"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no, her husband's name had been Ladislaus, and this man she had called "Mimo," and if the boy were the child of her marriage there need then have been no secret about his existence. There was no other solution—this Count Sykypri had been her lover when she was a mere child, and probably the concealment had gone through all her first married life. And no doubt her reason for marrying him, which she admitted was a very strong one, had been that she might have money to give to the ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... there's a deal of difference. A tarradiddle is what you say when you are, so to speak, took by surprise. It isn't a lie out and out; it's the truth concealed, I call it. Sometimes it is a mere exaggeration. You say a person is very, very cross when maybe that person is hardly cross at all. I can't quite explain, miss; I suppose there's scarcely any one who hasn't been guilty of a tarradiddle; ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... he had been in the house for months, had never become one of them. He had been seen in the early spring going up the stairway to his room, which was a mere garret on the sixth story, and it had been expected among them that in a day or so he would present himself for inspection. But this he did not do, and when he encountered any of their number in his out-goings or in-comings he returned their greetings gently in imperfect French. He spoke ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... calamity which threatened and afterwards fell upon his church and country, by the unbounded fury of the Presbyterians, he changed his religion, and went beyond sea, in order to recommend himself to some Popish preferment in Paris; but being a mere scholar was incapable of executing his new plan of a livelihood. Mr. Abraham Cowley hearing of his being there, endeavoured to find him out, which he did, and to his great surprize saw him in a very miserable plight: ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... "steps to the sea" for anywhere but London, and its beginnings as a small but independent fishing settlement are very remote; according to some seventeenth century writers it once boasted walls and upwards of two thousand inhabitants, but through the depredations of the sea, it had dwindled to a mere hamlet, and cut off by the Downs and away from all the usual channels of communication, the self-sufficiency of the place must have received a rude shock when the first visitors arrived, but natives of the coast are notoriously adaptable and know a ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... manure heaps drained into the wells. No young boy wore any clothing. Few of the men wore anything but the maro, the women were unclothed to their waists and such clothing as they had was very dirty, and held together by mere force of habit. The adults were covered with inflamed bites of insects, and the children with skin-disease. Their houses were dirty, and, as they squatted on their heels, or lay face downwards, they looked little ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... reigning beneath. Through the crowd hundreds of busy figures were gliding, standing still here and there, and addressing the people in low and impressive tones; now and then, however, they did not content themselves with mere words, but to some handed pieces of money, and whispered, "Drink the emperor's health, in order that your throats may be prepared, when he makes his entry, to shout in stentorian tones, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... that the Montague girl, as Miss Rebecca Hoffmeyer, had tired of being a mere New York society butterfly, had come out into the big open spaces to do something real, something worth while. The ruin of her father, still unexplained, had seemed to call out unsuspected reserves in the girl. She was stern and businesslike in such scenes ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... that it seemed best to work over carefully nearly all of the latter portion of the English and to embody as many as possible of the improvements of Boissevain. Incidentally Boissevain's interior arrangement of all the later books was adopted, though it was deemed preferable (for mere readiness of reference) to adhere to the old external division of books established by Leunclavius. (Boissevain's changes are, however, indicated.) The Tauchnitz text with all its inaccuracies endeavors to present a coherent and readable narrative, and this is something which the exactitude ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... with any girl before now. But he did not feel awkward or shy; he was thinking now, as he had been thinking now and then through the whole evening, of only one thing, that Maimie was going away. That would make a great difference to him, so great that he was conscious of a heart-sinking at the mere thought of it. During the last weeks, his life had come to move about a center, and that center was Maimie; and now that she was going away, there would be nothing left. Nothing, that is, that really mattered. But the question he was ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... a new church, which you understand by the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God; and teaching, that the Lord will endow with love truly conjugial those who embrace the doctrines of that church; the delights and felicity of which love you exalt to the very heaven? Is not this a mere fiction? and do you not hold it forth as a bait and enticement to accede to your new opinions? But tell me briefly, what are the doctrinals of the New Church, and I will see whether they agree or disagree." I replied, "The doctrines of the church, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Shakespear. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those Rules which are establish'd by Aristotle, and taken from the Model of the Grecian Stage, it would be no very hard Task to find a great many Faults: But as Shakespear liv'd under a kind of mere Light of Nature, and had never been made acquainted with the Regularity of those written Precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a Law he knew nothing of. We are to consider him as a Man that liv'd in a State of almost universal License ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all BENEVOLENCE is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... discussion occurs in a chapter on what is universally (but very absurdly) called "geometrical proportion." It is yet no more geometrical than our school-day problem of the basket and the hundred eggs in Francis Walkinghame. Mere names do not bestow character, however much philosophers as well as legislators may think so. All attempts of the kind have been, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... his small feet warm and dry—an odd new thing to him, belike, since he has doubtless been used to foot it bare, winters and summers the same . . . Would thread were bread, seeing one getteth a year's sufficiency for a farthing, and such a brave big needle without cost, for mere love. Now shall I have the demon's own time to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... landlady seem to desire any change; but she explained to us that the young person applying had made a strong appeal; that her classes (she was a teacher of French) were principally in our part of the city; and that she would be satisfied with a mere closet for a room. The only privilege for which she stipulated was the use of the common parlor twice a week to receive ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... a minute after I was awake that I became aware that I had been dreaming. I was soon convinced that the vision of Old Grimes was a mere dream, but I was not quite so well satisfied about the voices I had heard. I listened, expecting to hear them again, but all was silent as before. I now got up, resolving to try and make my way out. Though I had not previously experienced ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... speak to the bishops. On Sunday I shall take the perilous leap." The king's connection with Gabrielle presented another strong motive to influence his conversion. Henry, when a mere boy, had been constrained by political considerations to marry the worthless and hateful sister of Charles IX. For the wife thus coldly received he never felt an emotion of affection. She was an unblushing profligate. The king, in one of his campaigns, met the beautiful maiden Gabrielle in ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... from where John had seen Kitty for a last time. Now the mere recollection of her jarred his joy in the evening, for he had long since begun to understand that his love of her had been a kind of accident, even as her death a strange unaccountable divagation of his ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... produce it. To avoid multiplying of words, I would crave leave here, under the word ACTION, to comprehend the forbearance too of any action proposed: sitting still, or holding one's peace, when walking or speaking are proposed, though mere forbearances, requiring as much the determination of the will, and being as often weighty in their consequences, as the contrary actions, may, on that consideration, well enough pass for actions too: but this I say, that I may not be mistaken, if (for ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... Louis XIV.'s glory; if the expenses of Versailles surpassed his most gloomy apprehensions, the palace which rose upon the site of Louis XIV.'s former hunting-box was worthy of the king who had made it in his own image, and who managed to retain all his court around him there, by the mere fact of his will ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Companions of Jehu were not mere thieves, but, on the contrary, as rumor said, gentlemen of good family, who, while the noble Bretons were laying down their lives for the royalist cause in the West, were, here in the East, braving the scaffold to send to the combatants the money ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... customs of the blacks result in very ill-assorted unions as regards age; for it is usual to see old men with mere girls as wives, and men in the prime of life married to old widows. As a rule wives are not obtained by the men until they are at least thirty years of age. Women have very frequently two husbands during their lifetime, the first older and the second younger ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... knew her well were revealed the unvarying truth and simplicity of her nature. Even as I write, her spirit, tender and steadfast, seems standing by my side; I feel her eyes in the darkness of night, and, when the time comes—and often of late, it has seemed not far—to go from this mere dressing-room, the earth, into the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... correspondents being Lady Louisa Stuart (sister of the Marquis of Bute and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) and Lady Abercorn. With the former the correspondence is always on the footing of mere though close friendship, literary and other; in part at least of that with Lady Abercorn, I cannot help suspecting the presence, especially on the lady's side, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... me in the storm, and I heard that you were going to be my brother, I was glad—more glad than I can say. Then when I was getting well your mother came and told me that you had neither fear nor feelings. That you had risked your life out of mere love of danger, that you were cruel and vindictive. That, although you were the heir of the Trewinions, you were totally unfit for its responsibilities. That your brother Wilfred was in reality robbed of the position which he alone was fit to take. ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... and upon the huge boulders in farmer Martin's meadow, the birds thronging the orchard trees, the humming insects rioting in the genial sun, all of them gave token of strange new impulses calling for something more than mere living ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... peace, as may be, or—as may be too, just as like as not—wake to a wonder none can comprehend, an inconceivable surprise, a sudden knowledge what the whole thing meant that must seem, if they come to comprehend it now, a needless cruelty? If they—and you and I, in our turn—are to be nothing, mere items of the past lost in Oblivion, why not spare them the hideous revelation of the many, many years of might-have-been, when the same sun shone unmoved on each, even marked the hours for them alike, each unseen by the other, each beyond ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... but to say that Goethe faces the facts? What is it but to say that he accepts the conditions of his problem? He is to show that the high possibilities of growth can be realized here. To run off, get up a fancy world, and then picture these possibilities as coming to fruition there, would be a mere toying with his readers. Here is modern civilization, with its fixed forms, its rigid limits, its traditional mechanisms. Here is this life, where men make, execute, and obey laws, own and manage property, buy and sell, plant, sail, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... in the temperature arises entirely from the condition attending the radioactive heating; and involves something additional to the temperature conditions determined by the mere depression and thickening of the crust as in the Babbage-Herschel theory. The latter theory only involves a shifting of the temperature levels (or geotherms) into the deposited materials. The radioactive theory involves an ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... as they had departed, and there in the gloom he took his happiness to his heart, even as he had taken her delicious self to his breast. He put up his hands and pressed his face into the palms. He inhaled the delicate, subtle fragrance—a mere suggestion of perfume—the sweet ghost of her personality, which she had left behind. Her touch still thrilled him, and the warmth of her last kiss ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... began playing round the subject: he saw himself a slave, blotted out of existence—mere fuel for Hamilton's flame. In a week he was in a towering passion. Few men can afford to be angry. It is a run upon their intellectual resources they cannot meet. But Burke's treasury could well afford the luxury; ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... something said on the other side. Perhaps Bows was right in admiring that passion of Pen's, blind and unreasoning as it was, that made him ready to stake his all for his love; perhaps, if self-sacrifice is a laudable virtue, mere worldly self-sacrifice is not very much to be praised;—in fine, let this be a reserved point to be settled by the individual moralist who chooses ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Julian—hero of the night—had sat mute and somewhat constrained round the debris of the birthday pudding. The constraint was no doubt due partly to Julian's characteristic and notorious grim temper, and partly to mere anticipation ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... happened to be alone with Mere-Grand, face to face with sunlit Paris, he fell into a yet more dolorous reverie than usual. He seemed to be gazing fixedly at the old lady, as, seated in her usual place, she continued sewing with an air of queenly serenity. Perhaps, however, he did not see her. For her part ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... things which give refinement and tone to social life. Many persons lose sight of the fact that Canada, young though she is compared with the countries of the Old World, has passed beyond the state of mere colonial pupilage. One very important section of her population has a history contemporaneous with the history of the New England States, whose literature is read wherever the English tongue is spoken. The British population have a history which goes back over a century, and it ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... Forester may have been some relative for whom she was named—possibly an aunt, or even her mother, and thus I may be one of the heirs. But," she interrupted herself and smiled, "what a romantic creature I am, to be weaving such a story out of a mere advertisement! Still," she added, more thoughtfully, "this woman's heirs cannot be very numerous or it would not be ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle Renowned and rich, while Priam held command, Now a mere bay and roadstead fraught with guile. Thus far they sailed, and on the lonely strand Lay hid, while fondly to Mycenae's land We thought the winds had borne them. Troy once more Shakes off her ten years' sorrow. Open stand The gates. With joy to the abandoned shore, The places ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... and some other evidence has been collected by De Marchi in his work on the private religion of the Romans.[615] But only in the case of marriage do we hear of auspicia in historical times, and even there they seem to have degenerated into a mere form. "Auspices nuptiarum, re omissa, nomen tantum tenent"—so Cicero wrote of his own time;[616] he seems to be thinking of augury by means of birds, for he adds, "nam ut nunc extis sic tunc avibus magnae res impetrari solebant." As we have already seen, the object of the examination of a victim's ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... as fast as the animals could go when a long march and not a mere spurt of speed was before them. Through the mysterious sapphire darkness of the desert night the padding feet of the camels strode noiselessly over the hard sand. Sanda asked Max to offer extra pay to the men if they would put up with an abbreviated ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... much else against him, too, in her pride of race, and it helped her just then, for it told her how impossible it was that she, a princess of the house of Braccio, should love a mere artist, the son of a steward, whose forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors from time immemorial. It was out of the question, and she would not believe it of herself. Yet, as she looked ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... influence that the "Principles of Geology" had in moulding his mind. In 1845 he wrote to Lyell, "I have long wished, not so much for your sake, as for my own feelings of honesty, to acknowledge more plainly than by mere reference, how much I geologically owe you. Those authors, however, who like you, educate people's minds as well as teach them special facts, can never, I should think, have full justice done them except by posterity, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... refer in detail to mere admissions on the part of landlords and tacksmen, that such obligations exist on the estates under their control. Such admissions were made in all the cases already referred to, as will be seen from the references on the margin. In some cases, however, arguments were stated ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... hard frost was succeeded by a beautifully clear morning. The refraction brought the summits of a distant range above the south-east horizon; and the sight was so welcome to us, after having found Australia a mere desert from the want of hills, that I was at a loss for a name to give these that should sufficiently express my satisfaction. I found the breadth of the river at our camp to be 50 yards; and the velocity 4 chains (or ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... much. The Hescott girl was of little consequence at any time. Yet sharp, too! Perhaps, after all, she is of consequence. She has gone, however—and it is a mere question whether she had seen her with Sir Maurice or not. Of course, the girl would be on her brother's side, and if the brother is really in love with that little silly fool—and if a divorce was to be thought of—the girl might make ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... rumours then currently accepted by the Europeans and Americans at Manila which, of course, were impossible of verification. I say 'unfortunately' with some earnestness, because it does not appear on the face of his message that they were mere rumours. And, that they were wholly erroneous, in point of fact, has already been cleared up in previous chapters, wherein the real state of peace, order, and tranquillity which prevailed throughout Luzon at that time has been, it is believed, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the full text," Captain Fielder continued, "of Austria's demands upon Servia. I may be wrong, but I say confidently that those demands, which are impossible of acceptance, which would reduce Servia, in fact, to the condition of a mere vassal state, are intended to provoke ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the aims of his young wife: nor was it this new knightly enterprise he had presumed to undertake. Hero as he was, a youth, open to the insane promptings of hot blood, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the tenth article of the original treaty was not that it protected legitimate titles, which our laws would have equally protected without it, but that it most unjustly attempted to resuscitate grants which had become a mere nullity by allowing the grantees the same period after the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty to which they had been originally entitled after the date of their grants for the purpose of performing the conditions on which they had been made. In submitting the treaty to the Senate ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... merciful, more loving!" But these are the qualities of women! And we know that a Circle is a higher Being than a Straight Line, in so far as knowledge and wisdom are more to be esteemed than mere affection. ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he must inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers now over any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her, and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... presents of equal value are commonly returned by the wife's relations, if they have the means of so doing and are satisfied with the conduct of the husband. Some travelers have represented that the "marriage by purchase" among the Indians is a mere sale of the woman to the highest bidder, whose slave she becomes. Matthews regards this a misrepresentation so far as it concerns the Hidatsa, the wedding gift being a pledge to the parents for the proper treatment of their daughter, as well as an ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... could not give us more: besides, if we take arms against so great a Prince, we shall unavoidably perish." The Swedish peasantry, however, soon felt that the cruelty and tyranny of Christiern were something more than a mere report. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... homely life and interests of those with whom she dwelt. Thus far she had regarded them as uncongenial strangers, and had contented herself with mere politeness toward them. In her sad preoccupation she had taken little note of their characters or domestic life, and her mother had kept herself even more secluded. Indeed the poor lady felt that it was hardly right to ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... thinker, it is plain that he could never have been a rhetorician. He has no power at all as a writer, if writing be considered an accomplishment which can be separated from earnest thinking. Words are, with him, the mere instruments for the expression of things; and he hits on felicitous words only under that impatient stress of thought which demands exact expression for definite ideas. All his words, simple as they are, are therefore fairly earned, and he gives ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... of answer there seemed to rise before the eye of Montalvo's mind a measureless black gulf, and, falling, falling, falling through its infinite depths one miserable figure, a mere tiny point that served to show the vastness it explored. The point turned over, and he saw its face as in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... ordinaire. This comparison may be pleasant enough as after-dinner chat, but we fear our readers will think it like cooks circulating the Bills of Fare on the morning of Lord Mayor's Day; and lest we should incur their displeasure, we shall proceed with our select course: but we are mere disposers. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... language of her eyes; and it was a language which should have assured Ella that she had a better friend in her mother than she had ever dreamed of. The entrance of the defendant cut short my contemplation of any mere spectator. The change in him was so marked that I was conscious of it before I really saw him. Every eye had reflected it, and it was no surprise to me when I noted the relieved, almost cheerful aspect of his countenance as he took his place and ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... territory of Bruttium, fearful lest they should be overpowered, had retired on the approach of Hannibal to an eminence, secure from an immediate attack. While Fabius was besieging Tarentum, he received assistance in the accomplishment of that great object by a circumstance which in the mere mention, is unimportant. Tarentum was occupied by a garrison of Bruttians, given them by Hannibal and the commander of that garrison was desperately in love with a girl, whose brother was in the army of the consul Fabius. Being informed, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... that these ideals of service from which every taint of self-seeking and commercialism have been eliminated—do you think that these are mere figments of the impractical imagination? Go ask Perry Holden out in Iowa. Go ask Luther Burbank out in California. Go to any agricultural college in this broad land and ask the scientists who are doing more than all other forces combined to increase the wealth of the people. ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... to emphasize this point because we have to realize that the modern movement for surrounding the pregnant woman with tenderness and care, so far from being the mere outcome of civilized softness and degeneracy, is, in all probability, the return on a higher plane to the sane practice of those races which laid the foundations ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... nothing, nothing, old friend. You must not burden yourself with me. If I may be of any help, here I am.... Oh, no, no....' he paused, with blinking eyes, but wits still shrewd and alert. Why doesn't the man raise his head? he thought. A mere domestic dispute! ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... land of the Pharaohs is no joke. You must remember that we, as engineers, are only now where they were thousands of years ago. I mean that our present-day feats, the Dam at Assouan, wonderful as it is, and the rest, are mere child's play compared with the marvels they ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... did begin to flay the man, or peel him (as says Catullus), at that member which of all the body they loved best, to wit, the nervous and cavernous cane, and that above five thousand years ago; yet have they not of that small part alone flayed any more till this hour but the head. In mere despite whereof the Jews snip off that parcel of the skin in circumcision, choosing far rather to be called clipyards, rascals, than to be flayed by women, as are other nations. My wife, according to this female covenant, will flay it to me, if it be not so already. I heartily ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... from the extreme difficulty of knowing when to draw the line between friends and acquaintances. I have also observed that when your wife and daughters intend such a thing, they always obtain permission for the ball first, and then tack on the supper afterwards; commencing with a mere stand-up affair,—sandwiches, cakes, and refreshments,—and ending with a regular sit-down affair, with Gunter presiding over all. The music from two fiddles and a piano also swells into Collinet's band, verifying the old adage, "In for a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... How many things the mere name recalled! How many hours, how many days she had passed there, leaning on that damp sill, without rail or balcony, looking toward the factory. At that moment she fancied that she could see up yonder ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... it is hardly possible to arrive at valuations as securely based as in many other industries, but the elements of hazard are not so hopeless of measurement as might be supposed. The great mineral and financial organizations do not depend on mere guesses, but use well-tried methods. If the general investor were to give more attention to these methods he would doubtless save himself money, and the mineral industry would be rid of a great incumbrance of parasites who live on the credulity of the public. To ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... promoted by men like Maurokordatos had a double end; it revived the knowledge of the great age of Greece through its literature, and it taught the Greek to regard the speech which he actually used not as a mere barbarous patois which each district had made for itself, but as a language different indeed from that of the ancient world, yet governed by its own laws, and capable of performing the same functions ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... power to have cancelled the leaf in the large paper as well as in the small; but I thought it might thereby have taken from the former the air of a true edition; and so the blunder (a mere transposition of the letters ar) will go down to a future generation in the large paper. There is yet another slight variation between the small and large. At p. 111, in the account of the catalogue of Krohn's books, the concluding ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... "evolutions" of the fall training-day make up its greatest worth. It is not enough that squads of "our company" advance, fire, and fall back, the drummer drumming his loudest all the while. It is mere boy's play to march in single and double files or in platoons. We are to meet the companies from the other towns at the muster, and they must be forced to admit our superiority in spite of themselves, or else our town will not come out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... all is old, and tried, and dear, And all is fair, and round about The brook that murmurs from the mere Is ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... idea occurred to you?" Rexhill asked calmly, as though out of mere curiosity. "I'd ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... born October 4, 1814, in the hamlet of Gruchy, a mere handful of houses which lie in a valley descending to the sea, in the department of the Manche, not far from Cherbourg. He was the descendant of a class which has no counterpart in England or America, and which in his native France ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... enough to perceive that her mother aimed this tirade against ceremony at Lady Anne Percival, sat in the most painful embarrassment, her eyes cast down, and her face and neck colouring all over. "Never yet," said Miss Portman, "did mere ceremonious person win any thing like real affection; especially from children, who are often excellent, because ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... staff and supply departments, they should be filled by details from the line, the men so detailed returning after a while to their line duties. It is very undesirable to have the senior grades of the Army composed of men who have come to fill the positions by the mere fact of seniority. A system should be adopted by which there shall be an elimination grade by grade of those who seem unfit to render the best service in the next grade. Justice to the veterans of the Civil War who are still in the Army would seem to require that in the matter of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... as white; the leading out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... work. A disciple of Titian almost from his youth, it is the work of that master which gradually emancipates him from Flemish barbarism, from a too serious occupation with detail, the over-emphasis of northern work, the mere boisterousness, without any real distinction, that too often spoils Rubens for us, and yet is so easily excused and forgotten in the mere joy of life everywhere to be found in it. Well, with this shy and ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... off the wire and rail communication of a South African veld town and you have isolation in the most thorough sense. In such a place at such a time mere statement may seem ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... Socialism" are playing the same part. Doubtless without knowing it, they act as the agents of the Continental Illuminati and pave the way, as did the emissaries of Weishaupt, for the open attack on all forms of religion. It is not a mere accident that the blasphemous masquerades of the French Revolution have recently been repeated in Russia. The horrible incidents described in the press[749] were simply the outward manifestation of a continuous conspiracy of which evidence ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Chumbi and French, with its whitewashed city and jack-fruit odor, with its harbor and ships that tread the deep, faded slowly from view, and looking westward, the African continent rose, a similar bank of green verdure to that which had just receded till it was a mere sinuous line above the horizon, looming in a northerly direction to the sublimity of a mountain chain. The distance across from Zanzibar to Bagamoyo may be about twenty-five miles, yet it took the dull and lazy dhows ten hours before they dropped anchor on the top ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... something wholesome in such an atmosphere, the atmosphere of the West, at least by contrast. The worship of political success, low as it may seem, is less deplorable than the worship of wealth, which is already weakening the hold of the middle-class Eastern man upon the American idea. In the West mere wealth does not carry assurance of respect, much less can ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... (C.S., 125, 130, 60) that "the squaw is a mere slave, living a life of utter drudgery." The husbands "care little for their wives." "The drudgery of the tent and field renders the squaw cold and unimpassioned." "The son is taught to make his mother toil for him." "One can ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Mere toys they must have been in comparison with my dear Deane and Adams; that mattered nothing. I went no longer in dire terror of my life; indeed, there was that in Rattray which had left me feeling fairly ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... exclaims he, 'proceed in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... to go on hoping now? Had not he done all he could do? Was it probable that a girl who had loved another man—and that man, Percy—faithfully for a whole year on the mere possibility that he might have remained faithful to her, and who had been throughout blind and insensible to a regard deeper and purer than his had ever been, would be able to transfer her heart whole and undivided as he must have it if he had it ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... of me. I've one or two wounds, mere scratches, George, but I feel all pumped out. I'm like one of those empty wine-skins that you read about, empty, all dried up, and ready to ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fictions, becomes inadequate to decipher the characters he has thus promiscuously assembled—when he has huddled together a heap of incomprehensible, abstract qualities, which he is obliged to acknowledge are the mere creatures of imagination, not within the reach of human intellect, he firmly persuades himself he has made a most accurate and beautiful portrait of the Divinity; he ostentatiously displays his picture, demands the eulogy ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... soldier, encumbered with his heavy mail or thick-padded doublet of cotton, found it difficult to drag one foot after the other. The heat at times was oppressive; and, fainting with toil and famished for want of food, they sank down on the earth from mere exhaustion. Such was the ominous commencement of ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... my throat; so readily do our nerves deceive us that I even thought it grated against my teeth as I opened my mouth to give it passage. At any rate the choking was gone, only now I felt as though I were quite empty and floating on air, as though I were not I, in short, but a mere shell of a thing, all of which doubtless was caused by the stench of those burning roots. Still I could look and take note, for I distinctly saw Zikali thrust his huge head, first into the smoke of what I will call my fire, next into that of Saduko's fire, and ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... nature altogether private, and concern no person but myself; others not so much so. One consideration which deterred me was that, having kept no journal during a greater portion of the time in which I was absent, I feared I should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess, barring only the natural and unavoidable exaggeration to which all of us are prone when ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... gunpowder. In a word, I brought away all the sails, first and last; only that I was fain to cut them in pieces, and bring as much at a time as I could, for they were no more useful to be sails, but as mere canvas only. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... was not noticed. But in the course of the afternoon I told my friends that I had been to Hagenbeck's Circus a few days before, and that I had seen a monkey dressed as a man, and that it had eaten most daintily, cycled, and done other tricks. This had been a mere casual remark, and in about an hour's time I had returned home with Lola. But that same evening, when I was sitting reading, Lola came and rapped my hands—inquiring—"wer afe?" ( who monkey?) I was at the moment so absent minded that I did not grasp what ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... 1 represent the sounds made by the obstructed voice; those in column 2, except h (which represents a mere forcible breathing), represent those made by ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... relation, equips the youth with a shield and javelin. [85] These are to them the manly gown; [86] this is the first honor conferred on youth: before this they are considered as part of a household; afterwards, of the state. The dignity of chieftain is bestowed even on mere lads, whose descent is eminently illustrious, or whose fathers have performed signal services to the public; they are associated, however, with those of mature strength, who have already been declared capable ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... shores of this bayou are the picturesque homes of the planters, made more attractive by the semi-tropical vegetation, the clustering vines, blooming roses, and bright green turf than they could ever be from mere architectural beauty, while their continuous course along the shore gives the idea of ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... memory of his lost battery at the river's mouth. And as blind Fortune's dearest favor flutters often to the lackey while the master snatches vainly, so it befell in this case, for Mexia's chance raid, a piece of mere bravado to which De Guardiola had given grudging consent, was productive of results. Bravado for bravado, interchange of chivalric folly, of magnificence that was not war,—forth to meet the Spaniard and his company must go no greater force ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... could see either the elements or the fruits of this great sanctity in the National Council. In our eyes it is scarcely ever in its proper place on the railway of the Union, has degenerated into a mere electioneering machine, performing the little it really does convulsively, by sudden impulses, equally without deliberation or a sense of responsibility. In a word, we deem it the power of all others in the state that needs the closest watching, and were we what is termed in this country "politicians," ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... called the High Priest of Nature. Burke may be called the High Priest of Order—a lover of settled ways, of justice, peace, and security. His writings are a storehouse of wisdom, not the cheap shrewdness of the mere man of the world, but the noble, animating wisdom of one who has the poet's heart as well as the statesman's brain. Nobody is fit to govern this country who has not drunk deep at the springs of Burke. 'Have ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... could nought avail: Though heathen sword-blows fell like hail, Though cities ran with Christian blood, Imperishable they had stood! They did not seem like books to him, But Heroes, Martyrs, Saints,—themselves The things they told of, not mere books Ranged grimly ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice. "Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should own that land. It—it's empty! I ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... people of America have to a large extent lost sight of this fact; hence the failure of their penal systems to stop the growth of the delinquent population. If, however, imprisonment is not allowed to degenerate into mere detention, it is bound to act as a powerful deterrent upon grown-up offenders, and it is the only menace which will effectually keep many of them within the law. The hope of reward and the fear of punishment, or, in other words, love of pleasure, and dread of pain, are the two ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... has the criminals it deserves;" that is, every society could, by taking proper means, practically eliminate crime and the criminal class. This would have to be done, however, by something more radical than a mere reorganization of human society in an industrial way. Three things are necessary for society practically to eliminate crime: first, the correction of defects in social conditions, particularly of economic evils in society; second, ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the central government and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the downsized Yugoslavia, and a Greek ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... accompany his father on his cruise in the West Indies to break up piracy in those waters. When, two years later, Captain Porter entered the Mexican navy he appointed his son a midshipman. He acquitted himself gallantly in more than one fight with the Spanish cruisers. While still a mere boy he was made a midshipman in the United States navy. As a lieutenant he saw plenty of active service in the war with Mexico, and, at the beginning of the Civil War, was one of our most trusted officers. In command of the Powhatan he covered the landing ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... had not interrupted her in her solution of so nice a problem. Colonel Kenton, however, did not mind. He at once possessed himself of much more than his share of the cylinder, extorting a cry of indignation from his wife, who now saw herself reduced from a fastidious choice of luxuries to a mere vulgar strife for the necessaries of life,—a thing any ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... said Mr. Hamlin, "that you are surprised to see so many books and pictures. I admit that my house does not look like the house of a poor man, who has to struggle for the mere necessaries of life. But books and periodicals we have always classed among the necessities, and I am sure we would all rather limit ourselves to dry bread for two out of the three meals than to give up this ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a chequered one," continued the stranger. "I, too, as a mere boy, came up from the country to make my fortune. I embarked in trade, and was for a time successful. I resigned to get time to write a play,—a comedy ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... broke out, Brouillan's fighting resources were so small that he was forced to depend largely for help on sea-rovers of more than doubtful character. They came chiefly from the West Indies,—the old haunt of buccaneers,—and were sometimes mere pirates, and sometimes semi-piratical privateers commissioned by French West Indian governors. Brouillan's successor writes that their opportunities are good, since at least a thousand vessels enter Boston ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... within, and works effectually. There is nothing mechanical about it. The mere letter profits nothing. The Bible on the center table, unstudied and unloved, has no magic power. But God promises to abide by His Spirit of power in the heart that listens to His voice and trembles at His word. Jesus Himself tells us the secret of this power ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... a number of Union regiments recruited largely from the heavy German population; and from these sources Lyon was enabled to make such a show of available military force as effectively to deter any mere popular ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... higher want in her nature, and the suffering is there, too. She's born gifted with the faculty. And a woman of the type we're speaking of, is as often as not the flower of her kind.—Or becomes it.—For see all she gains on her way: the mere passing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded—why, even the common prostitute gets a certain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to the very existence of society. The man who disputes it seems to me an enemy of society. Whether he is right or wrong, or whether society itself is right or wrong, is another question with which, as it is a mere theory, practical men have nothing to do." Strong had only been fencing in his talk before. Now that he was ready he stated his position, quite coolly, with a quiet emphasis that made his line ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... affair with a four-cylinder thirty-horsepower engine. As she possessed no speed gears, she had either to plunge ahead full speed or come to a stop; there were no compromises. Her steering was managed by a tiller instead of a wheel, so that a mere touch sufficed to swerve her ten feet from her course. As the dhow was in no respects built on such nervous lines, she did occasionally ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... she said mournfully to herself, "I'm sure I don't know what they'll do. It's such a stiff thing to open that it must be perfectly awful when it shuts up all of a sudden," and she was just giving a little shudder at the mere thought of such a thing, when the sideboard bumped up against something and she found that it had run into a tree. In fact, she found that she had drifted into a forest of enormous trees, growing in a most remarkable manner straight up out of the lake; and as she looked up ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... prospects and wound the feelings of her adored daughter. Then, when the adored daughter herself marries, the mother must make every possible sacrifice for her, and the daughter must accept them all with indifference, as mere matters of course. But what is the final, triumphant proof of the theorem? Why, of course, the mother must kill her mother to save the daughter's life! And this ultra-obligatory scene M. Hervieu duly ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... should turn their arms against the Romans, while the reward which they were to receive to abstain from the war was large enough to remunerate them for their service in it. At the same time the mere rest from labour, the return to their homes, with the pleasure of seeing their friends and property, were pleasing to the generality. Accordingly, the multitude were prevailed upon as easily as their leaders. They had, moreover, nothing to fear from the Romans, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... shall be reminded that such a statement cannot be accepted on my own mere "ipse dixit," I proceed to subjoin the original Scholion of which the preceding is evidently only an epitome. It is found in three of the Moscow MSS., (our Evan. 239, 259, 237,) but without any ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... was my beautiful mistress treated upon mere suspicion, for guilty she never was. I had been permitted to see her previous to her latter punishment, and she fancied, poor thing, that the emperor's wrath had been appeased, and that she would have been permitted ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... unperverted conceptions. Matter therefore has prior to itself material form; because all matter is form in capacity, whether it be the first matter which is perfectly formless, or the second which subsists according to body void of quality, or in other words mere triple extension, to which it is likely those directed their attention who first investigated sensibles, and which at first appeared to be the only thing that had a subsistence. For the existence of that which is common in the different ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... a Providence which watches over all; and Lieutenant Reynolds' thoughtfulness was not a mere chance, but the answer to the simple trust Aunt Betsy had that God would take her safely to New York, never doubting until she reached it that she had been heard. And even then she did not doubt it long, for the conductor knew Lieutenant Bob, and attended as faithfully ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... "Those are mere details of horticulture," I said. "What I am protesting against is the whole spirit in which you approach the business—the light-hearted way in which you assume that you can support a flame-flower. You have to be a very superior ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... marquis was made to feel produced the usual effect of such obstacles on all young men. Though he had, apparently, treated Mademoiselle de Verneuil rather lightly, and left it to be supposed that his passion for her was a mere caprice, he now, from a feeling of pride, made immense strides in his relation to her. By openly protecting her, his honor became concerned in compelling respect to her person; and he went from group to group assuring his friends, in the tone of a man whom it was ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... said the dark-eyed doctor. "He was luring Clayton to his grave! He may have tried other plans, and, perhaps foiled by Clayton's suspicions or by mere accident, have used the real ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... petrified. Scarce fifty of that noble herd of buffaloes escaped the awful leap, but they escaped only to fall before the arrows of their ruthless pursuers. Dick had often heard of this tendency of the Indians, where buffaloes were very numerous, to drive them over precipices in mere wanton sport and cruelty, but he had never seen it until now, and the sight filled his soul with horror. It was not until the din and tumult of the perishing herd and the shrill yells of the Indians had almost died away that he turned to quit the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... there is no surer test nor any more fortunate concomitant of greatness than the union of the two. The highest genius is splendidly spendthrift; it is only the second order that needs to be niggardly. Browning's works are not a mere collection of poems, they are a literature. And his literature is the richest of modern times. If "the best poetry is that which reproduces the most of life," his place is among the great poets of the world. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... features of this strange incident are that it was equally and simultaneously evident to two witnesses, both entirely unprepared for any such manifestation, and differing widely in temperament, habits of life, mental capacity and educational attainments, and by mere accident making this journey together, and that to this day both of them—witnesses, be it noted, of unimpeachable credibility—attest it, and fully corroborate each other, but without being able ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... there?" he asked of one who seemed to be the strongest of the crew, and looked by his dress like an officer. Once he had evidently been a stout, broad-shouldered, muscular young man, now he was a mere skeleton ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... we must remember that he was a man of impulses; at one instant a mere incarnate thrill of gratitude or generosity, and in the next of spite or jealousy. A spasm of wounded vanity would make him for the time as mean and selfish as other men are made by a frenzy of bodily fear. He would instinctively snatch at a ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... most excellent scholar. I knew I had got rusty, but I didn't know how rusty till I came to work for him. He has a wonderful memory—seems to know every Greek author by heart—and a most delicate and unerring taste. I thought I should find a mere dabbler—an amateur. And it takes all I know to do the drudgery work he gives me. And then he is always coming down upon me. It delights him to find me out in a howler—makes him, in fact, quite good-tempered ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rod and his hook see him carefully rake The bed of the river, and gallantly wading, Arrayed in his breeches, endeavour to make Of genuine sport but a mere masquerading. You might think him a fool for his trouble—but look! (And it's true, though at first it appears to be gammon) With a horrible jerk, as he pulls up his hook, The sportsmanlike sniggler has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... with all brakes working full force, and both mates lending a hand, the water came in faster than it went out, and by the time the moon bounded up over the trees, the situation was accepted as demanding measures beyond mere pumping. And Rolfe stood glaring over at the now clearly visible schooner, debating the wisdom of attempting to carry her by boarding. Bill Blunt joined him, and the old sea dog hitched his trousers, shifted his quid, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... course, if they do not single them out expressly as objects of admiration. The two lines 'Ne'er sighed at the sound,' &c., are, in my opinion, an instance of the language of passion wrested from its proper use, and, from the mere circumstance of the composition being in metre, applied upon an occasion that does not justify such violent expressions; and I should condemn the passage, though perhaps few Readers will agree with me, as vicious poetic diction. The ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... tells you are no gentleman if you give him his correct fare. Not only his pocket, but his soul is hurt. You have wounded his ideal. You have defaced his vision of the perfect aristocrat. All this is really very subtle and elusive; it is very difficult to separate what is mere slavishness from what is a sort of vicarious nobility in the English love of a lord. And no Frenchman could easily grasp it at all. He would think it was mere slavishness; and if he liked it, he would be a slave. So every Englishman must (at first) feel French candour to be mere brutality. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... civilized life into which he may be thrown. For there is one thing that the more radical advocates of a narrow vocational education commonly forget, and that is the constant change that is going on in industrial processes. When we limit our vocational teaching to a mere mastery of technique, there is no guarantee that the process which we teach to-day may not be discarded in five or ten years from to-day. Even the narrower technical principles which are so extremely important to-day may be relatively ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... D'Effernay, scowling as he spoke, and working himself up into a passion. "And this lieutenant came here on this account, then, and the purchase of the estates was a mere excuse." ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... by the arm and drew him into a corner of the hall, away from the others, and hurriedly said: "You know I am not one to ask much of you, to ask anything of you, in fact. I merely reckon on a receivership. That is easily done, eh? A mere nothing?" ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... expedition to his prejudice, but the whispers of faction were soon drowned in the voice of the whole people of England, who never could persuade themselves that a gentleman raised to the height of power and popularity by mere dint of superior merit, integrity, and disinterestedness, would now sacrifice his reputation by a mock armament, or hazard incurring the derision of Europe, by neglecting to obtain all the necessary previous information, or doing whatever might ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... obtaining of credit the payment of foreign debts must be resumed and, therefore, are ready to pay such debts. But even though these debts are paid the members of the Soviet Government believe that they will not be able to borrow money in foreign countries on any mere promise to pay. They believe, therefore, that they will have to grant concessions in Russia to foreigners in order to obtain immediate credit. They desire to avoid this expedient if in any way it shall ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt
... altogether a laughable sight to witness the curious contest between the two quadrupeds, and had the hunters been pursuing the bear for mere amusement, they would have permitted the fight to go on for some time without interfering in it. But amusement was just then out of the question. The fat of Bruin was a thing of far more importance; ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... been attempted to justify each of them is derived from inferences and constructions of the Constitution which its letter and its whole object and design do not warrant. Is it to be conceived that such immense powers would have been left by the framers of the Constitution to mere inferences and doubtful constructions? Had it been intended to confer them on the Federal Government, it is but reasonable to conclude that it would have been done by plain and unequivocal grants. This was not done; but the whole structure of which the "American system" ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... her only for one year, one little year, to see her torn from me by a violent and bloody death, and to be left a mourner in this vast and eternal charnel, without a solitary consolation or a gleam of hope? Was the earth to be henceforth a mere mass conjured from the bones and fattened by the clay of our dead sires? Were the stars and the moon to be mere atoms and specks of a chill light, no longer worlds, which the ardent spirit might hereafter reach and be fitted to enjoy? Was the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and—you'll excuse plain speaking under the circumstances, sir—very foolish thing that you've done, Mr. Mallalieu," he said, as he and the prisoner sat closeted together in the still shuttered and curtained parlour-bedroom. "The mere fact of your making your escape, sir, is what some would consider a proof of guilt—it is indeed! And of course my aunt—and myself, in my small way—we're running great risks, Mr. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... hall door, opened it, and listened. All was still. Without further circumvention he went to the safe, and examined it. Of a primitive make and simple design, it afforded little more security than protection against light-fingered servants. To his skill it was a mere toy, a thing of straw and paste-board. The money was as good as in his hands. With his clamps he could draw the knob, punch the tumblers and open the door in two minutes. Perhaps, in another way, he might open ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... air once every half second, and at each stroke compressing the air to 60 pounds, and thereby producing 309 degrees of heat, is thus, by means of water injection, cooled to an extent hardly possible with mere surface contact. The specific heat of water being about four times that of air, it readily takes up the heat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... the West Indies, blood-hounds are employed to hunt negroes; and this fact is the foundation of one of the most painfully interesting scenes in Miss Martineau's Demerara. A writer by the name of Dallas has the hardihood to assert that it is mere sophistry to censure the practice of training dogs to devour men. He asks, "Did not the Asiatics employ elephants in war? If a man were bitten by a mad dog, would he hesitate to cut off the wounded part in order to save ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... term in reference to one who was, perhaps, among the most unsettled of men. He had settled with his family on the banks of the Red River. The colony on that river is now one of the frontier towns of Canada. At the time we write of, it was a mere oasis in the desert, not even an offshoot of civilisation, for it owed its existence chiefly to the fact that retiring servants of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company congregated there to spend the evening of life, far beyond the Canadian boundary, in the heart of that great wilderness ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... crater came into view. I have seen Vesuvius since, but it was a mere toy, a child's volcano, a soup-kettle, compared to this. Mount Vesuvius is a shapely cone thirty-six hundred feet high; its crater an inverted cone only three hundred feet deep, and not more than a thousand feet in diameter, if as much as that; its fires meagre, modest, and docile.—But here ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Orsdale, Harden, and Woodbridge were all at their posts, and none of them lost an opportunity to put in a telling shot. Lieut. Francis Woodbridge was the youngest officer in the command, then a mere boy, but a few months from West Point, yet he was as cool as any of the veterans, and displayed, soldierly qualities that endeared him to everyone who participated in that ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... easy to do good as those who have never attempted it may imagine; and they who without consideration follow the mere instinct of pity, often by their imprudent generosity create evils more pernicious to society than any which they partially remedy. "Warm Charity, the general friend," may become the general enemy, unless she consults her head as well ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... i.e. the Messiah." Comp. Dan. xii. 1; Rev. iii. 5, xiii. 8, xx. 15, xxii. 19; Phil. iv. 3; Luke x. 20. The bodily death of believers cannot exclude them from a participation in being written to [Pg 21] life; for, being a mere transition to life, it can, in truth, not be called a death. Here, too, the word of Christ applies: "The maid is not dead but sleepeth," Matt. ix. 24. The fact that there is no contradiction between bodily death and life, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... smiling, he untied his fair braguette, and drawing out his mentul into the open air, he so bitterly all-to-bepissed them, that he drowned two hundred and sixty thousand, four hundred and eighteen, besides the women and little children. Some, nevertheless, of the company escaped this piss-flood by mere speed of foot, who, when they were at the higher end of the university, sweating, coughing, spitting, and out of breath, they began to swear and curse, some in good hot earnest, and others in jest. Carimari, carimara: ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and his brother, you would not wonder at my avowing my gratitude to both of them. I should despise myself if I did not. Poor Jim saved my life on one occasion, and on another, but far more dreadful day, he—but words, mere words, can never express my deep thankfulness for his noble conduct, and were he here now I would tell him so, and give him my hand, if all the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... suppose that as you had no brothers or sisters they taught you to pray for your cousin, didn't they? Oh, I know all about it. It is my unfortunate sex that is to blame; while I was a mere tom-boy it was different. No one can serve two masters, can they? You have chosen to serve a machine that won't go, and I daresay that you are wise. Yes, I think that it is the better part—until you find someone that will make it go—and then ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... doubt, no," Captain Desportes answered, spreading his hand with decision: "in such a case I should throw up my parole. But a mere suspicion does not justify an act so ungracious to the commander, and personally so unkind to me. I hoped that bright eyes might persuade you to forego hard knocks, and wear none but gentle chains among us. Nature intended you for a Frenchman. You have the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... He says, in effect, there is nothing in making a lame man walk: thousands of lame men have been cured and have walked without any miracle. Bring me a man with only one leg and make another grow instantaneously on him before my eyes; and I will be really impressed; but mere cures of ailments that have often been cured before are quite useless as evidence of anything else than desire to help ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... period of her history, was a mere den of execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those 'compunctious visitings of conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... began to see much on its surface that was pleasant. Their own faces and figures must have struck them as surprisingly interesting, and, considering how little St. Bernard and other mediaeval saints and doctors had led them to expect, singularly beautiful. A new feeling arose that mere living was a big part of life, and with it came a new passion, the passion for beauty, for ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... the lake with you, children of Lir! Cry with the water-fowl over the mere! Breed and seed of you ne'er shall I see; Woeful the tale to ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... those prodigies who come but few times in a century, and the full list of whom in the records of history could be told on one's thumbs and fingers. His biographers tell us things about him that read like the most patent fairy-tales. As a mere infant in arms he had been able to read fluently. Before his fourth birthday came he had read the Bible twice through, as well as Watts's Hymns—poor child!—and when seven or eight he had shown a propensity to absorb languages much as other children absorb nursery tattle and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... was immensely long, a life-work, like Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, and like that work, perhaps, fatal to its author. Indeed, since Proust's death last year the two have frequently been compared, and on more than the mere alliterative ground that is in their names. Of Petronius we are told "illi dies per somnum, nox officiis et oblectamentis vitae transigebatur; utque alios industria, ita hunc ignavia ad famam protulerat, habebaturque ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... his fate, blended with natural steadiness of deportment; for our hero had calmly made up his mind that he must die, and preferred this mode to any other; the second was his great familiarity with this particular weapon, which deprived it of all the terror that is usually connected with the mere form of the danger; and the third was this familiarity carried out in practice, to a degree so nice as to enable the intended victim to tell, within an inch, the precise spot where each bullet must strike, for he calculated ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a moment of the mere drill of it all—that last dive for that attack on the chosen battleship; the eye at the periscope watching "No. 1 torpedo" get home; the rush of the vengeful destroyer; the instant orders for flooding everything; the swift descent which ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling |
