"Prevalent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called Wow-wow, contained some 18,000 inhabitants. It was one of the cleanest and best built towns the traveller had entered since he left Badagry. The streets are wide and well kept, and the houses are round, with conical thatched roofs. Drunkenness is a prevalent vice in Wow-wow: governor, priests, laymen, men and women, indulge to excess in palm wine, in rum brought from the coast, and in "bouza." The latter beverage is a mixture made of dhurra, honey, cayenne pepper, and the root of a coarse grass eaten by cattle, with the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... resulted in a profounder transformation of thought than has been effected by all the preceding centuries. Never, probably, in the history of the world were the meanings and ambitions of progress so prevalent as they are to-day. An energy of inquiry and an endless curiosity is sweeping away the complacent Victorian attitude, which in its secure faith and tranquil self-confidence accepted the conditions of living ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... fierce and intractable for a motherly piety and tenderness to tame and subdue. Her garments are painted with divers colors, but chiefly green, and figured with the images of several creatures, because such a dress is suitable to the variegated and more prevalent appearance of ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... St. Louis are, the government-house, the theatre, the bank of the United States, and three or four Catholic and Protestant churches. The Catholic is the prevalent religion. There are two newspapers published here. Cafes, billiard tables, dancing houses, &c., ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... for tens of thousands of years, it would, I think, be a marvellous fact if many plants had not thus become widely transported. These means of transport are sometimes called accidental, but this is not strictly correct: the currents of the sea are not accidental, nor is the direction of prevalent gales of wind. It should be observed that scarcely any means of transport would carry seeds for very great distances; for seeds do not retain their vitality when exposed for a great length of time to the action of sea water; nor could they ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... card to one of the secretaries, and we were immediately ushered up, when I stated my wishes. The reply was:—"If you had time to procure a substitute it would be easily arranged; but the regiment is so weak, and the aversion to the West Indies so prevalent after this last very sickly season, that I doubt if His Royal Highness would permit any man to purchase his discharge. However, we will see. The Duke is one of the kindest-hearted of men, and I will lay the case before him. But let us see if he is still ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... back as Doctor Johnson, punning was regarded as obsolete, it was still prevalent in the United States and so up to a late date. Mr. Lincoln was ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... creatures seemed to be in a manner out of their wits, on being brought on board as prisoners among a people so strange and fierce as our men seemed to them; but so prevalent is avarice in man, that we ought not to wonder that it should so prevail over the apprehensions of these Indians, as to make them so anxious about their cacao-nut money, even in their present situation[8]. The modesty of their demeanour ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the soldiers had eaten roast pork, and all kinds of vegetables, in consequence their weakened digestive tract had been overtaxed so that diarrhoea became prevalent, a most frightful condition during a march on the road, with a temperature of 25 deg. below zero, Reaumur (about ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... view of the devotional habits prevalent amongst the Pharisees may appear somewhat novel, but let that pass. Meanwhile, any one experienced in tract lore will feel certain that this outburst will be followed by the appearance of the "candid inquirer," ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... necessary work might have been done by them: and indeed many people at that time, and before it, used to think that machinery would entirely supersede handicraft; which certainly, on the face of it, seemed more than likely. But there was another opinion, far less logical, prevalent amongst the rich people before the days of freedom, which did not die out at once after that epoch had begun. This opinion, which from all I can learn seemed as natural then, as it seems absurd now, was, that while the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... or, again, it may have been only one cause out of many causes. In an article in the first number of this magazine, the financial fluctuations in this country are ascribed to the alternate inflation and collapse of our factitious paper-money. Adopting the prevalent theory, that the universal use of specie in the regulation of the international trade of the world determines for each nation the amount of its metallic treasure, it was there argued that any redundant local ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... "Anecdotes of the Eng. Lang.," p.217. This writer, whose evidence to a fact we may avail ourselves of, whatever we think of his criticism or his scholarship, quotes the following as forms of speech then prevalent among the Londoners: "and so says me I;" "well what does me I;" "so says me she;" "then away goes me he;" "what does me they?" Here it is obvious that me is the indeterminate pronoun, and represents the ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... is a more prevalent disease than is commonly thought. In the male it usually develops during the fourth and fifth decades of life. There is in some cases the history of years of more or less habitual consumption of strong alcoholic ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... complex elements of life. Spontini added to the majestic repose and ideality of the Gluck music-drama (to use a name now naturalized in art by Wagner) the keenest dramatic vigor. Though he had a strong command of effects by his power of delineation and delicacy of detail, his prevalent tastes led him to encumber his music too often with overpowering military effects, alike tonal and scenic. Riehl, a great German critic, says: "He is more successful in the delineation of masses and groups ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... towards the autumn, when all those of the first group are faded away, and only a weak though large section of the heads is still flowering, the whole aspect of the variety gradually retrogrades. The same law of dependency and periodicity is prevalent everywhere. In my own cultures of the improved field-marigold I have observed it frequently. The number of the ray-florets may be considered as a direct response to nourishment, both when this is determined by external circumstances, and when it depends on the particular strength of the branch, ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... no mention was made of it in his farewell address. He never was President of a savings bank. Washington never lectured. He never edited a newspaper. He could not tell a lie at the rates editors charge. No he was a good man, with none of the small vices that are so prevalent these days. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... the apocryphal authority of Sanconiatho, Ousous, one of the most ancient of the Phoenician heroes, took a tree which was half burnt, cut off its branches, and was the first who ventured to expose himself on the waters. This tradition, however, probably owes its rise to the prevalent belief among the ancients, that to the Phoenicians was to be ascribed the invention of every thing that related to the rude navigation and commerce of the earliest ages of the world: under this idea, the art of casting accounts, keeping registers, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... times to attend to the calls of nature, and hence they retained the power of moving about to within a comparatively short period of the close of life. Owing to the slow progress of the diseases most prevalent, diarrhea, and chronic dysentery, the corpses were as a ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... divinity, which he has demonstrated by so many and great works performed contrary to the laws of nature. Truth stands no more in need of the patronage of error, than does a natural good complexion of paint. And it is certain, that the opinion which has been prevalent for many ages, of the power granted to devils, of torturing human bodies and minds, has been several ways made subservient to the subtle designs of crafty men, to the very great detriment and ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... one happy or wish one joy; to congratulate is to express hearty sympathy in his joys or hopes. Felicitate is cold and formal. We say one felicitates himself; tho to congratulate oneself, which is less natural, is becoming prevalent. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... prevalent impression that Charles Frohman is a hard-headed American man of business who would not look at anything that is not likely to pay. On the contrary, he is the most wildly romantic and adventurous man of my acquaintance. As Charles XII. became ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Caesars were essentially different from those entertained and embodied by Greece and Rome. The State ceased to be an organic and self-attracting body. The individual rather than the corporate existence of man became the prevalent conception of the Church and of legislators; and nations sought rather to isolate themselves from one another, than to coalesce and correspond. Moreover, the life of antiquity was eminently municipal. The city was the germ of each body politic, and the connection of roads with cities is obvious. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... and the necessary funds came from corporations and men of wealth who contributed as I have described above. The majority of the men with a natural capacity for organization leadership of the type which has generally been prevalent in New York politics turned to Senator Platt as their natural chief and helped build up the organization, until under his leadership it became more powerful and in a position of greater control than any other Republican machine in the country, excepting in Pennsylvania. The Democratic machines in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... around them. Very large crops of potatoes are raised in this manner. Two hundred and fifty bushels per acre are no uncommon crop. I have assisted in raising double that quantity; but of late years, since the disease has been prevalent, but poor ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... 260. Botta, lib. vi. Despatches of Col. Graham, British attache with the Austrian army, in Records: Italian States, vol. 57. These most interesting letters, which begin on May 19, show the discord and suspicion prevalent from the first in the Austrian army. "Beaulieu has not met with cordial co-operation from his own generals, still less from the Piedmontese. He accuses them of having chosen to be beat in order to bring about a peace promised ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of South America there has been much misunderstanding of the attitude and purposes of the United States towards the other American Republics. An idea had become prevalent that our assertion of the Monroe Doctrine implied, or carried with it, an assumption of superiority, and of a right to exercise some kind of protectorate over the countries to whose territory that doctrine applies. Nothing could be farther ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... The sentiments prevalent in this era of perfect peace, harmony and balance of rights forbids the suspicion of any significance in the fact that the lordly palace of the Federal government at once overshadows and turns its back upon the humbler tenements of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... midday, grass, inches tall, was rippling all around the homestead in the now prevalent northwest breeze, and Dan was preparing for a trip out-bush to see where the showers had fallen, and Mac and Tam coming in as he went out, Mac greeted us with a jocular: "The flats get greener every ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... The horror of this nocturnal scream was equally prevalent in the West as in the East. Ovid Introduces it in his Fasti, L. vi. 1. 139; and Tibullus in his Elegies, L.i. El ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... seated over a low wood fire, in a small sitting-room, in which the smell arising from the burning of damp sticks was very prevalent. There was one small rickety table in the middle of the room, and one other chair besides that occupied by the host, and with these articles alone the room was furnished. That there was no carpet in a clergyman's house in Poitou was not remarkable; indeed it would have been very remarkable ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... been taken from different parts of the Ossianic poems, and all together expressthe graver attitude of the mind of Ossian towards the new faith. That idea, occurring in a separate paragraph in the middle of the page, though prevalent as a sentiment throughout all the conversations of Ossian with St. Patrick, has been, as it stands, taken from a meditation on life by St. Columbanus, one of the early Irish Saints—a meditation which, for subtle thought, for musical resigned sadness, tender brooding ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... their enemies; he must have sounded their harbours, he must have measured the quantity of their arable land and pasture, of their woods and mountains; he must have ascertained whether there are fisheries on their coasts, and even what winds are prevalent. On these causes, with some others, depend the bodily strength, the numbers, the wealth, the wants, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... weapon of the patricians, and one which could naturally be better used at a distance from Rome. The frequency of its use would seem to argue adaptability in the devotional feelings of the nobles at least, which might modify our reliance upon the statement made above as to the respect for the gods then prevalent in Rome.—D.O.] ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... of the house and her daughter had similar bags attached to their necks, containing charms, which, they said, prevented the witches having power to harm them. The belief in witchcraft is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of the Alemtejo, and I believe of other provinces of Portugal. This is one of the relies of the monkish system, the aim of which, in all countries where it has existed, seems to have been to beset the minds of the people, that they might ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... design, say, if you like, its correctness or incorrectness, is to a considerable extent a matter of logical reasoning, of which you must accurately know the premises before you can form a just conclusion. But there is another reason for this prevalent uncertainty and vagueness of opinion, arising out of the very nature of architectural art itself, as compared with the imitative arts. A painting of a figure on a landscape is primarily a direct imitation of the physical facts of nature. I do not for a moment say it is only that, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... States where the rate charged is but a dollar a day. But Melbourne was full of strangers, drawn thither by flaming accounts of the richness of the mines and the bright prospects of acquiring sudden fortunes, and war prices were prevalent everywhere. ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all their ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and of all other explanations Levin had unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it, as anyway the clearest, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Tom only expressed the views of the settlers. Mrs. Jones knew that there was no reason for her anxiety, except her fears, and she had not ventured to express them to any one before; for she was aware, such was the prevalent feeling on this subject, that it would expose her to ridicule. But now she only shook her head, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... ever mentioned. In regard to her Hugo proceeds to exhibit his etymological powers, ignoring entirely the agreeable heroine of Bevis of Hampton, and suggesting either an abbreviation of "Josefa y Ana" (at this time, we are gravely informed, there was a prevalent English fashion of taking Spanish names) or else a feminine of "Josias." Moreover, among dozens of other instances of this Bedlam nomenclature, we have a "combat of box" between the Irishman "Phelem-ghe-Madone" (because Irishmen are often Roman Catholics?) and the Scotchman "Helmsgail" (there ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... two-story acquaintances, they will all be in an excellent state of health, and have much pleasure in accepting this very polite invitation. If the note is from the lady of a two-story family to a three-story one, the former highly respectable person will find that an endemic complaint is prevalent, not represented in the weekly bills of mortality, which occasions numerous regrets in the bosoms of eminently desirable parties that they cannot have the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... had also to be made with the spirit of the age. The unfortunate conflict between Religion and Science prevalent at this time was mitigated, if I remember rightly, by making graduates in arts and priests in the established church Science Teachers EX OFFICIO, and leaving local and private enterprise to provide schools, diagrams, books, material, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and if the Roman historians are to be credited, more preternatural appearances and predictions announced this event, than its importance deserved.[30] The truth seems to be, that a belief in omens and prodigies was again become prevalent, as the people were evidently relapsing into pristine barbarity, ignorance being ever the proper soil ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... coarseness," pursued George, "she hates weakness. I believe that if ever a divorce was justified in this world, hers was. But to have you come back at her, to have Magsie Clay break in on her, and begin to yap breezily about divorce, and how prevalent it is, and what a solution it is, why, of course it was enough to break ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... disease is one of the oldest and most prevalent diseases of the skin. It is commonly known as scab or mange. The animals most commonly affected are sheep, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... what has occurred in Missouri, without ascribing it to the weakness or wickedness of any general. The newspaper files—those chronicles of current events—will show that evils now complained of were quite as prevalent under Fremont, Hunter, Halleck, and ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... of regulation has existed for a long time in its strictest form, venereal diseases are extremely prevalent; while in Switzerland, where it only exists at Geneva, having been suppressed for some years in the Canton of Zurich, they are less frequent. Geneva is not less contaminated than other towns in Switzerland, in spite of its model brothels, and Zurich has lately, by popular vote, confirmed abolition ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... with Walt Whitman: "I hail with joy the oceanic, variegated, intense practical energy, the demand for facts, even the business materialism, of the current age. . . . I perceive clearly that the extreme business energy and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States are parts of a melioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... national labor resources and the introduction of minimum standards in its philanthropic aspect is "the abolition of poverty." When he speaks of this as a definite and by no means a distant reform, the reformer refers to that extreme form of poverty, so widely prevalent to-day, which results in the physical deterioration and the industrial inefficiency of a ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... only through fear of losing economic security to the ever alert competitor. It is certain that when all men and all women have gained individual economic opportunity and security, social institutions will change also. May it not be possible that the jealousies now prevalent, because of the economic import or the social standing that the private claim on the ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... the time being in Seoul, I must introduce you to the Corean, not as a nation, you must understand, but as an individual. It is a prevalent idea that the Coreans are Chinese, and therefore exactly like them in physique and appearance, and, if not like the Chinese, that they must be like their neighbours on the other side—the Japanese. As a matter of fact, they are like neither. Naturally the continuous ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... There is a widely prevalent notion that the speakers of English Dialects employ none but native words; and it is not uncommon for writers who have more regard for picturesque effect than for accuracy to enlarge upon this theme, and to praise the dialects at the expense of the literary language. Of course there ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... Alps.[126] It is a spacious cavern, opening in a steep wall of rock above the Rositenschlucht between the Platten and Dachstein-kalk.[127] An ice-current rushes from within, and ice is found on the threshold, becoming more prevalent in the farther recesses of the cave. The lower parts are tolerably roomy, and masses of ice of various shapes are found piled one upon another, lighting up with magical effect when torches are brought to bear upon them. Guembel believes that the cold ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... part of the medical profession to eliminate all forms of germ diseases. The same physicians and sanitarians who have practically rid the modern city of small-pox and cholera and are eliminating tuberculosis, well know that the social evil is directly responsible for germ diseases more prevalent than any of the others, and also communicable. Over and over again in the history of large cities, Vienna, Paris, St. Louis, the medical profession has been urged to control the diseases resulting from ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... fetch a pail of water, or to gossip with a neighbour, she always leaves the door-key in the keyhole outside. The house is, in fact, at the mercy of any one who chooses to turn the key and enter. This practice of locking the door and leaving the key in it is very prevalent. The presence of the key is to intimate that the inmate has gone out, but will shortly return; and it is so understood by the neighbours. If a cottager goes out for the day, he or she locks the door, and takes the key with them; but if the key is ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... his marriage, visited many, if not all, parts of Scotland; knew high and low, rich and poor, with the amiable interest of his temperament and the keen observation of his genius; took part in business and amusement and conviviality (he accuses himself later of having been not quite free from the prevalent peccadillo of rather deep drinking); and still and always read. He joined the 'Speculative Society' in January 1791, and, besides taking part in the debates on general subjects, read papers on Feudalism, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... that the laboring multitude cannot command a variety of books, or spend much time in reading; and how, then, can they gain the force of thought, and the great ideas, which were treated of in the former lecture? This objection grows out of the prevalent disposition to confound intellectual improvement with book-learning. Some seem to think that there is a kind of magic in a printed page, that types give a higher knowledge than can be gained from other sources. Reading is considered as the royal road to intellectual ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... you, on my arrival at Quintero, that something unpleasant would take place, I was not altogether ignorant of a report which has now become prevalent. It was said on the day of your departure, that your Lordship had placed a large sum of money on board one of the British men of war in the harbour, 9,000 ounces in gold in a package directed to Lady Cochrane, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the servants at Mount Morven remarked that the weeks seemed to follow each other more slowly than usual. In the higher regions of the house, the same impression was prevalent; but the sense of dullness among the gentlefolks submitted ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... while of the rural populations of French Flanders Dr. Villerme then affirmed, after a careful study of their habits, that nothing was to be seen among them of the 'debauchery and the daily and disgusting drunkenness prevalent ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... impossible to believe that these men had committed the atrocities reported at Termonde and Roosbeek, at Malines and Louvain. At close range it was easy to see that the prevalent conception of the "barbarians" was the purest kind of rot—the picture created and fostered by the Allied press, of a vicious and besotted beast with natural brutality accentuated by alcoholic rage. With ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... bricks without straw, was the excess even of Egyptian bondage; Homer could not fight up against the necessities of his age, and the defects of its manners. And the very apologies which will be urged for him, drawn as they must be from the spirit of manners prevalent in his era, are reciprocally but so many reasons for not seeking in him the kind of poetry which has been ascribed to him by ignorance, or by defective sensibility, or by ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... following eight chapters (6-13) Sallust describes the transition from the stern manners, the warlike energy, and domestic peace of the ancient Romans, to the corruption prevalent in the time of Catiline, and which consisted chiefly in extravagance, avarice, oppression, and the love of dominion. His description is a striking picture of the early virtuous character of the Romans, ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... of St. Domingo possesses a beauty totally unexpected, from the prevalent gloomy character of the rest of the island. The village is situated at the bottom of a valley, bounded by lofty and jagged walls of stratified lava. The black rocks afford a most striking contrast with the bright green vegetation, which follows the banks of a little ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a form of small-pox was prevalent among cows, and that by taking the germs of this disease, which was called cow-pox, and putting them into the blood of human beings, he could produce a mild form of small-pox, which never assumed a dangerous character, and yet prevented the person ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, November 4, 1897, No. 52 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... prevalent amongst the men concerning Hunter's condition. He had 'broken his spiral column', he had 'conjunction of the brain', or he had injured his 'innards' and would probably never be able to 'do no more slave-drivin''. Crass—who had helped Mr ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... England, money used to be put under the candlesticks 'for the cards,' as it was said, but in fact for the servants, who waited. Winner or loser, the tax was to be paid, and this custom of vails was also prevalent in France. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... baptism was also reckoned a remedy for disease. This is doubtless a relic of the old creed which refers all human ailments to witchcraft and other spiritualistic origins. Mr. Henderson, speaking of the notion prevalent in the north of England that sickly infants never thrive until they are christened, relates a story communicated to him by a clergyman, within whose personal knowledge it had happened. He says: "The infant child of a chimney-sweeper at Thorne, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... furnished instances of astonishing audacity that made his name a byword for mastery in the hour of peril. His residence in Milan now, after seven years of exile in England and Switzerland, was an act of pointed defiance, incomprehensible to his own party, and only to be explained by the prevalent belief that the authorities feared to provoke a collision with the people by laying hands on him. They had only once made a visitation to his house, and appeared to be satisfied at not finding him. At that period Austria ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... about raising checks and drafts that should be carefully noted: To successfully raise a check or draft requires so much less skill or art than to accomplish a forgery that it has of late become alarmingly prevalent. Often where a check or draft is printed on ordinary paper the original figures are removed by some chemical process so skilfully that no alteration can be detected, even with a ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... he always had a card up his sleeve, but, unlike the others, he thought the Lord had put it there. This attitude, which has been characteristic of England, has been somewhat chastened among ourselves by the satire of men like Bernard Shaw; but in America it is still just as prevalent and self-confident as it was with us fifty years ago. There is much justification for such an attitude. Gladstonian England was more of a moral force than the England of the present day; and America is more of a moral force at this moment than any other ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... theme of frequent and all-but-interminable discussion. Not a day passed but mine host Lapierre publicly congratulated himself upon his acumen in having all along believed and declared that Savareen was still in the land of the living. This landlord shared the prevalent opinion that the family should be more communicative. "I haf always," said he, "peen a coot frient to Mrs. Safareen. I respect her fery mooch, put I think she might let us know sometings more apout her discoferies in New York." Scores of other persons harped to the same monotonous tune. But ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... among books and those who knew what was in books. I was carefully instructed in things temporal and spiritual. But up to a considerable maturity of childhood I believed Raphael and Michael Angelo to have been superhuman beings. The central doctrine of the prevalent religious faith of Christendom was utterly confused and neutralized in my mind for years by one of those too common stories of actual life, which I overheard repeated in a whisper.—Why did I not ask? you will say.—You don't remember the rosy pudency of sensitive ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... keeping you now from roughing it with me but the sight of this gun in my belt, and a suspicion in your mind that I may know how to use it. That suspicion is correct. Moreover, you will discover this same ability more or less prevalent throughout this section. However, I am not looking for trouble; I am trying to avoid it. I haven't sought your company; I do not want to know you. Now you go back to your bar-room where you will find plenty of your own kind to associate ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... command. The American soldiery are a more cultivated set of men than these, and are in proportion more inexcusable for any resort to intemperance. They ought to have neither the external discomfort nor the internal vacuity which have caused drunkenness in other armies. The resort to strong drinks so prevalent in the Americans is an ever-lasting mystery to Europeans, who recognize in them a self-governing people, universally educated up to a capacity for intellectual interests such as are elsewhere found to be a safeguard against intemperance in drink. If the precautions instituted by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... history to discuss in detail the causes of the deplorable vices that characterized the priesthood on the eve of the great religious movement of the sixteenth century; nor can we pause to make that analysis of the doctrinal errors then prevalent, which belongs rather to the office of the historian of the Reformation. It will be sufficient, therefore, if we glance hastily at some of the partial and abortive efforts directed toward the reform of doctrine and manners of which mediaeval France ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... older tertiary formations, with their abundant shells, and their relics of vegetable life buried under great sheets of basalt, led him to consider carefully the question of climate during these earlier periods. In opposition to prevalent views on this subject, Darwin points out that his observations are opposed to the conclusion that a higher temperature prevailed universally over the globe during early geological periods. He argues that "the causes which gave to ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... survive it. She not only became impressed with the idea, that, because she was richer, she was better than others, but that only such customs were to be tolerated in "good society," as were different from prevalent usages in the mass. Into this idea her two eldest daughters were thoroughly inducted. Mr. Ludlow, immersed in business, thought little about such matters, and suffered himself to be led into almost anything that his wife and daughters proposed. But Mrs. Ludlow's brother—Uncle ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... [Footnote 142: How prevalent these are is not recognised by readers familiar only with English poetry. See Simpson's Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1868) and Mr. Wyndham's edition of Shakespeare's Poems. Perhaps ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the same aid. The friends of Mars, who cannot bear the prospect of perpetual peace, maintain that war is an indispensable instrument of Progress. It is in the name of Progress that the doctrinaires who established the present reign of terror in Russia profess to act. All this shows the prevalent feeling that a social or political theory or programme is hardly tenable if it cannot claim that it harmonises with this ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... on the Lord's Prayer were published. Gerson admonished: "The reformation of the Church must begin with the young," and published sermons on the Decalog as models for the use of the clergy. John Wolf also urged that the young be instructed, and endeavored to substitute the Decalog for the prevalent catalogs of sins. The Humanists John Wimpheling, Erasmus, and John Colet (who wrote the Catechyzon, which Erasmus rendered into Latin hexameters) urged the same thing. Peter Tritonius Athesinus wrote a similar book of instruction ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... valuable. Freedom, I said, was one of those things which we thus worshipped in itself, without enough regarding the ends for which freedom is to be desired. In our common notions and talk about freedom, we eminently show our idolatry of machinery. Our prevalent notion is,—and I quoted a [55] number of instances to prove it,— that it is a most happy and important thing for a man merely to be able to do as he likes. On what he is to do when he is thus free to do as he likes, we do not lay so much stress. Our familiar praise of the British Constitution ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... besides scientific journals, as advocates of their notions, and in obtaining entrance for them into the common school books, put into the hands of our children, and into massive quartos published by State legislatures with the money of Christian people, and in the prevalent corruption of public morals and breach of private trusts necessarily resulting from the evolution of these principles, that we are compelled, in self-defense, to examine the doctrine of evolution. It is all very well for Mr. Tyndall to warn off everybody, but evolutionists, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... are little felt, where the prospect of gain is unbounded, and where immense wealth may cover the crimes by which it is acquired, that we can find any parallel to the levity, the rapaciousness, the perfidy, and corruption prevalent among the Spaniards ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... maintained them. Purity of doctrine was a jewel among the late reforming majority. The orthodoxy of the ministers in general of the separated Church is undoubted. She adheres to the Confession of Faith. It is requisite that she direct a testimony against unsound doctrine, including the errors prevalent now in Churches called Christian; and that whatever scheme of co-operation with other Christians she may embark in, may be consistent with ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to this day—the name of THE MOONSTONE. A similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying, however (as in India), to a diamond devoted to the service of a god, but to a semi-transparent stone of the inferior order of gems, supposed to be affected by ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... (charming for the shingles) was more prevalent in this parish than in any other in Montgomeryshire. A certain amount of penance was to be done by the sufferer, who was to go to the charmer in the morning fasting, and he was also to be fasting. The mode of cure ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... how thoroughly the belief in magic powers was ingrained in the Egyptians. Now such a belief implies the presence of magicians, and shows how familiar must have been the claim to such powers, and the practising of the tricks of witchcraft, so prevalent in Africa in modern times. The efficacy of a model, such as this crocodile of wax, is an idea continually met with in Egypt. The system of tomb furniture and decoration, of ka statues, of ushabtis or figures ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... hands, and saying that he hoped I would fulfill the expectations of General Grant in the new command I was about to undertake, adding that thus far the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac had not done all it might have done, and wound up our short conversation by quoting that stale interrogation so prevalent during the early years of the war, "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" His manner did not impress me, however, that in asking the question he had meant anything beyond a jest, and I parted from the President convinced that he did not believe all that ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... is a very prevalent opinion among the dwellers on the shores of Sir Isaac Newton's Ocean of Truth, that salt fish, which have been taken from it a good while ago, split open, cured and dried, are the only proper and allowable food for reasonable people. I maintain, on the other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... crowded from pit to dome—long tiers of changing faces and luminous eyes. There was a prevalent odor of stale tobacco, and orange-peel, and bad gas; and there was bustle, and noise, and laughter, and a harsh collection of stringed ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... throats. In one village six out of seven adults were affected, but apparently children under twelve or fourteen years are free from it as we saw no evidences in either sex. Probably the disease is in a large measure due to the drinking water, for it is most prevalent in the limestone regions and seems to ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... had a burden of care and anxiety on his mind on account of these two children. It was so difficult a work, especially as himself could not be with them, to save young boys like them from the contagious vice so prevalent in this country; and, above all, so hard to preserve young boys in the atmosphere of your "common schools." Bridget might be said to be safe, for she could remove to a better and more Christian neighborhood, or return to her friends in the old country; but Patrick, and, above ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... ride down the Bright Angel in riding suits that were identical in color, cut and effect—long-tailed, tight-buttoned coats; derby hats; stock collars; shiny top boots; cute little crops, and form-fitting riding trousers with those Bartlett pear extensions midships and aft—and the prevalent color was a soft, melting, misty gray, like a cow's breath on a frosty morning. Evidently they had both ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... procession through the stables, and return to coffee in the drawing-room. This custom was introduced by the first Lord Yarborough some half-century ago, in order to break through the habit of late sitting over wine that then was too prevalent. ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... of this Canto together with the following one, regards the belief, formerly prevalent in India, that by virtue of certain spells, to be learnt and muttered, secret knowledge and superhuman powers might be acquired. To this the poet has already alluded in Canto xxiii. These incorporeal ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... city of the most religious people in the world could not by any possibility lack that centre of civic life which its chief temple always was to every ancient town. Philosophy must settle the question how it came to pass that religious ideas were in ancient times so universally prevalent and so strongly pronounced. History is only bound to note the fact. Coeval, then, with the foundation of the city of Menes was, according to the tradition, the erection of a great temple to Phthah—"the Revealer," the Divine artificer, by whom the world and man were created, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... down sufficiently for me to see again, but I had lost my appetite for further hunting, especially as Chauvin had had several long tramps without any luck. We stayed in camp a couple of days longer, then, as signs of a rainstorm were prevalent, we packed up and left camp very early one morning, and the first day got back to Newhall. The next morning, when we reached San Fernando, as I was not feeling any too well, I took the train for Los Angeles, so as to avoid the hot, dusty ride in ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... not without merit, and a readable letter may be disinterred every now and then from beneath the piles of contemporary correspondence. When the history of the times comes to be finally written in the fashion now prevalent, in which some six portly octavos are allotted to a year, and an event takes longer to describe than to occur, the industrious will find ample mines of waste paper in which they may quarry to their heart's content. Though Hansard was not, and newspapers were in their infancy, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... feel that he was not only the strongest, but had actually been more prevalent in the contest than myself; nor did he, on this account, congratulate himself, when he reflected that the appointed hour was fast approaching when he must do his best to thrash me still more. The sole thought that weighed on my mind, was that of having quarrelled with a ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... the fallacy of these dreams. All that has been accomplished is the displacement of the objective point; the desire, the mania for a handle to one's name is as prevalent as ever. Leave the centres of civilization and wander in the small towns and villages of our country. Every other man you meet is introduced as the Colonel or the Judge, and you will do well not to inquire too closely into the matter, nor to ask to see the title-deeds ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... there a confident expectation entertained by the other States, that North Carolina and Georgia would complete the plan already so far executed by New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina, but that the opinion was in no small degree prevalent, that the just title to this "back country," as it was termed, had vested in the United States by the treaty of peace, and could not rightfully be claimed ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... contesting votes and throw the matter into the hands of the legislature—that was the Republican prophecy and the Republican fear. Manufacturers, merchants, and ministers pleaded for a fair election. An anti-autocratic grip became prevalent in the hills. The Hawns and Honeycutts sent word that they had buried the feud for a while and would fight like brothers for their rights, and from more than one mountain county came the homely threat that if those rights were denied, there would somewhere be "a mighty shovellin' of dirt." ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... to demean himself innocently and inoffensively; then is it now especially requisite, when (such engagements and restraints being taken off, love being cooled, persecution being extinct, the tongue being set loose from all extraordinary curbs) the transgression of this duty is grown so prevalent and rife, that evil-speaking is almost as common as speaking, ordinary conversation extremely abounding therewith, that ministers should discharge their office in dehorting and ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... plain and practical distinction. Goodness, in which the prevailing idea is beneficence and the kindlier virtues; righteousness, which refers to the sterner graces of justice; truth, in which the prevalent idea is conformity in action with facts and the conditions of man's life and entire sincerity—these three do cover, with sufficient completeness, the whole ground of possible human excellence. But the Apostle widens them still further by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... formality. At the corner below he bore to the left, and after a short walk entered the small one-story house set well back from the sidewalk among the clumps of oleanders. Here he turned into a study, quietly and richly furnished ten years in advance of the taste then prevalent in Monrovia, where he sank into a deep-cushioned chair and lit the much-chewed cigar. For some moments he lay back with his eyes shut. Then he opened them to look with approval on the dark walnut book-cases, the framed prints and etchings, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... to instruct them on that account. Such children are in peculiar need of watchfulness and knowledge, and the right kind of instruction does not tend to waken the senses. Of course no child should be sent away to school without an impressive warning against certain habits all too prevalent among boys in boarding schools. Here it may be wise to let him know something of what he will be sure to see or hear, that he may not be taken unawares, puzzled and tempted by things which to him will seem not to have come within the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... healing would have broken. The question evidently implies that, in the judgment of the askers, healing was unlawful. Talmudical scholars tell us that in later days the rabbis differed on the point, but that the prevalent opinion was, that only sicknesses threatening immediate danger to life could lawfully be treated on the Sabbath. The more rigid doctrine was obviously held by Christ's questioners. It is a significant instance of the absurdity and cruelty which are possible when once religion has been made ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... fulness and completeness, first given to the world by the Founder of Christianity. The claims made for these doctrines, too, gave them a unique character. In contrast with the half-hearted, faltering conclusions of the prevalent philosophical schools, Christianity asserted that its teachings were absolute truth; it claimed to be nothing less than a revelation from the Creator of the world. It will be readily seen that the introduction of such a system as this into the Greek world ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... impartially, "although we each think there is but one. I will agree that yours is more entertaining. Jannie was jealous again. The Roman orgies, the young person from the grands boulevards, were more than she could accept; and she tried, in the vocabulary lately so prevalent, a reprisal. But I must acknowledge that I am surprised at the persistent ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... their own boundless power, and with suspicions of illegal ambitions, with which it was well that they should become familiar, but which one dramatic moment would for the time dispel. His words were interpreted as a request for the consulship: and the prevalent opinion is said to have been that he desired to hold this office in combination with the tribunate. The time for the consular elections was approaching and expectation was roused to its highest pitch, when Gracchus was seen conducting Gaius Fannius into the Forum and, with the assistance of his ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... when truth dawned upon it. But it was a hollow laugh, ill-concealing prevalent feeling of vexation and shame-facedness. Turned with affectation of keen interest to question raised by MUNDELLA of iniquities of Education Department in connection with School Supply of York and Salisbury. But could not keep the thing up. Even rousing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... soever." The conclusion of so admirable a virtue was this: her husband Paetus, not having resolution enough of his own to despatch himself, as he was by the emperor's cruelty enjoined, one day, amongst others, after having first employed all the reasons and exhortations which she thought most prevalent to persuade him to it, she snatched the poignard he wore from his side, and holding it ready in her hand, for the conclusion of her admonitions; "Do thus, Paetus," said she, and in the same instant giving herself a mortal stab in the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... families on all hands and bring them into blood relationship, as if the whole of public life resolved itself into a matter of cousinship,—an inclination indicative of the times of political stagnation then prevalent. We hear of the families of the scribes at Jabesh, of the potters and gardeners and byssus-workers, of the sons of the goldsmiths, apothecaries, and fullers, these corporations being placed on the same plane with actual families. The division into classes of the persons engaged in religious ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... accounts received by last packet of the determined resolution of government to pursue the war in America with vigour, I am led to believe that the leaders in the rebellion must give up before fall. Indeed, when I consider the dissatisfaction universally prevalent caused by the badness of their money, I should not be surprised if such an event would take place as soon as General, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... God contained in innocence! ... happy the learning that shall learn from Thee!—noble the pride that shall humble itself before Thy gentleness! [Footnote: The idea of a Saviour who should be born as Man to redeem the world was prevalent among all nations and dates from the remotest ages. Coming down to what must be termed quite a modern period compared to that in which the city of Al-Kyris had its existence, we find that the Romans under Octavius Caesar were wont to exclaim at their ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... obliterate gradually the ancient superstitions and to establish Christian worship throughout the Roman Empire. He had undoubtedly learned from the wars and the machinations of Licinius that neither himself nor the Roman Empire could remain secure while the ancient superstition continued prevalent; and therefore, from this time onward, he openly opposed the pagan deities and their worship, as being prejudicial to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... d'Orleans; but in conversation they are called the Duchesse de Berri, the Duchesse d'Orleans; or, rather, one should say, Madame de Berri will have it so with respect to herself. The title of Duchesse d'Orleans belongs to Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, as granddaughter. Such is the custom prevalent here. The brother and the sister-in-law of the King are called simply Monsieur and Madame, and these titles are also contained in my brevets; but I suffer myself to be called commonly Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans. Madame de Berri will be called Madame la Duchess ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... Snakes.—There is a very prevalent belief that a snake can never die till the sun is down. Cut or hack it as you will, it will never die till sunset. This idea has evidently its source in the amazing vitality common ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... Medical Journal, March 18, 1905), finds that the practice has lately become very common in the English Midlands, and is gradually, it appears, widening its circle. It occurs chiefly among married women with families, belonging to the working class, and it tends to become specially prevalent during periods of trade depression (cf. G. Newman, Infant Mortality, p. 81). Women of better social class resort to professional abortionists, and sometimes ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... daring act. None but the old men and the warriors were allowed to eat oysters. It was universally held that if a woman or a child touched an oyster, the earth would open and swallow the culprit. Not daunted by this prevalent belief, Why-Why one day devoured no less than four dozen oysters, opening the shells with a flint spear-head, which he had secreted in his waist-band. The earth did not open and swallow him as he had swallowed the oysters, and from that moment he became suspicious of all the ideas and customs ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Latin which is so prevalent in our common People, makes me think that my Speculations fare never the worse among them for that little Scrap which appears at the Head of them; and what the more encourages me in the Use of Quotations in an unknown Tongue is, that I hear the Ladies, whose Approbation I value more than that ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... enters so largely into my narrative—the conjugality of disembodied spirits—I cannot forbear some further discourse before proceeding historically. The absurd idea is still prevalent that there is no sex in heaven. Those who retain this notion, despite the revelations of science concerning the universality of sex throughout creation, cannot reason very candidly. When we find in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... whole of mankind. Justice to the smaller countries would be secured; encroachments by the strong upon the weak would be prevented; the moral standard of politics would be uplifted; and though every step would be exposed to the selfishness, corruption, and love of despotism that are prevalent in all men, yet is it not reasonable to suppose that, as progress is now being made in the various nations for overcoming these evils, so it would be made in this united whole, to the ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... prevalent opinion which assigns this power principally to the male, he explains by giving the probable history of the first efforts in improving stock. The greatest attention would naturally be paid to the male, both on account of his more extended services, and the more numerous produce of which he could ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... possessions in question are only of wisdom and virtue, let them at least prove their sincerity by correcting, first, the injustice which has established itself respecting more tangible and more esteemed property; and terminating the singular arrangement prevalent in commercial Europe that to every man with a hundred pounds in his pocket there shall annually be given three, to every man with a thousand, thirty, and to every man ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... disinherit me. And I dare not, saith another, for my husband, for he will be a railing, and tells me he will turn me out of doors, he will beat me, and cut off my legs. But I tell you, if any of these, or any other things be so prevalent with thee now, as to keep thee from seeking after Christ in his ways, they will also be so prevalent with God against thee, as to make him cast off thy soul, because thou didst rather trust man than God; and delight in the embracing ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the straight road of observation. The sensuality so prevalent appears to me to arise rather from indolence of mind and dull senses, than from an exuberance of life, which often fructifies the whole character when the vivacity of youthful spirits begins to subside into strength ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Brandon, son of the Duke of Suffolk, died of the sweating sickness then prevalent in the University, on the 16th July, 1551, while a student of Cambridge. His brother, Lord Charles Brandon, died on the same day. Their removal to Buckden was too late to save them (Ath. Cant., i. 105, 541). ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... to reckon with; particularly when we remember that many of Jonson's notions came for a time definitely to prevail and to modify the whole trend of English poetry. First of all Jonson was a classicist, that is, he believed in restraint and precedent in art in opposition to the prevalent ungoverned and irresponsible Renaissance spirit. Jonson believed that there was a professional way of doing things which might be reached by a study of the best examples, and he found these examples for the most ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... proper motion, with its proper hardness, and with its proper inertia. But its redness and its warmth, and the sound of the click as a cannon is made off it are psychic additions, namely, secondary qualities which are only the mind's way of perceiving nature. This is not only the vaguely prevalent theory, but is, I believe, the historical form of the bifurcation theory in so far as it is derived from philosophy. I shall call it the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... especially devotion to the guru. The Sikhs now seem slowly relapsing into idolatry. In truth, the history of all attempts at reformation in India has been most discouraging. Sect after sect has successively risen to some elevation above the prevalent idolatry; and then gradually, as by some irresistible gravitation, it has sunk back into the mare magnum of Hinduism. If we regard experience, purification from within is hopeless; the struggle for it is only ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... represented almost entirely by individual peaks and mountain ranges. Moderately elevated tablelands are thus the characteristic feature of the continent, though the surface of these is broken by higher peaks and ridges. (So prevalent are these isolated peaks and ridges that a special term [Inselberg-landschaft] has been adopted in Germany to describe this kind of country, which is thought to be in great part the result of wind action.) As a general rule, the higher tablelands lie to the east ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... most healthful exertion; it is one of the greatest helps to digestion with which I am acquainted; and the custom prevalent among our forefathers, of exciting it at table by jesters and buffoons, was founded on true ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... his countrymen, who, though not deficient in a certain national savage grace, frequently shock our European notions of propriety by their open disregard of what we are accustomed to consider the decencies of society; but Jubber Kh[a]n seemed to have all the good qualities and few of the vices so prevalent in the Affgh[a]n character. No doubt that superior polish of manner was derived from his more extensive intercourse with Europeans. During our visit he presented us each with a small silver Mahommedan coin, saying at the same time with peculiar grace and dignity ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... IT IS MOST PREVALENT.—We may observe that the crying sin of infanticide is most prevalent In those localities where the system of moral education has been longest neglected. This inhuman crime might be compared to the murder of the innocents, except that the criminals, in this case, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... her heart, as with two strings, two different ways; one moment she thought of stabbing Joseph; the next, of taking him in her arms, and devouring him with kisses; but the latter passion was far more prevalent. Then she thought of revenging his refusal on herself; but, whilst she was engaged in this meditation, happily death presented himself to her in so many shapes, of drowning, hanging, poisoning, &c., that her distracted mind could resolve on none. In this perturbation of ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the north-east full of thankfulness, saying to each other that after all the Government of the Transvaal was not so ill-disposed towards us. Our oxen continued to walk with sturdy steps; we had not yet lost one, although the cattle plague was prevalent at the time. Wednesday, at four o'clock in the evening, we left the house of an English merchant, with whom we had passed a little time, and who had placed at our disposal everything which we needed. Towards eight o'clock, by a ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... falsification of texts has always been the subject of complaint. It was so with the Romans,[340] it was common in the Middle Ages,[341] and it is much more prevalent {86} to-day than we commonly think. We have but to see how every hymn-book compiler feels himself authorized to change at will the classics of our language, and how unknown editors have mutilated Shakespeare, to see how much more easy it was for medieval scribes to insert or ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... these bodies to what is probably their true place, as an early stage of sidereal life. At that early time our knowledge of stellar spectra was small. For this reason partly, and probably also under the undue influence of theological opinions then widely prevalent, he unwisely wrote in his original paper in 1864, that "in these objects we no longer have to do with a special modification of our own type of sun, but find ourselves in presence of objects possessing a distinct and peculiar plan of structure." Two years later, however, in a lecture ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... unworthy objects; but no experience of this sort ever checked her kindly impulse to give, and being once deceived taught her no lesson of distrust. She ever listened with ready ear to all who came to her in any form of distress. Indeed, to use the language of another friend, 'the prevalent impression at Rome, among all who knew her, was, that she was a mild saint and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... is empty as yet, but the other parts of the house are crowded to excess, and somewhat disorderly, the interior doors having been broken down by besiegers, and many people having obtained admission without payment. The prevalent costume of the ladies is white satin and diamonds, with a few ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... to dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of the family life that are so prevalent in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... alteration more prevalent than any other, which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. A mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both, and they will always be mixed, where the chief parts of education, and the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... wound" (Idyl. xiii.). In the Anthologia "Cease, Love, to wound my liver and my heart" (lib. vii.). So Horace (Odes, i. 2); his Latin Jecur and the Persian "Jigar" being evident congeners. The idea was long prevalent and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... been frosty, but kindly—it would have been babbling, irritable, senile, sickening. Death was kind and reaped him young. Sex was the rock on which Robert Burns split. He seemed to regard pleasure-seeking as the prime end of life, and in this he was not so very far removed from the prevalent "civilized" society notion of marriage. But it is a phantasmal idea, and makes a mock of marriage, serving the satirist ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Allies, furnishing them with food, shipping, and the munitions which had been promised—so many persons argued—it would be doing far better than if it weakened assistance of that sort by attempting to set up and maintain a large fighting force of its own. The impression was unfortunately prevalent in civilian circles that Germany was on her last legs, and that the outcome of the war would be favorably settled before the United States could put an effective army in the field. Military experts, on the other hand, more thoroughly convinced of German strength, believed that the final campaigns ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... depot, declares "that he wanted to avenge the nation." It is quite probable that this declaration is sincere. In his mind, assassination is one of the forms of patriotism, and it does not take long for his way of thinking to become prevalent. In ordinary times, social and political ideas slumber in uncultured minds in the shape of vague antipathies, restrained aspirations, and fleeting desires. Behold them aroused—energetic, imperious, stubborn, and unbridled. Objection or opposition ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... open testimony of gladness and approbation; which intimated—which declared—that the spirit, which swayed the individuals who were the ostensible and immediate authors of the Convention, was not confined to them; but that it was widely prevalent: else it could not have been found in the very council-seat; there, where if wisdom and virtue have not some influence, what is to become of the Nation in these times of peril? rather say, into what an ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... town, his steaming little gray- and-red-flecked "roadster" gurgitating, as it were, with that mysterious utterance that ever has commanded and ever must evoke the wonder and bewilderment of every boy; the small-pox rumor became prevalent betimes, and the subtle aroma of the asafetida-bag permeated the graded schools "from turret to foundation-stone"; the still recurring expose of the poor-house management; the farm-hand, with the scythe across his shoulder, struck dead by lightning; ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... mistress would be just as likely to be lodged in some of the other buildings within the circuit of the castle as in the great square tower of defence. And, if we accept the belief, which is now becoming more prevalent, that the present keep is of the twelfth century and not of the eleventh, we are not thereby at all committed to the dogma that, because Robert the Devil lived before 1066, he could not possibly have had a castle of stone. In the wars of the eleventh and twelfth centuries many castles in Normandy ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... an invasion of this country, which have been prevalent during the last few days, are presumably responsible for these letters addressed to the Kaiser, which have ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... was a reservoir, or deep marble basin, broken at intervals by little gates which, when raised, emptied the water into sluices bordering the walks—a cunning device for the rescue of the place from the aridity too prevalent ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... were gathered to a head. In this evil pre-eminence both of the universities and all the colleges appear to have been upon a level, though Lincoln College, Oxford, is mentioned as a bright exception in John Wesley's day to the prevalent degeneracy. The strange thing is that, with all their neglect of learning and morality, the colleges were not the resorts of jovial if unseemly boon companionship; they were collections of quarrelsome and spiteful litigants, who spent their time in angry lawsuits. The indecent contentions ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... current among the public so unspeakably many distorted and false notions and phrases about the people, the constitution, and the classes, that it would be a vain task to mention, explain, and correct them. The prevalent idea concerning the necessity and utility of an assembly of estates amounts to the assumption that the people's deputies, nay, the people itself, best understand what would promote the common weal, and that they have indubitably the good will to promote it. As for the first point, the case is just ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... added, showing me a paper parcel. 'On the envelope there is a printed account of the Chinese system of writing, extracted from authors of the most established reputation. These things I print, principally with the hope of, in some degree, removing the worse than Gothic ignorance prevalent amongst natives of these parts. I am from London myself. With respect to all that relates to the Chinese real imperial tea, I assure you sir, that—' Well, to make short of what you doubtless consider a very tiresome story, I purchased the tea and carried it home. The tea proved ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... rearing their large families was awful. The art of cooking was little understood. They had no stoves or table forks. The food was served in a very unsavory fashion, and was very indigestible. The people therefore had frightful dreams, and dyspepsia was very prevalent. No carpet was seen here for a hundred years after the settlement. Communication with the outer world was slow, difficult and rare. On several occasions, owing to the failure of their crops and the difficulty in getting relief from distant ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... are supposed to be deities of Crime, of Misfortunes, of Disease. These wicked Spirits naturally encourage evil rather than good. An energetic friend of mine was sent to a district in India where smallpox was specially prevalent, and where one of the principal Temples was dedicated to the Goddess of that disease. He had the people vaccinated, in spite of some opposition, and the disease disappeared, much to the astonishment of the natives. But the priests of the Deity of Smallpox were not disconcerted; only they ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... into Maryland, and doubtless make his way straight to Baltimore and Washington, depending on the Southern sentiment in that portion of the State to bring him reinforcements." That the Federal Government was apprehensive of some such movement is certain. The wildest rumours were everywhere prevalent. Men throughout the North wore anxious faces, and it is said that one question, "Where is Jackson? Has he taken Washington?" was on every lip. The best proof, however, that a movement on Washington was actually anticipated by the Federals is the dispatch ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... public affairs; and the measures of the administration are consequently seldom regulated by the strict rules of consistency or of order. But the general principles of the Government are more stable, and the opinions most prevalent in society are generally more durable than in many other countries. When once the Americans have taken up an idea, whether it be well or ill founded, nothing is more difficult than to eradicate it from their minds. The same tenacity of opinion has been observed in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the Protector's admirable commercial policy. I have it on good authority that, not thirty years ago, the phrase, "in Oliver's days," was in common use to denote a time of unusual prosperity. The class of Christian names prevalent in a district is one indication of the direction in which its tide of hero-worship sets. Grave enthusiasts in politics or religion perceive not the ludicrous side of those which they give to their children; and some are to be found, still in ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... morning he was up at five o'clock, desperately resolved to lay his case before the men. He walked to the end of the village, knowing the colliery would be idle, for Tam Donaldson was to be "creeled." This was a custom at one time very prevalent in mining villages. When a young man got married, the first day he appeared at his work afterwards he was taken home by his comrades, and was expected to stand them a drink. It generally ended in a collection being made, after they had tasted the newly-married ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh |
