"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this thy question, and by that whisper with thy lady, (O thou nymph of devotion!) I find I am to impart a secret, and not to ask one: Therefore, either confess thou art yet a mere woman under that veil, and, by consequence, most horribly inquisitive, or thou shalt lose thy longing, and know nothing ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... he made appear an insignificant physical limitation. Scholarship, college business or college sports, politics and literature—his mind, at least, was happy, strenuous, and at home in them all. To have pitied him would have been a mere impertinence. While in his own heart, which never grieved over himself, there were treasures of compassion for the weak, the tempted, and the unsuccessful, which spent themselves in secret, simple ways, unknown to ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... campaign, and then be governed by circumstances?"[396] The last sentence defines the policy actually followed; and the chances went definitely against it when Macdonough destroyed the British fleet on Lake Champlain. Except at Baltimore and New Orleans,—mere defensive successes,—nothing but calamity befell the American arms. To the battle of Lake Champlain it was owing that the British occupancy of United States soil at the end of the year was such that the Duke of Wellington advised that ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... refused to have anything to do with her. After the death of Elizabeth—that was Victor Nevill's mother—I began to feel that I had been too harsh with Mary. My remorse grew, giving me no rest, until recently I determined to find her. But I might never have succeeded had not mere chance helped me. I was struck by your resemblance to Mary when I first met you in Lamb ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... she was driven away on to the moors; but she always returned to her place in the angle, and counted that a day gained when she knew by Richard's strong singing that he yet lived. His songs told her more than that: they were all of love, and if her name came not in her image did. She knew by the mere pitch of his voice—who so well?—when he was occupied with her and when not. Mostly he sang all the morning from the moment the sun struck his window. Thus she judged him a light sleeper. From noon to four there was no sound; surely then he slept. He sang fitfully in the evening, not so saliently; ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... rambles are not always directed to this spot," she answered, with a conscious blush; "and it was mere chance that brought me here this evening. But, perhaps," she archly added, "absence has seemed so brief to you, that you expected to find me lingering ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... the novices 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 convincing ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... pathological phenomenon; they are the outcome of mass suggestion. Nicolai tersely analyses this conception. It is remarkable, he says, that whenever several animals or several human beings do anything together, the mere fact of cooperation causes each individual's action to be modified. We have scientific proof that two men can carry far more than twice as much as one. In like manner, a number of human beings react in a very different way from these same beings in isolation. Every cavalryman knows that his horse ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... quarter the wind was at the time of the assault, and which sail was taken in. His testimony bore on one man only, at whom he cast a vindictive look; but I think he told the truth as far as he knew and remembered it. Of the prisoners the second mate was a mere youth, with long sandy hair, and an intelligent and not unprepossessing face, dressed as neatly as a three or four weeks' captive, with small, or no means, could well allow, in a frock-coat, and with clean linen,—the only linen or cotton shirt in the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long, meditative hours upon it, criticising the fishermen on the bank below, watching the fish, talking of fish, thinking of fish, without haste, and with a good deal of rest. There was also Hallinan's Hotel, that was very far from being a mere country hotel. The stately bow-windows of its coffee-room have already been mentioned, but its wide verandah must not be forgotten, stone-paven, glass-roofed, umbrageous with tropic vegetation, beneath whose shade, on the sunny days ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... boy; 'it is beggars' food, but it will do you good,' and she poured out a liberal portion on a plate. From the bag she drew out a piece of brown bread and put it in the soup unnoticed; then as he moved up to eat and she saw his worn grey face, mere skin and bone, pity so moved her that she took out a piece of sausage and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... thereon hung the banner of the Wolfings, wherein was wrought the image of the Wolf, but red of hue as a token of war, and with his mouth open and gaping upon the foemen. Also whereas the other wains were drawn by mere oxen, and those of divers colours, as chance would have it, the wain of the banner was drawn by ten black bulls of the mightiest of the herd, deep-dewlapped, high-crested and curly-browed; and their harness was decked with gold, and so was the wain itself, and ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... the United States which makes the master the representative of his slave.'—'The Constitution of the United States expressly prescribes that no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States. The spirit of this interdict is not a rooted antipathy to the grant of mere powerless empty titles, but to titles of nobility; to the institution of privileged orders of men. But what order of men under the most absolute of monarchies, or the most aristocratic of republics, was ever invested with such an odious and unjust privilege ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... walking with Mrs. Craigie on the opposite side, had caught sight of him, and regardless of the fourfold chain of carriages, had rushed across to him with the fearless daring of a six-year-old child, to whom the danger of horses' hoofs was a mere nothing when compared with the desire to get a walk with her father. His heart beat quicker even now as he thought of the paralyzing dread of long ago, nor had Miss Erica ever been scolded for her loving rashness; in his ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... pictures accumulate, are crowded, and, getting in each other's way, spoil the impression as a whole. As a result one gets, not a picture in which all the details are merged into one whole like stars in the heavens, but a mere diagram, a dry record of impressions. A writer—you, for instance—will understand me, but the reader will ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... we of our certain knowledge, special grace, and mere motion will permit or allow any of our liege subjects to barter, buy, or procure of any of our English allies, Teas of any kind: provided always each man can purchase not less than ten nor more than one hundred and fourteen boxes at a time and those the property of the East India ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... dally, but clung to the rope. High-Tail whirled and started for the corral. Little Jim set back on his heels, but Little Jim was a mere item in High-Tail's wild career toward freedom. A patter of hoofs in the dark, and Little Jim and the calf disappeared around the corner ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... was knocked down to him for ever. The Mayor adjudged it to the poor devil with all his heart: indeed, this was the first occasion ever known in Haslau, on which the tears of a schoolmaster and a curate had converted themselves—not into mere amber that incloses only a worthless insect, like the tears of Heliodes, but like those of the goddess Freia, into heavy gold. Glantz congratulated Flacks very warmly; and observed with a smiling air, that possibly he had ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... monoplane. After a moment's fiddling with levers and adjustments Roy started the motor. Heavily laden as it was the staunch aeroplane shot upward steadily after a short run. As it grew rapidly smaller, and finally became a mere black shoe button in the distance, Miss Prescott turned to old Peter Bell with ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... the Court and sat with her veil down all through the burning hours. People looked at her curiously, questioning if there really had been any definite understanding between the two. Did she really care for the man, or was it mere curiosity that drew her? No one knew with any certainty. She wrapped herself in her reserve like an all-enveloping garment, and even those who regarded themselves as her nearest friends knew naught of what she ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... devastations of war should continue, we call God and the world to witness that the evils which must follow are not to be imputed to Great Britain." I wish you had spared your protestation. Matters of this kind may appear to you in a trivial light, as mere ornamental flowers of rhetoric, but they are serious things, registered in the high chancery of Heaven. Remember the awful abuse of words like those by General Burgoyne, and remember his fate. There is One above us who will ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... had so nearly admitted to her house was a horse-thief, who, but a short time before, had stolen the animal now tied to her front fence, at the point of a revolver from the man who was leading him to water, she said she wouldn't have believed that such a mere boy could be so great ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... absorbing much of the heat liberated, thus lowering the temperature of that flame, and reducing its illuminating power far more seriously. On the other hand, a certain quantity of air in acetylene helps to prevent burner troubles by acting as a mere diluent (albeit an inferior one to methane or marsh-gas), and therefore it has been proposed intentionally to add air to the gas before consumption, such a process being in regular use on the large scale in some places abroad. As Eitner has shown (Chapter VI.) that in a 3/4-inch pipe acetylene ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... personifications or individual representations of the sacred character and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were ascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.' So says Dr. Robertson Smith. He and Mr. Sayce are 'scholars,' not mere ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... as Northumbria. Edward died in 925, and under the reign of his son Aethelstan the Saxon kingdom reached still greater prosperity. The completion of the West Saxon realm was reserved for Edmund, son of Aethelstan, who ascended the throne in 940, being a mere boy. He was ruled by the greatest statesman of that age, the celebrated Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury,—a great statesman and a great Churchman, like ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or the audience may or may not do, nothing is more vulgar than audible conversation, or any other kind of disturbance, during a concert. Sometimes it may be mere thoughtlessness; sometimes boorishness, the want of the fine instinct which avoids occasioning any annoyance; but usually it is due to a desire to attract attention and to affect superiority to the common interest. ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... midst of wars and rumours of wars, the strife of king and barons, and persistent efforts to subdue neighbouring countries, the mere effervescence of the life of the nation, let us think for a moment of that to which the poems I am about to present bear good witness—the true life of the people, growing quietly, slowly, unperceived—the leaven hid in the meal. For what is the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... They were sharp youngsters, and having come well supplied, they did a thrifty business. When their stock in trade was all disposed of they wished to return, but they were so intelligent and observant that I thought their mission involved other purposes than the mere sale of newspapers, so they were held till we crossed the Chickahominy ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... mind, as a dim figure among many in the dim coloured atmosphere of revolt and bitterness in which her thoughts on human life would move when she had no labour for her hands. He was another of those who suffered so uselessly, a mere half animal who had to do the rough work of the world, and then was dropped into the great charnel house of unmeaning death. As soon as the man began to show signs, faint signs of perception, she left ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... see the Trick, Sir, a mere Trick put upon a Man, a married Man, and a married Man to a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... have had no effect. The Duke had desired the young man not to address him again; and the young man had disobeyed him. No mere courtesy would now have constrained him to send any reply to this further letter. But coming as it did while his heart was still throbbing with the effects of Mrs. Finn's words, it was allowed to have a certain force. The argument used was a true argument. His girl was devoted ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... beauties and the defects were carefully toned down. The English abridged edition was still more colourless.136 For a hundred years the character of Zinzendorf lay hidden beneath a pile of pious phrases, and only the recent researches of scholars have enabled us to see him as he was. He was no mere commonplace Pietist. He was no mere pious German nobleman, converted by looking at a picture. His faults and his virtues stood out in glaring relief. His very appearance told the dual tale. As he strolled the streets of Berlin or London, the wayfarers instinctively ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... data.—More striking in some respects than the failure to secure importers' selling expenses is the contrast exhibited in the commission's report between overhead expenses in the United States and abroad. The foreign overhead expenses are mere estimates, since the commission's representatives were refused access to the original books and records by practically every foreign firm. It accordingly became necessary to resort to estimates based on flat percentages of prime costs or sales price. These were in fact submitted by Italian ...
— Men's Sewed Straw Hats - Report of the United Stated Tariff Commission to the - President of the United States (1926) • United States Tariff Commission
... men and manners of the age in which they were drawn, whilst the latter, being in their own day but caricatures of life, will, in course of time, fade and lose their interest, and at length become levelled with the mere ephemera, or day-flies of literature. It is true that novel-writing has, within the last sixteen, or eighteen years, attained a much higher rank than it hitherto enjoyed; but it should be remembered that this superiority has not been grounded in mawkish records of the fashionable follies of high ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... first of his charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men. His education, in short, "was not based upon religion, but was itself religious." For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard. "Mere intellectual acuteness," he used to say, "divested as it is, in too many cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like the spirit of Mephistopheles." Often ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... ploughmen, or sailors; you will never be able to see the fine instrument you are master of, abused; but, once fix your desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride and folly in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... and burn what thou hast adored". The streets of the city were hung with bright banners, white curtains adorned the churches, and clouds of sweet incense filled all the great basilica in which "the new Constantine" stooped to the baptismal water. He entered the cathedral a mere "Sicambrian" chieftain, the descendant of the sea-god: he emerged from it amid the acclamations of the joyous provincials, "the eldest son ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... world he faced in Paris and London seemed to him fantastic Willing to admit it real in the sense of having some kind of existence outside his own mind, he could not admit it reasonable. In Paris, his heart sank to mere pulp before the dismal ballets at the Grand Opera and the eternal vaudeville at the old Palais Royal; but, except for them, his own Paris of the Second Empire was as extinct as that of the first Napoleon. At the galleries and exhibitions, he ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Gord. How you yo'se'f, my man?" There was a note of affection in the old man's voice as he addressed the little pickaninny, who seemed in the twilight a mere midget. ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... masterful hands—all these now worked in fullest harmony and told her here was a man. Preciosa, never inclined to make too much of worldly considerations, now set them aside altogether. Any idea of mere lucre slipped from her mind, and if she thought at all of a mother's strained social ambitions for a favourite child, it was but to feel with a wilful joy that she was extricating herself from the selfish grasp of Virgilia Jeffreys. Her own humble and obscure origin stirred within her,—her, the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... this entire seclusion from the world. It has a very injurious effect on the mind of a scholar. The Chinese proverb is true; a single conversation across the table with a wise man, is better than ten years' mere study of books. I have known some of these literary men, who thus shut themselves up from the world. Their minds never come in contact with those of their fellow-men. They read little. They think much. They are mere dreamers. They know not what is new nor what is old. ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... somebody would come along and steal them, and the rest of the time was devoted to Elam's stories. It was a wonder to Tom how the boy had managed to get through so many things and live. He didn't relate his adventures as though there was anything great in them, but told them as a mere matter of fact. Anybody could pass through such scenes if he only had the courage, but there was the point. For the first time in his life Tom wished himself back in Mississippi. Anyone might get into scrapes there, as Our Fellows got into ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... saloon, into which the body had been brought from the back room, was a fog of smoke and a blabber of voices. McFluke had not been idle at the bar, and the coroner's jury was three parts drunk. The members had not yet agreed on a verdict. But the delay was a mere matter of form. They always liked to stretch the time, and give the territory a good ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Dionysus, may be, as I have already suggested, distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing divine kings in the character of Dionysus and of dispersing the fragments of their broken bodies over the fields for the purpose of fertilising them. It is probably no mere coincidence that Dionysus himself is said to have been torn in pieces at Thebes, the very place where according to legend the same fate befell king Pentheus at the hands of the frenzied ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... European capitals is to witness a revelation difficult to convey in mere words. Soldiers of every nationality are treated by the expert and world famed in medicine. Human wrecks, victims of shot and shell, are repaired and rebuilt. It matters little whether a man is friend or foe, as long as a spark of life is there, he is picked tenderly ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... reflect upon all the circumstances connected with his experiments, the great disadvantages under which he labored, and his extreme youthfullness, we cannot but feel a national pride—yet wonder—that a mere yankee boy, surrounded by the deepest forests, hundred of miles from the populous portion of our country, without the necessary materials, or resources for procuring them, should by the force of his natural genius make a discovery, ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... the robber of the treasury by Hadding is a variant of the world-old Rhampsinitos tale, but less elaborate, possibly abridged and cut down by Saxo, and reduced to a mere moral example in favour of the goldenness of silence and the danger of letting ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... in which these can receive any satisfactory, or even plausible, explanation from psychological causes alone; and there is great reason to think that they have as positive, and even as direct and immediate, a connection with physical conditions of the brain and nerves as any of our mere sensations have. A supposition which (it is perhaps not superfluous to add) in no way conflicts with the indisputable fact that these instincts may be modified to any extent, or entirely conquered, in human beings, and to no inconsiderable extent even in some of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... a day-old stubble, as it was; his shirt-cuffs frayed, his shoes down at the heel, his baggy clothing weirdly ready-made, as they were: there remained his air. You'd think he might amount to something, to somewhat more than a mere something, given half a chance in the right direction. Then what?... Spaulding sought from Duncan elucidation of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... to earning his daily bread, and to the cultivation of religious exercises, which consoled him in some measure for his apparently useless way of living. Latterly, it is true, Fortune had seemed to smile upon him, by giving him a little more money and liberty, but this smile was a mere mockery, and a snare more hurtful than the pettinesses and privations of his past life. The fickle goddess, continuing her part of mystifier, had opened to his enraptured sight a magic window through which she had shown him a ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... the letter; then he dropped into a chair, exhausted. The letter was mere nonsense throughout, and needed a key. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... meets no interruption here. Emerging into Leverett Street, he with difficulty descries a white garment distantly fluttering in the feeble light of a street-lamp. Any other color would have eluded him, but the way is clear now, and it is a mere question of strength and speed. He sets his teeth together, takes a full breath, and gives ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and for the closet, I feel no hesitation in placing it as the first and most admirable of all Shakespeare's purely historical plays. For the two parts of Henry IV. form a species of themselves, which may be named the mixed drama. The distinction does not depend on the mere quantity of historical events in the play compared with the fictions; for there is as much history in Macbeth as in Richard, but in the relation of the history to the plot. In the purely historical ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear repined To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another, in this general frame; Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains, The great directing Mind of all ordains. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... while coming to wear a manner combining an atmosphere of dignified aloofness and a sentiment of frank indifference to the opinion of this loutish busybody, with just a touch, a mere trace, as it were, of nonchalance thrown in. In short, coming out he sought to deport himself as though it were the properest thing in the world for a man of years and discretion to be wearing a bright pink one-piece article of apparel on a public highway at four A. M. or thereabouts. ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to hear news he was invited to our houses and treated at our tables. If he afterwards found himself neglected, it was not to be wondered at; his intelligence was exhausted, and he had sunk into the mere tradesman. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... I'm proud to show you, at last, somebody that dotes on you more than myself. I expect you to feel flattered. Nay, it's not Nelly; don't look at her! My poor little sister-in-law is breaking her heart by mere contemplation of your physical and moral beauty. It lies in your own power to be Edgar's brother! No, no, Isabella, you sha'n't run off,' she continued, arresting, with feigned playfulness, the confounded girl, who had risen indignantly. 'We were quarrelling like cats about ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... millions smiled up at him reproachfully. "What! after I have been with you so long, Daddy? But it's true there was a time—before Tom taught me that men cannot be judged by mere polish and veneer, or the lack ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... hems and fells are also handed over to the rapid machine; and "over-casting" is but a variety of "top-stitching." There are then only four things which a girl really needs to be taught to do, so far as the mere manual facility goes—"to sew over-and-over;" to put on a button; to gather, including "stroking" or "laying," and to make a button-hole. Does it not seem as if an intelligent girl of fourteen or fifteen could be taught these in twelve lessons of one hour each? Only practice can ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... when the lightning's glory breaks Through fields of summer blue. And white foam-clouds and silver spray Were wildly tossed on high, Like swans that urge their homeward way Across the autumn sky. Now ran the river calm and clear With current strong and deep: Now slowly broadened to a mere, Or scarcely seemed to creep. Now o'er a length of sandy plain Her tranquil course she held; Now rose her waves and sank again, By refluent waves repelled. So falling first on Siva's head, Thence rushing to their ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... stench, that even those who were yet sound often fainted away, unable to endure it. Cries and groans were incessantly heard in all parts of the ships, and the sight of the poor diseased wretches who were still able to crawl about, excited horror and compassion. Some were reduced to such mere skeletons that their skins seemed to cleave to their bones, and these had this consolation, that they gradually consumed away without pain. Others were swelled out to monstrous sizes, and were so tormented with excruciating pain, as to drive ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... in a measure be modified. These pictures are letters and something more. Some of them are purely alphabetical in character, and some are symbolic in another way. Some characters represent syllables. Others stand sometimes as mere representatives of sounds, and again, in a more extended sense, as representatives of things, such as all hieroglyphics doubtless were in the beginning. In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected alphabet such as ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... rocky point, from which they fished, and sat down to reflect. Could it be that the vessel had been sent after them, or that she had by mere chance come among the islands? He decided after a short time that it must be chance, for none could know that they were saved, much less that they were on the island. Her steering towards the island must then be either ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they had wooed and won during their engagement in the peltry trade. These finding that other whites had taken Indian girls for brides, felt drawn towards the new settlement by sentiments stronger than those of mere interest. Numbers of unmarried French took up farms in the new colony, and soon fell captive to the charms of the Cree girls. Now and again the history of the simple-hearted Scots was repeated; and a coureur was presently seen to bring a shy, witching Saulteux maiden from the tents ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the dreadful remoteness of our position. Certainly the sea in itself looks no different at a thousand than at a hundred miles from shore. But as day after day I came out on deck at noon, after ascertaining our position on the chart (a mere pin-point in a reach of empty paper), the sight of the ocean weighed down upon me with an infinitely great awesomeness—and I was no new hand to ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... to say, it does not seem to have occurred to any member of the august assembly which is making the inquiry, that the Uitlanders are mere squatters in the Transvaal, and that if they don't like the ways of the country they are visiting, there is nothing to prevent them from packing up their traps, and ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... a mere nothing," said Karl. "Well—I found myself in a strange winding passage that led right down into the central hall of the dwarfs." He did not wish to say that he had been asleep; he thought that would sound so silly. "Queer little fellows they are, those dwarfs," he continued, "awfully ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... into her tin cup. With fried bread and black coffee she regaled herself. Again her mind reverted to her riddle. "The missionary preacher said he could not explain the white man's law to me. He who reads daily from the Holy Bible, which he tells me is God's book, cannot understand mere man's laws. This also puzzles me," thought she to herself. "Once a wise leader of our people, addressing a president of this country, said: 'I am a man. You are another. The Great Spirit is our witness!' This is simple and easy ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... farsighted men could foresee the day when the railroad train would cross the plains and the Rockies and link the Atlantic and the Pacific. Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... paid no attention to mere detail, but circulated the most startling rumors as to the excessive amount of brain-work Mopsey Dowd was doing on the new play, which was to be his masterpiece, and to far surpass anything Buffalo Bill or Sixteen-string Jack ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... was in the background. The grasp of his hand was firmer than usual, the tone more earnest, which said, "I am very glad to see you!"—and yet the doctor felt that in them both there was more—and also less—than mere ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... "I was a mere child when it chanced that I strayed from the hut which my English parents inhabited on the borders of this forest. Of them I know nothing. I remember the cry of surprise which came from the lips of a Dhah woman when she found me, and then carried me among her tribeswomen to show ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... forming of a correct conception should not be expected of men not trained to form it; clearly, for instance, mere knowledge of electricity and mere skill in using electrical instruments cannot enable a man to devise radio apparatus for naval use; a certain amount of knowledge of purely naval and nautical matters is needed ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... family! Triumph and happiness on the one hand; disgrace and death on the scaffold on the other! Suppose I go to the bailiff, and accuse Julio of the murder? That would put me above suspicion. But no; the search will be superficial, mere matter of form for the sake of appearances. If Julio as arranged things properly, they will merely cast a glance into the cellar. My presence will be a restraint upon the officers, and will prevent them from pushing their search ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... impulse to the minds of many men in all Italy, and especially in Tuscany, and led to the foundation in the city of Pistoia in 1032 of the church of S. Paolo, in the presence of S. Atto, the bishop there, as a contemporary deed relates, and indeed of many other buildings, a mere mention of which would occupy ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... and just as it neared the point where endurance ceased, there was relief. She heard clicks and clacks. There was light; there was air. Then a man's voice called, "All out for 125th Street," though of course to Kitty it was a mere human bellow. The roaring almost ceased—did cease. Later the rackety-bang was renewed with plenty of sounds and shakes, though not the poisonous gas; a long, hollow, booming roar with a pleasant dock smell ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... could not call at her home. He knew well that it would only provoke a storm; nor did Amy ask him to. They met only at church or at the Mission; and nothing but the common greetings passed between them. No one ever dreamed that they were more than mere acquaintances. But they each felt that the other understood, and so were happy; content to wait until God, in his own way, should unite the streams ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... that the discipline of the Mathematics is so important an element in female education; and it is in this aspect, that the mere acquisition of facts, and the attainment of accomplishments, should be made ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... most determined little woman," said Mr. Jerrold, going away from the bedside, "have left me no rest. You have preached to me in actions of Faith, Hope, and Charity, ever since I first knew you. Doctrinal arguments I should have regarded as mere priestly sophisms if I had never known you—our ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... over when he packed off her troublesome retinue to France—a bishop and 29 priests, with 410 more male and female attendants. Thenceforth their domestic life was a happy one; and during the twelve years following the murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence—not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Stafford even, or Laud. Little meddlesome Laud, made archbishop in 1633, proceeded to war against the dominant Puritanism, to preach passive obedience, and uphold the divine ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... on this subject. If my duty did not require my attendance on the public worship, and were I to visit your different places and huts, I fear I should find some of you spending the hours appointed for divine service in cultivating your gardens and grounds, others indulging themselves in mere sloth and idleness, others engaged in the most profane and unclean conversation, and others committing abominations, which it would defile my pen to describe. Now what must be the end of these courses? God says, Remember the sabbath day ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Terra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body."—DARWIN'S Journal, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... even reached the tree she felt herself borne up on strong wings ready to carry her to the clouds if she wished to go there, and seeming a mere speck in the sky, she was swept along till she beheld the Arch of St. Martin far below, with the rays of the sun shining on it. Then she swooped down, and, hiding herself behind a buttress so that she could not be detected from below, she set herself to dig out the nearest blue stones with ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... horse or wild goat. Like Dionysus himself, they are connected in ancient religion with the Renewal of the Earth in spring and the resurrection of the dead, a point which students of the Alcestis may well remember. But in general they represent mere joyous creatures of nature, unthwarted by law and unchecked by self-control. Two notes are especially struck by them: the passions and the absurdity of half-drunken revellers, and the joy and mystery of the wild ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... for the principle universally adopted, that the law of cause and effect rules phenomena, and that a cause which has been followed by an effect once will be followed by the same effect always? And he concludes that no rational ground can be found at all, that it is the mere result of custom without anything rational behind it. We are accustomed to see it so, and what we have been so perpetually accustomed to see we believe that we shall continue to see. But why what has always ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... pleasant one. They found they had regained their appetites, and were able to enjoy their meals; still they were not sorry when they saw the coast of Sweden, and, a few hours later, entered the port of Gottenburg, where Sir Marmaduke, for the first time, came on deck—looking a mere shadow of his ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... are historical characters, seen as it were through mists of love and wonder, whom men could not forget, but for centuries continued to celebrate in countless songs and stories. They were not literary phantoms, but actual existences; imaginary and fictitious characters, mere creatures of idle fancy, do not live and flourish so in the world's memory. And as to the gigantic stature and superhuman prowess and achievements of those antique heroes, it must not be forgotten that all art magnifies, as if in ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... aggregate of hunger. It is like having to undertake the feeding of the entire population of London. The mouth of Gargantua is but a faint type of even one day's voracity; and all this is devoured in a spot which hardly twenty years ago was unmarked upon the map, a mere streak of pasture-land on the banks of the Grand Junction canal. Surely this is not one of the least astonishing feats wrought by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... unappropriated materials of which his researches had put him in possession. That work, after an interval of ten years, and the writing and publishing of several intermediate ones, is now presented to the public, and with the single remark, that if it is made to possess less interest, as a mere tale, than its predecessor, the excuse must be found in the author's greater anxiety to give a true historic version of the interesting and important events he has undertaken ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... beware of making marriage a mere convenience. There may be folly in calling each truant inclination that deep sentiment and secret sympathy which firmly knits heart to heart, and doubtless a common fortune may bind the worldly-minded together; but this is not the holy union which keeps noble qualities in a family, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... I was a mere child when I lost her," he went on, and there was a moved look on his face; "but I remember her as plainly as I see you now. She was so young and pretty—every one said so. I remember once, when I was lying in my little ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Mr. Kennedy, with a warm expression of friendship on the part of his host, and from Lady Laura with a mere touch of the hand. He tried to say a word; but she was sullen, or, if not, she put on some mood like to sullenness, and said ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... The mere diminution of temperature, which they experience by the privation of animal heat, must, I should suppose, be sufficient to derange the order of attractions ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... But next morning we got a good whipping from our teacher, Nissel the small one, for the bruises we had on our foreheads and the blue marks around our eyes. It is shameful to tell it—we were each whipped in the true style. This was a mere addition, as if we ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... Samuel: And the common weid of that whole Cuntrey was mantils. As to the next, that it was not the spirit of Samuel, I grant: In the proving whereof ye neede not to insist, since all Christians of whatso-ever Religion agrees vpon that: and none but either mere ignorants, or Necromanciers or Witches doubtes thereof. And that the Diuel is permitted at som-times to put himself in the liknes of the Saintes, it is plaine in the Scriptures, where it is said, that Sathan can ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... feelings had only increased the intensity of those feelings; the shadow had been gradually deepening over his whole life, throwing gloom over the sunlight of his joyous youth; and now, for the first time in many years, that shadow seemed to be dispelled. Surely there is no wonder that a mere boy should be reckless of the future in the sunshine of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... courts was passed by him in deer-hunting in the woods. Confining ourselves to the first three and a half years of his actual practice, in which, by the record, his practice was the smallest that he ever had, it is not easy for one to understand how a mere novice in the profession, and one so perfectly ignorant of its most rudimental forms, could have earned, during that brief period, the fees which he charged in 1185 suits, and in the preparation of many legal papers out of court, and still have been seriously addicted to laziness. ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... was in existence at Belhaven in 1739, just ten years before Alexandria was founded. Presumably the Alexandria school of 1760 was put into operation under identical conditions and it may be that special classes beyond the mere rudiments of education were conducted for children whose families could pay extra tuition. Such a plan would closely approximate the tutorial arrangement prevailing on outlying plantations. For orphaned children ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... really pretty," thought Sara, "but how thin and blue. And what mere claws her hands are!" looking at the one clutching a corner of the sheet. "Poor girl! I don't believe she is much older than I, but she looks as if she had suffered enough for an ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... which have so much distinguished his theatrical career, and to give those sharp and distinct reproductions of character which alone can present to the reader the mind and spirit of an age. Not a mere historian, he has nevertheless carefully consulted the original sources of information, has weighed testimonies, elicited theories, and... has interpolated the poetry of history ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is a mere weak fool. I don't blame him,—he can't help it; but to see him made a tool of! He twists him round his finger, abuses his weakness to insult—to accuse. But he ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her, sleep-talking was uncanny to the point of horror; it was like the talking of the dead, mere parody of a living ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, 35 or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in the nature of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was a two-edged sword to cut both ways. You could trade with it, using it as a bribe, bartering vote for vote; that was one edge. Or you could threaten with it, promising nay for nay, and thus compel some member to save your bill to save his own; that was the other edge. A mere bribe from the lobby owned but the one edge; it was like a cavalry saber; you might make the one slash at a required vote, with as many chances of missing as of cutting it down. Every argument, therefore, pointed to a seat; whereat Patrick Henry Hanway bent himself to its acquirement, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round the neck of the miserable Dick Veneer, who made no sign of resistance,—whether on account of the pain he was in, or from mere helplessness, or because he was waiting for some unguarded moment to escape,—since resistance seemed ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mere pageants and ceremonies were concerned, Peter would probably have been very easily satisfied, and would have made no objection to paying such a token of respect to the patriarch as walking before him through the street once a year, and holding ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... was very injudicious in his treatment of her when he found out what was going on, and as this was the first time in her life that Edith's wishes had been crossed, it was not likely that she would yield without a struggle. The mere fact of opposition seemed to deepen what was at first merely an ordinary liking into an absorbing passion. It was perfectly useless to reason with her; she disbelieved all the stories to his discredit, which were abundant, and ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... General R. B. Hayes, who succeeded me as President of the United States, bore a very honorable part. His conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry as well as the display of qualities of a higher order than that of mere personal daring. This might well have been expected of one who could write at the time he is said to have done so: "Any officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress, ought to be scalped." Having entered the army as a Major of Volunteers ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... they were alone, "was it mere diffidence, or why was it, that he could not look me in the eyes? I wonder if he is concealing anything. It was in the afternoon and evening that papa was unlike himself yesterday. I wish I really knew whether or not that young man is hiding ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... what important concerns depended upon the life of this fragile little being, and to what a stormy and precarious career she might be destined. Her solitary position, also, separated from all her kindred except her little sister, a mere effigy of royalty in the hands of statesmen, and surrounded by the formalities and ceremonials of state, which spread sterility around ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... her—had anything happened to her lover? No; that was not it. The man she had met on horseback spoke of her having company soon again. How soon? she wondered. He had been unable to say when he should return, and now she suddenly felt that a great silence had enveloped him lately: not the mere silence of absence, of receiving no messages or letters, but another sort of silence which now, at this moment, was ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... hat proudly adorned with ribbons and plumes, and flew a flag before his dwelling with the initials of the North American Trading and Transportation Company on it—a defunct Alaskan corporation. We could not learn the origin thereof; the flag and the letters were plainly home-made. It was probably a mere imitation of a flag he had seen years ago at Tanana, copied without knowledge of the meaning of the letters, as the Esquimaux often copy into the decoration of their clothing and equipment the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... peril has been brought upon us by that foul system which came so near making a wreck of you, my precious one, as it has wrecked thousands of pure and gentle souls. I foresee that this war is destined, by mere force of circumstances, to rid the Republic of that deadly incubus. Rosa, are you not willing to give me up for the safety of the country, and the freedom ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... attendant, sole survivor of the field, to throw his sword Excalibar into the lake hard by. Twice eluding the request, the esquire at last complied, and threw the far-famed weapon into the lonely mere. A hand and arm arose from the water and caught Excalibar by the hilt, flourished it thrice, and then sank into the lake.[27] The astonished messenger returned to his master to tell him the marvels he had seen, but he only saw a boat at a distance push from the land, and heard shrieks ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... were more than he expected, and turned his anger into contempt for one so easily cowed and held in subjection by mere force. "He is mad!" he said, turning on his heel as he spoke, so that he lost his mother's look of pained reproach at this sudden free utterance of what was a lurking ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the painful scene that followed—a scene in which, as a mere Tommy, I had too much discipline to intervene? In vain the obsequious purveyor of tickets offered a selection of the world's most popular and celebrated operas for any other day but Monday. Nothing would do for my officer but Keine Vorstellung. Indeed, as he explained in his best and loudest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... Norwegian"—was all I could say, at which she laughed more joyously than ever, and rattled off a number of excellent jokes, no doubt at my helpless condition. Indeed, I strongly suspected, from a familiar word here and there, that she was making love to me out of mere sport, though she was guarded enough not to make any intelligible demonstration to that effect. At last I got out my vocabulary, and as we jogged quietly along the road, by catching a word now and then, and making her repeat what she said very slowly, got so far as ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... impression yet remains in architecture; but, as in Sicily, these barbarians, unrecruited from the North, soon died away, or were assimilated as usual with the more polished people, whom they had subdued by mere superiority ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... hills round about it I soon perceived the sagacity of the hunter in the site for his camp. Not a wind could touch him; and unless by the report of his gun or the sound of his axe, it would have been by mere accident if an Indian had discovered ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... has a horror of democracy; only like all energetic pessimists, who are not mere triflers, he used to say from time to time: "There are pessimists who are resigned and cowardly. We do not wish to be like them." When he would not take this view he persuaded himself to look at democracy through ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... hopeless minority; a certain number of German Prussians who think war good for the soul, and the dear ladies of the London Morning Post who think war so good for the manners of the working classes, are rare, discordant voices in the general chorus against war. If a mere unsupported and uncoordinated will for peace could realise itself, there would be peace, and an enduring peace, to-morrow. But, as a matter of fact, there is no peace coming to-morrow, and no clear prospect yet of an enduring universal peace at the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... ordinary classes. The ample means of both her father's and her husband's family had furnished all that was necessary to the improvement of the mind of one in her station, and perhaps she had been the gainer, in mere deportment, by having been greatly excluded, by their prejudices, from association with females of her own condition. As is often seen among those who have the thoughts without the conventional usages of a better ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... coming, when it first heaved in sight," chirped Miss Georgie, in a more cheerful tone than she had used that day; in too cheerful a tone to be quite convincing, if any one there had been taking notice of mere tones. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at all the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he moves among the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... keep the lovers apart for any mere purposes of fiction,—this is a true chronicle, and they stayed apart most of that winter. Jethro went about his daily tasks, which were now become manifold, and he wore the locket on its little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... light which flashed in their eyes from the reflecting mirrors of Anthemius; they were astonished by the noise which he produced from the collision of certain minute and sonorous particles; and the orator declared in tragic style to the senate, that a mere mortal must yield to the power of an antagonist, who shook the earth with the trident of Neptune, and imitated the thunder and lightning of Jove himself. The genius of Anthemius, and his colleague Isidore the Milesian, was excited and employed by a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... long fissure in the massive walls shows that the tower has been rent by some of the earthquakes which from time to time have thrown Granada into consternation; and which, sooner or later, must reduce this crumbling pile to a mere mass of ruin. The deep, narrow glen below us, which gradually widens as it opens from the mountains, is the valley of the Darro; you see the little river winding its way under embowered terraces and among orchards ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... they constitute the basic conditions of his life. When the Socialist movement was in its infancy in this country—though it had made great headway in several of the leading countries of Europe—the customary way of disposing of it was with a mere wave of the hand. Socialism can never work; it is contrary to human nature—these simple assertions were regarded by nearly all conservatives as sufficient to settle the matter in the minds of all sensible persons That is now no longer so much the ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... so. He then gave his name, but hastened to assure them that he was not their preserver, insisting that Zac had the better claim to that title. To this, however, the others listened with polite incredulity, and Mimi evidently considered it all the mere expression of a young man's modesty. She waved her little hand with ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... Saxony that this was only one of the numerous German topics on which little publicity was shed in his homeland in spite of the general emphasis laid on German preeminence. This emphasis was mainly a diffusion, through mere books of information, about achievements and an extraordinary condition of learned mentality. Of the actual inhabitants beyond the Rhine, ignorance was kept widespread. German femininity was assumed to be of a predominating excellence to ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... morning to speak to the bishops. On Sunday I shall take the perilous leap." The king's connection with Gabrielle presented another strong motive to influence his conversion. Henry, when a mere boy, had been constrained by political considerations to marry the worthless and hateful sister of Charles IX. For the wife thus coldly received he never felt an emotion of affection. She was an unblushing profligate. The king, in one of ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the rest of Dorothy's letters. It will, I think, throw great light on his character as a lover, showing him to have been ardent and ecstatic in his suit, making quite clear Dorothy's wisdom in insisting, as she often does, on the necessity of some more material marriage portion than mere love and hope. His reference to the "unhappy differences" strengthens my view that the letters of the former chapter belong all ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... into which newspapers never find their way, it is not a matter of surprise, that Mr. Knickerbocker should never have seen the numerous advertisements that were made concerning him; and that he should learn of the publication of his history by mere accident. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... motor acts that the individual acquires are based upon the reflexes. They are modified reflexes. The simplest kind of modification is the mere strengthening of an act by exercise. By his reflex breathing and crying, the new-born baby exercises his lungs and breathing muscles and the nerve centers that control them, with the result that his breathing becomes more vigorous, his crying louder. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Fontaine, bending the knee before her, "La mere des amours, et la reine des graces, c'est Bouillon, et Venus lui cede ses emplois." [Footnote: La Fontaine's "Letters to the Duchess ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... I went back to my boat, made some coffee over a spirit-lamp, devoured a few biscuits, and stretched myself aft, to smoke and gaze at the stars. The earth was a mere shadow, formless and silent, and empty, till a bullock turned up from somewhere, quite shadowy too. He came smartly to the very edge of the bank as though he meant to step on board, stretched his muzzle right over my boat, blew heavily once, and walked off contemptuously into the darkness ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... unbroken verdure, on which you can see none of the sculptural ornaments, nor any of the hieroglyphics of Time. A sweep of ivy here and there, with the gray wall everywhere showing through, makes the better picture; and I think that nothing is so effective as the little bunches of flowers, a mere handful, that grow in spots where the seeds have been carried by the wind ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a part of this regiment pursued the enemy's right upwards of a mile, and took 100 prisoners; his left was also pursued, and more than a hundred prisoners were taken beyond our works. These facts prove that the affair was not merely a defence of our position, or a mere repulse of the enemy, as I find it called by some. As regards myself, I am satisfied with the result, and am not disposed to make any difficulty about the name by which the affair may be called; but it is due to the brave men I have the honour to command, that I should say, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... great company of his chief warriors, Sir Geraint visited all the bounds of his territory. Experienced guides went with him, and old men learned in the marks of the boundaries, and priests, and they renewed the mere-marks that were broken down, and replaced those which had been ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... sectarian terms at the end of his tongue; never uttered a careless expression; was regular at meeting; apparently performed all the duties that his church required of its professors, in the way of mere religious observances; yet was he as far from being in that state which St. Paul has described succinctly as "for me to live in Christ, and to die is gain," as if he had been a pagan. It was not the love of God that was active in his soul, but the love of ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... had so far forgotten their B.E.F. habits as to pass a brother-officer without some recognition, replied hastily by murmuring the conventional "How are you?" into some innocent civilian's face some yards behind us. Mere stay-at-homes, on the other hand, surprised into believing that they ought to know him, stopped and became quite effusive. As far as I can remember George accepted three invitations to dinner from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... Ephrom, Izik, Zeke, black mammy's grandchildren; where most of us have had our meals prepared by black cooks, and been waited on by black house-servants and dining-room servants, and ridden in carriages and buggies with black hostlers? We are so used to the black people in the South, their mere personal presence is so far from being responsible for our race problem, that the South would not seem Southern without them, as it would not without its crape myrtles, and live-oaks, and magnolias, its cotton ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... mere literary criticism on Smith's writings, it would appear that he had a habit of transferring to his own career notable incidents and adventures of which he had read, and this is somewhat damaging to an estimate of his originality. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not sufficient. I often wonder now whether Gregory might not have saved the finger. If he had performed some small operation at once, cut away the poison, it seems to me that the tragedy might have been averted. I am, I admit, a mere layman in these matters, but it seems to me that something might have ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... example. He is a man of wonderful ability—one of the greatest men of this or any other age. Suppose Mr. Edison were to say: "I know I have a great deal of ability; I think that I will just sit down with folded hands and depend upon the mere possession of my ability to make a living for me"—what do you think would happen? If Mr. Edison were to go to some lonely spot, without tools or food, making up his mind that he need not work; that he could safely depend upon his ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... library door, and in marches a line of pale-faced ascetics, rigid of jaw, cold of eye, and exalted with that gloomy fervour which counts burning life's highest joy. Among them was the famous witch-hanger of after years, a mere youth then, but about his lips the hard lines of a spiritual zeal scarce ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and merciful dispensation of Providence that most fathers and mothers seem never to be capable of remembering their own experience, and will probably go on till the end of time thinking of their sons of twenty and daughters of sixteen or seventeen as mere children who may be allowed to run about together as much as they please. And, where it is otherwise, the results are not very different, for there are certain mysterious ways of holding intercourse implanted in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... what these weird Americans hope. Hawcastle assures me you have some such idea, but my charge has studied under my instruction—deportment, manners, and ideals—which has lifted her above the mere American circumstance of her birth. She has ambitions. If you stand in the way of them she will wither, she will die like a caged bird. All that was sordid about her parentage she has cast off. We have thought that we might make something ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... mere eagerness to be freed from an accusation which led the two young men down to the General's camp next morning to wait until they could ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and movement rest. They are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to that, as they are abandoning themselves to the mere pleasure of riding ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... hands; in a flash Hap Smith had dropped his reins so that they were held only by the ring caught over the little hook at the back of the seat and had whipped out his own big ugly revolver. His eyes ran this way and that; in his soul he knew well enough that no mere bit of chance had thrown the obstruction across his way. But never a head nor an arm nor a rifle barrel rewarded his look. Until, suddenly, heralded by a curt shouted command, a man rode out into the open road from ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... after the arrest of the Kid's gang near Sumner, and is not known in connection with any further criminal acts, though he still for a long time wore two guns in the settlements. Once a well-known sheriff happened, by mere chance, to be in his town, not knowing Pickett was there. The latter literally took to the woods, thinking something was on foot in which he was concerned. Being reminded that he had lost an opportunity to show how ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... been said, was painfully interested in the result of the race. To him the defeat of Parrett's meant more than the mere disappointment of a hope or the humiliation by a rival. It meant the loss of a good deal more money than he possessed, and the miscarriage of a good deal which he had expected with absolute confidence to win. No wonder then that his face was ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... get any of those lovely crisp crescent rolls that accord so rhythmically with orange marmalade and strawberry jam. I couldn't get hot buttered toast either, but only some thin hard slabs of war bread, which seemingly had been dry-cured in a kiln. I could have but a very limited amount of sugar—a mere pinch, in fact; and if I used it to tone up my coffee there would be none left for oatmeal porridge. Moreover, this dab of sugar was to be my full day's allowance, it seemed. There was no cream for the porridge either, but, instead, a small measure ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... for goodness and truth in every form. In short, through the curriculum the latent powers constituting the life capital of every normal child are to be stimulated and developed to the end that his life shall be more than mere physical existence—to the end that it shall be crowned with fullness of knowledge, richness of feeling, and the victory of worthy achievement. This is the right of every child in these prosperous and enlightened times,—the ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... Freddy, so naturally people began to say that at last Lampton had been "caught." She had danced very often, too, with Michael, and even Freddy's step had not suited hers so well. With Michael there was something more than mere perfection of dancing; there was the added sympathy of mind as well as body. When his arms encircled her for the first time and Margaret felt him steering her gently but firmly through the well-filled room, such ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... just appreciation of an older writer. The new concept, which Theobald owed largely to Richard Bentley as primate of the classical scholars, was of course the narrower one—implicit in it was the idea of specialization—and Theobald's opponents among the literati were quick to assail him as a mere "Word-catcher" (cf. R.F. Jones, Lewis ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... her father's life, Felicia—a great artist and still a mere child—used to execute half of his works; and nothing was more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed peaceably; although ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... objection, to my mind," Mr. Keller answered. "But your objection is simply unaccountable; and I press you for your motives, having this good reason for doing so on my side. If I am to disappoint my sister—cruelly to disappoint her—it must be for some better cause than a mere caprice." ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins |
