"Modicum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell you now by what arguments Dr. Voss, at first merely my benefactor, sparing me a portion of his small modicum, at length persuaded me to become his wife. His wife he called it, I called it; for we went through the religious ceremony too much slighted at the time, and as we were both Lutherans, and M. de la Tourelle had pretended to be of the reformed ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he recognized its ludicrous aspect. Still, he could not withdraw then, and he made the best of a difficult position with a certain gracefulness which might, under different circumstances, have secured him a modicum of consideration. As it was, however, Hetty's anger left her almost white, and there was a light he did not care to see in her eyes when she turned ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... than done! I escorted Bridget to a restaurant, and fed her and myself with lots of good hot food, and then straightway hired a taxi, and drove back to the agents to demand addresses of flats a little further afield, which should have at least a modicum of light and air. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... LITTLE bit of Thackeray, A little bit of Scott, A modicum of Dickens just To tangle up the plot, A paraphrase of Marryat, Another from Dumas— You ask me for a novel, sir, And ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... said the Rector, "if I remark that an hereditary peerage is so important an institution, that we should be very careful how we criticise any members of it. At the same time," he went on, turning apologetically to Westray, "there is perhaps a modicum of reason in our friend's remarks. I had hoped that Lord Blandamer would have contributed handsomely to the restoration fund, but he has not hitherto done so, though I dare say that his continued absence abroad accounts for some delay. He only succeeded ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... work which could not well be adjusted without some contrivance. He was a little, withered, dissipated, broken-down man, whom gin and poverty had nearly burnt to a cinder, and dried to an ash. Mind he had none left, nor care for earthly things, except the smallest modicum of substantial food, and the largest allowance of liquid sustenance. All that he had ever known he had forgotten, except how to count up figures and to write: the results of his counting and his writing never stayed with him from one hour to another; nay, not from one folio to another. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... sight that same hundred-acre bog must have been a couple of weeks later, when the berries had ripened, and a carpet of rosy redness blushed upwards to the waning sun! Yet 1858 (the even year) was a bad season for cranberries,—the yield was only sufficient to pay for the land and fencing, with a modicum over to begin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... common acquaintances. Or did you know Mrs. Larry Holbury? She has been reigning graciously over us, and I am among the smitten. However, since both she and Stuart are to sail on the Nippon Maru I have no great modicum ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... huge hotel expenses; Your beef was rightly of a super-cut; A modicum of wine does whet the senses; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... we can find the trick to make the end. The play, I fear, will have to end darkly, and that spoils the quality as I now see it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth century, high-life-below-stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring before the nature and the certain modicum of manhood of my poor, clever, feather-headed Prince, whom I love already. I see Seraphina too. Gondremarck is not quite so clear. The Countess von Rosen, I have; I'll never tell you who she is; it's a secret; but I have known the countess; well, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the eighteenth century were almost always content to maintain in tolerable, or scarcely tolerable repair, at the lowest modicum of expense, the existing fabrics of their churches. It has been truly remarked, that 'to this apathy we are much indebted; for, after all, they took care that the buildings should not fall to the ground; if they had done more, they would probably have done worse.'[838] For ecclesiastical architecture ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... furnished already with Aunt Jane's things, she need only take a few extras from the home. The debts were to be paid as far as possible now, and the small income was to be divided; part was to go as pin money to Mrs. Polkington, the main part of the remainder to go to the debts, and a very small modicum to come with the Captain to ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... either rose or fell much from a certain pitch; and at that level the words gurgled forth, seemingly from an ever-brimming fountain; he never wanted one; and the stream had neither let nor stay till his modicum of sense had fairly run out. People thought he had not a greater stock of that than some of his neighbours; but he issued an amount of word-currency sufficient for the use of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... war, Where I might have observed, more than I did, Patience and wholesome passion. I was there, And for such honor I gave nothing worse Than some advice at which he may have smiled. I must have given a modicum besides, Or the rough interval between those days And these would never have made for me my friends, Or enemies. I should be something somewhere — I say not what — but I should not be here If ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the Disagreeable Girl her opportunity. In the paper-box factory she would have to make good; Cluett, Coon and Company ask for results; the stage demands a modicum at least of intellect, in addition to shape; but society asks for nothing but pretense, and the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... more and more scornful of the girls who could be content with the narrow, humdrum routine at Harding. But she concealed her scorn perfectly. And she no longer neglected her work; she attended her classes regularly and managed with a modicum of preparation to recite far better than the average student. Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness. She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate, and when ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... and even now in New-Jersey servants are "bought" as really as in Virginia. And the different senses in which the same word is used in the two states, puts no man in a quandary, whose common sense amounts to a modicum. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... you three are brothers and sister to me, and that if you had been so, I could not love you better. I have so many cousins, and uncles and aunts, and bloods that grow in Norfolk, that if I had portioned out my affections to them, as they say I should, what a modicum would have fallen to each!-So, to avoid fractions, I love my family in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Commodore Martin, who had arrived overnight, appears in the Bay, with due modicum of seventy-fours, 'dursley galleys,' bomb-vessels, on an errand from his Admiral [one Matthews] and the Britannic Majesty, much to the astonishment of Naples. Commodore Martin hovers about, all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Roman men of the world, but it also doubtless reflects the tendencies of the Syrian branch of the school from which he sprang; for the Syrian group had had to cast off some of its traditional fanaticism and acquire a few social graces and a modicum of worldly wisdom in its long contact with the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... are marred and degraded by the influences under which they are nurtured. Yet what can the more fortunate individual do in the matter? If all the rich men in England were to resign to-morrow all the wealth they possessed, reserving only a bare modicum of subsistence, the matter could not be amended. Even that wealth could not be wisely applied; and, if equally divided, it would hardly make any appreciable difference. What is worse, it would not alter the baneful influences ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... peace requirements and experience shape the type and design of aircraft and engine best suited to its purposes. Although a good deal has under the circumstances already been achieved in peace, much remains to be done. Gradually, however, with a modicum of research, improvements in the factors already mentioned and the reduction of initial cost and maintenance expenses, air transport for mails, passengers and goods will take its place as a normal commercial public utility service, and the increased speed of communication will ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... movement of the verses. And whenever such a correspondence exists, it is due either to the fact that the incidence of stress tends to lengthen a syllable or to the fact that, oftentimes, in polysyllabic words, mere length will produce a stress. This is the modicum of truth in the quantitative view. But obviously ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Literate.—Education is not compulsory by law in Athens, but the father who fails to give his son at least a modicum of education falls under a public contempt, which involves no slight penalty. Practically all Athenians are at least literate. In Aristophanes's famous comedy, "The Knights," a boorish "sausage-seller" is introduced, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... plague and fever infected region of that Republic, which has for so long constituted a menace to health conditions on the Canal Zone. It is hoped that the report which this mission will furnish will point out a way whereby the modicum of assistance which the United States may properly lend the Ecuadorian Government may be made effective in ridding the west coast of South America of a focus of contagion to the future commercial current passing through ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... circa diaetis per aquam satis tenuem, haud profundam. Ibi, sicut et in alijs multis Insulis, rex non nascitur sed eligitur per partes terrae: et est haec vna de quindecim nominatis Regionibus conquisitionis Ogeri. Ista, cum modicum declinet a circulo terrae sub AEquatore, patitur in anno duas aestates, et duas hyemes, si tamen hyems aliqua dici debeat, et non magis aestas, quia nullus hic dies anni ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... successor of Lalbeg comes from the Punjab every year or two. He is richly clad and is followed by a sweeper carrying an umbrella. Other Hindus say that his teaching is that no one who is not a Lalbegi can go to heaven, but those on whom the dust raised by a Lalbegi sweeping settles acquire some modicum of virtue. Similarly Mr. Greeven remarks: [239] "Sweepers by no means endorse the humble opinion entertained with respect to them; for they allude to castes such as Kunbis and Chamars as petty (chhota), while a common anecdote is related to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... is entirely wanting in many cases, I may mention that I once received a letter in which the writer had literally copied one of my column advertisements, and then added, "Please send me what relates to the above!" A modicum of mental training would have led him to say, "Kindly send ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... of Twickenham was egregiously mistaken when he pronounced "a little learning" to be "a dangerous thing." Had it not been for the modicum of letters, small as it was, acquired by Mr. Wheelwright, at the school of which I had occasion to speak early in the present history, to say nothing, as seems most meet, of the university, his family would now have been rather short of bread and butter. They had great possessions, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... definition, which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity of digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of personal fact." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... can do my day's work yet. Ah! an' it 'ud be well if that gomerl, Renny Potter, 'ud do his'n. See here, now, Mester Adrian, nowt but a pint of wine left; and it the last," pointing her withered finger, erratically as the palsy shook it, at a cut-glass decanter where a modicum of port wine sparkled richly under the facets. "And he not back yet, whatever mischief's agate wi' him, though he kens yo like your meat at one." And then circumstances obliged her to add: "He is landing now, but it's ower ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... defer the relating of what I desired for a little while; which we all thinking most proper, I desired him and his friend (who might be another brother for aught I knew) to refresh themselves with the poor modicum I was able ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... unmethodical, was delicately neat; and though she kept them waiting for their dinner, always served it up with the precision of past prosperity. Cheap cookery and cottage economy were the study, and the results were pronounced admirable; but the master was the dispenser; and when a modicum of meat was to make nourishing a mountain of rice, or an ocean of broth, it would occur to him, as he helped Isabel, that the piece de resistance would hardly hold out for the kitchen devourers. He would take the recipe at its word, and dine on ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the education of their children. In a country in which there was more importance attached than in perhaps any other in the world to the religious teaching of the minister, there was so little importance attached to the religious teaching of the schoolmaster, that, when weighed against even a slight modicum of secular qualification, it was found to have no sensible weight. And with this great practical fact some of our leading men seemed to be so little acquainted, that they were going on with the machinery of their educational scheme, on a scale at least co-extensive ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the lady was a reader of character—of hobo character at least—and she saw nothing in the appearance of either of these two that inspired even a modicum of confidence. Now the young fellow who had been there earlier in the day and who, wonder of wonders, had actually paid for the food she gave him, had been of a different stamp. His clothing had proclaimed him a tramp, but, thanks to the razor Bridge always carried, he was clean ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stand so quiet. I've got hold of yours, and now I'll fasten them together. I say, Whitefoot, you don't kick, do you?" And then he contrived to picket the horses to two branches, and having got out his case of sherry, poured a small modicum into the silver mug which was attached to the apparatus and again supported Graham while he drank. "You'll be as right as a trivet by-and-by; only you'll have to make Noningsby your headquarters for the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... weaver of moonshine, of mystic phrases, of sweet gestures and veiled sonorities should not have worn the guise of one who ate three meals a day and slept soundly after his mellow incantations. Yet she was not—inheriting, as she did, a modicum ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... pleasantly for both the sisters. Jacinth earned her aunt's commendation by her quick neat-handedness and accuracy, and a modicum of praise from Miss Mildmay meant a good deal. The little misunderstanding of the morning, ending as it had done in making the aunt, an essentially just woman, blame herself for hasty judgment, had drawn her and ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... court at an early day, and succeeded in making a favorable impression upon my hearers. To be a good speaker, in the south and southwest, is to be everything. Eloquence implies wisdom—at least all the wisdom which is supposed to be necessary in making lawyers and law-makers—a precious small modicum of a material by no means precious. I was supposed to have the gift of the gab in moderate perfection, and my hearers were indulgent. My name obtained circulation, and, in a short time, I discovered that, in a professional as well as personal point of view, I had no ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... of three we are not represented in the House of Commons by a number of members greater than that to which our population at the present moment would, taking the three kingdoms as whole, entitle us, but one must point out that the system of electing representative peers robs us of even that modicum of democratic peers of Parliament which Great Britain is able to secure, and we repeat the argument of Mr. Gladstone that the distance of Dublin from Westminster and the consequent deafness of the House of Commons to Irish opinion is to a slight extent redressed by the small excess—calculated ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... teachers alike, and which must therefore be so framed that the least capable teacher, working under the least favourable conditions, may hope, when his pupils are examined on it, to achieve with decent industry a decent modicum of success. Under the control of a uniform syllabus, the schools which are now specialising and experimenting, and so giving a lead to the rest, would have to abandon whatever was interesting in their respective curricula, and fall ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... in common talk. But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of rain-water, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then at back, front, and sides, and yet to work on till the leaden light diminishes and marks that the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... workmates enjoyed the privilege of the same elementary training, they might have shown an equal facility in the humble task of pasting and labeling and tissuing paper boxes. "Lame Lena" knew how to work; she knew how to husband every modicum of nervous energy in her frail, deformed body; and thus she was able to make up—more than make up—for her physical inferiority. "Lame Lena" brought to her sordid task a certain degree of organizing faculty; she did the various processes rhythmically and ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... they believe him to be, not omniscient, but competent and trustworthy, and a great burden is lifted from their hearts when they see him take command of the ship. On all other subjects besides religion, people are able to exercise their common sense; why can they not use a modicum of the same common sense when they come to ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... statesmanship should at once perceive the immense benefit that would ultimately result from such refusal of the franchise. The cardinal recommendation of that refusal is that it would avert definitively the political domination of the Blacks, which must inevitably be the outcome of any concession of the modicum of right so earnestly desired. The exclusion of the Negro vote being inexpedient, if not impossible, the exercise of electoral powers by the Blacks must lead to their returning candidates of their own race to the local legislatures, and ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... almost perished man had regained consciousness and a modicum of strength, the girls were told the rest of his story, which ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... that unless a man puts a high appraisal upon his attainments and ability no one else is likely to do so, and that the public takes one, nine times out of ten, at his own valuation. Coming on the clay itself: I wore my hair rather long, with an appreciable modicum of bear's grease well rubbed in, side whiskers and white beaver, and carried a carpet bag on which was embroidered a stag's head in yellow on a background of green worsted. And the principal fact to be observed in this connection is that, instead of creating a smile ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... spirits and loved a jest, began to flirt with the girl, whom he saw for the first time. She, who neither meant nor suspected any ill, was quite at her ease, and we should have enjoyed the joke, and everything would have gone on pleasantly, if her husband had possessed some modicum of manners and common sense, but he began to get into a perfect fury of jealousy. He ate nothing, changed colour ten times in a minute, and looked daggers at his wife, as much as to say he did not see the joke. To crown ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to my story: it's a sort of shilling-shock tale, With no end of fire and fury, and a modicum of blood, And a Colonel who mixed metaphors as Yankees mix a cocktail, And a quiverful of arrows, shameful arrows, ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... together on the porch they would wait for the moon to stream across the silver acres of farmland, jump a thick wood and tumble waves of radiance at their feet. In such a moonlight Gloria's face was of a pervading, reminiscent white, and with a modicum of effort they would slip off the blinders of custom and each would find in the other almost the quintessential romance ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... have goods to sell you soon find your place at the counter, unless owing to some fault of character your fellow barterers and their patrons will have none of you. Of course there is always the meanest of all passions, jealousy, waiting to thwart you at every turn, but no woman with a modicum of any one of those wares the world wants and must have need fear any enemy but her own loss ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and withal so romantic in its elements. She exulted in the struggle, without realizing, as she might have done in a calmer mood, the vast perspective of present and future sorrow which it presented to Phillida. The disclosure of Phillida's position opened up not the modicum of practical wisdom which she possessed but ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... old way of making a cream enamel for stoving (a white was supposed to be impossible) was to mix ordinary tub white lead with the polishing copal varnish and to add a modicum of blue to neutralize the yellow tinge, stove same in about 170 deg.F. and then polish as before described". "This," continues Mr. Dickson, "would at the best produce but a very pale blue enamel or a cream. It was afterwards made with flake white or dry white lead ground ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... cautious feeler with the object of ascertaining whether perchance it had occurred to me that it might be politic on my part to confirm the excellent impression which I had already made by bestowing upon him and his fellow indunas a small—a very small—modicum of the inestimable treasures which they all knew my wagon must still contain. To this I replied that the idea was at that moment the one uppermost in my mind, and that I gladly availed myself of the opportunity afforded by the king's temporary absence to invite them to call upon ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Dinner.—2 p.m.:—A modicum of beef marrow soup; four ounces of meat, preferably of fatty character; moderate quantity of vegetable, especially the legumines, but no potatoes or anything containing starch; raw fruits in season, and cooked fruits (stewed, without sugar); two or three glasses of light ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... passage across; and what did that stay imply? It meant being in a hostile country, confronted by countless cavalry, legions of light infantry. And what had we? A heavy infantry force certainly, with which we could have dashed at villages in a body possibly, and seized a modicum of food at most; but as to pursuing the enemy with such a force as ours, or capturing men or cattle, the thing was out of the question; for when I rejoined you your original cavalry and light infantry divisions had disappeared. In such sore straits ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... is, two tumblers, one with a stand, the other with a flat bottom, and a tea-cup with a spoon in it. The tea-cup was put opposite Father John's chair, and the reverend father himself proceeded to pour a tolerable modicum of spirits out of the stone jar into a good-sized milk jug, and ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... hobnobbing and on the best of possible terms with the guardians of public immorality. We all feel, as indeed has been said in other nations, that the poor abuses of the time want countenance, and this moreover in the interests of the uses themselves, for the presence of a small modicum of sincerity acts as a wholesome stimulant and irritant to the prevailing spirit of academicism; moreover, we hold it useful to have a certain number of melancholy examples whose notorious failure shall serve as a warning to those who do not cultivate a power of immoral self-control ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... in. Captain Bacon almost fell, but recovered his balance, and, holding the broken bones together, staggered toward the booby-hatch for support. He groaned in pain, but did not curse; for it requires a modicum of self-respect for this, and Captain Bacon's self-respect was ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... cost. Selling expensive articles on the installment plan now seems a commonplace of business, but in those days it was practically unknown. McCormick was the first to see its possibilities. He established an agent, usually the general storekeeper, in every agricultural center. Any farmer who had a modicum of cash and who bore a reputation for thrift and honesty could purchase a reaper. In payment he gave a series of notes, so timed that they fell due at the end of harvesting seasons. Thus, as the money came in from successive harvests, the pioneer paid off the notes, taking two, three, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... remember his feminine beauty, his perfect figure, and the easy grace of all his movements. His mind had received no other cultivation than that of a well-educated man of the world. Religion in his eyes was inseparable from good breeding and the modicum of common sense which a classical education is apt ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... modicum on "Chimney-Sweepers," which your last paper contained, with pleasure. It appears to be the production of that sort of mind which you justly denominate "gifted;" but which is greatly undervalued by the majority of men, because they have no sympathies in common ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... however, it is necessary to be said that a modicum of merit goes a long way in all such matters, and it would not be safe now to assume that ours was much above the average of amateur attempts in general. Lemon certainly had most of the stuff, conventional as well as otherwise, of a regular actor in him, but this was not of a high kind; and though ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... chickens and a passel of turkeys and we waked up Mr. Mark to tell him and he said—" Stonie paused in the rapid fire of his announcement of the morning news and then added in judicial tone of voice, as if giving the aroused sleeper his modicum of fair play: "Well, he didn't quite say it before he swallowed, but he throwed a pillow at Tobe and pulled the sheet over his head and groaned awful. Aunt Viney was saying her prayers when I went to tell her, and Aunt Mandy was taking ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... N. smallness &c. adj.; littleness &c. (small size) 193; tenuity; paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight[obs3], whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "if you wish to make an Englishman respect you, you must treat him with insolence." The language is somewhat too strong, and it would not be altogether safe to act upon the suggestion; but the witticism embodies a modicum of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... her sleek hair and some flicker of a girlhood that had its modicum of grace, flared up in the swift curtsy with which ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... souls liked the old cottages, lop-sided as they were—liked the crooked staircase squeezed into a corner of the living room below, the stuffy little dens above, with casement windows which only opened on one side, letting in the smallest modicum of air, and were not often opened at all. Cottages on the Now Arden model meant stone floors below and open rafters above, thorough draughts everywhere, and, worst of all, they meant weekly inspection by Miss Granger. The free sons and daughters of Hickly-on-the-Hill—this ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... I too was foolishly intent to divert the leisure hours of posterity. But reflection assured me that posterity had, thus far, done very little to place me under that or any other obligation. Ah, no! Youth, health and—though I say it—a modicum of intelligence are loaned to most of us for a while, and for a terribly brief while. They are but loans, and Time is waiting greedily to snatch them from us. For the perturbed usurer knows that he is lending us, perforce, three priceless possessions, and that till our lease runs out ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... efforts for securing all they can in worldly effects. They almost repent of the bargain—it was too cheap—think of the price paid for the bride's mother—the expenses incurred during a long illness of the bride in her infancy—and compare the modicum demanded for her marriage; it is outrageous! no, the marriage can not go on, the girl is not in good health, and the ordeal might increase her ailment. Every sort of trick is resorted to in order that the other side may be more generous in the bestowal of gifts. The discussion ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... these missionaries by the greatness of Confucius that they urged upon the Vatican the expediency of placing his name upon the calendar of Saints. They began by combating his teachings, but this they soon ceased to do, and the modicum of success which they obtained was through beginning each Christian service by the hymn which may properly be called the National Anthem of China. Its opening ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... misfortunes which befall us, even the names of adversities and injuries? Are we not ashamed to ask a share of His divine patience to help us to bear such trifles as these, seeing that the smallest modicum of moderation and humility would suffice to make us bear calmly the insults offered ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... in the Church of England? There is certainly, or rather there was, a modicum of priestcraft in the Church of England, but I have generally found that those who are most vehement against the Church of England are chiefly dissatisfied with her because there is only a modicum of that article in her. Were she stuffed to the very cupola with ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... his way. To recover the right road, if want of success have not discouraged him, he can rely only on perseverance, the sole compass of the poor. Such was my fate. I taught myself by teaching others, by passing on to them the modicum of seed that had ripened on the barren moor cleared, from day to day, by my ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... where the dictum, 'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach,' no longer holds true. It means that we weary, work-hardened experts are called in every so often, handed our little blue ticket, and given six months off—with pay—if we will only do the younger generation the favor of pounding a modicum of knowledge into their heads. During that time, if we are very careful, we can try to prevent our muscles from going to flab and our brains from corroding with ennui, so that when we again debark into the infinite sea of emptiness ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... intricacies of the employment of those mysterious means by which she accomplished the charming effect that she did in some intuitive way presently accomplish; and at any rate I decline the task of description. I confess, however, that the little packet contained a modest modicum of the necessary materials, whatever they were; and I have no hesitation in praising the generous interest, the discretion and exuberant experience of the gay widow of the late Cap'n Saul Nash o' the Royal Bloodhound, whose letter, dealing with the most satisfactory methods of application, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... sign of his former respectability, and where he acts as master of the ceremonies to a clique of ancient ladies, his fellow-lodgers, to whom he is at once the guardian and the beau of the fourth floor. When he had received his own little modicum of benevolence, he pleaded hard for the immediate settlement of the claim of one of his fair coterie, a widow of fourscore and five; and finding that his request could not be complied with, but that she must be left till her ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... satisfaction I saw no profit in wasting that modicum of spleen, when I might double it by deliberately reading her effusion and knowingly casting it into the dust. One always can make excuses to oneself, for curiosity. Consequently I halted, around a corner in this exhausted ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... thinking of turning in, old thing," he observed. "Even newly-engaged people require a modicum of sleep, I suppose"—smiling across ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... by the doctor a certain modicum of whisky in the day, and the dose, for safety's ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... process ended in making him over-timid. It was otherwise with Isaac Hecker. He, too, had stopped to consider many doctrines which purported to be true; more than that, he had recognized in each the modicum of truth which it possessed. But the falsity with which this was overloaded was powerful enough to repel him, in spite of the truth he knew to be contained in it. He carried in himself the touchstone to which all that was akin to it beyond him responded of necessity. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... been the head of a grammar-school, with a comfortable income; but a habit of drinking had been his ruin, and he was now the preceptor of the village of Grassford, and gained his livelihood by instructing the children of the cottagers for the small modicum of twopence a head per week. This unfortunate propensity to liquor remained with him and he no sooner received his weekly stipend than he hastened to drown his cares, and the recollection of his former position, at the ale-house which ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... said Bakkus. "Much reading in military text-books has made him mad. A considerably less interesting fellow than Andrew, who, after all, has a modicum of brains, one Don Quixote, achieved immortality by proceeding ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Munster, gintlemen—glorious Kerry!—yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it. I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system: like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude" (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—"from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person. Gintlemen, I have the honor of being ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of the genus," he said, looking mildly at the horizon—and wanting to laugh, I thought. "But a modicum of brain would show you she hasn't thought it out, at all. How could she in forty-eight hours, being confronted for the first time in her life with the two most glowing things in a girl's fancy—love or a throne? She's dazzled, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... So, a king of Kish, whose name is read Alu-usharshid by Professor Hilprecht,[26] brings costly vases of marble and limestone from Elam and offers them to Bel as a token of victory; and this at a period even earlier than Sargon. Even when En-lil is obliged to yield a modicum of his authority to the growing supremacy of the patron deity of the city of Babylon, the highest tribute that can be paid to the latter, is to combine with his real name, Marduk, the title of "Bel," which of right belongs to En-lil. We shall see how this combination of En-lil, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... She had a momentary impulse that way. Then the irrevocableness of such a move frightened her; and, pale with dismay at what she felt to be a narrow escape from a grave error of judgment, she answered with just enough truth, for her to hope that the modicum of falsehood accompanying it would escape ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... man, am I a reasoning human being, or a novelette-reading jelly-fish? Did I not say that having regard to the interests of both, that is my advice? Kindly credit me with the modicum of intelligence required for adequate consideration of both sides. It isn't an international complication, you know; neither is it a situation entirely without precedent in history. But, mind you, I'm perfectly well aware that no advice, however good, is ever of any practical ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... of its modicum of red earth swamped by a huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at cultivation: I am told that vines once grew here. And, in fact, when we dig the ground before planting a few trees, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... of the family found me later when they came bringing their household goods; here I might have laid, broad and deep, the foundations of a useful life, had I possessed even a modicum of the stick-to-itiveness so essential ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... was open. I plunged into her room. The moment I drew the blanket-thickness from my eyes I knew blindness and a modicum of what Bert Rhine must have suffered. Oh, the intolerable bite of the sulphur in my lungs, nostrils, eyes, and brain! No light burned in the room. I could only strangle and stumble for'ard to Margaret's ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... generally cooked in it was leg of beef, with sliced potato, bits of onion chopped down, and a modicum of white pepper and salt, With just enough of water to cover "the elements." When stewed slowly the meat became very tender; and the whole yielded a capital dish, such as a very Soyer might envy. It was partaken ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... remarked, when he could gain a modicum of attention. "I bear you no ill-will. I like to see you enjoying yourselves. That's why I didn't tell you the whole story at once. The man—what was his name? Critchtichiello?—was shot by some of my agents ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... inner margin in which few grown persons could have stood upright. The port-hole windows were shrouded with rags of cobweb spotted with dead flies. They had evidently not been opened for years; it was even more depressingly obvious that we must not open them. One was thankful for such modicum of comparatively pure air as came up the open stair from the floor below; but in the freshness of the morning one trembled to anticipate the atmosphere of this stale and stuffy eyrie through the heat of a summer's day. And yet neither the size nor the scent of ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... of middle height, sturdy, with broad shoulders and a slow step. His clean-shaven face was a long oval, with pessimistic, brooding eyes—eyes that saw everything except the small modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they were persistently blind. Taking into consideration the small, set mouth, it was eminently a pugnacious face—a face that might easily degenerate to the coarseness of passion ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... same degree of intelligence; He does not endow them equally in this respect. How then could He make intelligence the first principle of salvation and of faith? God searches the heart, not the mind. A modicum of wit is guaranteed to all to know that they can safely believe. Be one ever so unlettered and ignorant, and dull, faith and heaven are to him as accessible as to the sage, savant and the genius. For all, the way is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... her, felt a little mollified and touched as she saw how tenderly the rough hand rested on the child's curls. But Kit pushed it pettishly away. "Don't, Ma'am, you've been and gone and spoiled Jemima's ball dress, and she is going to wear it to-night," and Kit held up a modicum of blue gauze which certainly did not bear the slightest resemblance to a garment, and regarded it anxiously. Jemima herself, a mere battered hulk of a doll, lay in a grimy chemise staring with lack-lustre eyes ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... schools which will satisfy the demands of the Catholics. The Protestant denominations might without difficulty agree upon a common platform, and it is on the cards that they may, in spite of the Catholic opposition, succeed in introducing a modicum of religious instruction into the State schools. The Catholics maintain that false religious teaching is worse than no religious teaching, and will be satisfied with nothing less than a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... people talk about a "good fall" being the best means for teaching horses how to jump, and there is a certain modicum of truth in this, especially with young horses, and young horsemen too for that matter; but when an old hunter gets a "bad" fall, I doubt whether he ever recovers his jumping form again, any more than we ourselves who may have come an awful "buster" after we have reached ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Smith, of Coalville, whose philanthropic efforts on behalf of 'our canal-boat population' are well known, has lately turned his attention to the wandering Gipsy tribes who infest the roadside, with the view to procuring at least a modicum of education for their children. He says that the Gipsies are lamentably ignorant, few of them being able even to write their names. By certain proceedings which took place at Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... obvenit, emi proxime Corinthium signum, modicum quidem, sed festivum et expressum, quantum ego sapio, qui fortasse in omni re, in hac certe perquam exiguum sapio: hoc tamen signum ego quoque intellego. Est enim nudum, nec aut vitia, si qua sunt, celat, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the Romans, Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa Arbitrio tractare suo: nil juris in hac re Pontifici summo, modicum concedere regi Suadebat populo. Sic laesa stultus utraque Majestate, reum geminae se fecerat aulae. Nor is the poetry of Gunther different from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... swam in the Potomac, often for a long (p. 207) time; and more than once he encountered no small risk in this pastime. During the latter part of his Presidential term he tried riding on horseback. At times when the weather compelled him to walk, and business was pressing, he used to get his daily modicum of fresh air before the sun was up. A life of this kind with more of hardship than of relaxation in it was ill fitted to sustain in robust health a man sixty years of age, and it is not surprising that Mr. Adams often complained of feeling ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the certainty of moderate success. It was not, when one considered it, the life which one would have chosen, but who, since the world began, had ever lived exactly the life of his choice? Many women, she reflected stoically, were far worse off than she, since she started not only with a modicum of business experience (for surely the three months with Brandywine & Plummer might weigh as that) but with a knowledge of the world and a social position which she had found to be fairly marketable. That Madame Dinard would have accepted an unknown and undistinguished applicant ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... rapidly away. I had attained my full height, and more than my just share of inches. I already enjoyed a fair modicum of whisker, and had even made some progress in the cultivation of a pair of moustaches, when suddenly the house I was connected with failed. What to do? The governor insisted upon my return to England, where his interest among the mercantile class ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... of children may be for such parents, there will always be mingled with it a modicum of indulgent pity, caused by their distrust, if the parents happen to be people of timidity, of what seem to ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... the Disagreeable Girl her opportunity. In the paper box factory she would have to make good; Cluett, Coon & Co. ask for results; the stage demands at least a modicum of intellect, in addition to shape, but society asks for nothing but pretense, and the palm is awarded to palaver. But do not, if you please, imagine that the Disagreeable Girl does not wield an influence. That is the very point—her influence is so far-reaching ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... patronizing the theatre in the rear. The old bar furniture, brought down by dog team from "Up River," was established at the rear extremity of the long building, just inside the entrance to the dancehall, where patrons of the drama might, with a modicum of delay and inconvenience, quaff as deeply of the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... case where there is little or no self-examination; God unquestionably knows the man as well as the man knows himself. The Omniscient One is certainly possessed of an amount of knowledge equal to that small modicum which is all that a rational and immortal soul can boast of in reference to itself. But the vast majority of mankind fall into this class. The self-examiners are very few, in comparison with the millions who possess the power to look into ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, hoped by this "bit by bit" preparation for the war to show his majesty the czar British desire for peace; and expected to conciliate him by showing how few regiments we were willing to raise, and the modicum of expense wo contemplated. All who knew the habit of thought in Asiatic nations—and Russia is essentially an Asiatic nation—were aware that this parsimonious war-making would have a contrary effect: the czar understood it as a token of a commercial disgust to war, and a dread of adding ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... however, that any question arises requiring much deliberation in the present times of peace. When a party of strange Indians arrives at the village, a council is called to ascertain the means the community may possess of discharging properly the rites of hospitality; each individual states the modicum he is willing to contribute, in cash or in kind, and the proceeds, which are always sufficient to entertain the guests sumptuously, according to Indian ideas, while they remain, are placed at the ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... tariff, and a remark of Hancock to the effect that the tariff was a "local issue" was jeered at as proving an ignorance of public questions. There was little response to the "bloody shirt" and little interest in "the great fraud." A modicum of enthusiasm was injected into the canvass by the participation of Conkling and General Grant. The former was not happily disposed toward the Republican candidate and Grant had always refused to make campaign speeches, but as the autumn came on and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... gate and a lady got out and ran up the courtyard path. Deena had been trying in vain to make quince jelly stiffen—jell was the word used in the receipt book of the late Mrs. Ponsonby—with the modicum of sugar prescribed, till in despair she had resorted to a pinch of gelatine, and felt that the shade of her mother-in-law was ticking the word incompetent from the clock in the hall—when suddenly the watchword was drowned in the stertorous breathing of the machine at the gate, and Polly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... GEORGE'S boundless energy has long been a mystery. It is now known to be derived from a raw leek eaten on rising, and a dinner of Welsh rabbit, made from a modicum of Government cheese and half a slice of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... passerum, citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore quo intus est, hiemis tempestati non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidve praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit merito esse sequenda videtur." "Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum," book ii. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... topics current in his day, whether in politics, theology, economics, or social gossip, which he did not attack with the artillery of his wit and satire. Had he been less sardonic, had he possessed even a modicum of the bonhomie of his friend Arbuthnot, Swift's satire would have exercised even more potent an influence than it has been its ...
— English Satires • Various
... of the poem must have been possessed either of an extraordinary modicum of modesty or of a bitter misanthropy; or possibly he had been guilty of a misdemeanor, and was cornered to expiate the punishment justly due; yet conjecture is at once made certainty in the second line, by which all doubts as to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... economic conditions which now prevail, it can no longer be asserted that the imparting of the mere elements of knowledge is adequate either to secure the future social efficiency of the children of the lower classes of society or that such a modicum of instruction as is provided by our Elementary Schools is sufficient to protect the community from the ignorance of its ill educated and badly trained members. The "hooliganism" of many of our large ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality. Hence the modicum of truth in the old saying that no man is a hero to his valet. There is only a modicum of truth, for the valet, and the private secretary, are often immersed in the fiction themselves. Royal personages are, of course, constructed personalities. Whether they themselves believe in their public ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... her assistance, down the companion ladder and into the cabin. She guided me to one of the sofa-lockers, upon which I mechanically seated myself; and then I saw her go to the swinging rack and pour out a good stiff modicum of brandy, which she brought and held to my lips. I swallowed the draught, and after a few seconds my senses returned to me, almost as though I were recovering from a swoon, Miss Onslow assisting my recovery by seating herself beside ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... finally gave place to a happier mood as he realized that he had gained a modicum of respect in a camp where hitherto he had been more or less of a joke. While he grieved over the events which led up to his newly attained prestige as a man of nerve, he was not a little proud of the prestige itself, and principally because he lacked the very ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... places, names and dates, Where, when, and how the ultimate truth had rise, —Thy prior truth, at last discovered none, Whence now the second suffers detriment. What good of giving knowledge if, because {520} O' the manner of the gift, its profit fail? And why refuse what modicum of help Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible I' the face of truth—truth absolute, uniform? Why must I hit of this and miss of that, {525} Distinguish just as I be weak or strong, And not ask of thee and have answer prompt, Was this once, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... go. He would have shared with her the love and respect of their three children, and he would have staved off bankruptcy with the very hundred thousand dollars that she exacted as spite money. But she was a nagger, and he was no Job. There was a modicum of joy in the heart of him, however: having been cleaned out to the last penny, he was in no position to come up monthly with the thousand dollars charged against him by the court for the support and maintenance of two of his children until they reached their majority. He ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... projecting border at the sill, which is 10 feet or so above the level of the present pavement. The jambs are quite plain, with heavy impost members, slightly hollowed, and a square label, much damaged and defaced. These two archways were no doubt made to admit a modicum of light to what must always have ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... arranged by correspondence it becomes another thing at once and loses spontaneity. The accent lies on the wrong details. Sympathy is watered by the post.... Importance lodges in angles not intended for it. Master of his time, with certain means at his disposal, a modicum of ability as well, he was free to work hard on the side of the angels wherever opportunity might offer; yet he had wasted all these weeks upon an unnecessary holiday, frittering the time away in enjoyment with the children. He ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... to the market for which the wine is destined: thus the high-class English buyer demands a dry champagne, the Russian a wine sweet and strong as "ladies' grog," and the Frenchman and German a sweet light wine. To the extra-dry champagnes a modicum dose is added, while the so-called "brut" wines receive no more than from one to three per ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... had talked this matter over with that small modicum of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties thus suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare of her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to secure for ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... loved, honoured, and esteemed in all the various relations of father, husband, friend, citizen, and Christian, who is on cushioned sofa composing himself for his wonted nap, after a dinner in substance and quantity of the most satisfactory description, and not untempered by a modicum of old port. His amiable partner, with that refined delicacy and sense of decorum peculiar to the female sex, has already withdrawn with her infant progeny, leaving her good man, as she fondly imagines, to enjoy the sweets of uninterrupted repose. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... not reasoner enough to persuade you that all women have souls. Very likely in Persia and India they have not. I only want you to believe that there may be women so fortunate as to possess a modicum of immortality. Well, pardon my interruption, 'if you looked abroad,' as ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... ready fervour. Their social proclivities were equally removed from the rude boorishness of the ordinary settler as from the pretence and ceremonial of the clique of self-constituted aristocrats. They generally preserved a modicum of state in the regulation of their household affairs, though they kept aloof from the Compact and its practices, and devoted themselves to various branches of industry—among others, to the education of youth; to the practice of the learned professions; to the opening ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... self-respecting, middle-aged man (to be polite to myself) stand for hours in a crowded shed, or lean against a dirty post, or sit on the sharp edge of his open trunk, waiting for a Superior Being with a gilt band around his hat, without losing some modicum of dignity? And how, when this Superior Being calls his number and kicks his trunk, is he to know that he is a free-born American citizen and a lineal descendant of Roger Williams? The evidence is entirely from within. How is he to support ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... officiarii per hoc non modicum damnificare civitatem Lundoniae, sed potius hoc multo majora damna intulerunt regi et hominibus regni quam jam ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... sure I will not allow you to stand a moment longer on this cold floor; and I do not intend that you shall pay me undeserved compliments. It is derogatory to your dignity, and dangerous to my modicum of humility. As soon as you are ready for breakfast, come to the dining-room, where Santa Klaus left his remembrances last night. O, Leighton! I had half a mind to hang up two stockings at uncle's bed, for the sake of dear old lang syne. If we could only shut our eyes, and drift back ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... words in Truc. 858 ff. is egregiously tiresome in the reading, but in action could have been made to produce a modicum of amusement if presented in the broad burlesque spirit that we believe was almost invariably employed. This gives us a ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... well feel crushed under such a load of accusations, but that does not excuse the incredible folly of my conduct. I denied alike the modicum of truth and the mass of lying, and went off to America. However, as time passed on and my mind got into a proper state, I felt that the truth must be told some time or other. I accordingly wrote from America to the proper ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... deliberate voice (Flora caught her hand away), "as far as I can make head and tail of your business—supposing it to have a modicum of head, which I doubt—it appears to me that I have just done you a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crying evil in Canada and in the States is the rage for dress. An Irish girl no sooner gets a modicum of wages than all her thoughts are to go to chapel or church as fine or finer than her mistress. Nearly every servant-girl in the large towns has a ridicule (that must be the proper way of spelling it), a bustle, a parasol, an expensive shawl, and a silk gown, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... such laws as suited its interests, while calling for the enactment or enforcement of other laws which favored its designs and enhanced its profits. We see Astor ruthlessly brushing aside, like so many annoying encumbrances, even those very laws which were commonly held indispensable to a modicum of fair treatment of the Indians and to the preservation of human life. These laws happened to conflict with the amassing of profits; and always in a civilization ruled by the trading class, laws which do this are either unceremoniously trampled ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... answered confidently. "There is, doubtless, plenty of hard work and anxiety in store for me, but not failure. I am master of my profession, and I have a certain modicum of business ability, as well as common sense. Never fear for me, my dear sir; I shall ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... pencils, half a dozen white saucers, a water cup, a lead-pencil and a piece of India rubber. Mr. Gummage immediately supplied her with two bristle brushes, and sundry little shallow earthen cups, each containing a modicum of some sort of body color, massicot, flake-white, etc., prepared by himself and charged at a quarter of a dollar apiece, and which he told her she would want when she came ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... to give a full exposition of any theme, but rather, 'to present a pleasing introduction to science.' We may grant, in the outset, that most pupils will really comprehend, in and through the reading of it, but a modicum of all the high and large fields of knowledge here intimated to them; but who that can now look on his school-days as in the past, does not remember how many grandiose sentences he was then called on to utter in cadence duly swelling or pathetic, but ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... filium diligit, desiderium dilecti sui adimplere non distulit. Nam uacca una lactifera, una cum uitulo, consecuta est eum, acsi a suo pastore minaretur post eum. Qui cum ad sacrum collegium sancti Fynniani uenisset, gaudium non modicum de eius aduentu omnes habuerunt. Vacca uero, que secuta est eum, simul cum uitulo pascebatur, nec ubera materna sine licencia tangere attemptabat. Keranus eius pascua sic discriminauit atque distinxit, ut tantum uitulum mater ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... with the hope of supplying this modicum of book-learning that the Introductions and notes in this and other ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... treating of this gas—Dr. Black of Edinburgh, as much as fifteen years before the date we have now arrived at, had suggested that it should be made capable of raising a thin bladder in the air. With a shade more of good fortune, or maybe with a modicum more of leisure, the learned Doctor would have won the invention of the balloon for his own country. Cavallo came almost nearer, and actually putting the same idea into practice, had succeeded in the spring of 1782 in making soap bubbles blown with hydrogen gas float ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... will come only to the teacher who is a middleman between thought and expression, valuing both. When we succeed in making the bulk of the undergraduates really think; when we can inspire them with a modicum of that passion for truth in words which is the moving force of the good writer; when the schools help us and the outside world demands and supports efficiency in diction; then we shall carry through the program of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the lot she preferred the string of hoops. It was quaint, there was nothing philistine about it and probably it had not cost so very much. The emerald was different. It was a stone that would please any woman with plenty of money and a modicum of taste. Probably it had cost a thousand on Fifth Avenue, in which case it would fetch a hundred on Broadway. Or if not, then the sapphire would. Either or both she would hock very willingly. But not the hoop-ring and not the opal, unless she had to, and if Paliser, who apparently ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... possessions have a good in them, they contribute to ease and grace in life, they save from carking cares and mean anxieties, they add many a comfort and many a source of culture. But, after all, a true, lofty life may be lived with a very small modicum. There is no proportion between wealth and happiness, nor between wealth and nobleness. The fairest life that ever lived on earth was that of a poor Man, and with all its beauty it moved within the limits of narrow resources. The loveliest ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which Joyce had built for herself and the Bonnivels. Both of them, though fitted with many conveniences and finished with taste, were of moderate cost, there being not one extravagance, and only the modicum of room actually needed for refined living, in either. Many a rich woman has thought nothing of putting more expense into the fitting of one room, even, than Joyce had laid out on her whole house. Indeed that reserved for Madame was much ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... for discharging their political duty. They subscribed to the campaign fund, but had too delicate a sense of propriety to ask how their money was spent. A few of them—and these seemed to be endowed with a special modicum of patriotism—even attended the party primaries in which candidates were named. The majority went to the polls and cast their vote on election day, if it did not rain or snow. For a young man of Roosevelt's position ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... nonnihil; tametsi non deerat unde id dissolvi posset. Haec 75 nequaquam loquor ad gratiam. Amavi vivum nec minus amo mortuum; quod enim in illo amabam non periit. Si supputem quicquid ille dare mihi paratus erat, immensa fuit eius in me liberalitas; si ad calculum vocemus quod accepi, sane modicum est. 80 Unicum modo sacerdotium in me contulit, immo non dedit sed obtrusit constanter recusanti, quod esset eius generis ut grex pastorem requireret, quem ego linguae ignarus praestare non poteram. Id cum vertisset ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... within its circle, that start up in tribes, and each in accordance with the congenial instrument that summons them to action. He who can thus, as it were, embody an abstraction is no mere pander to the senses. And who that has a modicum of the imaginative would assert of one of Haydn's Sonatas, that its effect on him was no other than sensuous? Or who would ask for the story in one of our ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... New Orleans, La., to promote industrial education, above referred to, failed to be fruitful. Members of different religious organizations, without suggestion that their particular sect would furnish a modicum of the large expenditure necessary to the establishment of such "schools of trade," strove to have the movement inaugurated, and launched under ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... et in altum suspendi nudumque corpus flagellis caedi et lacerari, donec ipse praeciperat ut silerent. Cumque diu caederetur, ex praecepto, ad modicum siluerunt. Et spiritu iterum reassumpto, hoc idem secundo ac tertio in abundantia sanguinis compleverunt. Tamdiu in se revertens, afferri viaticum sibi jussit et se velut proditorem et hostem, contra dominum suum ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... mutilated into this birth, which she could not survive. She had not the strength to come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile. She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless flower that the end of the winter puts forth mercilessly. And she wanted to harbour her modicum of twinkling life. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... very different standpoints of automatic stability and complete control by the pilot, the Voisin (as developed in the Farman) and Wright machines, through gradual evolution finally resulted in aeroplanes of similar characteristics embodying a modicum of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... a sweet psalmody, and weeping. And Beatrice, sighing and compassionate, was listening to them so moved that scarce more changed was Mary at the cross. But when the other virgins gave place to her to speak, risen upright upon her feet, she answered, colored like fire: "Modicum, et non videbitis me, et iterum, my beloved Sisters, Modicum, et vos videbitis me."[2] Then she set all the seven in front of her; and behind her, by a sign only, she placed me, and the Lady, and the Sage who ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... have been stricken at the moment with a similar weakness. No man dare say of this revolution that it was unprovoked; but its means were treachery and violence; the numbers and position of those engaged made the design one of the most insolent in history; and a mere modicum of native boldness and cohesion must have brought it to the dust. "My race had one virtue, they were brave," said a typical Hawaiian: "and now ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excited when the fateful day arrived. Miss Walters had made no objection to an order for chestnuts, and had even allowed a modicum of toffee to be added to the list. She did not refer to the subject of Hallowe'en, for she had some years ago suppressed the custom of bobbing for apples, finding that the girls invariably got their hair wet, and had colds in ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... family. But thanks to Her Majesty's well-meaning Secretaries of State for the Colonies, who have all successively judged alike on this point, it is declared most unadvisable to allow a local magistrate the smallest modicum of discretion. He has only one course to pursue, and that is, to commit the offender for trial at the next Quarter Sessions, to be held in the capital of the colony. Accordingly the poor native, who would rather have been flayed alive than sent into confinement ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... predecessor, the virtuous Palikao. The only two of them who would have had a chance of figuring in England, even as vestrymen, are M. Jules Favre and M. Ernest Picard. The former has all the brilliancy and all the faults of an able lawyer—the latter, although a lawyer, is not without a certain modicum of that plain practical common sense, which we are apt to regard as peculiarly ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... utter darkness even at mid-day, as the waves outside rose to the roof, and inclosed him in a chamber as entirely cut off from the external atmosphere as that of a diving bell. He was oppressed in the darkness, every time the waves came rolling in and compressed his modicum of air, by a sensation of extreme heat,—an effect of the condensation; and then, in the interval of recession, and consequent expansion, by a sudden chill. At low ebb he had to work hard in clearing away ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller |
