"Nil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little above its confluence with the Euphrates. Chaldaean cities appear likewise to have existed at Hymar, ten miles from Babylon towards the east; at Sherifeh and Im Khithr, south and south-east of Hymar; at Zibbliyeh, on the line of the Nil canal, fifteen miles north-west of Niffer; at Delayhim and Bisrniya, in the Affej marshes, beyond Niffer, to the south-east; at Phara and Jidr, in the same region, to the south-west and south-east of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... but whole tomes and voluminous treatises about nothing? Why should a fellow like me, who all his life does nothing, be ashamed to write nothing, and that, too, to one who has nothing to do but read it?" And so, with "ex nihilo nil fit," he laughingly ends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... magister ALBERTINUS DE MAYIS Notarius Veneciarum hoc exemplum exemplari anno ab incarnatione domini nostri Jesu Christi Millesimo trecentesimo quinquagesimo quinto mensis Julii die septimo, intrante indictione octava, Rivoalti, nil addens nec minuens quod sentenciam mutet vel ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... is marked in proportion to the severity and duration of the febrile phenomena, being slight or (nil) in febricula, and excessive in ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... verbal image. In certain fields, notably smell, the object image is almost absent and yet the verbal images in that field carry meaning. It is also true that people whose power of getting clear-cut, vivid object images is almost nil seem to be in nowise hampered by that fact in their use of the symbols. Knowing the unreliability of the object image, it would seem very unsafe to use it as the link between percept and symbol. Much better to connect the symbol directly with the experience ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... strong, logic weak, and the two qualities so balanced as to produce an indefinable charm; will-power large, but docility equal, if a man is clever enough to know how to manage her; knowledge of facts absolutely nil, but she is exquisitely intelligent in spite of it. She has a way of evading, escaping, eluding, and then gives you an intoxicating hint of sudden and complete surrender. She is divinely innocent, but roguishness saves her from insipidity. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and the money gifts sent him by Shu Kofa, while Ama Wang, on his side, sought to gain over Shu Kofa by making him the most lavish promises of reward. But that minister proved as true to his sovereign as Wou Sankwei did to the Manchu. The result of the long correspondence between them was nil, but it showed the leaders of the Manchus in very favorable colors, as wishing to avert the horrors of war, and to simplify the surrender of provinces which could not be held against them. When Ama Wang discovered that there was no hope of gaining over Shu Kofa, and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... or the danger of waiting nineteen days for the coming of the supply ship. If the ones who remained within suspected anything—anything at all!—then his chances of coming out of this alive were practically nil. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of this great subject, that the apostles absolutely command a slave to give obedience to his master in nil things, "as to the Lord." It is in vain to deny, that the most grasping of slave-owners asks nothing more of abolitionists than that they would all adopt Paul's creed; viz., acknowledge the full authority of owners ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... nil nisi bonum," Geoffrey laughed. "No jests about the dead, Alison. But to tell you a secret, he never was alive. He ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... much time. A despatch-runner from Koodoosvaal got through the enemy's lines last night with some letters and this paper. No, no word of the Relief. His verbal news was practically nil. He goes out at midnight with some cipher messages. And, if you will let me have your reply to the advertisement with the returned paper by eleven at latest, I will see that it is sent." The rather ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sic submerguntur. Scille enim atque Caribdi merito asi[mi]latur, uelim periculositate perfecta tristique [-teque MSS.] nautis malum ibi subministratur. Ad hoc eurippum ipsi peruenientes, repentino ceperunt in eum delabi cursu; quumque nil preter mortem [Quumque uelut propter mortem R2] sperantes, et quia iam quasi tetris essent abyssi faucibus deuorandi, tunc sanctus Columba prefati pulueris de tumba beati Kerani assumpti aliquid assumens, mare ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... and eloquence wherever he really did comprehend it. This was Lucan, who has nowhere exhibited more brilliant rhetoric, nor wandered more from the truth, than in the contrasted portraits of Caesar and Pompey. The famous line, "Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum," is a fine feature of the real character, finely expressed. But, if it had been Lucan's purpose (as possibly, with a view to Pompey's benefit, in some respects it was) utterly ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... witnesses for each place must be prepared to answer for the whole day. If they can only prove that he was not at A in the morning, and not at B in the afternoon, the evidence of his absence from both is nil, because he might have been at B in the morning and ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as "quick returns." De mortuis nil nisi bonum. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... and nurses had dedicated to them some specimens of real sailor poetry, combining the names of the staff. With grim humour, the "operation room" bore above it "Nil desperandum"; and the decorated walls of the hospital told the onlookers that "small vessels should keep in shore," that "windmills are not turned by a pair of bellows," that "good things are not found in heaps," that "hasty people fish in empty ponds," that "plenty, like want, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Inacho, Nil interest, an pauper, et infima De gente sub divo moreris, Victima nil miserantis Orci."—Hor. Carm., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... box, anything rather than a living tongue. To a later race of stylists, who have gone as far as Samoa and beyond in the quest of exotic perfumery, Borrow would have said simply, in the words of old Montaigne, "To smell, though well, is to stink,"—"Malo, quam bene olere, nil olere." Borrow, in fact, by a right instinct went back to the straightforward manner of Swift and Defoe, Smollett and Cobbett, whose vigorous prose he specially admired; and he found his choice ill appreciated by critics whose sense of style demanded that a clear glass window ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... great, as not to be relieved by the exertions of reverie, as above described; as when it is misplaced on an object, of which the lover cannot possess himself; it may still be counteracted or conquered by the stoic philosophy, which strips all things of their ornaments, and inculcates "nil admirari." Of which lessons may be found in the meditations of Marcus Antoninus. The maniacal idea is said in some lovers to have been weakened by the action of other very energetic ideas; such as have been occasioned ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... instruct. Yet, as the too evident plaything of an over-permeable moral constitution, he might set up some plea in explanation of his ethical vagaries. He might urge, for instance, that the high culture of which his books are all so redolent has utterly failed to imbue him with the nil admirari sentiment, which Horace commends as the sole specific for making men happy and keeping them so. For, as a matter of fact, and with special reference to the work we have undertaken to discuss, Mr. Froude, though cynical in his general utterances regarding Negroes-of the male sex, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... gratissima: namque Plotius et Varius Sinuessae, Virgiliusque, Occurrunt; animae, quales neque candidiores Terra tulit, neque queis me sit devinctior alter. O qui complexus, et gaudia quanta fuerunt! Nil ego contulerim jucundo ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... may be to rest from all labours. Now who doth so much vacare a rebus, who rests so much, who hath so little to do as the beggar? who can sing so merry a note, as he that cannot change a groat?[33] Cui nil est, nil deest: he that hath nothing wants nothing. On the other side, it is said of the carl, Omnia habeo, nec quicquam habeo: I have all things, yet want everything. Multi mihi vitio vertunt quia egeo, saith Marcus Cato in Aulus Gellius; at ego illis quia ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... canals was constructed throughout the country, which restricted the destructive tendencies of the Tigris and Euphrates and developed to a high degree their potentialities as fertilizing agencies. The greatest of these canals appear to have been anciently river beds. One, which is called Shatt en Nil to the north, and Shatt el Kar to the south, curved eastward from Babylon, and sweeping past Nippur, flowed like the letter S towards Larsa and then rejoined the river. It is believed to mark the course followed in the early Sumerian period by the Euphrates river, which ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... us nothing. The state of the Spanish navy has been for years so hopelessly rotten that when the moment for action arrived its military value was nil. The Spanish gunners hardly seem to have got a hit in on any American ship. Nothing is taught us as to the relative value of the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... possis, nil prius, neque fortius: Verum si incipies, neque perficies naviter, Atque ubi pati non poteris, cum nemo expetet, Infecta pace ultro ad eam venies indicans Te amare, et ferre non posse: Actum est, ilicet, Peristi: eludet ubi ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... increases human efficiency, not the one that retards it. An education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles, position—immunity—may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it weakens the race, and its gain on the whole is nil. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... principle, De mortuis nil, nisi bone 'em!" suggested Miss Hurribattle, with such perfect gravity that neither Miss Prowley nor the clergyman suspected the jocular atrocity that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... multifold good-byes effected to a spirituous accompaniment, was not so firm in his saddle as he might have been; but on the hardened heads of the other two the effect of such farewells had been nil. They were just getting clear of the town when they became aware of a panting, puffing ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... was hard, we repeat, when hostilities did at last break out in America, that his energies should have been so cramped by the passive attitude of his superior. Remembering, however, the maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, the editor has refrained from transcribing aught reflecting on the memory of that superior when he could do so consistently with truth, although he feels acutely that the death of Sir Isaac Brock—hastened as he believes it was by the defensive ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... chambers I know better than he does himself. A friend of mine—I call him my friend for brevity; he is now, I understand, in Demerara and (most likely) in gaol—was the previous occupant. I defended him, and I got him off too—all saved but honour; his assets were nil, but he gave me what he had, poor gentleman, and along with the rest—the key of his chambers. It's there that I propose to leave the piano and, shall ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae, id quod basis rei est, confusae sint, et tenere a rebus abstractae, nihil in iis quae superstruuntur est firmitudinis. Itaque spes est una in Inductione vera. In notionibus nil sani est, nec in Logicis nec in physicis. Non substantia, non qualitas, agere, pati, ipsum esse, bonae notiones sunt; multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue, humidum, siccum, generatio, corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum, materia, forma, et id genus, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... certainly drew largely either on Richard Bright's Travels through Lower Hungary or on Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been. His knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically nil. And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on the Gypsies. In Lavengro and, to a less degree, in its sequel, The Romany Rye, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is totally wanting in the works—mainly philological—of Pott, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum, quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur. et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri, ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris, in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum omnibus humanis esset terraque marique, sic, ubi non erimus, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... they occupy an important place both in the elaborate religious ceremonies and in the daily life of the Navaho. They are the sweat houses, called in the Navaho language co'tce, a term probably derived from qaco'tsil, "sweat" and [)i]nc[)i]nil'tce, the manner in which fire is prepared for heating the stones placed in it when it is used. The structure is designed to hold only one person at a time, and he must crawl in and squat on his heels with his knees drawn ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... as courage, whether it be physical or mental, both of which are not only innate, but to be acquired. The former, and the most universal, is most capriciously bestowed; sometimes, although rarely, Nature has denied it altogether. We have, therefore, in the latter instance, courage nil as a zero, courage negative, halfway up, and courage positive, at the top, which may be considered as "blood heat;" and upon this thermometrical scale the animal courage of every individual may be placed. Courage nil or cowardice, needs ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... IOTA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}: whereas the Judaical rites were abolished, whereupon Zanchius noteth,(193) that the Apostle doth not so much speak of things by-past, as of the very nature of all rites, Definiens ergo ipsos ritus in sese, dixit eos nil aliud esse quam umbram. If all rites, then our holidays among the rest, serve only to adumbrate and shadow forth something, and by consequence are unprofitable and idle, when the substance itself is clearly set before us. 4. That reason, Col. ii. 20, doth no less irresistibly ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... present desolation is to be traced to the change in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west. But in antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the dry bed of the Shatt en-Nil, which divides the mounds into an eastern and a western group. The latter covers the remains of the city proper and was occupied in part by the great business-houses and bazaars. Here more than thirty thousand ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... large scale, which would seem prima facie most probable, would be an increase of precipitation in the region watered. [Footnote: On the pluviometric effect of irrigation, see Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni, etc., p. 72, 74; the same author, Essai Hydrologique sur le Nil, p. 32; Messedaglia, Analisi dell' opera di Champion, pp. 96, 97, note; and Baird Smith, Italian Irrigation, i., ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Par saxi sinus: esca boves cum robore Bassi. Tollunt in numerum fera brachia, vique feruntur Per fluctus: sonuere viae clamore secundo: Et picea de puppe fremens immane bubulcus Invocat exitium cunctis, et verbera rapto Stipite defessis onerat graviora caballis. Nil humoris egent alii. Labor arva vagari, Flectere ludus equos, et amantem devia {147a} currum. Nosco purpureas vestes, clangentia nosco Signa tubae, et caudas inter virgulta caninas. Stat venator equus, tactoque ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... less able to face the thought of giving up this rare opportunity of winning Ann's favour and an influence over her—moral influence at least; his mind was clear enough to see that what was gained by disobeying God's law was from a religious point of view nil. In his mind was the beginning of a contempt for God's way of saving him. If he was to win his own soul by consigning Ann and her father to probable perdition, he did not want to ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... on a sailing-vessel that was captained by a kind kinsman of Bates, so the fare was nil, in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... matter, one way or the other, with the Turnpike Trusts, Mr. C.G. Harper tells us in "The Mail and Stage Coach," for the posts were then few and far between, and the revenue almost nil; but the advent of numerous mail coaches, running constantly and carrying passengers, and yet contributing nothing to the maintenance of the roads, soon became a very real grievance to those Trusts situated on the route of the mails. In 1816 the various Turnpike ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... at having beaten their opponents was unbounded, and when, a short time later, the latter retired with a score against them of one to nil. Jack Vance was seized by a band of applauding comrades, who, with his head about a couple of feet lower than his heels, carried him in triumph across the playground, and staggered half-way up the steep garden path, ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... see now that the national love of a lord is less subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on one's image, as it were, to bow to it. I see, too, the admirable wisdom of our system:—could there be a finer balance of power than in a community where men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a gold-lace hat on? How soothing it is to intellect—that noble rebel, as the Pilgrim has it—to stand, and bow, and know itself superior! This exquisite compensation maintains the balance: whereas that period anticipated by the Pilgrim, when science shall have produced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... . . au Levant. O y trouvera entr'autre une description de la Haute Egypte, suivant la cours du Nil, depuis le Caire jusques aux Cataractes. ALa Haye, chez Guillaume de Voys, 1709. 2 ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... late poet, not beside this purpose: Reges atque duces dira impelluntur in arma, Imperimque sibi miserorum cde lucrantur. O cci, miseri, quid? bellum pace putatis Dignius aut melius? nempe hc nil terpius, & nil Quod magis human procul ratione recedat. [Sidenote: Ouid.] Candida pax homines, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... themselves were slightly fuddled. We nudged each other and pricked up our ears, for we had already canvassed the question of security, surrounded as we were by ruffians who looked quite ready to dispose of babes in the wood. They discussed our 'portable property' which was nil; one decided, while the other believed, that we must have money in our pockets. The first remarked that, whether or no, we were unarmed; the other wasn't so sure about that - it wasn't likely we'd come there to be skinned for the asking. Then arose the question of consequences, and it transpired ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... of January, and thus far the opportunities for skating that had come to the young people of that section of country where Scranton was located, had been almost nil; which would account for the enthusiasm of the lads when Thad announced how rapidly the thermometer was giving promise of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... mortuis nil nisi bonum." When For me this end has come and I am dead, And the little voluble, chattering daws of men Peck at me curiously, let it then be said By some one brave enough to speak the truth: Here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong. Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth To his ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... exegi: quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi,— Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar: nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... known in that country, seems to have been in similar difficulties. The detailed information regarding the roads, trails and villages of the north country which filtered down as far as the English officers who controlled the various field operations of the Expedition turned out to be nil or erroneous. Thereby hang many tales which will be told over and over wherever veterans of that campaign are to ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... months one-third of the white colony—more exactly, 78 out of 250—had not reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime, the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a passage down south. To hear was to accept. Two days afterwards ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... supported on four sides. Grashof's formula for flat plates has no application to reinforced concrete slabs, because it is derived for a material strong in all directions and equally stressed. The strength of concrete in tension is almost nil, at least, it should be so considered. Poisson's ratio, so prominent in Grashof's formula, has no meaning whatever in steel reinforcement for a slab, because each rod must take tension only; and instead of a material equally stressed in all directions, there are generally sets of independent ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... circulation, and a loyal journal published in Kilkenny—the native town of the young rebel, who in this instance played his first trick on the government—referred to his supposed decease in terms which showed that the rule de mortuis nil nisi bonum found acceptance with the editor. The following are the words of the obituary notice which appeared in the Kilkenny Moderator on or about ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Moodu-kaduru (Ochrosia parviflora); Moodu-cobbe (Ornitrophe serrata); Moodu-murunga (Sophora tomentosa,) &c. &c. Amongst these marine shrubs the Nil-picha (Guettarda speciosca), with its white and delightfully fragrant flowers, is a conspicuous object on some parts of the sea-shore between Colombo ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... was an understood thing between himself and his protector, Senor Pomponio de Vergara y Puyarola, that his labours need not be otherwise than purely formal. To every one of the intelligent queries on the part of a paternal government it had been his custom, therefore, to append the magic word NIL. Banking system—NIL. Meat export—NIL. Cotton industry—NIL. Agriculture—NIL. Canal traffic—NIL. Teak trade—NIL. Emery ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... made for me. Granted that I am very glad the railway was made and use it when I find it convenient, I do not suppose that those who projected and made the line allowed me to enter into their thoughts; the debt of my gratitude is divided among so many that the amount due from each one is practically nil. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Gifted with rare perspicacity, moderation, and keen judgment, he maintained his attitude of impartial observation. By temperament and habit he was an aristrocrat—placet Hispana nobilitas—he confessed, admitting also that de populo nil mihi curae, yet he sided with the comuneros against the Crown. While deploring their excesses, he sympathised with the cause they defended, and he lashed the insolence and the rapacity of the Flemish favourites with all the resources of invective ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Freydis replied, "although it is the only magic I can perform in an enclosure of buttered willow wands. Now, then, you see for yourself that I am not going to take orders from you. So the figure you have made, will you or nil you, must limp about in all men's sight, for not more than a few centuries, to be sure, but long enough to prove that I am not going to be ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... franchise and suffrage, and a "good time" as seen from the standpoint of the average society girl or woman were absolutely nil. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... as many men in that town as had been taken away from it, only the colour and the race of the men had changed. The nationality of all of them, however, was the same—they were all subjects of the mighty French Empire or Democracy, and in France race prejudice is practically nil. Therefore Ouk, who worked in a munition factory, found himself regarded with curiosity and with interest, though not with prejudice. Thus it happened that Madame Maubert found herself gazing at Ouk one evening, from behind the safe security of her zinc covered ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... Fortunam[281] citius reperias quam retineas. Cravissima est probi hominis iracundia. Homo totiens moritur, quotiens amittit suos. Homo vitae commodatus, non donatus est. Humanitatis optima est certatio. Iucundum nil est, nisi quod reficit varietas. Malum est consilium quod mutari non potest. Minus saepe pecces, si scias quod nescias. Perpetuo vincit qui utitur clementia. Qui ius iurandum servat, quovis pervenit. Ubi peccat aetas maior, male ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... 'Bene quidem arbitrati, si causam celestis beatitudinis non in sonis sed in Creatore possuissent; ubi veraciter sine fine gaudium est, sine aliquo taedio manens semper aeternitas: et inspectio sola Divinitatis efficit, ut beatius esse nil possit. Haec veraciter perennitatem praestat: haec jucunditates accumulat; et sicut praeter ipsam creatura non extat, ita sine ipsa incommutabilem laetitiam ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... for the lateral sinus, as it is technically called, is nearly horizontal, and the cerebral chamber invariably overlaps or projects behind the cerebellar chamber. In the Howler Monkey or 'Mycetes' (see Figure 16), the line passes obliquely upwards and backwards, and the cerebral overlap is almost nil; while in the Lemurs, as in the lower mammals, the line is much more inclined in the same direction, and the cerebellar chamber ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Shakespear. In six Volumes. Carefully Revised and Corrected by the former Editions, and Adornd with Sculptures designed and executed by the best hands.—Nil ortum tale.—Hor. Oxford: Printed at ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... et carectarum nil quia per firmarium. Item pro eorum duspot (xij'd) nil, causa predicta. Item pro eorum forlot (iiij'd) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... a clue from this here gent," he said, pointing a bony finger at Bunch, "and I ups and chases that there maleyfactor for four miles, well knowin' that the cause of justice would suffer and the reward of fifty dollars be nil and voidless if the critter got away. But I got him, ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar, 'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.' You seem to want that 'vivida vis animi,' which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... that she had every reason to be satisfied with her progress and to congratulate herself upon the judgment she had displayed in continuing to raise sheep for their fleece when the price of wool was nil, practically, and every discouraged grower in the state, including the astute Neifkins, was putting in "black-faces" that were better for mutton. Now a protective administration was advancing the price of wool, and when she sold she would ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... science, morals, religion, and history; and a library which aspires to be complete must comprise, in addition to imaginative works, all these branches of intellectual activity. Comprising all these branches, it cannot avoid comprising works of which the purely literary interest is almost nil. ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... education had been somewhat hurried, but there was no doubt as to his mechanical ability. He took to a car like a young duck to water. He talked motor, thought motor, and would have accepted—I won't say with enthusiasm, for Alfred's motto was 'Nil admirari'—but without hesitation, an offer to drive in the greatest race in the world. He could drive really well, too; as for belief in himself, after six months' apprenticeship in a garage he was prepared to vivisect a six-cylinder ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... wholly left her, but her fear remained. A terrible sense of responsibility was upon her, and she was utterly at a loss as to how to cope with it. Her influence over this man she believed to be absolutely nil. She had not the faintest notion how to deal with him. Lady Carfax would have known, she reflected, and she wished with all her heart that Lady Carfax had ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Emotional Capacity—Nil or Evidence of grief, fear, etc., in almost so. Tears frequent facial expressions and wringing but due to relaxation of and clasping of hands. sphincter muscles. Features Tears rare. Great contraction ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... When the whistle blew for No-side, the house had just finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil was the exact total. Dencroft's returned to headquarters, asking itself in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on their mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the fashion in Dencroft's. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... it afterwards. He said I was drunk myself and that he heard me tumbling up the stairs to bed. Which is a lie. I did see it, and it was drunk. I heard it hiccough! I wouldn't say it was drunk if it wasn't. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Quinny, and it would be a very dirty trick to slander a poor bogey that can't defend itself. It looked very like its descendant, Lord Middleweight, and it had the same soppy grin that he has when he thinks he's said something ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... my men discovered a fire had been started in a mysterious way, which they succeeded in putting out. Only for prompt work it would have at least disabled the bomber so that its usefulness for the present would be nil." ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... mortuis nil nisi bonum; but, while fully acknowledging the force of the remark, as also the great scientific attainments and love for natural history which distinguished the illustrious traveller, I cannot allow anyone who reads his entertaining ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... party of a hundred and fifty men should produce about two hundred cantars (20,000 lbs.) of ivory, valued at Khartoum at 4,000 pounds. The men being paid in slaves, the wages should be NIL, and there should be a surplus of four or five hundred slaves for the trader's own profit—worth on an average five to ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... tanned like the ancient parchments of an olim; whose complexion is burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled like that of a turkey; who are covered with rags; whose voice is hoarse; whose intelligence is nil; who think of nothing but the bread box, and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; who dig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead the bread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants and men, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with thatch; ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... vous exprimer combien j'admire et combien j'approuve la politique actuelle de votre gouvernement en Egypte. Commissaire du gouvernement egyptien aupres de la compagnie de Suez depuis pres de vingt ans, j'ai etudie de pres ce qui se passait sur le Nil, et je ne crois pas ceder a un mouvement d'amitie pour le Khedive, en pensant que c'est de son cote que se trouvent le Droit, la justice, la civilisation. Apres l'avoir intronise, lui avoir promis de l'appui; l'avoir pousse contre Arabi, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... good cousin Craiglethorpe," pursued Lady Geraldine, "and nil the little note-book, which will soon turn to a ponderous quarto. I shall have a copy, bound in morocco, no doubt, from the author, if I behave myself prettily; and I will earn it, by supplying valuable information. You ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Hercules invaded hell. The discovery of fire put us in possession of a forbidden secret. Is this unnatural conquest of nature safe or wise? Nil mortalibus ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the Middle Kingdom (XIth-XIIIth Dynasties) from the Old Kingdom was caused by Egypt's coming into contact with other outside nations at this period. During the whole history of the Old Kingdom, Egyptian relations with the outer world had been nil. We have some inkling of occasional connection with the Mediterranean peoples, the Ha-nebu or Northerners; we have accounts of wars with the people of Sinai and other Bedawin and negroes; and expeditions were also sent to the land of Punt (Somaliland) by way of the Upper ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... the guardians, keeping carefully within the law, neglected nothing that could sap little Ginx's vitality, deaden his instincts, derange moral action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it was born." Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge to be reduced to a MINIMUM or NIL. The Baby's constitution alone prevented his reduction ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of the ballot' to sell the promise of them to both parties, are a free and independent constituency; that a man who successively betrays everybody that trusts him, and abandons every principle he ever professed, is a great statesman, and a Conservative, forsooth, a nil conservando; that schemes for breeding pestilence are sanitary improvements; that the test of intellectual capacity is in swallow, and not in digestion; that the art of teaching everything, except what will be ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... suggest anything, from profound thought to imbecility; but in this case its suggestion was nil. That something had happened, that some change had taken place, was as patent to Loder as the darkness of the curtain or the band of light that crossed the floor, but what had occasioned it, or ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of miracles. Their intellectual or moral value is simply nil. The greatest miracle could not really convince a man of what his reason condemned; and if a prophet could turn water into wine, it would not necessarily follow that all he said was true. In fact, truth does not require the support ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... enjoyment, seemed to him an indifferent exchange for a faith in the purgatory and paradise of Rome. Perplexed in the extreme, the youthful John bethought himself of an inscription over the gateway of his famous but questionable great grandfather's house at Amersfort—'nil scire tutissima fides.' He resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance upon matters beyond the flaming walls of the world; to do the work before him manfully and faithfully while he walked the earth, and to trust that a benevolent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... parade moderately strong, and Gen. Kemp was well satisfied with our "turn-out." It was, however, to be regretted that the only soldier to whom he spoke happened to be a blacksmith, for which trade we had the previous day sent to Brigade Headquarters a "nil" return. The cricket match was a great success, and thanks to some excellent batting by Lieut. Langdale, we came away victorious. The light training which we carried out each day now included a very considerable amount of bomb throwing, and it seemed as ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... of the Divisional Cup Competition, we beat the Divisional Mechanical Transport Column 3—0, and got into the semi-final, when, however, we were badly beaten by the 4th Leicesters at Bishop's Stortford, by 3 goals to nil. In a Brigade paper chase which was held on December 26th, Pvte. Allen of ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... cum sedebit Quidquid latet apparebit Nil inultum remanebit: Item, Rex tremendae majestatis Qui salvandos salvas gratis ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... local short form: As-Sudan former: Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Digraph: SU Type: military civilian government suspended and martial law imposed after 30 June 1989 coup Capital: Khartoum Administrative divisions: 9 states (wilayat, singular - wilayat or wilayah*); A'ali an Nil, Al Wusta*,, Al Istiwa'iyah*,, Al Khartum, Ash Shamaliyah*, Ash Sharqiyah*, Bahr al, Ghazal, Darfur, Kurdufan Independence: 1 January 1956 (from Egypt and UK) Constitution: 12 April 1973, suspended following coup of 6 April ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... such a movement were performed at night, the presence of the division in a new spot would almost certainly be detected by the aeroplanes in the morning. The possession of a large and efficient aeroplane corps reduces the surprises of war very nearly to nil, and proportionately increases the importance of ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... of political economy, looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it was only from that point ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... tablecloth under his arm with a grand air, and having sternly (not to say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter while he set the clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr. Grewgious, conveying: 'Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward is mine, and that Nil is the claim of this slave,' and pushed the flying waiter before him ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... wonder of artistic skill. After reading these papers you like and respect more the person you have admired so much already. And so with regard to Macaulay's style there may be faults of course—what critic can't point them out? But for the nonce we are not talking about faults: we want to say nil nisi bonum. Well—take at hazard any three pages of the "Essays" or "History;"—and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, as it were, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is a principle of conduct dating back to Him who of old declared burial of the dead a corporal work of mercy. It is the mark, neither of the Christian individual nor nation, to disrespect a body nor desecrate its resting place. The fact that in life ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... centrifugal and the centripetal forces or motions be applied to it, and to the sun. What is the result of such application? Will the planet move nearer the sun, which we are supposing to be perfectly at rest, or will it be urged further away? The effect is nil! for the simple reason, that when we set in motion the centripetal force of Gravitation, at exactly the same time we set in motion an exactly opposite force which is the exact complement and counterpart of the other, so that they exactly counterbalance each other, and Mercury ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... still improve, And their riders develope more skill; And it's oh! for the records of yesterday! To-morrow they'll all be nil! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... his floor, studying Watusk's words from every angle. The result of his cogitations was nil. Watusk's mind was at the same time too devious and too inconsequential for a mind like Ambrose's to track it. Ambrose decided that he was like one of the childish, unreasonable liars one meets in the mentally ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... care in thawing it out. We waited till we were all in our bags, and then we had one. I was greatly disappointed; it was not half so good as I had thought. But I am glad I tried it, as I shall never do so again. The effect was nil; I felt nothing, either in my head or ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... dead, and "de mortibus nil desperandum!" as Rapaud once said—and for saying which he received a "twisted ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... plum negaverit, A diis plum feret: nil cupientium Nudus castra peto . . . . Multa petentibus ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the brief, but that was no advantage. This time he had an M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins, but his military career listed him as a dishonorable discharge from the navy where he'd served in the steward department. His criminal record was happily nil, but his religion was listed as Holy Roller. Political affiliations had him down as a member of ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... though my feet are chained. It is just three months since I arrived. A part of the time we had beautiful weather, and I could walk on the road a little on sunshiny days, leaning upon my two sticks. But during the past five weeks, my out-door exercise has been nil: the roads were too wet and rough. It has been almost constant fog, rain, wind; and the drip, drip, drip, of a mist that was wetter than rain. This, I think, has added a little rheumatism to give name to the pain and stiffness of joints and ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead, who, if they cannot defend themselves, are, at least, ignorant of his abuse, will not hesitate, by the most wanton calumny, to destroy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... generously charged me "nil" for dues. I had letters for France from the highest authorities to pass the Rob Roy as an article entered for the Paris "Exhibition;" and when the douane and police functionaries came in proper state at Boulogne to appraise her value, and to fill ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... ceruisiam, et medonem non habent, nisi ab alijs nationibus mittatur, vel donetur eisdem. In hyeme, nisi diuites sint, lac iumentinum non habent. Millium cum aqua decoquunt, quod tam tenue faciunt, qud non comedere sed bibere possunt. Et vnus quisque ex eis bibit cyphum vnum vel duos in mane, et nil plus in die manducant. In sero vnicuique parum de carnibus datur, et brodium de carnibus bibunt. In state autem, quia tunc habent satis de lacte iumentino carnes rar manducant, nisi fort donentur eis, aut venatione ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... with a perfect gas naturally becomes much greater as the solution becomes more diluted. It then imitates gas in some other properties; the internal work of the variation of volume is nil, and the specific heat is only a function of the temperature. A solution which is diluted by a reversible method is cooled like a gas ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out suddenly, "I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are numerous—the assets nil; but I rely on ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... replied the other, with a shrug, "de mortuis nil nisi bonum; but as touching beauty, in what sense ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Percutit injustos ira molesta Dei; Quem neque praemeditans latuit Nero, funera cujus Distulit adversa in tempora longa vice. Occidit ergo miser, Divumque hominumque favore, Traduxitque illuc sors malesuada virum. Nil gravius pugnare Deo, pugnare feroci Fortunae. Vinci magnus ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... travelled they were in the realm of intellect. On the other hand, I discovered that their intellect, in the business sense, was abnormally developed. Also, I discovered that their morality, where business was concerned, was nil. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... gave off aniline was discovered as early as 1840. In fact that was how aniline got its name, for when Fritzsche distilled indigo with caustic soda he called the colorless distillate "aniline," from the Arabic name for indigo, "anil" or "al-nil," that is, "the blue-stuff." But how to reverse the process and get indigo from aniline puzzled chemists for more than forty years until finally it was solved by Adolf von Baeyer of Munich, who died in 1917 at the age of eighty-four. He worked on the problem of the ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... rede to every land, * Whose driving causeth all the world to thrive; Nil is the Nile of Misraim by thy boons * Who makest misery smile ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... far these different kinds of restraint operate upon the community as a whole in the prevention of deliberate crime. Clearly the fear of pecuniary loss through actions brought to judgment in the civil courts is practically nil. Most persons who set out to commit crime have no bank account, the absence of one being generally what leads them into ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... by symptoms which are excessively variable. The local lesions may be confined to a small portion of the animal's body and the constitutional phenomena be nil. The appearance and gravity of the local lesions may be so unlike, from difference of location, that they seem to belong to a separate disease, and complications may ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... mortuis nil nisi bonum. The directors are meeting now to elect his successor. Only one name has been mentioned. There's only one editor we'll hear of for the paper. Won't you come back to us, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... constructors found themselves faced with the possible complete stagnation of the industry, since military activities no longer demanded their services and the prospects of commercial flying were virtually nil. That great factor in commercial success, cost of plant and upkeep, had received no consideration whatever in the War period, for armies do not count cost. The types of machines that had evolved from the War were very fast, very efficient, and ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... by Anaxagoras as eternal; because he held the dogma, peculiar to all the Ionians, that nothing can be really created or annihilated (de nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti). But he saw, nevertheless, that the simple existence of "inert" matter, even from eternity, could not explain the motion and the harmony of the material world. Hence he saw the necessity of another power—the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... in totemism, when dissected, there is no religion, just as in the child's drum, when cut open, there is—nothing. Yet, we may reflect, on the battle-field from a drum proceeds a great and glorious sound, inspiring men to noble deeds. Whereas ex nihilo nil fit: from nothing naturally nothing comes. If, however, something does come, it is not from nothing that it comes. Amongst the most primitive savages known to us, men are united to their totems, as Frazer admits, by 'certain ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... who were swayed By those who dwelt upon this hill, And who in humble awe obeyed The dictates of their sovereign will,— Are they self-conscious beings still, Or are their minds and bodies ... Nil? ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... nil nisi bonum," said he. His air was grave, his blue eyes solemn, and the Abbot had little cause to suspect the closeness with which that pair of eyes was watching him. He coloured faintly at the implied rebuke, but he inclined his head as if submissive to the correction, and waited ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... proportion to the shrinkage, for the percentage of caffein constantly decreases with the increase in color. If the roast be carried almost to the point of carbonization, as in the case of the "Italian roast," the caffein content will be almost nil. This is not a suitable coffee for one desiring an almost caffein-free drink, for the empyreumatic products produced by this excessive roasting will be more toxic by far than the caffein itself would ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... at Ahcunazie's village, searched every tepee, and questioned the inhabitants down to the very children. The result was nil. The Indians one and all denied that Imbrie had come back up the river. Stonor was convinced that they were lying. He said nothing of what had happened down at the falls, though the young Kakisa, Ahteeah, displayed no little curiosity on ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... American hymnals down to 1880 the average number of hymns of purely American origin was not quite one in seven; the proportion would be a little larger now. And the number of Methodist poets is almost nil, in spite of the fact that the compiler is a Methodist and the volume is issued from the official Methodist Publishing House. But if we thought that this would be any barrier to its wide circulation in Methodist homes we should be deeply ashamed for our church. We ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... special call at the Cottage—this time accompanied by the modest Muriel—to offer them in person. "It will be so delightful to have a chatelaine at Heronsmere at last," she had gushed. Presumably, recognising that her daughter's chance of acquiring the coveted position was now reduced, to nil, she had decided—with the promptness of a good general—to accept the fact and adapt her tactics to the altered situation. With mathematical foresight she argued that when Coventry was married Heronsmere would undoubtedly become the centre of a considerable amount of entertaining, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... me want it. I want it for the sheer beauty; I want it for the tremendous panorama the sight of it unfolds in my mind. I imagine what happened from the hour the stone was mined to the hour it came into my possession. To me—to all genuine collectors—the intrinsic value is nil. Can't you see? It is for me what Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin would be to you if you had fallen on it for the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... ticket, a C. O. D. check, or a regular sales check, special care must be exercised, as one cannot afford to exhaust the patience of customers by exhibiting a lack of knowledge. Every check in a check book should be accounted for: a spoiled check should be marked "Nil" or "Void," be signed by one in authority and sent to the cashier. Quantity, goods and prices should always be written plainly, all blanks properly filled out, plain, neat writing, and particularly good figures. Salespeople are usually held responsible for all errors ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... pursue his crazy journey, stretch out his leg, and feel for a resting-place for his foot. Rowland had measured with a glance the possibility of his sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil. The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections, the remains apparently of a brick cornice supporting the arch of a vault which had long since collapsed. It was by lodging his toes on ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... losses in the capture of Dongola and in the subsequent pursuit were: British, nil. Native ranks: killed, 1; wounded, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... The world judges what it can understand—the man alone. Hence the student preparing for the foreign mission may take this as an axiom:—If people cannot respect you as a gentleman, on the non-Catholic world your influence is nil; and even on your own Catholic people it will sit very lightly. But he replies— "This is not logical, for a man may be an excellent priest, a good scholar, without social accomplishments." All that ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... all these systems in their later developments, is their cosmopolitanism. Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto, 'I am a man; nothing appertaining to humanity do I deem alien from myself,' this was the true keynote of whatever was vital in any of them. And the reason of this is not far to seek. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... produced an impression in my favour far beyond what I deserved. I must have seemed a very strange bird, such as had never before built his nest at Oxford. I was very young, but I looked even younger than I was, and my knowledge of the manners of society, particularly of English society, was really nil. Few people knew what I was working at. Some had a kind of vague impression that I had discovered a very old religion, older than the Jewish and the Christian, which contained the key to many of the mysteries that had puzzled the ancient, nay, even the modern world. Frequently, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... at the body floating far out on the swift tide. Three sharks were circling lazily. He looked around for a boat, saw none. He swiftly estimated his chances of swimming out after the fat man and towing him in. The chances appeared to be nil. Nevertheless, he ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis
... nata virum dies; Vesper colloquiis dulcibus ad focum; Somnis nox magis, et preci: Sed nil, Terrigenum maxima, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... volume of republished essays coming out with Chatto and Windus; I wish they would come, that my wife might have the reviews to divert her. Otherwise my news is nil. I am up here in a little chalet, on the borders of a pine-wood, overlooking a great part of the Davos Thai: a beautiful scene at night, with the moon upon the snowy mountains and the lights warmly shining in the village. J. A. Symonds is next door to me, just ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... in the commercial district and also portentous columns of smoke hovering over the southern part of the city. Then like a blow in the face came the realization that all fire fighting facilities were nil owing to the lack of water. One short hour previous, San Francisco was sleeping peacefully in its prosperity, and now the sight was appalling. Devastation, far as the eye could see, was spelling death ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... conspicit arcem Ingeniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem; Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... level that conversation on them was merely waste of time. It was as if a man upon a cliff started a dissertation with another in a boat lying on the sea beneath. Half the excellent arguments would drift away upon the wind, lost, rendered nil by the mere difference of level in the two planes. The two main chains that bound my whole psychological system—self-control and self-respect—were entirely absent in him. He looked at his every good action from the point of utility, at his every ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... marrd husb can shro 1st flr suite, beaut furn, pri bth rm, sth asp, telephne, mo 'bus psses dr, ex cellar kept. Mrs. Bland, "Nil Desperandum," Muswell Hill, N. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... turn sharp to the right, and then to the left, and you will come to an iron door, which rises and falls like a portcullis. The handle is of no use, but on the ceiling you will see the motto, 'Nil desperandum,' which you must take as counsel offered to yourself. Press the space in the centre of the D, and ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... It will be observed that the "Gopis" here personify the five senses. Lassen says, "Manifestum est puellis istis nil aliud ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... fact of the matter is, Mr. Rattar, that, as you yourself said, the direct evidence is practically nil, and one is forced to go a good deal by one's judgment of ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... et collibus istis, O pueri,' Marsus dicebat et Hernicus olim 180 Vestinusque senex, 'panem quaeramus aratro, Qui satis est mensis: laudant hoc numina ruris, Quorum ope et auxilio gratae post munus aristae Contingunt homini veteris fastidia quercus. Nil vetitum fecisse volet, quem non pudet alto 185 Per glaciem perone tegi, qui summovet Euros Pellibus inversis; peregrina ignotaque nobis Ad scelus atque nefas, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... who had throned himself in every heart. Not one of that immense crowd doubted the final triumph of his country in her arduous conflict, for everyone saw, or thought he saw, in Washington, her guardian angel, commissioned by Heaven to insure her that triumph. 'Nil desperandum' was the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... offer you in a perfectly friendly spirit) you will carefully consider the consequences which such a voyage might produce, and, frankly speaking, I consider that your chance of bringing it to a successful termination is Nil. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... force. So be it. By force we take again our own, and revenge ourselves for all the pilling of the past. We are a perilous people, who have proved victors in divers great battles, and brought many a bitter war to a good end. But what profit is ours of nil these triumphs, so long as we cry not 'check' to Rome! I desire not drink to my lips when athirst, nor meat to my mouth when an hungered, as I desire the hour when we hurtle together in the field. Then hey for the helm laced fast, the lifted shield, for the brandished sword, and the mighty ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... cargo to Panama and another back, and it doesn't cost him a blamed cent to stow the first cargo and cheap Jamaica nigger labor to stow the second, and the cost of operating the ship for the round trip is absolutely nil—I tell you, sir, there's ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... hole to put one's finger in, looking like a mere spot in the middle of a great white panel; to accumulate so much patient and delicate workmanship on almost imperceptible accessories, and all to produce an effect which is absolutely nil, an effect of the most ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to the Christian Observer, vol. vii., p. 91, in the year about 1809, "Nil" writes:—"As the divine spirit of Christianity deems no object, however uncouth or insignificant, beneath her notice, I venture to apply to you on behalf of a race, the outcasts of society, of whose pitiable condition, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... wholly to the habits acquired by people in using established kinds of food, but with the development of the nut trees, which furnish the appropriate starch, oils, and essentials of human diet, the danger of over-population becomes absolutely nil. We can not have over-population anyway, because nations of people reach cultural limitation, just as breeds of cattle run out, just as a breed of dogs runs out, just as a breed of any cultivated animal runs out. We are sure to do that. In all of our cultural periods ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... following day, for which purpose he left me a permit, vilely scrawled in Dutch. I mentally reserved to myself the decision as to keeping the rendezvous. We sat down to breakfast together, although, as he could speak no English and I could speak no Dutch, the conversation was nil. He was pleased with the cigarette I offered him, and observed me with some curiosity, probably never having seen anything approaching an English lady previously. Before he left, I complained, through an interpreter, of the insobriety of my self-constituted sentinel Dietrich, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... accomplished thing. Pliny would have loved it who said: "Ea est stomachi mei natura ut nil nisi merum atque totum velit," which signifies "such is the character of my taste that it will tolerate nothing but what is absolute and full." ... It is no use grumbling about the Latin. The nature ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... your connection, and my connection, with the matter cannot possibly be established by the police. The incident is regrettable, but the emergency was dealt with—in time. It represents a serious deficit, unfortunately, and your own usefulness, for the moment, becomes nil; but we shall have to look after you, I suppose, and hope for better things in ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... he may not have been present at all; at least Col. Stewart, who was there and was acquainted with every one of note in the army, asserts positively that there was no such man along; nor has any other American account ever mentioned him. His military knowledge was nil, as may be gathered from his remark, made when the defeats of Braddock and Grant were still recent, that British regulars with the bayonet were best ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... especially in the Latin countries, where class barriers are more formidable, the situation differs materially, and to the disadvantage of the girl. If she makes an overture, it is an invitation to disaster; her hope of lawful marriage by such means is almost nil. In consequence, the prudent and decent girl avoids such overtures, and they must be made by third parties or by the man himself. This is the explanation of the fact that a Frenchman, say, is habitually enterprising ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... all, Ivan soon discovered that, in winter, regimental duties were practically nil. Half the privates of his regiment had been dismissed to their native villages. The rest, though nominally in barracks, and paraded once or twice a month (very badly), were wont to eke out their half-pay (supposed to be whole, but actually shared with two lofty administrators ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Atlanta and Des Moines have but confirmed me in my judgment that our delegated body always should meet in Washington. For local propaganda both were undoubtedly good, but for effect in securing Congressional action, absolutely nil. I believe in resuming our old plan of holding at least two conventions every year, one for the election of officers and for its influence upon Congress in Washington every winter; the other in whatsoever State we have constitutional amendments pending, where we need to do ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... But not by the same door through which came in Baba and Juan, which last stood admiring, At some small distance, all he saw within This strange saloon, much fitted for inspiring Marvel and praise; for both or none things win; And I must say, I ne'er could see the very Great happiness of the 'Nil Admirari.' ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron |
