"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visitors was one who came not for mere curiosity. He was dressed in rebel uniform, but was instantly recognized by Andrews as a spy in the service of the United States. They had no opportunity for private communication, but our situation was revealed in such a way as not to excite suspicion. His ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose brilliance death as yet had gained no control. Clements's soul was in that gaze; Clement halting at the brink of dissolution to sound the depths behind him for the hope which would make departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere slip of a girl dressed in fashionable clothes and bearing about her all the marks of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the task upon the success of which depended his darlings' future? She could hardly ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... consisting of Swansea, Cambridge, Langhorn, and three other places, which should have the privilege of sending one member to parliament; the only additional one proposed to be added to the representation of Wales. In Scotland the existing county franchise, which depended on a mere feudal right of superiority over lauds belonging to others, was to be annihilated; the election of members for boroughs was to be taken from the town-councils, and vested in the citizens at large; and the new English franchise was to be introduced, both in counties and in boroughs. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... A mere glance was directed at the dangerous coast, for every eye was turned seaward, east, north, and south, in search of the gunboat; but she was ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... more seducing than mere beauty; but where they are allied, the captivation is irresistible. That subduing alliance was to be found, in perfection, in the person of Mrs Causand. As she always dressed up to the very climax of the fashion, possessed a great variety of rich bijouterie, and never came down to us in the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... heartened by the tone of his voice, and pleased with the request. She immediately sang with great spirit a little Methodist hymn she had learned when a mere child. The wild air and simple words singularly suited ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... that lay between him and the men of Earth went beyond mere physical differences, however. Earthmen had differences of skin color, facial contour and physical size among them, yet made no sign of distinction. Dal's alienness went deeper. His classmates had been ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... as well as liberality, could not fail to secure to him all the good things of this world,—the respect of his friends amongst the rest. Caroline was right when she told Evelyn that her papa was very different from a mere ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... travel the long and difficult road; and not all eyes could see at the end the promised kingdom where all men are brothers. That's why all these good people, despite their beards and worn faces, seemed to her mere children. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... what would have happened had the men attacked us. It would have been worth seeing, and—and surprising. Yes: I'm quite certain it would have been surprising. Perhaps, too, I might have learned more of the Great Secret ... and yet, I don't know. It's all dark ... a hint here ... theory ... mere glints of light.... Where did I ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "Nothing—a mere scratch," said Jack hastily. Then he added with a bitter laugh, "I'm not in luck to-day. But come: ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... constitutional means, should be subjected to the possibility of arrest and imprisonment and trial before a military commission, and punishment at its discretion, for offences unknown to the law—a possibility to be converted into a fact at the mere will of the President, or of some subordinate officer, clothed by him with this power. But I do perceive that this Executive power is asserted.... It must be obvious to the meanest capacity that, ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... is talking," replied Sandford, "of the passion in its most refined and predominant sense; while I may possibly be speaking of a mere phantom, that has ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... were concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionist though he was, he was quite willing to accept it. He only dreaded its effect on the blacks themselves. Hitherto they had in the main, been modest and respectful, and mere freedom was not likely to spoil them. But the deference to them likely to be shown by partisans eager for their votes would have a tendency to uplift them and unbalance them. Beyond this, no harm would be done the South by Negro suffrage. The old owners would ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... danger of a relapse into the mistakes of the past; other faults, other temptations would assail her, but these were harmless. Having once seen and realized the falsity of worldliness when compared with religion, the worthlessness of mere money, when compared with true affection, Sibyl could never forget the lesson, for firm reason and resolve were parts ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... words are open to this meaning, that a spoken word is not the word unless it is spoken in accordance with the city or college-bred standard? But sound is sound, by whomsoever uttered, and if the word is mere sound a provincial can make words as well as any one else. The proposition is, the word is the word spoken and not the word written, unless the word is spoken by a provincial. To be the word, it must be intoned and articulated in accordance with the intonation and articulation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... The mere word musician called up in him an inchoate longing, a desire for something far and undefined. He thought of great audiences, roses, the accompaniment of violins. Subconsciously he began to sing in a whisper that yet reached beyond the huts. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was henceforth riveted to that Roman soil, it remained kingly in spite of everything, forced to cling to the principle of temporal power under penalty of suicide, bound by tradition, enchained by dogma, its evolutions mere simulations whilst in reality it was reduced to such immobility that, behind the bronze doors of the Vatican, the papacy was the prisoner, the ghost of eighteen centuries of atavism, indulging the ceaseless dream of universal dominion. There, where with priestly faith exalted ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... facts concerning the southern cities which adopted the new plan are taken from the reports of the Des Moines investigation committee, headed by the Hon. W.N. Jordan. We would be glad to submit these pamphlets to the gentlemen for examination. The mere fact that Des Moines adopted the commission form does not disprove the integrity ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... be the subject of some hallucination. He therefore called to the servants who were accompanying him, and asked them whether they, too, could see a brilliant object in the direction in which he pointed. They certainly could, and thus he became convinced that this marvellous object was no mere creation of the fancy, but a veritable celestial body—a new star of surpassing splendour which had suddenly burst forth. In these days of careful scrutiny of the heavens, we are accustomed to the occasional outbreak of new stars. It is not, however, believed that any new star which has ever appeared ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... had turned his brown hair to a crisp grey, had bowed his shoulders to the desk he had used for twenty-two years. His eyes alone retained their boyish brightness, and a sort of appealing look as of one who his whole life long had been a dependent on other people. As an automaton, a mere cog in a vast machine, he had won the praise of his superiors by his complete self-effacement. He was never ill, never absent, never had trouble with his subordinates, never talked back, never made complaints, and, in the flattering language of the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... needing to suppose any accident; or, if an accident, why not a very trifling one? She may have slightly hurt her foot—she may have slightly sprained her ankle. 'Oh, doubtless,' I exclaimed to myself, 'it will be a mere trifle, or perhaps nothing at all.' But I remember that, even whilst I was saying this, I took my hat and walked with nervous haste into the little quiet lane upon which our garden-gate opened. The lane ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... stipulations admitting such a right of navigation, and the better to do so he was quite willing to let the fisheries go. The navigation privilege he considered "much too important to be conceded for the mere liberty of drying fish upon a desert," as he was pleased to describe a right for which the United States has often been ready to go to war and may yet some time do so. "Mr. Clay lost his temper," writes Mr. Adams a day or two later, (p. 089) "as he generally does whenever this ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... effect of the McKinley law, but, on the contrary, showed that prices had declined and wages increased since its enactment. When cheapness comes by discoveries, by inventions, or by new industrial processes, the people ought to share in those benefits, but as a rule mere cheapness of things is not a benefit to the people of the United States, especially when they are the productions of the people of the United States. When the wheat of a farmer is worth only fifty cents a bushel or his cotton only seven cents a pound it is to him ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... more charm in beauty than in that of Marguerite. Excessively tall and thin, she had in the fullest degree the art of repairing this oversight of Nature by the mere arrangement of the things she wore. Her cashmere reached to the ground, and showed on each side the large flounces of a silk dress, and the heavy muff which she held pressed against her bosom was surrounded by such cunningly arranged folds that ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... class of arguments—intellectual grievances. The suffragist tells us that it is unchivalrous to oppose woman's suffrage; that it is insulting to tell woman that she is unfit to exercise the fran- chise; that it is "illogical" to make in her case an exception to a general rule; that it is mere "prejudice" to withhold the vote from her; that it is indignity that the virtuous and highly intelligent woman has no vote, while the drunkard has; and that the woman of property has no vote, while her male underlings ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... and humbly hoped I would not condemn her for the ignorance of her accusers, who, according to their own words, had rather represented her killing than dead." She further alleged, "That the expressions mentioned in the papers written to her were become mere words, and that she had been always ready to marry any of those who said they died for her; but that they made their escape, as soon as they found themselves pitied or believed." She ended her discourse by desiring I would for the future settle ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... himself. His fury was foolish, a mere generalization of discontent from very little data. Still, it was a relief to be out in the purring night sounds. He had passed from the affluent stone piles on the boulevard to the cheap flat buildings of a cross street. His way lay through a territory of startling contrasts of wealth ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 1 Mere human power shall fast decay, And youthful vigor cease; But they who wait upon the Lord In strength shall ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... my lawful commands. In so doing, on this occasion, I will defend him at all risques and hazards. For the information of those persons who may have real business on the premises, there is a good and convenient gate. But Mark! I do not admit mere curisoity an errand of business. Therefore, I beg and pray of all my neighbors to avoid Evermay as they would a den of devils, or rattle snakes, and thereby save themselves and me ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... think that it was mere recklessness. What would you rather have it be, mother—recklessness, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... gently replied, "I could not feel anger or resentment towards any one because of a mere difference of opinion." ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the good result of amusing Mrs. Trent so that, for an hour at least, she forgot to be anxious over her daughter's unexplained absence. Aunt Sally was a person who was always "driven to death" by the mere thought of tasks for which there was, in reality, ample time. But now that she had decided to remain at the ranch for a further indefinite stay, her spirits rose and her brain busied itself with a thousand plans for the comfort ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... The mere mention of the dishes made his mouth water, while his anger against the dame who had compiled it mounted higher. He remotely contemplated writing to inquire of the culinary oracle why she had ignored ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... long time ago, and I am too much accustomed to it! But the worst of it is, that the first time I forgave her, when I told her that all the same, I might some day have my revenge by cutting her throat, if I chose, without seeming to do it on purpose, as if it were an accident, mere awkwardness." "Oh! So you said that to her?" "Of course I did, and I meant it. I thought I might be able to do it, for you see I had the perfect right to do so. It was so simple, so easy, so tempting! Just think! A mistake of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of your Majesty, and for the service of the Divine Majesty, to grant the residence the alms of the said sum—or greater, if your Majesty be so pleased. Its being in unassigned Indians, with which grant the soldiers are rewarded, is not a [mere] favor to the said fathers, since they embark with the soldiers on all the occasions demanding a fleet, and are employed in the rearing of the youth of this community, and all their ministers are engaged in the service of the community, gaining much fruit, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... the spectroscope was turned upon the nebula, and many of them were found to be gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the inference that in these nebulous masses at different stages of condensation—some apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres—we have the process of development actually going on, and observations like those of Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confirmation to this view. Then came the great contribution ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in all probability, reconcile it to their ideas of propriety, and it is a pity that we do not show ourselves capable of something better. Conversation at these parties is necessarily restricted to a few commonplaces; nothing is gained but the mere interchange of civility, and the native spectators gladly depart, perhaps to recreate themselves with more debasing amusements, without having gained a single ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... life of those past centuries. The stamp of thought and the seal of art were set upon the simplest conveniences of life. The very keys of the locks and hinges of the doors were designed, not by mere workers in metal, but by sculptors and artists who were pre-eminent for genius. It was in the spirit of this period that Benvenuto Cellini modeled saltcellars as well as statues, and his compeers designed carvings and gildings for state carriages, and painted ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... reference to its service against powers of wind and wave, turns out one of the loveliest things that human hands produce. Still, we do not, and properly do not, hold ship-building to be a fine art, nor preserve in our memories the names of immortal ship-builders; neither, so long as the mere utility and constructive merit of the building are regarded, is architecture to be held a fine art, or are the names of architects to be remembered immortally. For any one may at any time be taught to build the ship, or (thus far) the ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... Square; and the more so because Geraldine's visit to Dawes Road had not been a dazzling success. Geraldine in Dawes Road had somehow the air, the brazen air, of an orchid in a clump of violets; the violets, by their mere quality of being violets, rebuked the orchid, and the orchid could not have flourished for any extended period in that temperature. Still, Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie said to Henry afterwards that Geraldine was very clever and nice; and ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... and meditatively, with mute intervals between rushes of talk; for, the spell once broken, they had much to say, and yet moments when saying became the mere accompaniment to long duologues of silence. Archer kept the talk from his own affairs, not with conscious intention but because he did not want to miss a word of her history; and leaning on the table, her chin resting on her clasped ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... "struck a particularly soft spot." The miller had gone to the war leaving behind him his wife, his mother and two children. Nothing they could do for the five officers of the Company was too much trouble. Madame Mere resigned her bedroom to the Major and his second in command, while Madame herself slew the fattest of her chickens and rabbits for the meals of ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... you should remember your place. It is certainly not becoming for you, a mere boy, and filling a subordinate position, to come to me with gossip concerning the vestry ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... the mere putting it into words, his feeling for her seemed to grow. He was even somewhat excited. He bent toward her, his eyes on her face, and caught one of her gloved hands. He was no longer flirting with a pretty woman. He was in real earnest. But Natalie ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... teachings and ordinances. For whoever preaches to us the true Faith giveth us reason to pray to God for His mercy, and to call up within us and confirm us in the true Faith. For if we do not enjoy His grace, we remain mere flesh and blood, which profiteth not. It is clearly written in the Scriptures that it is only through the true Faith that we can come to God, and only through His mercy that we can be saved. Therefore it is that we require such ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... adopted, and moving forward under the 'Squire's guidance as noiselessly as Indians, the whole party secreted themselves in ambush, within shooting distance of the horse, which was hid away in a thicket of bushes so nicely, that it was a mere accident the 'Squire discovered him. Here they remained in whispered silence for several hours, until some time in the afternoon, and were about to despair of seeing the culprit, when their attention was directed by Mr. Mandeville, who had kept a sharp look out, to a man descending from ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, England owes her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Prince John.—"Sirrah Locksley, do thou shoot, but, if thou hittest such a mark, I will say thou art the first man ever did so. Howe'er it be, thou shalt not crow over us with a mere ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... never tell lies for either themselves or for others, or in jest or for exciting laughter, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who never tell lies for earning their subsistence or for earning merit or through mere caprice, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who utter words that are smooth and sweet and faultless, and who welcome all whom they meet with sincerity, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a horn that never offends, You may join the genteelest party that is, And enjoy all the scandal, and gossip, and quiz, And be certain to hear of your absent friends; - Not that elegant ladies, in fact, In genteel society ever detract, Or lend a brush when a friend is blacked, - At least as a mere malicious act, - But only talk scandal for fear some fool Should think they were bred at CHARITY school. Or, maybe, you like a little flirtation, Which even the most Don Juanish rake Would surely object to undertake At ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... cry it at five-and-thirty purses. He stopped the crier, and said to him, "Let me see that apple, and tell me what virtue or extraordinary property it possesses, to be valued at so high a rate?" "Sir," replied the crier, giving it into his hand, "if you look at the mere outside of this apple it is not very remarkable; but if you consider its properties, and the great use and benefit it is of to mankind, you will say it is invaluable, and that he who possesses it is master of a great treasure. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... this fermented dough acted as a starter on a fresh batch of dough. Hence, a little of the fermented dough was carefully saved from a batch, and when the next bread was made, the fermented dough, or leaven, was worked into the fresh dough and served to raise the mass more quickly and effectively than mere exposure to air and warmth could do in the same length of time. This use of leaven for raising bread ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... story-book adventure at last. And he began to entertain a little more respect for those writers of romance who have so persistently attempted to convince an incredulous world that adventures are to be had anywhere and at any time for the mere ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... he come here?" demanded Rigdon. "He who by his preaching can gather thousands in populous places, why should he ride across this thinly settled parcel of land, preaching to mere handfuls, if it is not to denounce us? And he has not the courage to go nearer to the place where the Saints are gathered in numbers. He will teach his hearers first to ravage the few sheep that are scattered in ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... many other influences at work in the moulding of the American character, besides the mere vastness of his continent; but the fact remains that this has been immensely the most powerful of all the factors. English originally, the American is still English in his essentials, modified chiefly by the circumstances ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... pass through pipes over hot plates in the stove, and in this way fresh air, properly charged with oxygen, is supplied to the inhabitants. In large houses the mouth of the stove is in an outer passage or in an ante-room, while the front is a mere mass of china, or concealed altogether by looking-glasses or other furniture. One or more servants in large houses have the entire charge of the stoves. They fill them with wood the last thing at night, and light them some hours ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... immense preponderance of the material power of the Persian king over that of the Athenian republic is more striking than any similar contrast which history can supply. It has been truly remarked that, in estimating mere areas Attica, containing on its whole surface only seven hundred square miles, shrinks into insignificance if compared with many a baronial fief of the Middle Ages, or many a colonial allotment of modern times. Its antagonist, the Persian, empire, comprised ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... marching in irons, have arrived; shrunk to Ninety-four, the fifth man of them choked by the road. They arrive: and suddenly find themselves not pleaders for life, but denouncers to death. Their Trial is for acquittal, and more. As the voice of a trumpet, their testimony sounds far and wide, mere atrocities of a Reign of Terror. For a space of nineteen days; with all solemnity and publicity. Representative Carrier, Company of Marat; Noyadings, Loire Marriages, things done in darkness, come forth into light: clear is the voice of these poor resuscitated Nantese; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... all love and tenderness, but join the glorious expedition he must and would, encouraged in this resolve by mother, sister, and kinsfolk; Maisie's being the only dissenting voice; and, as Lady Glenlivet tauntingly remarked to her daughter-in-law, "it was not for the child of a mere English pock-pudding to decide what was fitting conduct for a Highland noble—Maisie should remember she had wedded into an honourable house, and not strive to draw her husband aside from the path ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... while a shuddering fit that affected his whole body testified his alarm at the alternative proposed—"one would imagine thine own profession might have taught thee, that no mere mortal man, unless predestined to be a glorified saint, could ever prefer darkness to the light of day; blindness itself to the enjoyment of the power of sight; the pangs of starving to competent sustenance, or the damps of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... mere horror of the thought, upon just how complete the "bust-up" would be if she knew! He realized that he had undeserved good luck with Lily; she hadn't fastened herself on him. She was decent about that; if she'd been a different sort, he might have had a nasty time. But Lily ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... and the workers among them, I could hardly help thinking they dearly earned all that grew upon them, although there would be no half-yearly rent hanging over them. In one little clearing some children were scattering manure. One, a sturdy little maiden, but a mere baby of about seven years of age, had a fork cut down to suit her size, and was handling it with infantile vigor, laying about her with great vim. It was such a comical sight that we stopped the car to watch her. As soon as she saw she was watched, she dropped the fork ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... free will. I own that I was pleased with the inclination she displayed, and did what I could to make the way pleasant for her, but the thing is not of my planning. What I am displeased with is this sudden change. There is no reason for it and no sense in it. It is just a mere baby performance, a girlish freak, very unpleasant for him and very disagreeable for us. The child ought not to ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... thought, as he went down town, was of Jim Hegan. "Come and see me sometime," Hegan had said, and Montague had never accepted the invitation. The Northern Mississippi would, of course, be a mere bagatelle to a man like Hegan, but who could tell what new plans he might be able to fit it into? Montague knew by the rumours in the street that the great financier had sold out all his holdings in two or three of his ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... be easily effected; an union founded upon interest, and cemented by dependence, is naturally lasting; but confederacies which owe their rise to virtue, or mere conformity of sentiments, are quickly dissolved, since no individual has any thing either to hope or fear for himself, and publick spirit is generally too weak to combat ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... written to be intercepted. The books say that Washington used every art in his power to deceive Clinton. He wrote letters containing the barefaced lie that he intended to attack New York when he intended to attack Cornwallis. It was not a mere white lie, for he intended to deceive. We don't regard Washington as a liar, and he was not a liar in any proper sense of the word. All the high-toned generals on both sides in the present war do not hesitate to deceive the enemy, for it is a part of their duty ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... building at Karnak, thus affording the good people of Thebes an opportunity for the first time of reading on the monuments the titles of the king's Syrian subjects written in hieroglyphics. One hundred and nineteen names follow each other in unbroken succession, some of them representing mere villages, while others denoted powerful nations; the catalogue, however, was not to end even here. Having once set out on a career of conquest, the Pharaoh had no inclination to lay aside his arms. From ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Baba nullahs in the centre. In the dry season only a gentle flow of water trickled down these courses, leaving enough room for a path or even a roadway to be beaten out by which men and rations and stores could be got forward unobserved by the Turk. Their banks were honeycombed with crude dug-outs (mere scrapings in the ground with a waterproof sheet or blanket for covering) in which men sought protection from shell-fire and relief ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... and foe; and although the spreading of a certain amount of false news for the purpose of deceiving an enemy has always been considered as a legitimate means of warfare, Peterborough altogether exceeded the usual limits, and appeared to delight in inventing the most complicated falsehoods from the mere love of mischief. At times Jack was completely bewildered by his general, so rapid were the changes of plans, so changeable his purposes, so fantastic and eccentric his bearing and utterances. That his military genius was astonishing no one can for a ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... coats, they were splashed to the knees with mud and their unpowdered hair lay damp on their shoulders. One was a very dark man who might have been a Spaniard but for his blue eyes. The second was a mere boy with a ruddy face and eyes full of dancing merriment. The third was tall and red-haired, tanned of countenance and lean as a greyhound. He wore trews of a tartan which Mr. Lovel, trained in such matters, recognised as that ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... land or shore. Indeed, this is in some measure the situation of all the tropical isles in this sea that I have seen; and thus nature has effectually secured them from the encroachments of the sea, though many of them are mere points when compared to this vast ocean. Van Diemen's Road, where we anchored, is under the northwest part of the island, between the most northern and western points. There lies a reef of rocks without it, bearing N.W. by W., over which the sea breaks continually. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... disappointment, wondering whether he ascribed it to her influence, and Mr. Charteris blandly expressed great obligation and more complete resignation of the boy than she desired; disclaimers ran into mere civilities, and she was thankful to the captain for saying, shortly, 'We'll leave it till we have seen more ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... still unconscious, up stairs and laid him on a couch. Old Burt could not refuse an act of mere humanity, but he said ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Claude de Richebourg with a number of Huguenots who settled above the Falls. First and last, Virginia received many of this good French strain. The Old Dominion had now a population of over eighty thousand persons—whites, Indians in no great number, and negroes. The red men are mere scattered dwellers in the land east of the mountains. There are Indian villages, but they are far apart. Save upon the frontier fringe, the Indian attacks no more. But the African is ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... appreciation of the moment. There were, of course, many people to whom it would be impossible to contemplate the spending of a sum of money of any importance in the indulgence of a wish founded on mere taste. He had not thought of the thing particularly in detail before, and now that he realised the significance of the fact as a fact, Emily had afforded him ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... life the Gypsy race has always had a peculiar interest for me. Indeed I can remember no period when the mere mention of the name Gypsy did not awaken within me feelings hard to be described. I cannot account for this—I merely state it as a fact."—The Gypsies ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... unable to decide definitely for an hour or so yet, unless he regains consciousness in the meantime. It may be a fracture of the skull or a mere concussion." ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the smell is too much for his new-born virtue. He will go in just for a moment to pass the time of day with his friend the publican and see his last brand of books, but not to buy—I mean to drink—and then he comes across a little volume, the smallest and slimmest of volumes, a mere trifle of a thing, and not dear, but a thing which does not often turn up and which would just round off his collection at a particular point. It is only a mere taste, not downright drinking; but ah me, it sets him on fire again, and I who ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... such luxury, Herode had fixed upon this house as their place of abode in Paris; because it would give a certain prestige to his troupe to be lodged there, and show conclusively that they were not mere needy, vagabond players, gaining a precarious livelihood in their wanderings through the provinces, but a company of comedians of good standing, whose talents brought them in ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... in this sort of thing is somewhat limited, Mrs. Burke. A tangled skein is unravelled by following a mere thread, not by tearing at the entire mass. I have hold of a thread, ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... be an absurd bit of one's life to look back upon, but its days were bright and innocent enough. Health was so perfect that the mere sensation of being alive became happiness, and all the noise of the eager, bustling, pushing world, seemed shut away by those steep hills which folded our quiet valley in their green arms. People have often said to me since, "Surely ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... There was something about the man which she had never seen before, something more than the mere spirit of defiance, something terrible ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... dwarf never grows to the middle size. Rousseau tells a story of a painter's servant, who resolved to be the rival or the conqueror of his master. He abandoned his livery to live by his pencil; but instead of the Louvre, he stopped at a sign-post. Mere learning is only a compiler, and does with the pen what the compositor does with the type: each sets up a book with the hand. Stone-masons collected the dome of St Paul's, but Wren hung ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... of strength, of a mastery of facts, of a fund of knowledge, that speaks well for future production. . . . To be thoroughly enjoyed, however, this book must be read, as no mere cursory notice can give an adequate idea of its many interesting points and excellences, for without a doubt 'Dr. Claudius' is the most interesting book that has been published for many months, and richly deserves a high place in the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... have been most deeply loved the wounded heart cherishes the greatest bitterness. Then, by way of illustration, she told me of a quarrel between her mother and a till then dearly loved sister. It had happened many years ago, when she, Paquita, was a mere child; yet the sisters had never forgiven ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... my teeth tightly together. I toiled like a galley slave to gain a mere living for myself and daughter, but I was stricken by an epidemic. When I came out of it, everything went to the dogs, for my shop was sold to cover my debts. I was practically turned out into the street without a penny. An unspeakable rage seized me. I borrowed ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... considered in its generic aspect is a graver sin than the cursing which expresses a mere desire; while the cursing which is expressed by way of command, since it has the aspect of a cause, will be more or less grievous than backbiting, according as it inflicts an injury more or less grave than the blackening of a man's good name. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the organisation of a strong Opposition, and providing the means of carrying on an effectual war against the new Government. They do not choose to look upon their expulsion as attributable to the defection of their allies, but as the work of the Tories upon a mere party question, and that a very unjustifiable one, and treated in a very unjustifiable manner. I met Ellice and Labouchere in the street, and found them full of menace and sinister prediction, and to my assertion that ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a most important solemnity: "How!-not know?-Give me leave, my dear Madam, to recommend this caution to you: Never dance in public with a stranger,-with one whose name you are unacquainted with,-who may be a mere adventurer,-a man of no character, consider to what impertinence you may ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Mere antiquarianism, Dr Arnold justly observes, is calculated to contract and enfeeble the understanding. It is a pedantic love of detail, with an indifference to the result, for which alone it can be considered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... 'Gaston Vandeloup is a fictitious third person I have called into existence for my own safety—you understand. As Gaston Vandeloup, a friend of Braulard, I knew all about this poison, and manufactured it in Ballarat for a mere experiment, and as Gaston Vandeloup I give evidence against the woman who was my mistress on the ground of ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... fancies which came from a soul so new to life! It enchanted one, painfully fastidious in what relates to the true nobility of character, that, however various the themes discussed, no low or mean thought ever sullied those beautiful lips. It was not the mere innocence of inexperience, but the moral incapability of guile, that charmed him in the companion he had chosen on his path to Eternity! He was also delighted to notice Evelyn's readiness of resources: she had that faculty, without which woman has no independence from the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... miles grow few when love is fleet, And love, you know, hath flying feet; Break off thy sighs and witness this, How poor a thing mere distance is. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of the wedding breakfast made the usual meal a mere mockery. Every one was in a driving hurry, every one was very much excited, and nobody but Prue and the colored gentlemen brought anything to pass. Sylvia went from room to room bidding them good-by as the child who had played there so long. But each looked unfamiliar in its ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... interest. This I gave to the Colonist readers some years ago, and the items regarding View Street were some of them. I think Mr. Higgins will forgive me if I say that the Gazette's evidence is likely to be more correct than mere memory. I am glad of the opportunity to correct an error I made in copying from my former article; that of substituting the name of Southgate for Stamp. Southgate's name occurred several times in items, and I find by referring to my former article, that I have Captain Stamp's name ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... certainly it wouldn't be worth while your going up to London on such a mere chance or possibility; but it suggests itself to me that, if Lydia Philips would like the situation which the doctor has to offer, and he is willing to take her on my recommendation, it would be a great satisfaction ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... natural history museum, more than half a million visits each year are also made. In the aggregate, then, about a million and a quarter of visits are paid to the British Museum yearly, and though the bulk of the visitors may be mere sight-seers, yet even these must carry away many ideas of value, and it hardly requires argument to show that, as a whole, the educational influence of the British Museum must be enormous. Of its more direct stimulus to scientific work through the trained experts connected ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... observation: I feel a laudable doubt and disinclination to believe any statement of Swainson; but now Waterhouse remarks it, I am curious on the point. There is, however, so much vague in the meaning of "typical forms," and no little ambiguity in the mere assertion of "wide ranges" (for zoologists seldom go into strict and disagreeable arithmetic, like you botanists so wisely do) that I feel very doubtful, though some considerations tempt me to believe in this remark. Here again, if you can throw any light, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... experience of the world, and a vast variety of characters have passed under our eyes; but there is one sort of men not an uncommon object of satire in novels and plays—of whom I confess to have met with scarce any specimens at all in my intercourse with this sinful mankind. I mean, mere religious hypocrites, preaching for ever, and not believing a word of their own sermons; infidels in broad brims and sables, expounding, exhorting, comminating, blessing, without any faith in their own paradise, or fear about their pandemonium. Look at those candid troops ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... abruptly, and so it happened that all three failed to see Ramsey, in dark attire and with Joy close behind, emerge an instant from the pantry gangway and shrink again into it. On the return from her stateroom to the roof, for mere variety, she had taken this direction. Said Julian ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... stripped the Holy See of most of these acquisitions. In many cases its civil authority was no longer acknowledged; in many it became a mere title of honour, while the real power had passed into the hands of the towns or of the nobles, sometimes into those of the bishops. Rudolph of Habsburg restored all that had been lost, and surrendered the imperial ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... there was for the moment no thought of the perils of the Navy, but only of the glory of it. And afterwards in the Admiral's pleasant drawing-room on board the Flag-ship, with its gathering of naval officers, Admirals, Captains, Commanders, how good the talk was! Not a shade of boasting—no mere abuse of Germany—rather a quiet regret for the days when German and English naval men were friends throughout the harbours of the world. "Von Spee was a very good fellow—I knew him well—and his two ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it?—in the beginning, and, except for the few who have gone altogether to the bad, you can all work hard. Asking does the rest. Call it cheek, call it insolence, call it anything you like, but ask! Men argue—yes, I know what men say—that a man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some good in him. A weak man doesn't say: 'Give me this and that.' He whines 'Why haven't I been given this and that?' If you were in the Army, I should say learn to spin plates or play ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was not unlimited, and the sentence must sooner or later be carried out. The same liberals who, out of mere opposition, had declared Tascheron innocent, and who had done their best to break down the verdict, now clamored because the sentence was not executed. When the opposition is consistent it invariably falls into ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... saw him stop short, a mere speck of white against a distant hill. Again in creek bottoms, in the edges of woods, they found him, erect, motionless, tail straight out, a living, breathing statue in white. They advanced side by side; the staccato of their shots rang out in the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... implies an act—every thinker a thought. We may therefore universally make this dual classification, according as we view the mental operation involved, or the attributes of objects which form the subject of thought. The possibility of science is conditioned upon the possibility of classification. Mere knowledge is not science, as the world ought to have learned by costly experience. Even classified knowledge may not be science; it becomes science not through previous classification, but in the act of being classified, and therefore ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter
... looking them in the face. Just so it was with Adam. He heard the word of the Lord God, Jesus Christ, walking in the garden. Did he go to meet him; thank him for that pleasant life, pleasant earth, for the mere blessing of existence? No. He hid himself among the trees of the garden. But why hide himself? Even if he had given up being thankful to God; even if he had learned from the devil to believe that God grudged him, envied him, had deceived him, about that fruit, why run away and hide? He wanted to ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to have supported itself for the winter. But the difficulty with me is how this amphibius mus came to fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. Was it determined in its choice of that place by the mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there; or is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of the water in the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Europe and America. Even democracies regarded with ill-dissimulated admiration the work of the Kaiser, who brought everywhere his voice, his enthusiasm, his activity, to the service of Germany. As a matter of fact, his speeches were poor in phraseology, a mere conglomerate of violence, prejudice and ignorance. As no one believed in the possibility of a war, no one troubled about it. But after the War nothing has been more harmful to Germany than the memory of those ugly speeches, unrelieved by ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... like cause of excellent learning, great wisdome, and gentle humanitie, which I haue seene in them, and felt at their handes my selfe, where the matter of indifference is mere conscience in a quiet minde inwardlie, and not contentious malice with spitefull rayling openlie, I can be content to followe this rewle, in misliking some one thing, not to hate for anie thing els. But ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... be no doubt that I had been arrested by the despotic viceroy, who had been persuaded by Nina that I was her favoured lover. The question of my passports must have been a mere pretext, for eight or ten days would have sufficed to send them to Madrid and have them back again if their authenticity had been doubted. Possibly Passano might have told the viceroy that any passports of mine ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... conquered to Christianity by the sword. Before Constantine, Christians were but a small fraction of the empire. In the preceding century they had gone on deteriorating in good sense and most probably therefore in moral worth, and had made no such rapid progress in numbers as to imply that by the mere process of conversion they would ever Christianize the empire. That the conversion of Constantine, such as it was, (for he was baptized only just before death,) was dictated by mere worldly considerations, few modern Christians will deny. Yet ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... retired like caterpillars into cocoons of dress, expecting constantly the wondrous hour when they shall emerge from their self-woven prison in the garb of the angelic butterfly, having entered into the chrysalis state as mere human grubs. But though they both toil and spin at their garments, and vie with Solomon in his glory to outshine the lily of the field, the humanity of the grub shows no signs of developing either in character or appearance in the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... most fierce and selfish passions. They had attempted to colonize a portion of the New World, from interested and ambitious motives; their followers were in general actuated by a hope of gain, or the mere spirit of adventure, which characterized that age; and, if religion was at all considered, it was only from motives of policy. The purity and disinterestedness of the New-England fathers was more striking from the comparison; and, as Stanhope mused on them, he wondered that the light sacrifices he ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... two had been camped in this particular gulch, which drew in to a mere wrinkle on the southwestern slope of the black-topped butte, toward which the Joshua tree in the pass had directed them. Nearly a week they had spent toiling across the hilly, waterless waste, with two harrowing days when their canteens flopped empty on the burros ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... the storm, a thing of beauty while it lives, and of varied use when its life is taken. In animals, birds, insects, and vegetation we are surrounded by diversified life, and our life grows richer, more healthful and complete, as we enter into their life and comprehend it. The clouds above us are not mere reservoirs of water for prosaic use. In their light, shade, and exquisite coloring they are ever a reproach to the blindness of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... at Plato, but never had he known crying curlew and misty mere and the fluttering ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... happened to the miller to make him so agreeable. And she tried to be chatty and pleasant with him for the rest of the way home. But Uncle Jabez was short on conversation— he seemed to have hoarded that up, too, and was unable to get at his stores of small-talk. Most of his observations were mere grunts and nods, and that evening he was just as glum and silent as ever over his ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... been right but we have been wrong in our way of setting about it. First of all, are not our very ways of living wrong? You want to be useful to people, but by the mere fact of buying an estate you make it impossible to be so. Further, if you work, dress, and eat like a peasant you lend your authority and approval to the clumsy clothes, and their dreadful houses and their dirty beards.... On the other hand, suppose you work for a long, long time, all you life, and ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Nada, where we were more or less exposed to the open sea, and where we took more water on board than we had done in the gale before arriving at Yokohama. There were no big waves, but we rolled tremendously, and the spray came over us, though the mere force of the wind seemed to keep the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... refuge. They made their new headquarters at the Island of New Providence, one of the Bahamas. With buccaneering ended, and piracy in process of suppression by all the naval powers, the reason for Tortugas' importance was gone. It dwindled and sank until now it is a mere rocky islet with a few acres under cultivation, and that is all. I know it well. Much treasure is said to be buried there, but no one has ever found it. Don't waste your time looking for it, boy. You will keep away from ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... saying, "from the standpoint of fraternity, equality, and the rest of it, Mitka, the swineherd, is perhaps a man the same as Goethe and Frederick the Great; but take your stand on a scientific basis, have the courage to look facts in the face, and it will be obvious to you that blue blood is not a mere prejudice, that it is not a feminine invention. Blue blood, my dear fellow, has an historical justification, and to refuse to recognize it is, to my thinking, as strange as to refuse to recognize ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... attached to men like Selden and Falkland of being mere theoricians in advance of their time,—an accusation fatal to statesmanship. But the advent of that age was marked by so much that was novel in religion,[9] in State, in foreign and domestic policy, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... current is so strong that at three-quarters flood-tide in the river it is still running out. All the land that I have seen consists only of mountains and rocky promontories, for the most part covered with fir and birch, a very unattractive country on both sides of the river. In a word, it is mere wastes, uninhabited by either animals or birds; for, going out hunting in places which seemed to me the most pleasant, I found only some very small birds, such as swallows and river birds, which go there in summer. At other times, there ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... that unless they do scrupulous justice to the corporation, unless they permit ample profit, and cordially encourage capable men of business so long as they act with honesty, they are striking at the root of our national well-being; for in the long run, under the mere pressure of material distress, the people as a whole would probably go back to the reign of an unrestricted individualism rather than submit to a control by the State so drastic and so foolish, conceived in a spirit ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... at the back of it all—the mere imaginative exuberance of a race whose early poetry consisted in saying things ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the copse, but that would not have saved them had it been mere copse-wood. Such a huge creature as their pursuer would have dashed through copse-wood as through a field of grass; and, in reality, he did so, charging through the bushes, goring them down on all sides of him, and uttering his loud grunting ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... its length, but embraced above one shoulder a distant view of Brandon Mountain, and above the other a peep of the Atlantic. Thither, ever since she could remember, she had carried her dreams and her troubles; there, with the lake stretched below her, and the house a mere Noah's ark to the eye, she had cooled her hot brow or dried her tears, dwelt on past glories, or bashfully thought upon the mysterious possibilities of that love, of that joint life, of that rosy-hued ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... is more than a mere metaphor has been proved by Professor Freud and others of the Vienna school, who cure cases of hysteria by inducing the patient to give expression to the secret anxieties and emotions which, unknown to him, have been preying upon his ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... gold, or of that species, to him who included malleableness in his specific idea. And who, I pray, is it that makes these diverse species, even under one and the same name, but men that make two different abstract ideas, consisting not exactly of the same collection of qualities? Nor is it a mere supposition to imagine that a body may exist wherein the other obvious qualities of gold may be without malleableness; since it is certain that gold itself will be sometimes so eager, (as artists call it,) that it will as little endure the hammer as glass itself. What ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... was imposed three vital questions were raised. Deprivation obviously involved the problem of the power of the State over the Church. If the act of a convention whose own legality was at best doubtful could deprive the consecrated of their position, was the Church a Church at all, or was it the mere creature of the secular power? And what, moreover, of conscience? It could not be an inherent part of the Church's belief that men should betray their faith for the sake of peace. Later thinkers added the purely secular argument that resistance in one case made for ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... for a long leave, and I went a good deal into society. What did I see? I saw that the women of England were in the main a mass of useless, purposeless butterflies. I saw that the great mass of the young men of our class were mere empty-headed, worthless parasites. The whole country was given over to money getting and pleasure seeking. I didn't realize it then; but I do now. On every hand they were craving for unnatural excitement, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... this manufacture greatly exceeded the value of the sugar produced, according to the price of colonial sugar, it was only by the artificial encouragement of a monopoly and premiums that it could be carried on to advantage. The process is one of mere curiosity as long as sugar from the sugar cane can be obtained cheaper, and the import duties laid upon it are not so excessive as to amount to a prohibition; and in this case it is almost impossible to prevent ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... four lines of Johnson are beyond question an improvement, and it is worth remark in passing how in the fourth line he has anticipated Cowper's "made poetry a mere mechanic art." ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... had taken place on the earth for him, as if a new creation were fulfilled, in which he had real existence. Things had all been stark, unreal, barren, mere nullities before. Now they were actualities ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... I., had been known before his accession as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade-days, wonderful in detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments. It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered circumstances made a new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Gathergold. Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation of this one man's wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost within the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in the shape ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... but his mere duty, Wilton knew that the effect of his presence would be great; but as he walked on, he began to entertain new apprehensions. For nearly two miles, no one appeared to guide them to the place of their destination; at length a church, with some cottages gathered ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... was universally recognised and familiar to all classes, and the practice itself reduced to a regular system, as it remains at the present time amongst the populace of Naples, who will carry on a long conversation between themselves by mere gesticulation, and without pronouncing a word." That many of these signs are similar to those used by the ancients, is proved by the same author, who copies from an antique vase a scene which he explains by the action of the hands of the figures, adding, "A common lazzaroni, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... true, as Count Tisza declared, that Austria did not undertake to make territorial acquisitions to the detriment of Serbia, who, moreover, by accepting all the conditions imposed upon her, would have become a subject State. The Austrian Ambassador, Herr Merey von Kapos-Mere, on July 30, stated to the Marquis di San Giuliano that Austria could not make a binding declaration on this subject, because she could not foresee whether, during the war, she might not be obliged, against her will, to keep ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the meaning, the naturalness, the necessity of those various eccentricities of reformers which we set out by describing. They are not accidental; they are not mere personal caprices, as people are apt to suppose. On the contrary, they are inevitable results of the law of relationship above illustrated. That community of genesis, function, and decay which all forms of restraint exhibit, is simply the obverse of the fact at first pointed out, that they have ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... noble in descent. And although my first motive in favoring this marriage is the pure desire for yours and for my daughter's happiness, still I assure you, my lord, I am keenly alive to its eligibility in a mere worldly point of view. Your ancient historical title is, (to speak as a man of the world,) much more than an equivalent for my daughter's expectations. But it is not, as I said before, as a highly eligible, conventional marriage that I most desire it, but as ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... think of these whenever the African Company shall discover an inclination to prosecute this design. At present I have done what I proposed, and have shown that such a collection of voyages as this ought not to be considered as a work of mere amusement, but as a work calculated for the benefit of mankind in general, and of this nation in particular, which it is the duty of every man to promote in his station; and whatever fate these reflections may meet ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... to me in a tone of detachment is not its gentleness but its effective wisdom. Had he said, "Why not go on writing," it is very probable he would have scared me away from pen and ink for ever; but there was nothing either to frighten one or arouse one's antagonism in the mere suggestion to "write another." And thus a dead point in the revolution of my affairs was insidiously got over. The word "another" did it. At about eleven o'clock of a nice London night, Edward and I walked along interminable streets talking of many things, and I remember that on getting home I sat ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... see those battered, sunburnt, bloodless young men, with deep lines of suffering on their faces, aged before their time, and the mere wrecks of what they once were. Men who had gone to that region strong, active, ruddy, enthusiastic, and who, after a few months, returned thus feeble and shattered—some irreparably so; others with perhaps years of joyless ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... So, mere complexion is elevated above character. Sensible men and women are not ashamed of the acknowledgment. The fact has a popular endorsement. People sneer at you if you are not ready to comprehend the fitness of the thing. If you cannot weigh mind in ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... himself by Abou Hassan, while he told him all that had happened to him, from his waking in the palace to his waking again in his own house, all which he described as a mere dream, and recounted all the circumstances, which the caliph knew as well as himself, and which renewed his pleasure. He enlarged afterwards on the impression which the dream of being caliph and commander of the faithful had made upon him, which, he said, threw him into such ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... his home and his children; and the image of Henry, when a bright-eyed, curly-headed, happy child, came up so vividly before him, that it was only by an effort that he kept the tears from gushing over his face. For years he had cherished, in mere self-justification, the bitterest feeling towards his wife; and hundreds of times had he given expression to these feelings in words that smote the heart of Cara with crushing force. Only a little while before ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... grimly engage in mutual extermination. Is it still a blind world, doomed to blunder down again from such light and order and hope as we were born to, toward such another millennium of barbaric hates and aimless wars? That is no mere possibility; it is the present probability unless men exert themselves to make it impossible. It is quite conceivable that ours is the last generation for many generations that will go freely about the world, that will have abundance of leisure, and science and free speech and abundant ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had never been in any way connected with the civil administration of Nation or State. The charge of being a mere military chieftain had been in vain preferred against some of his most illustrious predecessors; but with the possible exception of General Taylor, no President ever came to the office with so little previous experience in civil affairs. Washington's fame, prior to his accession to the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a while listening, a slight smile on her lips. Blessed happiness had come to her in time for Christmas—a strange and heavenly happiness, more wonderful than when a life is spared to one who loves, for it had been more than the mere life of this man she had asked of God: it had been ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted—not until it is held by the divine fragment which has created it, as a mere subject for grave experiment and experience—not until the whole nature has yielded and become subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open. Then will come a calm such as comes in a tropical country after the heavy rain, when Nature ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... question which a philosophy of mythology has to answer is this—Is the whole of mythology an invention, the fanciful poetry of a Homer or Hesiod, or is it a growth? Or, to speak more definitely, Was mythology a mere accident, or was it inevitable? Was it only a false step, or was it a step that could not have been left out in the historical ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... and some earlier writers believed that the amount of malaria in a district was dependent upon the amount of vegetable debris in the soil. Since we have learned that malaria is carried by mosquitoes, we are less interested in the amount of organic matter in the soil. Its mere presence is ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... amusement; and it is safe to say that each one found its way into a memory book for future reference and pleasure. Patty Paine, gifted in art, had painted them charmingly, while Angela Dare, despite her scorn for mere "doggerel," had penned a verse suitable to each guest. Jokes and jests were the order of the evening. Each girl had been asked to bring her best story, and consequently there were no lapses into silence or ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... mere antiquarianism in Virgil, any more than is the detail of old life which abounds in Scott's poems and novels. These two men had the same wide, sympathetic outlook on the world. Scott was interested in everything and everybody, whether living or dead ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the eighteen-gun ship General Moultrie, the two sixteen-gun ships Notre Dame and Polly, and the fourteen-gun brig Fair American; the last commanded by a certain master, Philip Wilton. They made officers of very young men in those days, and mere boys often occupied positions of trust and responsibility apparently far beyond their years,—even Seymour himself, though now a commodore or flag officer by courtesy, was very young for the position; and Governor Rutledge, moved by a warm friendship ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... visits in later years, and by all the growing associations that linked him to life and politics in the dominions. Redmond knew vastly more, and in truth cared vastly more, about the British Empire than most Imperialists. His affection was not based on any inherited prejudice, nor inspired by a mere geographical idea. He was attracted to that which he had seen and handled, in whose making he had watched so many of his fellow-countrymen fruitfully and honourably busy. He felt acutely that the Empire belonged to Irish Nationalists at least as much as to English Tories. America also was familiar ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... has its rotten plank, every fence its flimsy rail, every great one his weakness, and Kellyan, as he pondered, knew how mad it was to meet this one of brawn with mere brute force. ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... as the Spaniards are brave fighters, the havoc and slaughter will be infinite, to the great damage of the country. Therefore an effort should be made to have the troops so numerous, well equipped, trained, and strategically handled, that there will be no chance for resistance; and their mere presence and a demonstration will suffice to cause the Chinese to submit, with no great bloodshed. In this way there will be no danger that the Spaniards, finding themselves surrounded and pressed by such a multitude, incited ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... existence; we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived, and with which we have intimate associations, every one must have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression: we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is forgotten!—To return to the question I have ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt |
