"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here and there people were saying to one another, aside, the words he had feared to hear in reproach—that the swain whom he and his lady-love had conspired to dupe was his brother, who had done everything for him—had, as a mere child, encountered and vanquished poverty, had clothed and educated this man and his sisters, had served his every interest with a perfect self-abnegation all his life; that it was his brother who had won his election, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of mere grief; Of this Antonia was an instance. Aided by her youth and healthy constitution, She shook off the malady which her Mother's death had occasioned; But it was not so easy to remove the disease of her mind. Her eyes were constantly filled with tears: ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... religious persons. It must mean, then, the development of character; it includes the aim, in the parents' minds, to bring their children up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. It is evident that this is a much greater task, and yet more natural and beautiful, than mere instruction in formal ideas or words in the Bible or in a catechism; that it is not and cannot be accomplished in some single period, some set hour, but is continuous, through all the days; that it pervades not only the spoken words, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... was, a thousand years ago—a hundred years ago even, to have dark thoughts about our fellow-men, simply because we did not know them! Easy it was, while the nations were kept apart by war, even by mere difficulty of travelling, for Christians to curse Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics, and believe that God willed their eternal perdition, even though the glorious collect for Good Friday gave their inhumanity the lie. ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... well, maybe. Things might be worse. I might have a broken arm, or something; laid up for weeks—slow starvation and all that. What's a mere puncture? Nothing! Now that the spear's out, it'll begin ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... bless you for the kind tone and the kind word! but the gold I cannot take. I am able of body, and do not lack friends so wholly as you may think; for the time may come that I may yet show myself more thankful than by mere words." He threw himself on his knees, kissed the hand which she did not withdraw, and then, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... this time of year. But he knew too well how little effect any such prudent counsels would have. The very fact that her interest had lasted for more than three months showed that it had really struck roots into her mind, and mere prudence would not avail much. Still, he would urge prudence; then, if she was determined, she must go. "She'll get sick of it in a fortnight," he said; but for the present he must let her have her head, even if she was making a mistake. She had a right to have her head, he reminded himself—"but ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... journeyed towards the Derbyshire border, he was not in truth thinking of Dora's counsels or of Lucy Purcell at all. Every now and then he lost himself in the mere intoxication of the spring, in the charm of the factory valleys, just flushing into green, through which the train was speeding. But in general his attention was held by the book in his hand. His time for reading had been much ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... courageously as the workers toiled on, there were moments when their hearts almost failed them, when it seemed as though nothing could stop the oncoming tyrant, which appeared more like a living monster than a mere inanimate agency. But as the daylight waned, it began to be evident that victory would be with the devoted workers. Although the ever-increasing light in the sky told them that in other directions the fire was spreading with tireless ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... peel and buried it tidily, and then stepped out of the cool grove into the hot sunshine with some reluctance. But gold-digging is not mere play, as Hugh reminded them. If you want to find a large nugget you begin by looking for small ones, and the search undoubtedly ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the walls were saw-toothed, volcanic peaks, capped and halo'd with captive trade-wind clouds. Every nook and crevice of the disintegrating lava gave foothold to creeping, climbing vines and trees—a green foam of vegetation. Thin streams of water, that were mere films of mist, swayed and undulated downward in sheer descents of hundreds of feet. And to complete the magic of the place, the warm, moist air was heavy with the perfume of ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... I think she is, sir; but how she comes to be chasing another English vessel is mere than I ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... her ungloved friends. The same thing may be said of that drawing-room fire which is lit so late in the season for economical reasons, and so late in the day at all times: the pinch is felt as much by the visitors as by the members of the household. These things, however, are mere nips, and may be placed in the same category with the hardships complained of by my friend Quiverfull's second boy. 'I don't mind having papa's clothes cut up for me,' he says, 'but what I do think hard is getting Bob's clothes' (Bob being ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... warming to the subject, "is her own reward. What mere bodily indulgence is there which money could buy which can give that deep thrill of satisfaction which comes on the man who has conceived something new, something beautiful, and the daily delight as he sees it grow under his hand, until it stands before him a completed whole? ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not 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
... it is that of a lovely daughter manifesting a promptitude and zeal to alleviate the sorrows, and to aid the weekness of a parent, by those nameless and numberless assiduities which bespeak a genuine affection. Her own works praise her, and the mere flatterer's tongue is awed into respectful silence. How deplorable is it to witness the impatience of some young persons who think every little exertion an insufferable effort, a trouble, and a fatigue; and who forget the maternal fondness which cherished their infancy, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Congress, who immediately passed the acts necessary on our part to secure to France the commercial advantages conceded to her in the compact. The treaty had previously been solemnly ratified by the King of the French in terms which are certainly not mere matters of form, and of which the translation is as follows: WE, approving the above convention in all and each of the dispositions which are contained in it, do declare, by ourselves as well as by our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... frequently gave expression to his dislike and mistrust of the antics or the Salvation Army. He was far from prim himself, but he held that if people were not "won over to Christ" by preaching, it was idle to bait the hook with mere sensationalism. Yet by a strange irony his closest friends, in announcing his death to his flock, actually improved on the extravagance of the Salvationists. Here is a copy of the telegram that was affixed to the rails of the Metropolitan Tabernacle ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... clenching and unclenching as she stared at the man, who seemed a part of the horse he was sitting so closely. Would it never end? She did not care now which killed the other so that it would only stop. The man's endurance seemed mere bravado. She clutched Gaston's arms with a hand that was wringing wet. "It is horrible," she gasped with an ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... it any approach to sentimentality or romance. They had not even kissed. They had spent most of the time arguing from different points of view. They had been near to quarrelling. It was outrageous of him to criticize her; yet how could he help it? The mere fact of striving to exalt her was ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... phantom resistance is mere attribution to the Mormons, without the slightest attempt to find base for the attribution. We think of messages that were showered upon this earth, and of messages that were cached in mounds upon this earth. The similarity to ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... not long persist in its feeble resistance. Extremely fearful of the people, it increased its arrogance towards the king, depriving him every day of some part of his prerogatives and authority. He was now scarcely more than a mere official obliged to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... That's all—no money nor nuthin'—only sign the paper an' he gets to America. What is the paper? Oh, just a promise that the Chink will pay the company that's sending him all his future wages—less enough for food—until fifteen hundred dollars have been paid. Just a mere matter of slavery, that's ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... I entertain the reader with the triumphant campaign of Peter Stuyvesant in the haunted regions of those mountains, but that I hold all Indian conflicts to be mere barbaric brawls, unworthy of the pen which has recorded the classic war of Fort Christina; and as to these Helderberg commotions, they are among the flatulencies which from time to time afflict the bowels ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... what is marriage when one comes to think about it? It is really the promise of the man and the woman to take each other as husband and wife. All the rest, Church services and legal documents, are mere attestations to the fact. Marriage, true marriage, is simply a matter for the parties in question who have ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... tang of a scarlet spray. And the secret of the face, of course, is "Lure"; but to save your soul you could not decide in any specific case whether the lure is the lure of personality, or the lure of physiognomy—a mere accidental, coincidental, haphazard harmony of forehead and cheek-bone and twittering ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Abdurrahman has averted. In giving the actual text of Gordon's letter, it is only right, while frankly admitting that the course pursued has proved most successful and beneficial, to record that it might well have been otherwise, and that as a mere matter of argument the probability was quite the other way. Neither Gordon nor any other supporter of the evacuation policy ventured to predict that Abdurrahman, who was then not a young man, and whose early career had been one of failure, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... was apt to "trouble" people with whom she came into contact. As an accepted "star," she had a high sense of her own importance and considered herself above mere rules. Once, when travelling from Niagara to Buffalo by train, she elected to sit in the baggage car and puff a cigarette. "While," says a report, "thus cosily ensconced, she was discovered by the conductor and promptly informed by him that such behaviour was not permitted. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... "Do you suppose that these translators who have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the art are not competent to interpret the different shades and colors of meaning better than the mere dabbler in foreign tongues? And then, again, is not human life too short for the lover of books to spend his precious time digging out the recondite allusions of authors, lexicon in hand? My dear sir, it is a wickedly false economy to expend time and money for ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... house, so as to hear any possible outcry from the nursery. He had been on his feet all day. But he reflected that there was a real satisfaction in his family tasks, however gruelling. Now, at last (he said to himself), I am really a citizen, not a mere dilettante. Of course it is arduous. No one who is not a parent realizes, for example, the extraordinary amount of buttoning and unbuttoning necessary in rearing children. I calculate that 50,000 buttonings are required for each one before it reaches the age of even ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... vaults been any other on earth than the man he was, the old retainer would have rushed upon him and struck to save the Weymouth property. But now the watcher's soul was tortured by the poignant dread of something worse than mere robbery. He was seized by an accusing terror that said the Weymouth name and the Weymouth honour were about to be lost. Marse Robert robbing the bank! What else could it mean? The hour of the night, the stealthy ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... on their way to the big meeting of the season. Except for a mere dozen of practised ubiquity the camp was empty; for that night, which was to seal the fate of the trestle—perhaps—Koppy was less concerned than usual that the three up on the grade ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... was brought in, and two young men joined the party, followed by the host, Geoffrey Hilliard, who gave the warmest of welcomes to his little sister-in-law. His kiss, the grasp of his hand, spoke of a deeper feeling than one of mere welcome, and Pixie had an instant perception that Geoffrey, like his wife, felt in need of help. The first glance had shown him more worn and tired than a man should be who has youth, health, a beautiful wife, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... the blood was entirely due to the mechanical action of the heart as a pump. There were all sorts of speculations about the matter, but nobody had formed this conception, and nobody understood that the so-called systole of the heart is a state of active contraction, and the so-called diastole is a mere passive dilatation. Even within our own age that matter had been discussed. Harvey is as clear as possible about it. He says the movement of the blood is entirely due to the contractions of the walls of the heart—that it is the propelling apparatus—and all recent ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley
... tale into vol. i., p. 223, notes on chapt. iii., apparently not knowing that it was in The Nights. He gives a mere abstract, omitting all the verse, and he borrowed it either from the Halbat al-Kumayt (chapt. xiv.) or from Al-Mas'udi (chapt. cxi.). See the French translation, vol. vi. p. 340. I am at pains to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... good preservation, is called the Castle by the peasants. Parthey, a German traveller, who investigated these dwellings, reckoned their number to be over 1500. He saw nowhere any trace of ornament about them. Doors and windows were mere rough holes cut through the limestone. Rings hewn in the stone which are found in the chambers probably served some purpose of domestic economy. Fragments of Samian ware and carved marble have been found in them, but are probably later than ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... from any imaginary traces of Eastern, Egyptian, Phoenician rites and fables in the religion or the legends of Greece in her remoter age) I see sufficient ground for inclining to the less modern, but mere popular belief, which ascribes a foreign extraction to the early civilizers of Greece: nor am I convinced by the reasonings of those who exclude the Egyptians from the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hatefull world we'll liue, A den of mere dispight: To Ideots only that doth giue, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... right past Mallard with a levelled, steady, contemptuous gaze, addressed the other two. His tone was quite casual, and yet somehow he managed to freight his words with a scorn too heavy to be expressed in mere words: ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... wonderful voice, a mere tired essence of a voice now, "if there is anything to forgive, I am so glad to forgive it! You are mine, and I am yours. Please God we will never ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... maintain that a PARTY to a COMPACT has a right to revoke that COMPACT, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a question of this nature proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... a narrow lane, and, looking up at the sign, saw that it was called "Hanging Sword Alley." He looked at the bye-way, a mere gutter of a street, and wondered what sort of a man had given it that romantic name; and while he wondered, it seemed to him that his mind had suddenly become illuminated. His Uncle Matthew had had romantic imaginings all his life about everything except the things ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... served to remind you of the real meaning of Verdun of the moment, to leave the automobile and plunge into the welcome obscurity of this cavern—this was perhaps the most comfortable personal incident of the day. The mere shadow of the rock gave a sense of security; to penetrate it ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... to be done. To ask the tenants for the L6,000 was mere waste of breath. The young soldier had no agent. He was determined to be the people's friend. Although a Black Protestant, he was ambitious of Catholic good-will. He wanted to have the tenants blessing him. He coveted the good name which is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... step the weaver led her on to tell him the story of what had led up to the shameful transaction in the market-place. It was no mere curiosity that moved him, but a realisation that there could be no peace of mind for Mary Whittaker until she had found relief by unburdening her tortured soul. The weaver's gentle ways and tactful bearing were slowly winning her heart, and, painful though the recital of ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... handling. He is obstinate, and by mere long, tedious, passive resistance will often get the better in a bargain. By the employment of similar methods however, it is not difficult to obtain one's way in the end. A good deal of patience is required and time ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... made it necessary, its novelty was no reason against it. Now, in that legal provision for the maintenance of the poor, poor children must doubtless have had a part in common with grown people. But this could never be sufficient for children, because their case always requires more than mere maintenance; it requires that they be educated in some proper manner. Wherever there are poor who want to be maintained by charity, there must be poor children, who, besides this, want to be educated by charity; and whenever there began ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Seraphina,' said she, as she removed me from my arm-chair, 'you and I have passed many a happy day together, and I do not like to throw you away as mere rubbish; but the new mistress of your house has already more dolls than she knows what to do with. You are no great beauty now, but I wish I knew any child who ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... gaze upon the glittering world of stars; The poet's richest music only mars The rasping of the locust's strident sound. And yet I've never seen a wilder light Glow in the beauteous eyes of dawning love, Than flashes from this strange man's soul at sight Of some rare flower he finds in mountain cove: Mere fungus, or the poisonous, dank mushroom, Enchants him more ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... said that the more food, the better for the people; and as the price was fixed, the men here saw that it made no difference to them. Still, like our own men, they are doing badly enough, and one could buy a boat for a mere song." ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... impossible to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary feeling of religious awe; it breathes the very savor of Gospel antiquity. The sincerity of the author heightens his power of language. The band which to his eyes was a mere party of adventurers gone forth to seek their fortune beyond seas appears to the reader as the germ of a great nation wafted by ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... helped to popularize this view, regarded the phenomenon as "geographical and climatic, not racial," and held that within what he called the Sotadic Zone "the vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, while the races to the north and south of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically, amid the opprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust." He adds: ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... few remaining believers in Norse legendary lore, upbraid their fierce divinities with the most reckless hardihood when things go wrong. There were times when Valdemar Svensen secretly quailed at the mere thought of the wrath of Odin,—there were others when he was ready to pluck the great god by the beard and beat him with the flat of his own drawn sword. This was his humor at the present moment, as he averted his gaze from the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... adaptation of a historical subject to a loftier purpose than the mere renewal of the past which gives real greatness to the play. Here at last his work attains to the full stature and noble harmony of a tragedy, not on the highest level, it is true, but dignified and moving. The catastrophe is physical, not moral, and thus the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... ask for; and it comprehends all; and yet how heartlessly is this pronounced by many of those who do repeat their daily prayers. So is the blessing asked at meals, which is by too many considered as a mere matter of form. They forget, that He who gives can also take away; and in their presumption, suppose their own ability and exertion to have been the sole means of procuring themselves a daily supply of food; thanking themselves rather than the Giver of all ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the 'perfervidum ingenium' of our northern race takes the form not of youthful hero-worship, but of loyal admiration and respectful homage, it is a very genuine affair. In the present instance I may say it is no mere outburst of young undisciplined enthusiasm, but an honest expression of intellectual and moral indebtedness, the genuine and distinct tribute of many minds that have been touched to some higher issues by what you ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... other, even at the risk of his neck, and to make his escape to some fair, where he would earn a few pence by the exhibition of his varied accomplishments. During these periods of vagabondism he would live on a mere nothing, sleeping in barns, or in the open air, and would faithfully bring back his gains to Uncle Moses. But even this astounding generosity, appealing, as it must have done, to the uncle's sentiments, could not appease him. His uncle went so far, apparently with ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... who was afterward destined to play so important a part in the history of the city to which the mere chances of war sent him ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... your own you forgot," she interrupted, "or you could never have forgotten mine, but then one can't be too hard on a person for forgetting such mere trifles, I don't blame you, yours is so insignificant, that I often ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... out of that now with no more gratitude than if he had given me a gold goose. And yet I fought a duel for him and managed everything so finely that he came away well enough to box me on the ear, which was mere hilarity and means nothing ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... 