"Innocuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Deflect their engines, throwing still the bolts Far into space; but from the rampart top Flung ponderous masses down. Long as the shields Held firm together, like to hail that falls Harmless upon a roof, so long the stones Crushed down innocuous; but as the blows Rained fierce and ceaseless and the Romans tired, Some here and there sank fainting. Next the roof Advanced with earth besprinkled: underneath The ram conceals his head, which, poised and swung, They dash with mighty force upon the wall, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Head, where they found plenty to amuse them. It was a splendid headland, rising bluff four hundred feet out of the sea, and presenting magnificent reaches of rock scenery on all sides. The boys lay on the turf at the summit, and flung innocuous stones at the sea-gulls as they sailed far below them over the water and every now and then pounced at some stray fish that came to the surface; or they watched the stately barques as they sailed by on the horizon, wondering ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... from rendering him innocuous to the Opportunist party, brought him into Parliament[2] (as the French Chambers are now called) and increased his popularity. He had been already elected deputy both from the Department of the Aisne and the Department of the Dordogne,—the latter without his proposing himself ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... party,' he goes on, 'more fear these secret Catholics than those who wear their colours openly. The latter they can fine, disarm, and make innocuous. The others, being outwardly compliant, cannot be touched, nor can any precaution be taken against their rising when the day of ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... predisposition toward the miraculous, which acted so fearfully upon the imaginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed; but the implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity with which the virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a little less superstitious, the effects of their superstition would have been much more terrible. It was firmly believed that any one who deviated from the strict line of orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the power of Satan; but as there was no spirit of rebellion or doubt, this ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... or silk—had been trying to eyes and nerves. Infinitely preferable would stone or wood have been, for dwellings; but as Jannati Shahr was, so the Legion had to take it. And doubtless long generations of familiarity with it had made it wholly normal, pleasant, and innocuous to these super-Arabs. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... is a place where life is o'er, And sorrow's blasts innocuous rave; A place where sadness comes no more. Know'st thou the place? It ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... one may get a grip on ... what use is it for an officer to say that no violence is required and enough is done for present purposes if the enemy is successfully observed and quietly apprehended? The first enemy to approach turned out, on arrest, to be just an innocuous cow; but this disappointment served only to make the aspect of my men even more menacing. The next arrival was a hapless scout of the attacking party: he had come to surprise, but was himself violently surprised. What advice and exhortations I had to give were lost in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... than ever arose from the little crowd of Indians, whose mounts began to partake of the excitement imparted by the ponies that had begun to tear to and fro in the narrow gulch, while after discharging another innocuous flight of arrows against the barrier of stones, about a dozen of the savages came on, yelling and belabouring their mounts, driving them nearly frantic ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... prison." Johnson comments: "This impatience of a high spirit is very natural. It is not so dreadful to be imprisoned, as it is desirable in a state of disgrace to be sheltered from the scorn of gazers." This note may be innocuous enough, but it is worth recalling that Johnson was arrested for debt in February, 1758, when he was engaged in the edition of Shakespeare. And two years earlier, in March of 1756, he had also been arrested for debt. Friends came ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... even in its most innocuous form, was contrary to good international usage. Great Britain had previously offended in this respect by permitting her patrolling cruisers to intercept and examine merchant vessels off the port of New York. She desisted at Washington's request. But a waiting cruiser, plain ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... fortify their perilous sovereignty. He shrank from nothing. Self-preservation was the guiding principle of his policy, his first object and his only excuse. Among many wicked and ingenious expedients three main methods are remarkable. First, he removed or rendered innocuous all real or potential rivals. Secondly, he pursued what Sir Alfred Milner has called 'a well-considered policy of military concentration.' Thirdly, he maintained among the desert and riverain people a balance of power on the side of his ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... inoperative, until such a time as a new tooth is grown, and again calls it into action, which is commonly but a few weeks at most; and a person purchasing a poisonous serpent under the supposition that it has been rendered innocuous, will do well to keep watch of its mouth lest he be some time taken unaware. It may be rendered permanently harmless, however, by first removing the fang, and then cauterizing the duct by means of a needle ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... thoughts in its own way, but does not care for the thoughts of older people, or attempt to copy what it feels too difficult. This much at least is certain, that for one cause or another, everything that now at Paris or London our painters most care for and try to realize, of ancient Rome, was utterly innocuous and unattractive to the Saxon: while his mind was frankly open to the direct teaching of Greece and to the methods of bright decoration employed in the Byzantine Empire: for these alone seemed to his fancy suggestive of the glories ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... walked home, that night, the doctor told my sister and me that, whatever the greater world might think of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, whether innocuous or virulent, Jagger was beyond cavil flagrantly corrupting our poor folk, who were simple-hearted and easy to persuade: that he was, indeed, a nuisance which must be abated, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... or offensive. As the judicious physician informs the patient suffering under some cutaneous or other external torture, that the poison lay deep in his constitution—that it must have worked in some shape—and well it is that it has taken one so innocuous—so may even the book-hunter be congratulated on having taken the innate moral malady of all the race in a very gentle and rather a salubrious form. To pass over gambling, tippling, and other practices which cannot be easily spoken of in good society, let ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the mis-aimed cleverness and presumptuous self-confidence which always criticised and sometimes disobeyed the orders of his Chief. General Pennefather, "the grand old boy," his exulting radiant face flashing everywhere through the smoke, his resonant innocuous oaths roaring cheerily down the line, sustains all day the handful of our troops against the tenfold masses of the enemy. Generous and eloquent are the notices of Korniloff and Todleben, the great sailor and the great engineer, the soul and the brain of the Sebastopol ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... it comes into consideration as an object of immediate religious interest, which, strictly speaking, in the Catholic Church is not the case.[4] The Council of Trent was simply wrung from the Romish Church, and she has made the dogmas of that council in a certain sense innocuous by the Vatican decrees.[5] In this sense, it may be said that the period of development of dogma is altogether closed, and that therefore our discipline requires a statement such as belongs to a series of historical phenomena ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... between the Baptist and the Son of Man. The Nazarite would have felt it a sin against the law of his vocation and office to touch anything pertaining to the vine. Christ began his signs by changing water into wine, though of an innocuous kind, for the peasants' wedding at Cana of Galilee. John would have lost all sanctity had he touched the bodies of the dead, or the flesh of a leper. Christ would touch a bier, pass his hands over the seared flesh of the leper, and stand sympathetically beside the grave of his friend. Thus ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... convulsively moves her legs. So long as these throes continue, the Pompilus does not release her prey. She seems to watch the progress of the paralysis. With the tips of her mandibles she explores the Spider's mouth several times over, as though to ascertain if the poison-fangs are really innocuous. When all movement subsides, the Pompilus makes ready to drag her prey elsewhere. It is then I ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the eland, like those of most antelopes, are large, bright, and melting, without any expression of fierceness; and the animal, though so very large and strong, is of the most innocuous disposition—showing fight ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... are not permitted at Nice, the gambling at present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite innocuous in the beginning, so the new Casino at Nice schools the gamester from the outset, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees preparing him for ruin, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... credited. Another reason, I would venture to submit, in opposition to this custom is, that in the case of the blacks doing any mischief, no method of punishing them can possibly be devised equal in severity to the destruction of their weapons. A tribe is rendered more helpless and more innocuous by this than by shooting down half the males, and I am sure that if they once found that only in case of mischief was this punishment resorted to, we should hear infinitely less of cattle-spearing and shepherd-murdering than at present obtains. ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... To keep Scotland innocuous was a primary object with the Tudor King. At the time when he grasped the sceptre of England, the King of Scots, James III., was a feeble ruler surrounded by unpopular favourites, with a baronage preparing to rise against him, and there was little ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... esculent, we would like to suggest to Mr. JOHNSON that this Mixture be administered to the Bug with a spoon, and not sprinkled promiscuously on the ground. We have drank Tea with a "green flavor," and found it comparatively innocuous; but Potatoes with a green flavor, (especially if flavored by the JOHNSONIAN method,) we should consider as doubtful, to say the least. It is the general impression that there is nothing Green in Paris; but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... a temperature above 200 deg. F., because of the water they contain which is not completely removed below 212 deg. One of the chief objects in cooking food is to render it sterile. Not only do bacteria become innocuous through cooking, but various parasites, as trichina and tapeworm, are destroyed, although some organisms can live at a comparatively high temperature. Cooked foods are easily re-inoculated, in some cases ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... Jim is as a den of serpents. I reckons now he has a plumb dozen mowed away in his raiment. Thar's no harm in 'em; bein' all bull-snakes, which is innocuous an' without p'ison, ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... generally adopted. And so you see why the Church strives to hold the people to its own archaic and innocuous religious tenets; why your Church strives so zealously to hold its adherents fast to the rules laid down by pagan emperors and ignorant, often illiterate churchmen, in their councils and synods; and why the Protestant church is so quick to denounce as unevangelical everything that ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was an unmistakable one. It was nothing less than the definitive introduction into astronomy of the paradoxical conception of the central fire and hearth of our system as a cold, dark, terrestrial mass, wrapt in a mantle of innocuous radiance—an earth, so ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... infinite tenderness, trembling with fraternal pity, awoke within him, now that he was about to plunge into the painful truths of existence; and it was something emanating from himself, something very great and very good which was to render innocuous the terrible avalanche of facts which was impending. He was determined that he would reveal everything, since it was necessary that he should do so in order to remedy everything. Was not this an ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Frederick II. and his eternal "combinations" went to such lengths that, during the first Silesian war, he offered the Austrian Court a detailed plan by which the "Land-hungry conqueror" might be personally rendered innocuous. (See Arneth, Maria ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... particularly in a state institution, and perhaps its advisability, but successive discussions had only postponed action from year to year. So it was not until January 5, 1870, that the great step was taken in the following innocuous resolution: ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... boughs close to me. Once for a few moments I got completely entangled in the folds of one, a wonderfully slender kind, being nearly six feet in length, and not more than half an inch in diameter at its broadest part. It was a species of Dryophis. The majority of the snakes seen were innocuous. One day, however, I trod on the tail of a young serpent belonging to a very poisonous kind, the Jararaca (Craspedocephalus atrox). It turned round and bit my trousers; and a young Indian lad, who was behind me, dexterously cut it through with his knife before it had time ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the Arab fusillade was almost innocuous, it harassed the troops, keeping them on the alert all night. And when, with the first streaks of dawn, the dreary march began, all traces of the foe had disappeared. All the morning dragged along, till fatigue and the heat of the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... problematical nature of a future life. It is, in essence, a reductio ad absurdum of those professors of religion who still preach a heaven of golden streets and pearly gates, of idleness and everlasting psalm-singing, of restful and innocuous bliss. Mark Twain wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the allegories and the figurative language of the Bible literally. Of course everybody called for a harp and a halo as soon as they reached ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... principal noxious element in sea water, and soda in combination with a vegetable or organic acid, such as citric acid, tartaric acid, or malic acid, being innocuous, the conclusion is that the element of evil to be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... appointed in hardwood, with red cushions on the transoms and a creeping plant or so hanging here and there. A canary chirped up and broke into rolling song. It was all homy, innocuous. Yet he had been drugged at the same table not so long before. And now he was pledged a share of ungathered gold. It was a far cry back to his ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... Farnsworth told Meadows that he had not yet spoken to Millard about the matter, and he thought it not best to mention it to him before the meeting. But the one thing that rendered Meadows tolerably innocuous was that he never could co-operate with an ally, even in factious opposition, without getting up a new faction within the first, and so fomenting subdivisions as long as there were two to divide. The moment Farnsworth had left him he began to reflect suspiciously that ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... prevailed to any extent in the neighborhood of Ypres, and there can be no doubt that the effect of these poisonous fumes materially influenced the operations in that theater, until experience suggested effective counter-measures, which have since been so perfected as to render them innocuous. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... solitary meditation follow on the useful field of observation sought in the world, and thus he drew profit from both, without ever suffering himself to be exclusively engrossed by one or the other. The enervating atmosphere of drawing-rooms remained innocuous for him; he came out from them with a mind as virile and independent as if he had never breathed it, keeping all his ideas strong and bold, just and humane, as they were before. But the consequences of this rare equilibrium, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... drying up. Endless innocuous papers recalculating the values of harmless constants and other such nonsense were all that was being published. They were hardly worth reading. Others were feeling the throttling effects of security ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... transaction solely as it affected himself: as an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise presentable record. He had scarcely considered the act in relation to Margaret Aubyn; for death, if it hallows, also makes innocuous. Glennard's God was a god of the living, of the immediate, the actual, the tangible; all his days he had lived in the presence of that god, heedless of the divinities who, below the surface of our deeds and passions, silently forge the fatal ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... always felt an intense wish to make analogous trials, but have never had an opportunity, and it is not likely that you or any one would be willing to try so troublesome an experiment. Colouring or staining the fine red breast of a bullfinch with some innocuous matter into a dingy tint would be an analogous case, and then putting him and ordinary males with a female. A friend promised, but failed, to try a converse experiment with white pigeons—viz., to stain their tails and wings with magenta or other colours, and then observe what ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... found that it had an acrid and unpleasant taste, which would have induced any one at once to have pronounced it poisonous. Thanks to the missionaries, this plant now thrives only in these deep ravines, innocuous to every one. Close by I saw the wild arum, the roots of which, when well baked, are good to eat, and the young leaves better than spinach. There was the wild yam, and a liliaceous plant called Ti, which grows in abundance, and has a soft brown root, in shape and size like a huge log of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place where the professor becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and a preacher, displaying his science in its most complete and most winning form, pouring it forth ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... had been here a whole week, and he wasn't in the least curious about her. He didn't know that when you're a "nice common sort of a woman" to these Maine folk, you're receiving high praise from sturdy democrats. The phrase, to him, called up a good, homely creature, amiably innocuous, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the yunbeai enter the stricken body and drive out the poison. These various incantations are a large part of the wirreenun's education; not least valuable amongst them is the chant sung over the tracks of snakes, which renders the bites of those snakes innocuous. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... either to relax a muscle. The little circle of admiring beholders which is always on hand inspecting these splendid horsemen was present, of course, with varying elements, and I had to wait a few minutes until a small number of innocuous spectators coincided with the aphelion of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... be living entirely within himself for the moment. He might have made you think of the Trojan Horse—innocuous without, but teeming with belligerent activity within. He seemed to be laughing maliciously, though without movement or noise. Then he was all frank joyousness again. "Good!" he exclaimed. He smote Harboro on the shoulder. "Good!" He stood apart, vigorously ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... involved in a conspiracy against the government he was liable at any moment to be seized and conducted to prison, where he might be detained indefinitely, until the danger was over, or he was considered innocuous. The ancient fortress at the river mouth in Santo Domingo, known as La Torre del Homenaje, bears over its entrance the sign, "Political Prison," and rarely has it been without tenants, even when the country was at peace and the constitutional guarantees were supposed ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... that scientists will consign to innocuous desuetude their camouflaged sesquipedalian vocabularies, and tell us what they mean in short words, so we all may know what ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... the sort of existence most of these people do," he retorted, "I'd take measures to be broke as soon as possible. What the deuce is there to it? The women get up in the morning, spend the forenoon fixing themselves up to take in some innocuous gabblefest after luncheon. Then they get into their war paint for dinner, and after dinner rush madly off to some other festive stunt. Swell rags and a giddy round. If it were just fun, it would be all right. But ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... out. You didn't want to be told you were in love. It was a thing too harsh and sweet. It frightened you to think of. You wanted us to sit for ever, like two lovers painted on a fan, fixed in an everlasting and innocuous bliss. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... progress. Arrived at the door, she proclaimed her embassy. Col. Zane fastened a table cloth around her waist, and emptying into it a keg of powder, again she ventured forth. The Indians were no longer passive. Ball after ball passed whizzing and innocuous by. She reached the gate and entered ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... homeward-bound convoy approaching. The situation was one that obviously could not be solved effectually except by winning a general command of the sea, but in Torrington's judgment it could be rendered innocuous by holding the command in dispute. His design, therefore, was to act upon the defensive and prevent the enemy achieving any positive result until he was in a position to fight them with a fair chance ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... spirituous liquors under the name of Sarah Schnetterling, tobacconist. The window had the placard 'Ici on parle Francais', and was adorned in a tasteful manner with ornamental pipes, fishing-rods and flies, jars of sweets, sheets of foreign stamps, pictorial advertisements of innocuous beverages. A woman with black grizzling hair, fashionably dressed, flashing dark eyes, long gold ear-rings, gold beads and gaudy attire, came out to reclaim her property. A word or two passed about payment, during which Clement had a strange thrill of puzzled recollection. The bottles ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that 'patriotism' ought to be written 'Pat riotism.' Deep regret was expressed that those who attended the meeting had not been armed with revolvers instead of stones, and that the platform had not been defended with Maxim guns instead of comparatively innocuous wooden chairs. Had modern weapons of precision been used the Daily Express would have been able to congratulate mankind on getting rid of quite a considerable ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... missed to one I have killed! How often the fierce arrow hissed its threat close by the wide ears! How often the puff of lifted feathers has marked the innocuous passage of my very best arrow! How often the roar of wings has replied to the 'chuck' of my steel-head shaft as it stabbed the tree branch under the grouse's feet! Oh, le bon temps, que de ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... country, a fascinating belief in witchcraft. There was in our near neighbourhood, for example, a person known as the Dudley Devil, who could bewitch cattle, and cause milch kine to yield blood. He had philtres of all sorts—noxious and innocuous—and it was currently believed that he went lame because, in the character of an old dog-fox, he had been shot by an irate farmer whose hen-roost he had robbed beyond the bounds of patience. He used to discover places where objects were hidden which had been stolen ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... of advancement, a callaboose. It bein' inconvenient to shoot up or lynch everybody who infringes our rooles, Jack Moore invents a convincin' but innocuous punishment for minor offenders. Endorsed by Enright, he established a water trough—it's big enough to swim a dog—over by the windmill; an' when some perfervid cow-puncher, sufferin' from a overdose ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... tender. The plant should be pulled up whole, with a portion of the root. In order to preserve your hands from the sharp biting liquid which issues from the points, you should wrap them in linen of close texture. When once the nettle is boiled, it is perfectly innocuous; and this vegetable, so rough in its exterior, becomes a very delicate dish. We were able to enjoy this delightful variety of esculents for more than a month. Then the little tubercles of the fern became hollow ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... bridge so recently replaced by this structure was much more picturesque, curving across the flood and supported upon multitudinous feet, like a long-legged centipede of the innocuous kind. For three hundred years it had stood over the stream firmly and well, and it ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the injection of the venom vary directly in intensity with the amount of the poison introduced, and the rapidity with which it reaches the circulating blood, being most marked when it immediately enters a large vein. The poison is innocuous when ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... presence of disease, and which, after a plentiful crop of guineas had been extracted, nature was allowed to heal: the patient was then pronounced out of danger. With some persons the liniment was perfectly innocuous, and when this was the case the patient was informed that no disease need be feared. The secret of course lay in the fact that the quack used two liniments, apparently identical, one of which only contained ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... be able to speak. "Curl your hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but you'd still remain the Nice Boy. That's why I like you. You're as refreshing and innocuous as a lettuce salad, and you may glare as much as you like. I hope you'll never be spoilt. Come on. We shall be late for dinner." And she made him quicken his step ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... football, and even that will soon be stripped of its vigor on the plea that it is barbarous. When our fathers quarreled they took a pot-shot at each other at ten paces; now disagreements involving even family honor are carried into the courts—the bloody Code Duello has been relegated to "innocuous desuetude." Texas is supposed by our Northern neighbors to be the "wurst ever," the most bloodthirsty place this side the Ottoman Empire; yet the Houston Post, leading paper of Harris county, is crying its poor self sick because some peripatetic Ananias intimated ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... mast-head. All the same, "Come if you Dare" is a fine song; "Fairest Isles, all Isles excelling," is one of Purcell's loveliest thoughts, and the words are more boastful than ferocious; "Saint George, the Patron of our Isle," is brilliant and the words are innocuous. The masque element is not dumped into King Arthur altogether so shamelessly as in other cases; the whole play is a masque. Although there is a plot, the supernatural is largely employed, and ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... Independence of 1857"—in its way a very remarkable history of the Mutiny, combining considerable research with the grossest perversions of facts and great literary power with the most savage hatred—were bound in false covers as "Pickwick Papers," or other equally innocuous works. Other seditious leaflets besides those for the incitement of mutiny in the native army appear to have come from America, whilst newspapers like the Talvar and the Bande Mataram, which preach ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... injustice. Again, it may be affirmed that all powerful associations, private as well as public, operate in restriction of individual liberty. You may argue that great industrial companies are voluntary; the question is whether they are innocuous to the common weal, and we may add that this point is coming seriously to the front at the present time. The distinction, as Mr. Stephen remarks, drawn by the old individualism between State institutions and those created by private combination is losing its significance; ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... room, and an electrical machine will not work without a pan of coals under the cylinder. But as no part of the island is more than twenty-five miles from the sea, this continual moisture appears to be quite innocuous, its worst effect being the musty smell which it causes in everything in the mountains, where there is the most rain. Use fortunately takes from us the perception of this, or it would be quite intolerable. Perpetual ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a sort of musical or sketch entertainment, thoroughly innocuous, and, while attaining a certain amount of popularity and presumably success to their projectors, were of a nature only amusing to the completely ennuied or juvenile temperament. Readings by various persons, more or less celebrated, not forgetting the name of Dickens, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... most innocuous way in which we may digress is by compiling one of those delectable literary hotch-potches known as 'commonplace books.' Here, with careful selection, we may garner those delightful thoughts, those gay conceits or pithy stories, that strike our fancy as we read. And though perhaps it may be urged ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... man, the danger incurred may be warded off by the gift from the stranger to the child of some small article of value. In a similar way the breach of other tabus, such as the entering of a room which is LALI, may be rendered innocuous. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... beneficent work if, while they continue to spread before our households every day the details of the brawls and fights of drunken men and the horrible murders which they commit, they would discontinue advertising, without warning or dissent, side by side with the atrocities, the 'innocuous beers,' the pure malt whiskies, the genuine brandies, guaranteed to prevent and cure all manner ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... mason-wasps and other spider-killers with the majority of their victims. These spiders have soft, plump, succulent bodies like pats of butter; they inhabit trees and bushes chiefly, where their geometric webs-betray their whereabouts; they are timid, comparatively innocuous, and reluctant to quit the shelter of their green bower, made of a rolled-up leaf; so that there are many reasons why they should be persecuted. They exhibit a great variety of curious forms; many are also very richly ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of them into the palm of his hand he proceeded to swallow them with a backward throw of his head. Tabloids were Mr. Purvis's only personal indulgence. He had been recommended them for his nerves, and he had swallowed so many that had they not been perfectly innocuous he must ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... tombs. They even went themselves to the graveyard and fetched bits of rotten flesh, which they slyly gave their lovers to eat—with more that is still worse. Pieces of the hair and nails of the lover were boiled in oil stolen from the ever-burning lamps in the church. The most innocuous of their charms was to make a heart of glowing ashes, and then to pierce it while singing: 'Prima che'l fuoco spenghi, Fa ch'a mia porta venghi; Tal ti punga mio amore Quale io ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... if he had not so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me less occupied in taking notice than in avoiding it. In innocuous futility one could scarcely excel the other; and between them they raised ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... search of Harriet, and found her in a summer-house reading an innocuous French romance which her professor had selected. There was no place near by where Miss Trumbull might lie concealed, and Betty went ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... this spectacular or frivolous kind which he habitually endeavours to provide. It is Quixotic to anticipate much diminution in the supply and demand of either frivolity or spectacle, both of which may furnish quite innocuous pleasure. But each is the antithesis of dramatic art; and whatever view one holds of the methods of the American capitalist, it is irrational to look to him for the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... however, were more fortunate than the average in having their letters sent back to them for revision. The usual scheme is for the censor to clip out completely the portion of the letter carrying the damaging information. In case, therefore, a man has written something innocuous—but interesting none the less to his correspondent—on the other side, he is simply "out of luck." One can see it pays ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... his two officers of the watch, Dogberry and Verjuice; the poisonous Dogberry, and the acid liquor of green fruits, affording suitable names for the stupidly innocuous constables, in a play the very essence of which is Much Ado About Nothing. Another of his discoveries he had, during their last lesson, unfolded to David, who had certainly contemplated it with interest. It was, that the original forms of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... old saying, and therefore of course indisputably true, that some have greatness thrust upon them. True of men, it is, in one instance at least, true of places—Needley, from an unheard of, modest, innocuous and unassuming little hamlet, leaped in a flash into the focus of the world's eyes. In huge headlines the papers in every city of every State carried it on their front pages. And while the first astounding despatch from the metropolitan ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... strove to drive its point into his own heart. But the owner of the spear recovered himself in a flash, and, seizing the blade of the weapon in his bare hand, he twisted it upward with such strength that the slender wooden shaft snapped, leaving the head in his hand and the innocuous shaft in that of M'Bongwele. At the same instant half a dozen men flung themselves upon the king, and in a trice his hands were drawn behind him, and securely bound. Then, from somewhere, two long thongs or ropes of twisted raw-hide were produced ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... leaves suddenly disinterred from wet mould,—as of grasses decomposing after a flood. Something saffron speckled the slimy water of the gutters; sulphur some called it; others feared even to give it a name! Was it only the wind-blown pollen of some innocuous plant? ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... due time they came into the knowledge of the Russian spies and were promptly transmitted to Port Arthur. As a matter of fact, however, the mines which were proposed to be, and actually were, sown, were of a very innocuous character, Togo's object being to imbue the Russian mind with the idea that the Japanese mines were so useless that they might be safely disregarded. Then, when this object had been achieved, genuine Odo mines would be sown, with disastrous results to such Russian ships as might chance ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... the theme I have been wont to brag on; I've told how you, my now innocuous moke, Would chew the tail-board off a G.S. wagon By way of mere plaisanterie (or joke); Dubbed you most diabolical of ragers, A rampant hooligan, a fetid tough, A thing without respect for sergeant-majors— That is to say, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... was very different from the absurd exhibition which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily have said, if he was determined to compliment me, that they had "improved," "progressed," or something equally adequate and innocuous. But no. The man must needs be effusive, positively gushing. He came to me in transports. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... his last moment, of some graceful hind Seen once afar upon a mountain-top, E'en so, Savonarola, didst thou think, In thy most dire extremity, of me. And here I am! Courage! The horrid hounds Droop tail at sight of me and fawn away Innocuous. [The crowd does indeed seem to have fallen completely under the sway of LUC.'s magnetism, and is evidently convinced that it had been about to make an end of the monk.] Take thou, and wear henceforth, As a sure talisman 'gainst future perils, This little, little ring. [SAV. makes awkward ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... many visitors to the lake, as from the then cooler season the necessary exposure to the heat of a midday sun in a slightly-covered boat is comparatively innocuous, and much less disagreeable than it would prove at any other ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... instantly discharged, and after several pots of strong green tea, rendered innocuous by brandy, we sallied forth in pursuit of what we then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... sermon, and he had more than sufficient tact never to discuss either whiskies or sermons in the wrong place. He had made a speech (responding for the learned professions) at the annual dinner of the Society for the Prosecution of Felons, and this speech (in which praise of red wine was rendered innocuous by praise of books—his fine library was notorious) had classed him as a wit with the American consul, whose post-prandial manner was modelled on Mark Twain's. He was thirty-five years of age, tall and stoutish, with a chubby ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... extreme elements in the Constitution which a powerful party had laboured, with great eloquence and considerable effect, to separate on the grounds of a natural antagonism. Their popularity was unbounded, and saved the country. Paine's "Age of Reason" fell innocuous upon the people; the tidings of the Revolution, and of the massacres that tracked its daily steps in blood, excited wonder and horror, but produced no frenzy of imitation such as they inspired elsewhere; and while Europe was convulsed with alarms, England, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... us the snail would still demand more. As the unaccustomed food proves to be good and satisfying, and also harmless, we may come to like it. That, however, which many good and eminent naturalists find to be healthful and reasonable, and others innocuous, a few still regard as most unreasonable and harmful. At present, we call to mind only two who not only hold to the entire fixity of species as an axiom or a confirmed principle, but also as a dogma, and who maintain, either expressly or implicitly, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... don't know how to earn a decent living, refusing to accept anything from your friends, ready (you say) to do almost anything to get some money.... And think of the country heiresses, with plenty of money for two, pining away in—in innocuous desuetude—hundreds of them, fine, straight, good girls, girls you could easily fall in love with, sighing their lives away for the lack of the likes of you.... Now, why not take one, Nat—when you come to consider it, it's your duty—marry her and her bank-roll, make her happy, make yourself ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... fact there's uncommon little of it—they don't get a hundredweight in a generation. Then there's the red form, and that's what Johnnies have been dumping down 580 tons of at What's-its-name. It's quite innocuous, and is used for commercial purposes—tanning leather, or making spills, or something of that kind. Now may I go ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Tugela near Hunger's Drift. At noon the completion of the bridge was signalled to the feint attack. The batteries fronting the Brakfontein ridge were withdrawn, and Wynne's brigade which, having been marched up the slope, was now marched down again, came under a heavy but almost innocuous infantry fire, which at last broke out ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... quantity, which is illimitable. Within our shanty there are certain species which make themselves felt, smelt, or otherwise apparent to our annoyance, without taking into consideration the hosts that, as far as we are concerned, are innocuous. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... septuagenarian, is popularly known as "Papa" Kaempf. I see Liebknecht whispering quietly in Kaempf's ear. He is asking for permission to speak, probably as soon as comrade Davidssohn has finished making his innocuous suggestions of minor reforms to relieve discomforts in the trenches. Kaempf is shaking his head negatively. As the official executor of the House's wishes, the old man understands perfectly well that Liebknecht ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... singular fact that the small and innocuous ground-snakes called Calamariae, which abound on the continent of India and in the islands are not to be found in Ceylon; where they would appear to be replaced by two singular genera, the Aspidura ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... sort of control. But there again they will shy. They will report for it and then they will do their utmost to whittle it down again. They will refuse it the most reasonable powers. They will alter the composition of the Committee so as to make it innocuous." ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... suffered invasion of every sort; the East has wounded her in arms and has corrupted her with ideas; her vigorous blood has healed the wounds at once, and her permanent sanity has turned such corruptions into innocuous follies. She ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Crown, that is, not to the King, but, by specific enactment, become a portion of the revenue under the Woods and Forests. Of course Leopold will give up Claremont, which is in fact a source of expense. The Duke said Leopold would be at least innocuous, and he might be of use. The King asked how we could be such fools as to think he would be ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... only to begin the ethical battle all over again; to fight and to wander among the tombs in the valley of indecision for a week and a day, eight miserable twirlings of the earth in space, during which interval he was invisible to his friends and innocuous to his enemies. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... he was a compound of the dandy, the swash-buckler and the literary man. He led Mr. Richards through the house. Every odd corner displayed weapons—guns, pistols, boar-spears, swords of every shape and make. On one cupboard was written "The Pharmacy." It contained the innocuous medicines for Mrs. Burton's poor—for she still continued to manufacture those pills and drenches that had given her a reputation in the Holy Land. "Why," asked Richards, "do you live in a flat and so high ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... to limit it, by the federal system, which suffers it to exist nowhere in its plenitude. They deprived their state governments of the powers that were enumerated, and the central government of the powers that were reserved. As the Romans knew how monarchy would become innocuous, by being divided, the Americans solved the more artful problem of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... periodically quelled by regular and comfortable meals. Country doctors, for the same reason, not unfrequently manifest a stronger predilection for their employers' bottles than their patients do for theirs. In the absence of innocuous and benign appliances, the deleterious are had recourse to exorcise the fiend that is raging within them. These views are explicable by the laws of physiology, but this is not the place for such disquisitions. One reason why the temperance movement has been ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... intoxicated at the time, and was carried off to his bed as if nothing had happened. A violent colic ensued, and it was feared that this, with a quantity of wine which he had drunk, would render the poison innocuous. But Agrippina had gone too far for retreat, and Xenophon, who knew that great crimes if frustrated are perilous, if successful are rewarded, came to her assistance. Under pretence of causing him to vomit, he tickled the throat ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... shuffling feet, you were brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt self-possession, for he was on a mission for Istra, and he cared not for the goggling eyes of all England. What though he was a bunny-faced man with an innocuous mustache? Istra would be awakening hungry. That was why he bullied you into selling him a stew-pan and a bundle of faggots along with the tea and eggs and a bread loaf and a jar of the marmalade your husband's farm had been making these ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... ridiculousness and the total futility of such matters as motor-cars, fine raiment, beautiful boudoirs and correctness smote Audrey severely. She saw that there was only one thing worth having, and that was the mysterious thing that Jane Foley had. This mysterious thing rendered innocuous cruelty, stupidity and injustice, and reduced them to rather ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... be; for the parrot was tender, juicy, of very appetising flavour, and perfectly cooked, while the little cakes of hot bread were particularly good. Then the wine! It was of a rich ruby colour and exquisite aroma, but light and innocuous as water. As for the fruits, I had never before—and have never since—tasted such luscious peaches and grapes. And all this elegance and luxury, I kept reminding myself, existed in a part of Africa utterly unknown to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Peter. He was baffled and angry. Had Jen played the leading part in the mysterious and grim comedy of last night, or was he only a work coolie, a deck-steward, harmless, innocuous, babbling happily in his limited knowledge of a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... pipe in his hand, and contemplated the repast. It was only logical to suppose it to be innocuous, and a keen appetite hastened the issue. He sidetracked his suspicion, and made an excellent breakfast. So the first ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... them, and the guns were spiked by Captain Willis and a few sailors, who crossed the river for the purpose. The flank of the advance being thus protected, the attack on Tangku itself began with a cannonade from thirty- six pieces of the best artillery of that age. The Chinese fire was soon rendered innocuous, and their walls and forts were battered down. Even then, however, the garrison gave no signs of retreat, and it was not until the Armstrongs had been dragged within a very short distance of the walls, and the foot-soldiers ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a conquest to fight such a sea of fire, to keep it in check, and carry it through sea and storm; to manage that it should carry itself three or six thousand miles in the ocean in fair weather or foul, hidden away and absolutely innocuous. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... itself is deadly in the green state. It exhales a poison you couldn't stand for ten seconds. Dried, its poison is killed stone dead. But it leaves behind it its priceless narcotic properties. And these are perfectly innocuous, and even health-giving. I don't need to worry you with the scientific side of it, but it'll tell you something of what it means when I say it suspends life, and you don't need to worry about the condition of the person who's doped with it. You said those darn Indians live ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... polluting the sweet air with his pipe, and taking occasional draughts from a brown jug that stood near at hand. The basis of the potation contained in this vessel was harsh old cider, from the widow's own orchard; but its coldness and acidity were rendered innocuous by a due proportion of yet older brandy. The result of this mixture was extremely felicitous, pleasant to the taste, and producing a tingling sensation on the coats of the stomach, uncommonly delectable to so ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rages, the iniquities, the loud and silent deliriums, the mad blindnesses and sins of mankind; and what amount, of CALCINING these may reasonably take. Not calcinable in three Campaigns at all, it would appear! Four more Campaigns are needed: then there will be innocuous ashes in quantity; and a result unexpected, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the cottage, where he had first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange walking-stick ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... use of the present tense. Her look surprised him, too: there was a strange fixity of resentment in her innocuous eye. Was it possible that she was laboring under some delusion? Or did the pronoun ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... moved beyond the comparatively innocuous accumulation of mechanical discoveries, and advancing into the domain of morals, has emerged in the sinister aspect ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... and certainly, it is said, without extracting their fangs. They declare they enjoy the privilege from their founder. The creatures writhe and struggle between their teeth; but possibly, if they do bite them, the bite is innocuous." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... surgeon's hands, because only a certain proportion of such instruments are dangerous. Thus the banana seems to be widely used for masturbation by women, and appears to be marked out for the purpose by its size and shape[195]; it is, however, innocuous, and never comes under the surgeon's notice; the same may probably be said of the cucumbers and other vegetables more especially used by country and factory girls in masturbation; a lady living near Vichy told Pouillet ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and courtesies of the alms-women daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. 'T is a throne on which patience seems to sit,—the proud perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life have sat, and rid him easily. For he has thrid the angustiae domus ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the elect addressed him as 'thou.' And you have learned somewhat of the Hyndses. In consequence, your Jelnik is a mixture of South-Carolina-Viennese-Hynds-Jelnik pride, beside which Satan's is as mild, meek, and innocuous as a properly raised Anglican curate. Don't meet his pride with pride. Meet it with you, Sophy. Most of us have been loved in our time, but how few of us have been permitted really to love! That you have in full measure this ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... to members of the crust. But the chief result of the penny-in-the-pound rate is to supply women old and young with outmoded, viciously respectable, viciously sentimental fiction. A few new novels get into the Library every year. They must, however, be "innocuous," that is to say, devoid of original ideas. This, of course, is inevitable in an institution presided over by a committee which has infinitely less personal interest in books than in politics or the price ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... huge trusts and fabulously wealthy multi-millionaires, employ the very best lawyers they can obtain to pick flaws in these statutes after their passage; but they also employ a class of secret agents who seek, under the advice of experts, to render hostile legislation innocuous by making it unconstitutional, often through the insertion of what appear on their face to be drastic and sweeping provisions against the interests of the parties inspiring them; while the demagogues, the corrupt creatures who introduce blackmailing schemes to "strike" corporations, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... League bristled up at this resurgence of the protectionist champions, but Disraeli was too wise to invite a renewal of that contest which the voice of the nation had settled, and the subject was left to lapse into innocuous desuetude for half a century. Representing but a minority in Parliament, the ministry could maintain itself but a few months. December, 1852, found the Whigs again in power, where they remained until 1859, Disraeli using his talents the while to build up and consolidate ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... opposite ends of the social course, they displayed, in respect to the "figure" that each, in his way, made, one the expansive, the other the contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat. A scratch company of two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now offered itself to Mrs. Stringham, who rustled in a little breathless and full of the compunction of having had to come alone. Her companion, at the last moment, had been indisposed—positively not well enough, and so had packed ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... nature intended for popular consumption demands the exercise of sound professional judgment prior to publication. A resourceful enemy is ever alert to evaluate and turn to his own advantage all available information, including that ostensibly innocuous. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... hunting, time pressing him into frantic speed. The idea was incredible, but it had to be true. He searched the micro-film files for three hours before he found it, in a "Who's Who" dating back to 1958, three years before the war with China. A simple, innocuous listing, which froze him to his seat. He read it, unbelievingly, yet knowing that it was the only possible link. Finally he read ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... considerable, in order to compensate for the somewhat lessened rapidity (though this is still great) with which, when dilated, they can strike at their enemies or prey; on the same principle that a broad, thin piece of wood cannot be moved through the air so quickly as a small round stick. An innocuous snake, the Trovidonotus macrophthalmus, an inhabitant of India, likewise dilates its neck when irritated; and consequently is often mistaken for its compatriot, the deadly Cobra.[23] This resemblance perhaps serves as some ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... always lurking behind a non-committal "if" or something of that kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison here and there and everywhere, but always leaving himself in a position to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and examined. He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband's first great sin—but it is in the general view that this is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... successful quarrymen—stories like that unspeakable novel "Three Decades," of which I am credibly informed eight million tons have already been sold; and which, let me say, when I had read only seven slabs of it I had carted away and dumped into the Red Sea; or the innocuous but highly frivolous tales of Miss Laura Jean Diplodocus—they would hardly accept from me as worthy of serious attention such admonitions as I am constantly giving them on the subject of the decadence of literature when I find them poring over ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... became in their turn the dominant interests in society. Capitalism in its development effectually destroyed all those institutions of feudalism which obstructed its progress, leaving only those which were innocuous and safely ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Wade's prayer-book—The Key of Heaven,—on a small table, the "Imitation of Christ" beside it. By these lay one or two oddly bound books in garish colourings, Lady O'Gara opened one. She saw it was in French—an innocuous French romance suitable for the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... detected, as in toothing or worms, it should be removed. As this species of asthma is so liable to recur during sleep, like epileptic fits, as mentioned in Section XVIII. 15. there was reason to believe, that the respiration of an atmosphere mixed with hydrogen, or any other innocuous air, which might dilute the oxygen, would be useful in preventing the paroxysms by decreasing the sensibility of the system. This, I am informed by Dr. Beddoes, has been used with decided success by Dr. Ferriar. See ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... access to the site, a large number of sexually explicit sites may be accessed for free and without providing any registration information. Most importantly, some Web sites that contain sexually explicit content have innocuous domain names and therefore can be reached accidentally. A commonly cited example is http://www.whitehouse.com. Other innocent-sounding URLs that retrieve graphic, sexually explicit depictions include http://www.boys.com, http://www.girls.com, ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... latch of the van door, found it, and leaped out into the waste under the stars, just as the owner of the van rose with a clatter of coins. To pick up money is a deeply rooted human instinct. Barney Bill lit his lamp, and, uttering juicy though innocuous flowers of anathema, searched for the scattered treasure. When he had retrieved three shillings and sevenpence-halfpenny he peered out. Paul was far away. Barney Bill put the money on the shelf and looked at it in a puzzled way. Was it an earnest of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... this unchartered but widely known brotherhood appeared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the lilies of the conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. Thus displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an innocuous conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven blocks to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... a palace, created Bristol a city in the same document. The name palace gave a certain amount of trouble, because there were palaces in some cities where other things than bishops were sold. There was a palace where a certain innocuous drink was sold, and letters sometimes went there. There was also a most delightful place of entertainment called the People's Palace in Bristol, and letters sometimes went there. When grave clergymen from a distance came to stay at his house they were ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... a case in point. Theoretically I should have here the innocuous union of three harmless chemicals; as a matter of fact I had occasion to experiment with it and learned that I had innocently produced a vicious and unheard-of poison. The stuff is of no use. It is one ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... only take back one hour of her life, well she knew what that hour would be! Even that shameful time with Leonard on the hill-top seemed innocuous beside the degrading remembrance of her conduct to the noble friend ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... declared Rufus, perceiving that Geraldine would as yet refuse to go alone with him, and considering that as ballast in the tonneau his mother's presence would be innocuous. "This little girl's got the reins. You and me are ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... district was easy," Caesar used to say; "I managed to have one make all the others innocuous, and then I made that one, who was Don Calixto, innocuous ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... spent the whole afternoon in wandering hither and thither over the hills that encircle the little cove in which I had landed, heedless of the minutes and my steps, watching the sailing clouds and the cloudy sails on the horizon, listening to the musical attrition of the tidal pebbles, killing innocuous suckers. The only particular sensation I remember was that of being ten years old again, together with a general impression of Saturday afternoon, of the liberty to go in wading or even swimming, and of the prospect of limping home in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a monster of terrible potential, yet so innocuous looking that he'd not stand out. I couldn't produce him, couldn't say where in the world he was. Nevertheless he was the basis, the motivation second only to mine. I took the long, hard way—three years—making him ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... old man of Hong Kong, Who never did anything wrong; He lay on his back, with his head in a sack, That innocuous old man ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... crystal eyes of wooden statues in the Museum at Cairo. He is going to make them the fashion in America, next year. Yes, Madame Rechid Bey is a most explosive protegee for a girl to have, on her way to Egypt. I'm not sure even I am not innocuous by comparison; though I do wish you hadn't reminded me of my poor little step-daughter Esme, in her convent-school. If any one should get the idea that Monny—but I won't put it in words! Besides me, and the brand-new bride of Rechid Bey ('Wretched Bey' is our name for him), there's ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... columns came out with red scare heads and gory recital full of reference to "something rotten in the State of Denmark" and "damnable rascality," there was only one emasculated innocuous column given to the local event, but seven columns were steeped with the bloody details of sheep massacres and stock raids and Range Wars in other states in "the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... perennially gratified, and accordingly it naturally comes about that the conductors of journals such as I have referred to, if they cannot provide a sufficient quantity of sensationalism true or partly true, have either to invent it or exaggerate some perhaps innocent or innocuous incident. I am sorry to say that yellow journalism is not only not unknown in Japan, but is apparently in a very flourishing condition there. I regret the fact all the more because the people of Japan are not yet sufficiently educated ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... of them are defying this obsolete and debasing law of their faith. Many others are crying for a modern interpretation of the law—an interpretation which will explain away its bitterness and render it innocuous. For it is not simply or chiefly the reactionary and absurd character of this legislation which exasperates the intelligence of the land; it is the very offensive and revolting nature of the expiation which preeminently stirs up the rebellion. In former centuries of darkness, Hindus ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones |
