her perversity was left; she remained enigmatical and notorious, a somewhat scandalous heroine! And Cristich had known her; he ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... care a number of pious young men, preparing for the ministry. These she had looked after, and brought out of obscurity. As soon as their piety had been sufficiently tested, she would bring them to the notice of her Christian friends. She persuaded pious teachers to give them gratuitous instruction, and pious booksellers to supply them with books. In the same way, she procured their board, in the families of wealthy Christians. And she formed little societies of ladies, to supply ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... stipends were enlarged, and the surplus money set apart for college exhibitions. The head master receives L900 a year, the second master L400. The education is entirely gratuitous. The presentations to the school are in the gift of the Master of the Mercers' Company, which company has undoubtedly much limited Dean Colet's generous intentions. The school is rich in prizes and exhibitions. The latest chronicler of the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... means of tuition among their young people, from the introduction of mechanical arts into the different tribes, and from the increased attention bestowed on agricultural pursuits, under the patronage of government, throughout the territories of emigration; nor can the gratuitous but useful labours of the missionary, and the inculcation of the pure doctrines of Christianity, be overlooked in the enumeration of means that are conducing to the great end so precious in the sight of the philanthropist, and so dear to the finest ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... than two thousand souls, we had, of course, a variety of character. In addition to the common run of men, there were some characters of sterling worth and ability, who exerted a most beneficial influence on the children and youth of the place by imparting gratuitous religious instruction.* Much intelligent interest was felt by the villagers in all public questions, and they furnished a proof that the possession of the means of education did not render them an unsafe portion of the population. They felt kindly toward each other, and much respected those of the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... that Miss Lavinia was an authority in affairs of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr. Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured of her. My private opinion is, that this was entirely a gratuitous assumption, and that Pidger was altogether innocent of any such sentiments—to which he had never given any sort of expression that I could ever hear of. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a superstition, however, that he would ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... subject was due to two reasons: firstly, it was a cardinal instance; secondly, it was a miracle not worked by Christ Himself, and therefore a discussion of its genuineness could offer no suggestion of personal fraud, and hence would avoid inflicting gratuitous ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... work of Aaron Hill, excepting only the anonymous letter which Richardson summarizes, beginning on page xxi[6] — sent to Richardson in care of Charles Rivington, co-publisher of Pamela, on November 15, 1740, the first gratuitous response to Richardson's book. To advertisements in The Daily Gazeteer (November 20) and The London Evening-Post (December 11-13), Richardson added ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... improvements than the certainty of reward to the person who first introduces one. The moment, however, that the improvement is imitated by all producers, the advantage gained by it becomes the common good of the whole nation.(646) These are, as J. B. Say says, conquests made over the gratuitous productive force of nature. As a consequence, the value in use of a people's resources increases; generally, also, their value in exchange, in so far as the production of the now cheaper goods increases in a degree greater than their cost of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... misfortune to be born into the world, and not into a fairy tale, you see. But it's a perfectly gratuitous assumption, that I ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him—for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl—wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... woman would tell me the truth. And don't you see how well it is that your husband should know it? It's true that he doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn't alter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his daughter's prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord Warburton simply got tired of the poor child, that's one thing, and it's a pity. If he gave her up to please you it's another. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... should regard as the limits of honourable warfare, it must be remembered that he was fighting an enemy who had also disregarded these limits, and much may be forgiven to brave men who are resisting a gratuitous war of conquest. When he died, his work seemed to have failed. But he had shown his countrymen how to resist Edward, and he had given sufficient evidence of the strength of national feeling, if only ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... Cologne, as the main bastion of the impregnable Hindenburg Line, cannot be over-rated. Our strategical, voluntary and gratuitous crossing of the Rhine was carried ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... GRATUITOUS. There are those who object to the use of this word in the sense of unfounded, unwarranted, unreasonable, untrue. Its use in this sense, however, has the sanction of abundant authority. "Weak and gratuitous conjectures."—Porson. "A gratuitous assumption."—Godwin. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. If it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which you disliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. Nearly the whole study of aesthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... your bath—for hours together, upon payment of a franc. The water costs nothing; the building has been erected at the public expense, and the visitor therefore enjoys this luxury at a moderate rate. For the poorer class of patients gratuitous baths are provided; and in fact the gifts of nature are here grudged to no one, but every man's wants may be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... to the mass of Southern white men, emancipation was a measure born of malicious spite in the breast of the North, what should they say of that which followed—the enfranchisement of the black? It was a gratuitous insult—a causeless infamy! It was intended to humiliate, without even the mean motive of advantage to be derived. They did not for a moment believe—they do not believe to-day—that the negro was enfranchised for his own sake, or because the North believed ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... before the Battle, and finally that now was the time when Mr. Dodd sang Just before the Battle; so that the thing became a fixture like the dropping of the dummy axe, and you are to conceive me, Sunday after Sunday, piping up my lamentable ditty and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause. It is a beautiful trait in human nature that I ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... true a large part of one of my lectures consisted of a gratuitous slam at "Mr. Howells and the so-called realists," but further reading and deeper thought along the lines indicated by Whitman, had changed my view. One of Walt's immortal invitations which had appealed to me ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... not respond to his gratuitous praise of the fair and benevolent Clara. While he was talking, he seemed to recede a great way from her; his tones to ring hollowly upon her hearing, his form to grow indistinct. Was he playing with ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... digression from the main question. History will doubtless attribute the outbreak of war between ourselves and Germany to the development of the Belgian question, and, we are confident, will judge that had it not been for the gratuitous attack made on a neutral country by Germany, war with Great Britain would not have ensued on August 4, 1914. The excuses put forward by the German Government for this wanton outrage on international agreements are instructive. In conversation ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... resolutions, and inducing his colleague, Dan Stone, to sign it with him, had his protest entered on the journal for March 3, 1837. While this protest was cautiously worded it did declare "the institution of slavery is founded upon injustice and bad policy." This was a real gratuitous expression of a worthy ideal contrary to self interest, for his constituents were at that time certainly not in any way opposed to slavery. It was only within a few months after this very time that the atrocious persecution and murder ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... accurately the most trivial occurrences of our meeting and the very subject-matter of our conversation. I even remember the very words in which he declined a drink from my traveling-flask—for "It's a raw day," I said, by way of gratuitous excuse for offering it. "Yes," he said, smilingly motioning the temptation aside; "it is a raw day; but you're rather young in years to be doctoring the weather—at least you'd better change the treatment—they'll all be raw days for you after a while!" I confess that ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... all proportioned to the inconvenience of having the hostility of Tunis, flanking as it did the trade routes to the Levant. The British had then quite enough on their hands, without detaching an additional force from the north coast of the Mediterranean, to support a gratuitous quarrel on the south. As a matter of mere policy it would ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... that there would be barely enough to pay the next month's rent, let alone to settle the current bills. She had no idea what Mrs. Condor intended paying, but she fancied that it must be little enough. Surely Mrs. Condor did not receive any great sum for her singing and there must be any number of gratuitous performances. She decided quite suddenly, the day after Christmas, to take Mrs. Condor at her word, and she was a bit disturbed at both the lady's reply and ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... nature had intended her to bestow on the new generation that was to spring from her. She mended his clothes and looked after him generally. He had lost his mother when he was a little boy and had never been accustomed to gratuitous kindness; therefore he was inclined to look upon her services as an interference with his liberty, but he accepted them nevertheless. But all the same the public house was his real home. There he paid for everything and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... however, are somewhat in advance of the story. Henchard, being uncultivated himself, was the bitterest critic the fair girl could possibly have had of her own lapses—really slight now, for she read omnivorously. A gratuitous ordeal was in store for her in the matter of her handwriting. She was passing the dining-room door one evening, and had occasion to go in for something. It was not till she had opened the door that she knew the Mayor was there in the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... to him a gratuitous probe into the private affairs of the family. "I do not care to ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... accomplished by a voluntary and gratuitous establishment, on the part of the superintendent and principal, of Normal and Theological departments, that were maintained as long as there was any real need for them; the former until the fall of 1907, the last year under territorial rule preceding the establishment of county ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... repudiated; for so pained have some persons been by the necessity of recognizing Thomas Lincoln as the father of the President, that they have welcomed, as a happy escape from this so miserable paternity, a bit of gratuitous and unsupported gossip, published, though perhaps with more of malice than of faith, by Mr. Herndon, to the effect that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of some person unknown, presumably some tolerably well-to-do Kentuckian, who ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was complete when, a few days after, she received, addressed in Lord Fitzjocelyn's handwriting, an Illustrated News, with a whole page containing 'the reception of Mrs. Dynevor of Cheveleigh,' with grand portraits of all the flounces and veils, many gratuitous moustaches, something passing for Oliver standing up with a wine-glass in his hand, a puppy that would have perfectly justified Mr. Ponsonby's aversion representing Lord Fitzjocelyn, and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a publication. Being satisfied with this effort, I looked around for other worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece of gratuitous rascality and "see ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... Hugh had become hypersensitive and expected his "brothers" to find fault with his every move. He had no intention of deserting Parker, but he could not help feeling that rooming with him would be a gratuitous ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... Was not he a hero who would, year after year, not merely kill the fatted calf for a quarterly or camp-meeting, but the yearling, and provide as liberally of other things required for entertaining the guests and their horses, and yet keep open house, day and night, for the gratuitous entertainment of preachers? No traveling preacher ever displayed greater heroism than these truly great men, and yet they were not the greatest heroes of that heroic age. Such sacrifices as they made from year to year ...
— The Heroic Women of Early Indiana Methodism: An Address Delivered Before the Indiana Methodist Historical Society • Thomas Aiken Goodwin
... highest in the land in ten brilliant years of spirited, unflagging labor. And to stand at the very top of your calling in a great city is something in itself,—that is, if you like money, and influence, and a seat on the platform at public lectures, and gratuitous tickets to all sorts of places where you don't want to go, and, what is a good deal better than any of these things, a sense of power, limited, it may be, but absolute in its range, so that all the Caesars and Napoleons would ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... special schools of sculpture and architecture in 1871. It would occupy too much space to follow the various changes that have been made in the schools since their establishment. In one important respect, however, they remain the same, viz. in the instruction being gratuitous—no fees have ever been charged. Up to the removal of the Academy to its present quarters the schools could not be kept permanently open, as the rooms occupied by them were wanted for the exhibition. They are now open all the year round with the exception of a fortnight at Christmas, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... precedent. And, accordingly, in testimony of that obligation, the first Christian Caesar, on behalf of Christianity, founded the first system of relief for pauperism. It is true, that largesses from the public treasury, gratuitous coin, or corn sold at diminished rates, not to mention the sportulae or stated doles of private Roman nobles, had been distributed amongst the indigent citizens of Western Rome for centuries before Constantine; but all these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... without more zest of their cycle-rides; though there had been a certain grim pride in squeezing forty miles a day out of the cycle which, having been won in a girls' magazine competition, constantly reminded her of its gratuitous character by a wild capriciousness. And there were occasions too which had been sanctified by political passion. There had been one happy morning when Rachael and she had ridden past Prestonpans, where the fisher-folk sat mending their nets on the beach, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time; at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous after-thought. We began the composition together, on that to me memorable evening: I furnished two or three lines at the beginning ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the first instance proposed by some ancient Critic in the way of useful comment, or necessary explanation, or lawful expansion, or reasonable limitation of the actual utterance of the Spirit. Thus I do not call the clause [Greek: nekrous egeirete] in St. Matt. x. 8 'a gloss.' It is a gratuitous and unwarrantable interpolation,—nothing else but a clumsy encumbrance ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... did not understand it—he couldn't have done so. Else he could not have approved it. But that tied my hands. If Lansing again brings up the Declaration of London—after four flat and reasonable rejections—I shall resign. I will not be the instrument of a perfectly gratuitous and ineffective insult to this patient and fair and friendly government and people who in my time have done us many kindnesses and never an injury but Carden[97], and who sincerely try now to meet our wishes. It would be too asinine an act ever ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... hither from his voyage northward. The islanders met the ship as before, with hogs and fruits; but they set a price upon them, instead of presenting them, as formerly, in the character of offerings, and accepting the returns made them as gratuitous gifts. Finding that they obtained what appeared to them an exorbitant price for their provisions, they supposed the strangers to come from a land of scarcity for the mere purpose of satisfying their appetites; and the common people wholly ceasing to regard ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Congress the Embargo. The Democratic party was then all-powerful, and the measure, after being debated for a few days and nights in the House, and a few hours in the Senate with closed doors, was adopted. This gratuitous surrender to England of the commerce of the world, this measure whose objects were veiled in mystery, conjectured, but not understood, became ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Swift and stealthy as Indians, the black men passed from house to house,—not pausing, not hesitating, as their terrible work went on. In one thing they were humaner than Indians or than white men fighting against Indians,—there was no gratuitous outrage beyond the death-blow itself, no insult, no mutilation; but in every house they entered, that blow fell on man, woman, and child,—nothing that had a white skin was spared. From every house they took arms and ammunition, and from a few, money; on every plantation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... criticism appears just. As to the Memoirs, Marmont says (ii. 224), "In general, these Memoirs are of great veracity and powerful interest so long as they treat of what the author has seen and heard; but when he speaks of others, his work is only an assemblage of gratuitous suppositions and of false facts put ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... though, your dad would hardly listen to me. He would put any advice I might give him down to gratuitous impertinence and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... with an assumption of blandness which I did not feel. "That was simply gratuitous. It is a sample of what I shall do to you if you do not immediately ask this lady's pardon for the gross insult you have ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... man ever handed out more gratuitous advice than Philip Armour. He was the greatest preacher in Chicago. With every transaction, he passed out a premium in way of palaver. He loved the bustle of business, but into the business he butted a lot of talk—helpful, good-natured, kindly, paternal talk, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... others, Dr. Hodge says vaguely: "Here, it is said, is a case of intentional deception commanded. Saul was to be deceived as to the object of Samuel's journey to Bethlehem." Yet, whoever "said" this was guilty of a gratuitous charge of intentional deception, against the Almighty. Samuel was directed of God to speak the truth, so far as he spoke at all, while he concealed from others that which others had no right to know.[2] It would appear, however, throughout this discussion, that Dr. Hodge ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... 20th lovely spring weather began in earnest. The best evidence we had that our lines of communication were getting in more efficient condition, was the arrival of an agent of the Sanitary Commission with a large shipment of fresh vegetables for gratuitous distribution. We were sorely in need of them. There was a good deal of incipient scurvy in camp, and scarce any one was wholly free from disorders caused by too restricted diet. Our regular rations were bacon and flour, varied occasionally by a small ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... and susceptible hearts went round canvassing their parishioners for signatures to petitions. Legal gentlemen, whose practice did not yet correspond to their own opinion of their deserts, rushed into print with gratuitous opinions on the evidence and the various points in the case. Newspaper reporters, sensitively alive to the first symptoms of a 'boom,' wrote up the tragic situation with graphic pens. They described the ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward |