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. In the vast extent of his work he has dealt with or touched ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... round and round in the air, gently at first but with a motion that grew ever more rapid, until the bright chains on the victim's breast flashed in the sunlight like a silver wheel. Then he hurled him to the ground, where the poor king lay a mere shattered pulp ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... reproduction is necessary for the continuation of the race, so with the individual, elaboration of sexual instinct is necessary in order that adult sexual responsibilities may be assumed. This consists of much more than mere physical development. In a complex state of civilization many adjustments in the sphere of sexual indulgence and continence and marriage have to be made. This phase of the individual's life is a very important one. It is the rule for proper reactions to occur at this time, in which case the reproductive ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... court etiquette, and her gay, impulsive ways, provoked the dislike of many high in station, and exposed her to the natural but unmerited suspicion, on the part of the people, that she had faults worse than mere indiscretion. A great scandal connected with a diamond necklace, which an unprincipled woman, the Countess Lamotte, falsely asserted that the queen desired the Cardinal de Rohan to purchase for her, did much to make her the victim of gross defamation (1785). Her forbearance towards ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... see how the mere taking his portrait would improve the animal; but thinking it might be meant for a compliment, he assented, adding that he would pay a fair price for himself and his friend to be allowed to have the donkey, all saddled, for two ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... They live in the country and only visit in Berlin. It is complained, that the double taxation incident to the up-keep of an establishment both in town and in the country, makes it impossible for them to be much in Berlin. They stay in hotels and in apartments, and are mere passing visitors in their own capital. They have, therefore, practically no influence upon social life, and Berlin is merely the centre of the industrial, military, official, and political society of Prussia. It is the clearing-house of Germany, but by no means the literary, artistic, social, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... us to balance those somewhat indefinite definitions. Carlyle has himself in his Histories illustrated and enforced his own interpretations of the summary views of his political treatises. There he has demonstrated that his doctrine, "Might is Right," is no mere unguarded expression of the truism that moral might is right. In his hands it implies that virtue is in all cases a property of strength, that strength is everywhere a property of virtue; that power of whatever sort having any considerable endurance, carries with it the seal and ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... for the convenience of those ladies and nobles who were expected to attend the tournament. A narrow space between these galleries and the lists gave accommodation for yeomanry and spectators of a better degree than the mere vulgar, and might be compared to the pit of a theatre. The promiscuous multitude arranged themselves upon large banks of turf prepared for the purpose, which, aided by the natural elevation of the ground, enabled them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... for him to hold out longer might seem strange to M. de Nailles. Besides, the matter, though in some respects it gave him cause for anxiety, really excited an interest in him. For some time past, though he had long known women and knew very little of mere girls, he had had his suspicions that a drama was being enacted in Jacqueline's heart, a drama of which he himself was the hero. He amused himself by watching it, though he did nothing to promote it. He was an artist ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... satisfy ourselves with a mere glance at the hills of Gilead; the rich pasture-lands of the tribe of Reuben, and formerly the kingdom of the gigantic Og, the monarch of Bashan. It is well known that the Valley of the Jordan is bounded on the east by a range of mountains still more lofty than those which skirt its western ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... of continuous interest is the fault of most comic novels, as well as poems. Even the matchless works of Jean Paul grow tedious by the endeavor to read much of them at a time, a fact which may be ascribed to the sentimentality and mere fantastics with which the kernels of his wit are overburdened. It is certain that no German humorous work can be compared with those great originals in that kind, Gil Blas and Don Quixote, or even with the much inferior works of Smollett and Dickens. Baron Sternberg's last effort forms no exception ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Hatty's failures, her miserable derelictions of duty, her morbid self-accusations and nervous fancies, bred of a sickly body and over-anxious temperament, were breathed into Bessie's sympathizing ear. Hatty's feebleness borrowed strength and courage from Bessie's vigorous counsels. She felt braced by mere contact with such a strong, healthy organization. She was always less fretful and impatient when Bessie was near; her cheery influence cleared away many a cloud that ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Jones, tells us[95] how a gunner asked to be photographed beside his beloved weapon, and how, when he wanted to leave his address, he suddenly realized that with the loss of this gun he would be a mere homeless wanderer. It was not surprising that these steel-built stoics, than whom all French and British witnesses agree there are no better fighters in the world, should have broken down at this ordeal. As for the chauffeurs, they were busy polishing their cars and cleaning their ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... of the emperor had drained France of men, and her armies were now recruited by mere boys, who were utterly unfit to bear the burden and fatigue of Napoleon's rapid campaigns. The heavy taxes, also, which were necessary to meet the expenses of Napoleon's wars, and to carry on the splendid public works upon ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... had been unjustly usurped by another family in times past to his detriment, and which only a mere human invention—a "pleasantry" as Alva had happily termed it, called the "Salic law"—prevented from passing quietly to his daughter, as heiress to her mother, daughter of Henry II., he was now fully bent upon making his own without further ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that "it will hardly be doubted that our Saviour Himself belonged to this holy brotherhood."[97] So after representing Christ as a magician in the Toledot Yeshu and the Talmud, Jewish tradition seeks to explain His miraculous works as those of a mere healer—an idea that we shall find descending right through the secret societies to this day. Of course if this were true, if the miracles of Christ were simply due to a knowledge of natural laws and His doctrines were the outcome ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... money and men, it meant a deadly blow to the importance of the assemblies. They could no longer exercise complete control over their property and their finances. They would sink to the status of mere municipal bodies. So far as the Americans of 1765 were concerned, the feeling was universal that such a change was intolerable, that if they ceased to have the full power to give or withhold taxes at their discretion ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... The mere size of it, the gambling element, the surging mobs who had risked something to take part in it were material for stories. The real hero of the stories, of course, was the land itself—the last frontier. There were a few who pondered on what its passing would mean to the country ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the active, healthy mind than such an existence. If Signor Gaudentio di Lucca, still keeping himself alive by means of his marvellous knowledge of the secrets of Nature, were to appear before me now on this mountain to inform me that the sacred community he resided with in Central Africa was no mere dream, and should offer to conduct me to it, I should decline to go with him. I should prefer to remain in the Banda Oriental, even though by so doing I should grow at last to be as bad as any person in it, and ready to "wade through slaughter" to ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. Although each of these was welcome in its place, the charm for the sake of which we read depended on something different from either. My elders used to read novels aloud; and I can still remember four different passages which I heard, before ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... witch-doctors read hearts. But do not weep, Little Flower. Why should you for such as I, a black man, a mere savage cheat, as your father named me? Yet I have not been altogether a cheat, O Imba, though sometimes I used tricks like other doctors, for I have a strength of my own which your white people will never understand, because they are too young to understand. It only comes to the ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... this, why, it is so much gained for you. Then, indeed, the world will esteem you as not only brave, but just; and then only will history honor you as truly great—the equitable and humane conqueror. The Vandals, too conquered by the sword; and if it only depended on mere brute strength, wild bulls would ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... capable of giving right ideas of female decorum, you are yourself to judge. When I fixed Margaret with you, it was not to education alone that I looked; my views and hopes extended to principles, temper, and conduct. The mere mechanical parts of education may at all times be purchased for money; automatons may be made to perform wonders. But we all know that something more is wanting to give solidity and consequence to character. If you refuse my daughter, she will lose ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... the sea is apt to vanish as you look out upon a wilderness of foaming water, tossing the boat like an insignificant toy, drenching the bulwarks and vehemently smiting everything in its riotous anger. Neptune seems a mere blind force without reverence or mercy for the works of man. It is good for a boy of romantic disposition to cross to the Long Island in a gale: it will effectually cure him of all desire to take up ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the daughter was increasing in beauty, the mother was increasing in poverty, and ran into debt on account of her daughter's virginity, as an alchemist will for the crucible in which his all is cast. As soon as his plans were arranged and perfect, one rainy day the said lord of Valennes by a mere chance came into the hovel of the two spinners, and in order to dry himself sent for some fagots to Plessis, close by. While waiting for them, he sat on a stool between the two poor women. By means of the grey shadows and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... conceived," he wrote in 1776, "with what little trouble the Boer gets into order a field of a moderate size ... so that ... he may be almost said to make the cultivation of it, for the bread he stands in need of for himself and his family, a mere matter of amusement.... With pleasure, but without the least trouble to himself, he sees the herds and flocks which constitute his riches daily and considerably increasing. These are driven to pasture and home again by a few Hottentots or slaves, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... best rifle-shot in India. The natives called him Hand-of-a-God. As usual they meant a lot more than a mere decoration. M'Cord was one of the big master mechanics—especially serving Indian Government in engine building—a Scot nearing fifty now. For many years he had answered the cries of the natives for help against the destroyers of human life. Sometimes it was a mugger, sometimes ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... me? They are sick? they are weary? They have travell'd all the night? Mere fetches; The images of revolt and flying off. Fetch ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... nothing by informing you that everyone has a right to live, since a certain number of human beings must give up living, or, in other words, live like dogs, in order that you may have something beyond the mere necessaries of life—something to make your existence pleasant. This only I will say. If you are one of those who persistently shut their eyes to the fact that a change has come, that it will no longer be as it ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... was relieved, the party, coughing and spluttering, would make their way into the ward-room where Hooper and Neale, the stewards, mere boys, supplied them with steaming cocoa. How on earth the cooks kept the galley fires going I could never understand: they not only did this, but fed us all ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... soon 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 was on ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... ordinary daily grist of the diplomatic mill. Among these are such as apply to minor territorial adjustments, boundary rectifications, the policing of boundaries, the regulation of fishing rights, private pecuniary claims against another government or its nationals, in Story's words, "the mere private rights of sovereignty."[223] Crandall lists scores of such agreements entered into with other governments by the authorization of the President.[224] Such agreements are ordinarily directed to particular and comparatively trivial disputes ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... springtime glory! From the noonday blue of the sky overhead to the deep verdure of the land below, there ranged every dainty tint of changeful coloring. Nature lavished her wealth of loveliness here, that the dream of the New Jerusalem might not seem a mere phantasy of the poet disciple who walked with the Christ and was called of ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... but even in their hearts, there was an open truthfulness which gave signs of real nobility; and a full flowing sympathy, a solid common sense, a love of principle, a love of the good and noble, against which mere surface refinement and polite words, empty of soul and meaning, would weigh but ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Morris took little account of the terrible solidity of human nature—took little account, so to speak, of human figures in the round, it is altogether unfair to represent him as a mere aesthete. He perceived a great public necessity and fulfilled it heroically. The difficulty with which he grappled was one so immense that we shall have to be separated from it by many centuries before we can really judge of it. It was the problem of the elaborate and deliberate ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... excellent friend was decisive. Pronounced by her, the wife of an influential official, the name of Berlat became really my own, and gave me an identity that no mere suspicion could affect. The commissary ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... mund, is hand, and by periphrasis "land of fist"; so that Hallmund is meant by this couplet, and that was the real name of "Air," who is not a mere man, but a friendly spirit ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... writing forcibly is, of course, a valuable acquisition—almost as valuable as the art of writing clearly. But forcible expression is not, like clear expression, a mere question of mechanism and of the manipulation of words; it is a much higher ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... frequently applied at the Convent to see them, or at least to inquire after their welfare. It was common for them to be politely refused an interview, on some account or other, generally a mere pretext; and then the Superior usually sought to make as favorable an impression as possible on the visitors. Sometimes she would make up a story on the spot, and tell the strangers; requiring some of us to confirm it, in the most ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... and tyrannical Custom continue to support; I hope your Spectatorial Authority will give a seasonable Check to the Spread of the Infection; I mean old Mens overbearing the strongest Sense of their Juniors by the mere Force of Seniority; so that for a young Man in the Bloom of Life and Vigour of Age to give a reasonable Contradiction to his Elders, is esteemed an unpardonable Insolence, and regarded as a reversing the Decrees of Nature. I am a young Man, I confess, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to call your attention to the following facts. They may have no significance. They may be mere coincidences, the strange freaks of hazard, of no possible value in the opinion of some among the learned men of our days. Just as the finding of English words and English customs, as now exist among the most remote nations and heterogeneous ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... general tone of management we have nothing to retract, nothing to alter. History is Truth, or it is a mere delusion. The discovery and the establishment of Historical Truth, in all its branches, are our objects, and we shall continue to pursue them, as we have done in times past, faithfully and honestly, but, as we purpose and intend, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... as though that great walking beam was smashing up and down right in the midst of his brains. He had never felt so ill before in his life, and was very sure, in his inexperience, that something worse than mere seasickness ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... were the glory of Europe to the thinker. Modern wits have laughed at the enthusiasm of the Crusades. Did they weep over the perfidy of the partition of Poland? Do they really trust themselves to persuade a generous mind that the principle of mutual jealousy and mere selfishness, the meagre inspiration of the so called balance of power in modern politics, is, according to any norm of nobility in action, a more laudable motive for a public war, than a holy zeal against those who were at once the enemies of Christ, and (as future events but too ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... and over again proved not to flow from them: and when reason fails him, tries the effect of an injurious nickname. According to the views of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mivart tells us, "virtue is a mere kind of retrieving:" and, that we may not miss the point of the joke, he puts it in italics. But what if it is? Does that make it less virtue? Suppose I say that sculpture is a "mere way" of stone-cutting, and painting a "mere way" of daubing ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... for the profits of many a trip have told his comrade captains why he had named his boat the "Heather Bell." He had a sentiment about the name which he himself hardly understood. It seemed out of all proportion to the occasion; but a day was coming when it would seem more like a prophecy than a mere sentiment. He had builded better than he knew when he chose that name for the ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as a slave of the emperor in a court which was a mere sink of profligacy and villainy. Then he had got his freedom, and next, the governorship of Judaea, probably by his brother Pallas's interest, who had been a slave like him, and had made an enormous fortune by ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... his couch in its case; but I only saw the latter open on one occasion, I think, and was deeply thankful that John no longer took the same delight as heretofore in the practice of this art,—not only because the mere sound of his violin was now fraught to me with such bitter memories, but also because I felt sure that its performance had in some way which I could not explain a deleterious effect upon himself. He exhibited that absence of vitality ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... regard to fortune, one of our poorest republican generals who have headed armies. He has not, during all his campaigns, collected more than a capital of eight millions of livres—a mere trifle compared to the fifty millions of Massena, the sixty millions of Le Clerc, the forty millions of Murat, and the thirty-six millions of Augereau; not to mention the hundred millions of Bonaparte. It is also true that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... musingly, "would I could say so! There are times, indeed, when I hope I have an interest in the precious Redeemer, and behold an infinite loveliness and beauty in Him, apart from anything I expect or hope. But even then how deceitful is the human heart! how insensibly might a mere selfish love take the place of that disinterested complacency which regards Him for what He is in Himself, apart from what He is to us! Say, my dear friend, does not this thought sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... in great affliction," he said to Madame Campan; "she has much reason to be. But what then? They would not see in this business anything save a prince of the Church and the Prince of Rohan, whereas it is only the case of a man in want of money, and a mere trick for raising cash, wherein the cardinal has been swindled in his turn. Nothing is easier to understand, and it needs no Alexander to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... all so beautiful and so terrible, Uncle George," she moaned at last—"and all so true. Such awful mistakes are made and then it is too late. And nobody understands—nobody—nobody!" She paused, as if the mere utterance pained her, and then to St. George's amazement asked abruptly "Is there nothing yet ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of life, whether openly or secretly, he was to put in force against them to the utmost severity of martial law. Such men as these must find in the Governor neither indulgence, nor mercy. The lesson must be made clear even in those remote parts that a mere difference of colour does not turn men into wares, and that life and ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... do you see any sense in the Atlantic Ocean's having refused to take me of all the persons on board the Roland? Do you see any sense in my having fought like a madman for my mere existence? Do you see any sense in my having struck some unfortunate creatures over the head with my oars because they nearly capsized our boat? I struck them so hard that they sank back in the water without a sound and disappeared. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... moving figure or a breaking wave. There are indeed one or two broad distinctions in the nature of the senses,—a sensibility to color, for instance, being very different from a sensibility to form; so that a man may possess one without the other, and an artist may succeed in mere imitation of what is before him, of air, sunlight, etc., without possessing sensibility at all. But wherever we have, in the drawing of any one object, sufficient evidence of real intellectual power, of the sense which perceives the essential qualities of a ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... as used above refers more to the EXPRESSION, of, rather than to a meaning in a deeper sense—which may be a feeling influenced by some experience perhaps of a spiritual nature in the expression of which the intellect has some part. "The nearer we get to the mere expression of emotion," says Professor Sturt in his "Philosophy of Art and Personality," "as in the antics of boys who have been promised a holiday, the further we ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... 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 ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... movement of Loveday had been a mere feint. Partly hidden by the leaves he glided back to the other part of the tree, from whence it was easy to jump upon a thatch-covered out-house. This intention they did not appear to suspect, which gave him the opportunity of sliding down the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... seems pretty well agreed in an opinion, that the utmost scope and end of reading is amusement only; and such, indeed, are now the fashionable books, that a reader can propose no more than mere entertainment, and it is sometimes very well for him if he finds even this, in ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... have to do is to discover why the three cases were enacted at 25, Rue Clapeyron, at 134, Avenue Henri-Martin and within the walls of the Chateau de Crozon. The whole case lies there. The rest is mere talk and child's play. Don't ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... quoted by Eusebius, of about the year 200, it is apparent that they who at that time contended for the mere humanity of Christ, argued from the Scriptures; for they are accused by this writer of making alterations in their copies in order to favour their opinions. (Lardner, vol. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... shown your Lordships the entire dependence of Oude on the British empire. I have shown you how Mr. Hastings usurped all power, reduced the prince to a cipher, and made of his minister a mere creature of his own,—how he made the servants of the Company dependent on his own arbitrary will, and considered independence a proof of corruption. It has been likewise proved to your Lordships that he suffered the army to become an instrument of robbery and oppression, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with the nave. More probable is the conjecture that it was merely the entrance to the monastic enclosure, turned to account as a ready-made structure when the work at the church was the reverse of constructive, as it seems too large and too high for a mere doorway at the end of an aisle, besides being rather too far from the church to agree with its supposed dimensions. The modern iron gate is surmounted by a gilded cross and the name of the church on a framework in the tympanum. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... not correct, and that it was proclaimed in 1336, during the reign of the Emperor Charles IV. 'That is true, Sire,' replied the Prince Primate I was mistaken; but how does it happen that your Majesty is so well acquainted with these matters?'—'When I was a mere sub-lieutenant in the artillery, said Napoleon,—at this beginning, there was on the part of the guests a marked movement of interest, and he continued, smiling,—when I had the honor to be simply sub-lieutenant in the artillery I remained three years ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... future may be like, there are, and will be, two sides to human life. There is the material, commonplace, and in a sense, vulgar existence; there is also life's ideal side. Give a man, who is a man and not a mere biped animal, all the comforts and enjoyments of physical life, good food, good habitation, safety and health, even a clear intellect, and give him nothing else. Would he not scorn and weary of such a life as that, which merely adds empty day to empty day, so many ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... moved her head just enough to gain a corner-wise glimpse of a calm and unresponsive face beneath a scarlet Tam; and evidently realizing that she had become a mere support to the maid who owned her, uttered ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... that extremely good humoured, complaisant children, when they grow up, become ill tempered; and young men who are generally liked in society as pleasant companions, become surly, tyrannical masters in their own families, positive about mere trifles, and anxious to subjugate the wills of all who are any wise dependent upon them. This character has been nicely touched by de Boissy, in ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... even told her of it, nor suffered her to join them! How can they treat her so—even Dunois and La Hire—when they have seen again and yet again how futile are all plans made by their skill without the sanction of her voice? It makes my gorge rise! Do they think her a mere beautiful image, to ride before them and carry a white banner to affright the foe? It is a shame, a shame, that they should treat her so, after all that they have ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... understood that there are chairmen—and chairmen. He could name to you three or four men holding responsible permanent official positions quite as good as that he filled in regard to salary,—which, as he often said of his own, was a mere nothing, just a poor two thousand pounds a year, not as much as a grocer would make in a decent business,—but they were simply head clerks and nothing more. Nobody knew anything of them. They had no names. You did not meet them anywhere. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... certainly not take him at Easter. It would be a mere farce intended to compensate to us for giving up the school, and I'll not lend myself to it while I can have ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mere thinker, no mere creature of dreams and imagination. I stamp and post letters; I buy new bootlaces and put them in my boots. And when I set out to get my hair cut, it is with the iron face of those men of empire and unconquerable ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... 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
... of the house regarded as absent-mindedness. In any case, he talked little; but his silence was affable and benevolent. He was a man of great height and spare, with grave and solemn manners, though his face expressed all gentle sentiments and an inward calm; while his mere presence carried with it a sacred authority. He was very fond of the Voltairean chevalier. Those two majestic relics of the nobility and clergy, though of very different habits and morals, recognized each other by their generous traits. Besides, the chevalier was as unctuous with the abbe ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... or child; they (especially women and children) share, in common with dogs and horses, that divine attribute which, for want of a better name, we call 'instinct,' whereby they love or hate for the mere tone of a voice, the glance of an eye, the motion of a hand, and, the love or hate once given, the prejudice for, or ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... professed that he did not know his own secret. The charge of a rape, long ago, at Nismes, was obviously trumped up to cover the real reason for the extraordinary vindictiveness with which he was pursued, illegally taken, and barbarously slain. Mere Protestant restlessness on his part is hardly an explanation. There was clearly no evidence for the charge of a plot to murder Louis XIV., in which Colbert, in England, seems to have believed. Even if the French Government believed that he was at once an agent of Charles II., and at the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... north of our present position. The unequal contest between floe and iceberg exhibited itself there in a fearful manner; for the former pressing onward against the huge grounded masses was torn into shreds, and thrown back piecemeal, layer on layer of many feet in elevation, as if mere shreds of some flimsy material, instead of solid, hard ice, every cubic yard of which weighed nearly ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... that way, Harry, but the work to-morrow would suffer, and work is more important than mere ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... was much the same, and so was their manner of life: their virtues and their vices were similar, and thus it happened that a mere acquaintance grew into a friendship, and on his return from the field the marquis introduced Sainte-Croix to his wife, and he became an intimate of the house. The usual results followed. Madame de Brinvilliers was then scarcely eight-and-twenty: she had married ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... You may be a man of rank. You may be one of the profligate and profane crew who haunt the court. You may be the worst of them all, my Lord Rochester himself. He is about your age, I have heard, and though a mere boy in years, is a veteran in libertinism. But, whoever you are, and whatever your rank and station may be, unless your character will bear the strictest scrutiny, I am certain Stephen Bloundel will never consent to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... system of Government that has hitherto prevailed, that we are now driven to insist upon a change that cannot be for the worse." Reference was made to the desire to bring about a system of Responsible Government, and the utter futility of mere responsibility to Downing Street was pointed out with a pointed eloquence which proved that the signatories were in deadly earnest. The misgovernment of Dalhousie and Aylmer in Lower Canada, and of Gore, Maitland and Colborne in Upper Canada, was touched upon in a few brief, vitriolic ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... dressed in brown linen, had thrown off his coat for greater comfort. The stifling heat, in spite of the palm-leaf fan which he plied mechanically, was scarcely less oppressive than his own thoughts. Long ago, while yet a mere boy in years, he had come back from Appomattox to find his family, one of the oldest and proudest in the state, hopelessly impoverished by the war,—even their ancestral home swallowed up in the common ruin. His elder brother had sacrificed his life on the bloody altar of the lost cause, and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... confession, we are not dealing with what is properly called conscience, but more or less with disease, with an abnormally excited imagination.[3] But where such hallucinations are lacking, and religious influences are absent, and the confession is made freely in response to mere pressure, we have a case of conscience,[4]—another of those terms which need explanation. I know of no analogy in the inner nature of man, in which anybody with open eyes does himself exclusive harm without any contingent use being apparent, as is the case in this class of confession. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... on mere forms, Dr. Connelly; but if you continue to call me simply 'mister,' I shall understand from it that you do not recognize me as the rightful commander of the Bronx," replied Christy, as he invited the surgeon with a gesture to ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... The same afternoon we drove to the house of a shipbuilder at a little hamlet called Greenshore, and went out lobster-fishing in his beautiful boat. The way of fishing for these creatures was a novel one to me, but so easy that a mere novice may be very successful. We tied sinks to mackerel, and let them down in six fathoms water. We gently raised them now and then, and, if we felt anything pulling the bait, raised it slowly up. Gently, gently, or the fish suspects foul play; but soon, just ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... was (to our apprehensions) rather a "creature of the element, that lived in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds," than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of his own pageants, and that he should pass by unquestioned like ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... impossible in these pages to give a comprehensive account of them all, we have restricted ourselves to such as seem more especially suited to the amateur, to whom needlework is a mere recreation ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... result from it, but they are certainly not received as warnings; and after all, such sports, where there is nothing bloody, nor even cruel, saving the thump which the bull gets, and the mortification which he no doubt feels, but from both of which he soon recovers; and which are mere games of skill, trials of address—are manly and strengthening, and help to keep up the physical superiority of that fine race of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... his afflictions, by directing his thoughts, not to maxims for enduring them, or modes of expressing them with interest, but to plans for getting rid of them; and to this disposition or habit,—too rare among men of genius, men of a much higher class than mere sentimentalists, but whose sensibility is out of proportion with their inventiveness or activity,—we are to attribute no small influence in the fortunate conduct of his subsequent life. With such a turn of mind, Schiller, now that he was at length master of his own movements, could not ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... was in desperate need of quick action. He was not playing a game of business for the mere pleasure of playing. He was fighting for his financial life and every hour's delay increased his peril. But Jefferson Worth did not need his railroad friend's warning that an attempt to rush George Cartwright would be disastrous. The old financier was not at all backward in making ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... by a member, and usually sets forth the grievance desired to be remedied. This petition (when founded on facts that may be in their nature disputed) is referred to a committee of members, who examine the matter alleged, and accordingly report it to the house; and then (or, otherwise, upon the mere petition) leave is given to bring in the bill. In public matters the bill is brought in upon motion made to the house, without any petition at all. Formerly, all bills were drawn in the form of petitions, which were entered upon the parliament ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... crumbling, the flames falling, a chaos of mere feeling overwhelmed her. It was as though her blood were running backward, knotting itself in clots of darkness and agony. He had sent her away unlovingly—punishing her for her fidelity. Her love for Tante destroyed his love for ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... not calculated to endure. After some five months of labour from nine till two, and often later, it came suddenly to an end. No clear explanation of the breach is forthcoming, but mere incompatability of temper would probably supply a sufficient ground for disagreement. Goldsmith, it is said, complained that the bookseller and his wife treated him ill, and denied him ordinary ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Wolsey inquired whether Chievres was "looking to any chance of the Earl's succession to the throne of England."[520] If further proof were needed that Henry's anxiety about the succession was not, as has been represented, a mere afterthought intended to justify his divorce from Catherine, it might be found in the extraordinary measures taken with regard to his one and only illegitimate son. The boy was born in 1519. His mother was Elizabeth Blount, sister of Erasmus's ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... information collected, pertaining to the people and country along the course of the Great River, from its headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico, is of value to every student of our country's history. The book is more than a mere description of an expedition—it is an epitomized collection of historical, geographical and commercial ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... smiled grimly, the cynical smile that added years to the boyish face. "When I see her safe at some ranch, I'll beat it," he muttered thickly. "I'll go somewhere an' finish my jamboree an' then I'll hit fer some fresh range." To his surprise he suddenly found that the mere thought of whisky was nauseating to him. His memory took him back to a college town in his native State. "It used to be that way," he grinned, "when I'd get soused, I couldn't look at a drink for a week. I reckon stayin' off of it for a ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... the Celtic character—vivacity, valour, kindness, tenderness, as well as boastfulness and fiery temper. Though dating from pagan times, the saga throws little light upon pagan beliefs, but reveals much concerning the manners of the period. Here, as always in early Celtdom, woman is more than a mere chattel, and occupies a comparatively high place. The various parts of the saga, like those of the Finnish Kalevala, always existed separately, never as one complete epos, though always bearing a certain relation to each other. Lonnrot, in Finland, was able, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... replied, "my parents died when I was a mere child, but the faint recollection of my early home, and the memory of my uncle's home, which has been mine also, correspond very closely with the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... I cried, "she baffles me; for a hint I let drop in a mere careless badinage of your gallanting reputation made her perilously ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on the mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to reproduction, stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle. The physical creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is concerned, consists in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female must always signify ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... primary decoration, though this relationship may sometimes be found reversed. It has the appearance of being some decoration belonging to the ground rather than to the primary pattern; in its simplest form it appears as a mere repeating dot or a lattice (see fig. 22), but it may be so elaborated as to cover with an intricate design every portion of the exposed ground not decorated with ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie |
