"Offhand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was of no matter to him. But all the time she was in her Spiral room she had a sense that he was upstairs, a physical sense of his person in the same building. Every second she expected him to come through the door, and when he came it was a shock to her. But he was often short and offhand with her. He gave her his directions in an official manner, keeping her at bay. With what wits she had left she listened to him. She dared not misunderstand or fail to remember, but it was a cruelty to her. She wanted to touch his chest. She knew ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Harbour, or that the 7.30 from Galashiels was stopping that month at Shankend. He knew all the connections; he knew all the restaurant trains; and, if you mentioned the 6.15 to Little Buxton, he could tell you offhand whether it was a Saturdays Only or ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... recognize a crucifer, requires the indication provided by the flower. Here the Pieris surpasses us. She does not consult the seed-vessel, to see if it be long or short, nor yet the petals, four in number and arranged in a cross, because the plant, as a rule, is not in flower; and still she recognizes offhand what suits her caterpillars, in spite of profound differences that would embarrass ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... t' tell offhand," says Peter. "'Twas deep enough. But never you care. You'll be able t' square it in course o' time. You're young an' hearty. An' I'll not be harsh. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... surprised at the apt wit and the subtlety with which these gentlemen formulated their replies, he felt bewildered with epigram and repartee, and, most of all, by their offhand way of talking and their ease of manner. The material luxury of Paris had alarmed him that morning; at night he saw the same lavish expenditure of intellect. By what mysterious means, he asked himself, did these people make such piquant reflections on the spur of the moment, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... good humor. He has a most beautiful countenance, and a very intellectual one, but he has some halting and hesitating in his conversation, and says very pleasant, agreeable things in a husky, weak, peculiar voice. He has a dark complexion, dark hair, whiskers already a little gray. This is a very offhand portrait of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... it is not attached to the deep structures, and when it is so moved it is not tender or sore. Any little lump which ulcerates located on the genitals must be regarded with suspicion. Boys and men should not be satisfied with any offhand statement that, "it is nothing." It may be a chancre, and it may be exceedingly serious if ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... the memory! Only think of the implications of the annual price-catalogue! Soon after the issue of this work, every collector worthy the name has almost unconsciously filed away in his mind the current market values of thousands of stamps. And he can tell you offhand, not only their worth in the normal perforated and canceled condition, but also how their values vary if they are uncanceled, unperforated, embossed, rouletted, surcharged with all manner of initials, printed by mistake with the king standing on his head, or water-marked anything from a horn ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... of homosexuality put forward by Freud need not be dismissed offhand. Freud has often manifested the insight of genius, and he refrains from molding his conceptions in those inflexible shapes which have sometimes been adopted by the more dogmatic psychoanalysts who have followed him. Nor need ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... we'll take that up later. Vast, amorphous aerial regions, to which such definite words as "worlds" and "planets" seem inapplicable. And artificial constructions that I have called "super-constructions": one of them about the size of Brooklyn, I should say, offhand. And one or more of them wheel-shaped things a goodly number of square miles ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Mrs. Mencke began, throwing herself into a chair and trying to speak in an offhand way, "that another little trip would do us all good. Will has business that calls him to Canada, and he thinks he would like company on the journey; so we have decided to combine business and pleasure, and take in all the ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... matters connected with the golf course mystery. Jack had obeyed the colonel's instructions to the letter. He had played many rounds on the links and had gotten to a certain degree of friendship with Jean Forette. He had even formed a liking for Bruce Garrigan, who, offhand, informed him that the amount of India ink used in tattooing sailors during the past year was less by fifteen hundred ounces than the total output of radium salts for 1916, while the wheat crop of Minnesota for the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... both hands and your teeth. An hour passed—busy, yet pleasant—and we were both gorged to the gills and had reared back with our cigars lit to enjoy a third jorum of black coffee apiece, when Johnny, speaking in an offhand way to Bill, who was still hiding away biscuits inside of himself like a ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... his people and his people knew and strongly liked him. So much Hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their wanderings. First they went to the printing-plant, the Certina Company ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... then, he must be as much as a week old," hazarded Adam, in an offhand tone. "They are never born with teeth, are they, unless they are going to be Richard the Thirds, ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... He is ready, and comes slowly down the stairs, giving some very audible and offhand orders in the hall respecting his particular belongings. A close observer might notice that he speaks and laughs a little too readily. The little, pale woman, sitting motionless in the room, hears him, and in her heart of hearts hears ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... answered the watery-eyed young man with an offhand attempt at familiarity. "I'm his Assistant—name of ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... said, rather hesitatingly. "The truth is, I'm afraid Muriel doesn't want me to go. She was so queer and offhand about it when I was staying at Thorncroft; she wouldn't talk of it at all, though Aunt Lucy did. Somehow I think she won't like me to be at the ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of course. In an offhand manner, to his next neighbor. It went round the table, and a sort of icy silence, after that, greeted his small sallies. He never knew what the trouble was, but his ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ain't Saturday night!" said one. It was impossible to say offhand what day it was, but after a slight argument they arrived at the astounding discovery that it was indeed Saturday. The discovery was astounding, because it was almost incredible to them that such misery ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... for the beef-shoot was forty yards "ef ye shot from a chunk." Twenty-seven yards, or about two-thirds the distance, if the shot was offhand. "A chunk" was any rest for the rifle—a bowed limb cut from a tree, the fork of a limb driven firmly into the ground, a part of a log—anything that was the height to give the needed low level to the rifle-barrel when ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... been less surprised at the tone of this last remark if he had seen Lady Groombridge's exceedingly offhand way of greeting Molly this same evening. That great lady, having expected to find that Molly had, acting on her advice, abandoned Mrs. Delaport Green, was quite disappointed in the girl when she met ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... moderately easy task to lay out a suburb in so far as its exterior appointments are concerned, the rub comes in the getting of citizens. A Standard Oil magnate can build a city if he is willing to spend the money, but all the powers of heaven and earth combined cannot manufacture offhand a citizenship. In an emergency of this nature most land improvement companies would have issued pretty little pamphlets, gotten up in exquisite taste, full of beautiful pictures and bubbling over with enthusiastic text, all based upon possibilities ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... one shot, offhand. The charging horse reared, stood so a moment as rigidly as if fixed by bronze in that pose, its rider leaning forward over its neck. Then, in whatever terrible pang that such sudden stroke of death visits, it flung itself backward, the girths snapping from its distended belly. The ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... could I explain, offhand, to this stranger, the big boss, the little boss, the State boss, the ward boss, the county boss, all burrowing underneath our theoretical government! How could I explain to him that Fidele's department in the custom-house had been allotted to a Congressman about to run ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Jane's announcements, combined with the captain's own actions in regard to the Port family, had almost convinced him that this miserable engagement was a fact. But, of course, he would not in any way intimate to the captain that he believed in such nonsense, and therefore, in an offhand manner, he mentioned Olive's absurd anxiety in regard ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... trifle disappointed at this offhand response to her more earnest speech, but she only smiled gaily, and ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... the information. Ask him any questions you like. I've perfect confidence in him, and I stand by any statement of his we print. I don't think people realize how careful we are on financial matters—they seem to think that a popular paper will print any sort of canard offhand." ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... The offhand, hard manner and the contemptuous tone of "plain Mr. Jones" disconcerted Schomberg utterly. He had never been spoken to like this in his life. He shook his head in silence and withdrew, not exactly scared—though he was in ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... last he gave it up and turned her over for the day's inquest to an old hand at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities—Beaupere, a doctor of theology. Now notice the form of this sleek strategist's first remark—flung out in an easy, offhand way that would have thrown any unwatchful ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... water to one's eyes. Davy Lindsay had yet to play many a spring before King James, and some that were not gay. But the gentle stripling with the infant on his shoulder, the pertinacity of the little babbling cry, the "homely springs" played offhand that it was pity to hear, but which the lad enjoyed almost as much in laughing at their dashing incorrectness as the baby who knew only that it was a pleasant sound—how bright and vivid is the picture! ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... scenery and traditions of his own native land, the scandals of the court and the cloister, the petty struggle for the primacy of Wales, and the great tragedy of the fall of the Angevin Empire - is all alike dealt with in the bold, dashing, offhand style of a modern newspaper or magazine article. His first important work, the 'Topography of Ireland,' is, with due allowance for the difference between the tastes of the twelfth century and those of the nineteenth, just ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... says Mr. Calvin's the man who has most influence in the committee, and it occurred to me that it would be a good thing if you'd put Mrs. Fenton up to taking my part with Calvin. You see," he continued, in an offhand manner, "artists don't get any show nowadays unless they keep their eyes open, and I mean to be wide awake. I'm ready to do a good turn, too, for anybody that helps me. John told me the other day that you and he had had a row, and if you can do me a good turn in this, I may be able ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life. I am therefore of the opinion that it is best to accord freedom to dreams. Whether any reality is to be attributed to the unconscious wishes, and in what sense, I am not prepared to say offhand. Reality must naturally be denied to all transition—and intermediate thoughts. If we had before us the unconscious wishes, brought to their last and truest expression, we should still do well to remember that more than one single form of ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Folsom availed himself of his acquaintance with Clarke to salute the latter with surprising cordiality. She looked a few years older and less girlish without her blond wig but she was still quite pretty in brown hair. She treated Folsom with her wonted offhand amiability. He left the train when she left it, and he walked a block with her. With pardonable shrewdness she inspected his visage, attire, and manner, for indications of his pecuniary and social standing, while he was indulging in silly commonplaces. When they parted at the quiet ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... arm, thin and white, D'Herouville felt all his ire ooze from his pores. He could not measure swords with this old man, who stood near enough to his grave without being sent into it offhand. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... with a ponderous air of weighing his words. "I ain't the man to judge a feller offhand like. I 'lows I know suthin' o' the blind man o' Skitter Bend, seein' I wus workin' contract fer him all last summer. An' wot I knows is—nasty. I've see'd things on that ranch as made me git a tight grip on my axe, an' long a'mighty hard to bust a few heads in. I've see'd that all-fired Jake Harnach, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... been fiddling with his hat and staring hard at a pile of old ties just outside the window. He raised his head, and regarded her steadily. It was beginning to occur to him that there was a good deal to this Miss Georgie, under that offhand, breezy exterior. He felt himself drawn to her as a person whom he could ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... me a difficult question," she said. "Offhand I should say you must ride every morning, sleep some part of the early afternoon, and—oh, well, ride the next morning again, I reckon." And she smiled across at him. "Are you thinking ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... offhand way. He did not dislike Braybrooke. When Braybrooke was there he perceived him, having eyes, and having ears heard his voice. But hitherto Braybrooke had never succeeded in conveying any impression ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... in this world from which it would be desirable to see men delivered, it is from a certain small, cheap wisdom which expresses itself in general verdicts on all humanity, and enables the fribbler or dolt who can not see beyond his nose to give an offhand summary of the infinite. There is 'an aping of the devil' in this flippant assumption of our immutability, which strangely combines the pitiful and painful. Oh! if the ne plus ultra which antique Ignorance complacently inscribes on the gates of its world should ever be worn away, let it be replaced ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... didn't look so silly. Kindly get the facts well into your head, will you? The man must pursue Mary's affection either there or here, mustn't he? He can't do it there because his wife won't let him. In order to do it here, one would say offhand that Mary would have to be here, and since her mother declines to bring her, it does look to me as if the job would have to be done by somebody else. However, if my logic is wrong, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were said offhand and with the license of coffee-house talk at so late an hour. Beau Wilson rose, in a somewhat unsteady attitude, and, turning towards Law, addressed him with a tone which left small option as to ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... I suppose they have been demolished since. The worst of them all, the Mott Street Barracks, were taken into court by the owner; but all the judges and juries in the land had no power to put them back when it was decided upon a technicality that they should not have been destroyed offhand. It was a case of "They can't put you in jail for that."—"Yes, but I am in jail." They were gone, torn down under the referee's decision that they ought to go, before the Appellate Division called a halt. We were not in a mood to trifle with the Barracks, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... continually bringing forth things new and old, and often it happens that the newest are the oldest of all. Whether this or the exact converse is the case in regard to the latest discovery of Biblical archology is a question not to be determined offhand; but the interest and importance of the question can hardly be overrated. There are now deposited in the British Museum fifteen leather slips, on the forty folds of which are written portions of the Book of Deuteronomy in a recension entirely different from that of the received text. The character ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... met Steve in the bank knew vaguely that some sort of invention was being perfected, but did not know what it was. They spoke in an offhand way of the matter to their friends and that increased the general curiosity. Every one tried to guess what was up. When Steve was not about, John Clark and young Gordon Hart pretended to know everything but gave the impression of men sworn to secrecy. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... humor which was one of his marked characteristics. After fatiguing his vocabulary with hard usage, after his unsparing denunciation of "the very dirty politics" which he finds mixed up with our popular institutions, he says,—it must be remembered that this was an offhand letter to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pointed out to her she tapped. Miss Gallifer opened it, receiving her colleague with a great big hearty smile. Great, big, and hearty were the traits by which Miss Gallifer was known among the doctors. Healthy, skilful, jolly, and offhand, she carried the issues of life and death, in which she was at home, with a lightness which made her easy to work with. Some nurses would have resented the intrusion of an outsider—professionally speaking—like Miss ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... In the first place, I am speaking from memory; in the second place, rats, mice, squirrels, small boys, visitors, and high winds have made such inroads upon my specimens, and upon my work, that it is not quite time to report. I am merely speaking offhand in a general way, stating that the hickories, open bud and scale bud, both seem to cross rather freely back and forth. Open bud hickories and the walnuts seem to cross rather freely back and forth, while the walnuts and the scale bud hickories apparently do not ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... del Toboso named, I was struck with surprise and amazement, for it occurred to me at once that these pamphlets contained the history of Don Quixote. With this idea I pressed him to read the beginning, and doing so, turning the Arabic offhand into Castilian, he told me it meant, "History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian." It required great caution to hide the joy I felt when the title of the book reached my ears, and snatching it ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sublimated when they get to talking of architecture. I have just copied two quotations from Emerson, and am studying them every night for fifteen minutes before I go to sleep. I'm going to quote them some time offhand, just after matins, when we are wandering about the cathedral grounds. The first is this: 'The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone, subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mortifying to his visitor to be caught napping on so familiar a text; the parson saw it, and spoke consolingly. But if not strong in texts, the Deacon knew what his strong points were; so, before leaving, he invites a little offhand discussion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... to enter the laundry and pass over his parcel, as though it were his week's washing. He would be gone before they had discovered its contents. He merely needed to be offhand and nonchalant. More than once he had seen dilapidated actors carrying a limited wardrobe to the laundry at equally small hours of the night. And the sloe-eyed iron-thumpers would never ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... in that "etc." I cannot therefore regard The Triumphs of Sara (HUTCHINSON) precisely as the work of a beginner, though it has a freshness and sense of enjoyment about it that might well belong to a first book rather than to—I doubt whether even Mr. NORRIS himself could say offhand what its number is. Sara and her circle are eminently characteristic of their creator. You have here the same well-bred well-to-do persons, pleasantly true to their decorous type, retaining always, despite modernity of clothes and circumstance, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... the princess who—she thought—was making a favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard the sound of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... unexpectedly &c. 508. suddenly &c. (instantaneously) 113; before one can say "Jack Robinson", at short notice, extempore; on the spur of the moment, on the spur of the occasion [Bacon]; at once; on the spot, on the instant; at sight; offhand, out of hand; a' vue d'oeil[Fr]; straight, straightway, straightforth[obs3]; forthwith, incontinently, summarily, immediately, briefly, shortly, quickly, speedily, apace, before the ink is dry, almost immediately, presently at the first opportunity, in no long time, by and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reply. In his heart he blamed Rhodes that the prisoner had not been let escape during the absence of the girl, and also resented the offhand manner of the young American concerning ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... either he did not or would not perceive it, and he sailed without showing me any preference. In six months he returned, and whether it was that he was told of by others, or at last perceived, my feelings towards him, he joined the crowd of suitors, made a proposal in his offhand manner, as if he was indifferent as to my reply, and was accepted. My father, to whom he communicated the intelligence as carelessly as if he were talking about freight, did not approve of the match. 'Very well,' replied he, 'I shall say no more; as long as a man has a ship he ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... type of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered. "The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... a few others, I have picked out from hundreds of atrocity tales which I heard during four months spent in England, Belgium, Germany, and Holland. It will serve as an example, not only because it has the earmarks of truth,—having been told in an offhand way merely as an explanation of the private's insanity,—but because it is typical of the kind of incident which in the telling is, nine times out of ten, twisted into atrocious and ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... himself with conducting, besides his own symphony, the Oberon Overture and a Mozart concerto. These performances were interesting; a personality like his is so curious that it is quite amusing to find it coming out in the works he conducts. But how Mozart's features took on an offhand and impatient air; and how the rhythms were accentuated at the expense of the melodic grace. In this case, however, Strauss was dealing with a concerto, where a certain liberty of interpretation is allowed. But Mahler, who was less discreet, ventured upon conducting the whole of the Beethoven ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... do with Eeny-Meeny when we go home?" asked Gladys. That was a question nobody was prepared to answer offhand. ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... realized it or not; and this touch the girl Corinne had given her. Now, too, impulse met convenient opportunity. For two weeks she had been thinking that if she did ever happen to go to the Works, she would make a point of going in some offhand, incidental sort of way, thus proving to herself and the public that she had not the slightest responsibility for whatever might be going on there. (How could she possibly have, no matter what Mr. V.V. thought, with his exaggerated sympathies for the poor?) ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... disengaged hand pointed successively to the constellation of Orion, to the stars Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran, Rigel, the Pleiades, Sirius and others which with my very limited knowledge I could not recognise offhand. Then on the plate which I held, he showed us those same stars and constellations, checking them ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Bird, at all events. Offhand I would say that a huge cavern had been washed in the earth and ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... poet and another does not at all impair the possibility that it is his accusation which they are answering. So multiple are the threads of influence leading from the Republic through succeeding literatures and civilizations that it is unsafe to assert, offhand, that any modern expression of hostility to poetry may not be traced, by a patient untangler of evidence, to a source in the Republic. But even this is aside from the point. One might concede that ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Trenton came in to breakfast, he found his friend Mason waiting for him. That genial gentleman was evidently ill at ease, but he said in an offhand way— ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... sought to capture? Where were they taking me, and why was I not released as soon as they discovered their mistake? These were the main questions, but there were others also arising in mind. This did not seem to me like an ordinary party of troopers; there was an offhand freedom from discipline totally unlike the British service. Neither Peter nor the Indian seemed to belong to the class with which the army was recruited. Peter appeared more like a well-trained servant, and his riding was atrocious. And the lieutenant! There came back ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... let her go so easily. Assuming charge in a simple, offhand manner, he found a taxicab which took them to the South Station, led her to the ticket-office, secured a chair, and ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... man rage on without interruption. When he saw his opportunity he said offhand: "Too bad to spoil this ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... of the old gentleman as one of the most interesting residents of the precinct. I had even seen him more than once on the avenue, but I had never before been brought face to face with him, and consequently had much too superficial a knowledge of his countenance to determine offhand whether the uneasy light in his small gray eyes was natural to them, or simply the result of present excitement. But when he began to talk I detected an unmistakable tremor in his tones, and decided that he was in a state of suppressed agitation; ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the culprit. Yet you tell me Millard did not contest her divorce and that it would have been very easy for him to file a counter-suit because everyone knew of her relationship with Manton. That, offhand, shows no ill-will on his part. And now we find this note from him, which at least is friendly ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... like to answer such a question positively, offhand, but I don't, on the spur of the moment, recall any ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... she met was an old lady who had difficulty in walking," the seine-maker went on in the same offhand manner, "and maybe she stumbled and fell when Glory Goldie ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... that no more than a single stanza should be written on each tablet, so that unable, after all, to disregard her directions by writing anything in excess, she had no help but to compose a pentameter stanza, in an offhand way, merely with the intent of complying with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... precisely how things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. Yet if the tall, lean man, serious and growing grey, represented one form of strength, the shorter, stouter man, with the mobile face and the quick brain, stood for another. Offhand he could think of no weak spot on his side; and if he must ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... was all pity. I had not thought him great, but I had not suspected how small he was. His friends, the best, were confounded. One of them said to me the next day, 'It was not amazement that I felt, but consternation.' I spoke offhand and the report is horrible. Conkling's speech was carefully written out, and therefore you do not get all the venom, and no one can imagine the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... with the crudest superstitions, going so far as to forbid its adherents to read the Bible, and when the greatest philosopher representatives of the Church, like Albertus Magnus, would have rejected offhand, as a childish fancy or, indeed, as an heretical chimera, any attempt to rescue the lower classes of the people from their wretched state of spiritual servitude—in a time like this, the truly majestic spectacle is presented of a philosophy declaring war on superstition, and setting out to ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... room whose every feature had taken on a ghostly and unfamiliar air from the strange hour and the unwonted circumstances. I saw how her impressionable nature was affected by the scene, and made haste to assume the offhand air I thought most likely to overcome her apprehension. But the effect of the blank walls before her, relieved, but in no reassuring way, by the long dark folds of the rugs hanging straight down over the mysterious partition, ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... men were matched. Should they ever be pitted against each other, it would be impossible for anyone to determine offhand which ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... care for it," returned the other superciliously. While willing to aid in a good work, he did not in the least approve either of the Unspeakable Perk or of his offhand manners. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... construction; for a distance of a few score yards it runs supported by iron staples across the front of a sheer precipice, and for perhaps half a mile it hangs like an eyebrow over nearly or quite vertical walls of pine-set rock. Beside it, on the outer side of it, runs a path, which becomes an offhand gangway of planking at the overhanging places. At one corner, which gives the favourite picture postcard from Montana, the rocks project so sharply above the water that the passenger on the gangway must crouch down upon the bending ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... raise her eyes from her book in school and find him gazing steadily at her like a timid deer drinking thirstily at a spring. Nancy did not like Cyril, but she pitied him and was as friendly with him, in her offhand, boyish fashion, as ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... offhand speech upon the assignats grew a paper which, some time afterward, I presented in Washington before a number of members of the Senate and House, at the request of General Garfield, who was then a representative, and of his colleague, Mr. Chittenden of Brooklyn. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... as freely as though we were seated in friendly converse around the soda fount of a Kansas drug store; and I want you to feel as free to talk back as though we had gotten into this difficulty by accident instead of design. Ask me all the questions you want to, and if I'm unable to answer offhand I'll look the matter up later and telegraph you—at your expense. With such unbounded liberty there's really no telling whither we will drift, what subjects we may touch upon; but should I inadvertently trample upon any of your ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... my way down the stream, little elated at my solution of what at first had seemed a mystery, for I felt that Nick would have told me offhand all about it. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... ask, are you going to be able to know the good from the indifferent and bad sets? By buying a make of a firm with an established reputation. I have given a few offhand at the end of this book. Obviously there are many others of merit—so many, indeed, that it would be quite impossible to get them all in such a list, but these will serve as a guide until you can ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... penholder, carved to resemble a chessman and with a hole in the top through which you could see four views of Nauheim. And, as for experience, as for knowledge of one's fellow beings—nothing either. Upon my word, I couldn't tell you offhand whether the lady who sold the so expensive violets at the bottom of the road that leads to the station, was cheating me or no; I can't say whether the porter who carried our traps across the station ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... matter of phrasing which I am now discussing. Even in such a book there would doubtless be many points which would be open to assaults for sticklers in psychological technology. I am not issuing a propaganda or writing a thesis for the purpose of having something to defend, but merely giving a few offhand facts that have benefited me in my work. However, it is my conviction that it is the duty of the pianist to try to understand the analogy to the physical limitations which surround the more natural mediums of musical expression—the voice and the violin—and to apply ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... said offhand that even the complete appearance of depth such as the stereoscope offers would be in no way contradictory to the idea of moving pictures. Then the photoplay would give the same plastic impression which the real stage offers. All that would be needed is this. When the actors play ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... now for concerting measures offhand to prevent the disaster, for the other members of the party had already reached the spot where the Hansa lay bound in her icy trammels. A flight of steps, recently hewn by Hakkabut himself, gave access for the present to the gangway, but it was evident that some different contrivance would ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... of them. Indeed, the faculty for organization seems innate in the American people, so that when it became necessary to raise and equip so large a body of men at a few weeks' notice, the task was undertaken offhand by lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers, and schoolmasters, without a minute's hesitation, and was performed on the whole with ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... I ever heard of MacNelly doing. Can't make head nor tails of it. I'd have said offhand that MacNelly wouldn't double-cross anybody. He struck me as a square man, sand all through. But, hell! he must mean treachery. I can't see anything else in ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once—never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no work on it—thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan is an ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... morning Whitey restrained his impatience until breakfast-time, then strolled down to the bunk house, wearing the boots. Several of the men were there, just finishing the meal, and rolling their after-breakfast cigarettes. Whitey sat down, sort of offhand and careless-like, and to his pained surprise, no one noticed the boots. Then he crossed his legs and leaned back, with his hands clasped behind his head—and Buck Higgins ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... certainly have been jealous of your powers of specification. I do not know that it is sufficient to base a contract upon that would hold water in law; nevertheless, it is sufficient for me. I cannot offhand state the cost; but when the sketch and estimate are made, you shall see them; and if the cost exceeds your views, there will be no harm done; on the contrary, I shall have had the pleasure of scheming a little for you by way ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... was the first of many that Anne spent at the brown-stone house next door. The 'Roseland' family became so fond of her that Mr. and Mrs. Marshall talked about adopting her. 'It was too important a matter to decide offhand,' Mr. Marshall said; 'too great a responsibility to undertake lightly. They would wait awhile. Of course the child ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... ground; since it is impossible to find any large tract of country exactly what you would desire. If for no other reason, through sheer stress of numbers there will be collisions, and much damage done by kicks through mutual entanglement; whereas a pick of horse and men will be able to escape offhand, (15) especially if you have invention to create a scare in the minds of the pursuers by help of the moiety of troops who are out of action. (16) For this purpose false ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... swaggered around the room with a proprietary air. He threw in the casual "Lola" as if he owned her. Dale is the most delightful specimen of the modern youth of my acquaintance. But even Dale, with all his frank charm of manner, has the modern youth's offhand way with women. I often wonder how women abide it. But they do, more shame to them, and suffer more than they realise by their indulgence. When next I meet Maisie Ellerton I will read her a wholesome lecture, for her ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... what was once his country house and garden in old Chelsea Village to the theological seminary of his professorship. How many people remember this, or his scholarship? But before that old rooftree was laid low, he wrote beneath it, quite offhand, a little poem, 'The Night Before Christmas,' that blends with childhood's dreams anew each Christmas Eve—a few short verses holding more vitality ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... something in the quiet man that had effectually prevented any development of roughness in Norah. Boyish and offhand to a certain extent, the solid foundation of womanliness in her nature was never far below the surface. She was perfectly aware that while Daddy wanted a mate he also wanted a daughter; and there was never any real danger of ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... guessed his hopes and high aspiration, not even his friend Crowder. When Crowder rallied him about this treatment of the Alstons he had been short and offhand—didn't care for society, hadn't time to waste going round being polite. He left upon Crowder the impression that the Alston girls did not interest him any more than any other girls. "Old Mark isn't a lady's ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... friends have achieved it, distance will be annihilated and there will be no such thing as separation. We shall draw from our little box a small white packet, and, though Nostradamus may offer us every secret of magician or alchemist in exchange for it, we shall refuse offhand. How shall he lure us with a shadow, a ghostly visitant, savoring of the pit and summoned only by the most marrow-freezing incantations? Here in our hand is a mysterious, more potent charm, bringing us the warm, human personality of the man. We are not spiritualists, yet here sealed in ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... "and it is a somewhat difficult question to answer: very much too difficult to answer offhand. We ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... tenacity, can be compared with spiders who repair, or start again every instant at a damaged or broken thread. When these good fathers knew that their petition had not triumphed offhand, they struck out for some new road to reach the generous heart of the monarch. Having learnt that an alderman, full of enthusiasm, had just proposed in full assembly at the Hotel de Ville to raise a ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... committee that he would give them a better railroad bill than they were asking. His practice was to commit to memory a bill that he was about to introduce and then go into his committee-room, when it was full of loafers, and pretend to dictate it offhand to the stenographer, section by section without pausing. It was an impressive performance, and gained Handy the reputation of being brainy. But we at home who knew Handy were not impressed; and, in our office, we knew that he was the same Ab Handy who once ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... not to be supposed that in the darkness the Comanches below would grasp the situation offhand, and, before they could do so, Dinah scurried over the peak of the roof to the scuttle, which of course was still open, and descended. In her haste, she stepped upon the back of the chair, which tripped over, and she went down with a crash that ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... expression on his deeply wrinkled, tough old face, which Sewall said "looked like the instep of an old boot that had lain out in the weather for years,"—"what I can't make out is why you make all this fuss instead of hanging 'em offhand." ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... under the daily and hourly strain of constant intimate association with the woman he loved, of knowing that she gained strength and courage from her reliance upon him, and of forcing himself to treat her with an offhand good-fellowship which defied analysis for the mere reason that ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... carefully as one generally watches men who dispose of one's future. A slouching, slender figure; a head like a wise macaw; a beaked nose; shaggy eyebrows; unorderly hair and clothes; hoarse voice; offhand manner; free talk, and perpetual cigar, offered a new type — of western New York — to fathom; a type in one way simple because it was only double — political and personal; but complex because the political ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... far as to ask the loan of a pound or two of my own money off them. And there have been times, in the pre-1914 past, when I have felt it would be better to go without money than to have the stuff thrown at me, shovelled at me in that contemptuous offhand manner. I now repaired in person to the premises of Box and Co., with their handsome marble facade and their costly mahogany fittings, and had a word with Mr. Box himself. A little artful flattery, a few simple lies and just a touch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... at this insolent and offhand definition. He was astonished and hurt at the tone of his friend. However, presently, he resolved to go through with it, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and to pay for. Thirty thousand was the number thus far; and that number, reached within six weeks, meant a hundred thousand before the "run" should be over. His method involved simply a familiar offhand treatment of royalty, backed up by an excess of beauty, bravery, sword-play, costume, and irresponsible and impossible incident. "The only wonder is," he said, "that I shouldn't have taken up with this before. Anybody can do it; almost everybody ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... rear sight will necessitate a corresponding change in the position of the soldier's head when aiming, the exercise should not be held with the sight adjusted for the longer ranges until the men have been practiced with the sights as the latter would generally be employed for offhand firing. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... else can know, his own conditions and requirements, and should be able to form very exact ideas of just what he wants, and the doing so is, in my opinion, one of the most important requisites for satisfactory tomato growing. I also believe that it is as impossible for a man to answer offhand the question, "What is the best variety of tomato?" as for a wise physician to answer the question, "What is ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... morals by the universal envy of comrades, and unspoiled in teeth by the parental sugar-plums. People of older growth attach childish importance to the trade one plies. Nobs and nabobs (at least on the stage) disinherit daughters offhand for marrying grocers, and groan over sons who take to high art. The smug and prudent citizen shudders at the career of the filibuster, while the adventurer would commit suicide rather than achieve a modest livelihood in tape and needles. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... longer fighting units, and when the motives of conquest and defence were no longer in operation, is a question on which I should not like to dogmatize either way. Certainly we have no right to assume offhand that the unifying process which has given the nations the mass cohesion and efficiency they require for holding their own against enemy States would still remain in full power when there were no longer any enemy ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Morkan good-evening in what seemed an offhand fashion by reason of the habitual catch in his voice and then, seeing that Mr. Browne was grinning at him from the sideboard, crossed the room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone the story he ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the two men greeted each other in their offhand British way. As we couldn't well, under the circumstances, maintain a fiction of mutual invisibility, Mr. Shaw, with a certain obvious hesitation, turned ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Saving is not always and everywhere Welcomed.—To an offhand view it would seem that product multiplying is the greatest blessing that, in an economic way, can come to humanity; and if general and permanent effects be considered, it is so. The solitary hunter who has to catch and club his game would get ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... large audiences during the Civil War on war themes, and subjects in a lighter strain; was the first woman widely received as a lecturer by the colleges and lyceums. With a commanding presence, handsome face, an agreeable, permeating voice, a natural offhand manner, and something to say, she was at once a decided favourite, and travelled great distances to meet her engagements. She often quoted that ungallant speech from the Duke of Argyle: "Woman has no right on a platform—except to be hung; then it's unavoidable"; ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Suddenly and offhand he was hurried into a most momentous decision. Towards the end of June 1505, when several Church festivals fall together, he paid a visit to his home at Mansfeld, in quest, very possibly, of rest and comfort to his mind. Returning on July 2, the feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... 'Laverick Wells' was in great feather—it had never known such times. Every house, every lodging, every hole and corner was full, and the great hotels, which more resemble Lancashire cotton-mills than English hostelries, were sending away applicants in the most offhand, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Balfour by the artistic recital of a horrible tale. He declared that a little child had been barbarously sentenced by resident magistrates to a month's imprisonment for throwing a stone at a policeman. Some hard-headed or hard-hearted Yorkshireman, however, would not believe Mr. Waddy offhand, and challenged him to declare names, place, and date. On the 15th of November, Mr. Waddy gave the following particulars in writing. He stated that the magistrates who had imposed the brutal punishment were ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... his cacoethes scribendi, after those few blank days at Becket, Felix saw nothing amiss with his young daughter. The great observer was not observant of things that other people observed. Neither he nor Flora, occupied with matters of more spiritual importance, could tell, offhand, for example, on which hand a wedding-ring was worn. They had talked enough of Becket and the Tods to produce the impression on Flora's mind that one day or another two young people would arrive in her house on a visit; but she had begun a poem called 'Dionysus at the Well,' and Felix ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... moment Bonbright felt curiously calm, curiously cold, curiously detached from the scene. He regarded the other man.... This man was his father. His FATHER! The laws of life and of humanity demanded that he regard this man with veneration. Yet, offhand, without investigation, this man could jump to a vile conclusion regarding him. Not only that, but could accuse him, not of guilt, but of failing to conceal guilt!... Respectability! He knew he was watching ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... again into a heap. Mr. Leary stepped nimbly forth upon the pavement, feeling in his overcoat pocket for the fare; and then he realised he was not in West Eighty-fifth Street at all; he was not in any street that he remembered ever having seen before in the course of his life. Offhand, though, he guessed he was somewhere in that mystic maze of brick and mortar known as Old Greenwich Village; and, for a further guess, in that particular part of it where business during these last few years had been steadily encroaching upon the ancient residences ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... said. "Answer that offhand! There is a reporter down-stairs for the Sunday Gorgon, who wants five hundred words from you which he is prepared to take down in shorthand. ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... evening he would come over to my bungalow in a friendly way; he would "just drop in," as he used to say, in his pleasant offhand fashion, and he would irrigate himself with my brandy and soda, amid genial smiles and a brandishing of his long cheroot, playfully indicating his recognition of a stimulant with which he had been ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Snow interestedly. And then he added very casually, in the most offhand manner—he said it more to an orange orchard through which they were passing than he said it to Linda—"I have very grave doubts about that. I think there must be some slight complication that will have to ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... proximity—the nearest to French being Netherlandish. The next, as a result of immediate intercourse, Italian. Then German, Spanish, and the rest, as intercourse gave opportunity. It is not always an easy matter to say offhand whether a MS. is French or Flemish. In the earlier days it is not easy to say whether it be French or English, or even whether French or Italian. But ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... without enjoyment the works of James, so admirable for terseness; and the playful humour and dazzling offhand lightness of Ainsworth? Among other humourists, one might glance at a Jerrold, the chivalrous advocate of Toryism and Church and State; an a Beckett, with a lightsome pen, but a savage earnestness of purpose; a Jeames, whose pure style, and wit unmingled ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that we are of some account in the world,' says Mr Desmond, in his offhand Irish way; 'but if you please, Miss O'Regan, we are as hungry as hounds, and as thirsty as hippopotami, and I'm sure you'll say a good word to get us something to eat ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... too offhand, but it was quite impossible for her to gush, and she could not pretend a sudden affection just because of the engagement. So she just said something about Dudley being very happy, and hoped they would have good luck, and then went to the sitting-room to talk to Basil, entertaining him ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... to the holy volume? And what had they exactly in their several individual minds, when they delivered their utterances? These are manifestly questions of historical fact, and one does not see how the answer to them can decide offhand the still further question: of what use should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so defined, be to us as a guide to life and a revelation? To answer this other question we must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... anchored to earth in a good-sized field. Woods horizoned the field on three of its edges and a sunken road bounded it on the fourth. She measured, I should say at an offhand guess, seventy-five feet from tip to tip lengthwise, and she was perhaps twenty feet in diameter through her middle. She was a bright yellow in color—a varnished, oily-looking yellow—and in shape ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Monica with a smile, "but one can't do these things offhand—that is worse than doing nothing. I'll tell you what to do NOW. Why not go and stay with Aunt Anne? She would like to see you, I know, and I have always thought it rather lazy of you not to go there—she is rather a remarkable ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Haswell became interested in the work of an obscure chemist over in Brooklyn, Morgan Prescott. Prescott claims, as I understand, to be able to transmute copper into gold. Whatever you think of it offhand, you should visit his laboratory yourselves, gentlemen. I am told it is wonderful, though I have never seen it and can't explain it. I have met Prescott several times while he was trying to persuade Mr. Haswell ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... bed and whistled softly to himself. This was a contingency he had not foreseen. What would the Mexican chief do to two of the range-rider's friends who delivered themselves into his hands so opportunely? Steve did not think he would kill them offhand, but he was very sure they would not be at liberty to return home. Moreover, Harrison would be on the ground, eager for revenge. The prizefighter never had liked Farrar. He had sworn to get even with Threewit. An added incentive to this course was the fact ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... But from this admitted fact to the inference that it is "affection" that makes the husband defend his wife, there is a tremendous logical skip not warranted by the situation. Instead of making such an assumption offhand, the scientific method requires us to ask if there is not some other way of accounting for the facts more in accordance with the selfish disposition and habits of savages. The solution of the problem is easily found. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... witnesses were forthcoming to give evidence against them; such can be purchased outside any cutcherry in India for a few rupees. The men were convicted. Some were given a choice between execution and service in the Nawab's army; others were sentenced offhand to a term of imprisonment, and these considered themselves lucky in escaping with their lives. In vain they protested their innocence and pleaded that a messenger might be sent to Calcutta; the Nawab was known to be ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... have seen, had taken him into her confidence the day after her mother's wedding—and, indeed, had talked over the matter many times with him since—the actual truth was far too strange to suggest itself offhand, as it would have been doing had the doctor connected the fact that Sally's mother went out to India to be married with this meeting of two lovers at a simmering railway-station, name not known. The idea of the impossible per se is probably the one a finite intelligence ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... together, and there is enough of them to make an intelligible picture. I wonder how he would have related it himself. He has confided so much in me that at times it seems as though he must come in presently and tell the story in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with his offhand manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt, but now and then by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses of his very own self that were never any good for purposes of orientation. It's difficult ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... to say offhand. We'd have to figure that. That's another reason for filling the boat up, though. The more we have the less everyone's share ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... understand the same thing by "self-evident,'' so that what is self-evident to one is far from so to the other. This difference becomes especially clear when a lawyer examines professional people who can imagine offhand what is in no sense self-evident to persons in other walks of life. I might cite out of my own experience, that the physicist Boltzmann, one of the foremost of living mathematicians, was told once upon a time that his demonstrations were not sufficiently detailed ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... knows. They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the universe's name. Plato, Locke, Spinoza, Mill, Caird, Hegel—I prudently avoid names nearer home!—I am sure that to many of you, my hearers, these names are little more than ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... said Bert. "I never heard any one say 'factor' offhand like that. It's one of the words I've always held sacred to special topics and theses ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... amazed me, because if you dig deep enough into them you are likely to find common sense at the bottom. We must search Umballa's house thoroughly. I wish to see Ramabai and Pundita in the shadow of their rights. Can't destroy a document offhand and make a new one without legally destroying the first. Well, let us be getting back to the bungalow. We'll talk ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Spanish rule, would be useful to Porto Rico, then give them that. But, in any case, the starting-point should be the needs of Porto Rico herself, intelligently studied and conscientiously met—not the blacksmith's offhand attempt to fit on her head, like a rusty iron pot, an old system made for other needs, other industries, a ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... Lasswade. During the resting time passed in the country cottage, Scott found enjoyment in composing poems based upon some of the legends and superstitions with which he had become familiar in his jaunts among ruined castles and scenes in the Highlands. Some of these verses, shown in an offhand manner to James Ballantyne, who was the head of a printing establishment in Kelso, met with such favorable recognition that Scott was encouraged to lay bare to his friend a plan that had been forming in his mind for publishing a great collection of Scotch ballads. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... make her an offer for the ranch—for yourself, you understand. She doesn't know you, and she may have become tired of mooning around here by now, and there's just a chance that she'll take you—that is, if you handle the cards right. No eagerness, you understand—just sort of offhand and careless, as if you didn't care much whether she took ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... inspired by a spirit of contradiction, and he was afraid of inciting her, by resistance, to say something she would be unable to retract. "I don't think you've given the matter sufficient thought," he said at last. "It can't be decided offhand." ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson |
