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Proverbially   Listen
adverb
Proverbially  adv.  In a proverbial manner; by way of proverb; hence, commonly; universally; as, it is proverbially said; the bee is proverbially busy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Proverbially" Quotes from Famous Books



... eminence by their repeated statements of what they had witnessed and their varied surmises. The role of commentator, if mysterious human action be the text, is always popular, and as this explanatory class are proverbially gifted in conjecture, there were many theories of explanation. Some of the guests had already the good taste to prepare for departure, and when Dr. Mark appeared from the sick ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... mate is proverbially a dog's berth. He is neither officer nor man. He is obliged to go aloft to reef and furl the topsails, and to put his hands into the tar and slush, with the rest, and the men do not much respect him as an officer. The crew call him the "sailor's waiter,'' ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of the ordinary pursuits of men, that, even among ourselves, few have been able to transfuse it into their daily consciousness. We never looked to England for the encouragement of a popular enthusiasm,—hardly, perhaps, for a cold acquiescence. John Bull, we said, is proverbially a grumbler, proverbially indifferent to all affairs but his own; he will be annoyed by tariffs, and plagued by scarcity of cotton;—what wonder, if we are a little misunderstood? The minor contributors to his daily press will not be able to think long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... whereupon the son of the sea at once adopted the part of tutor, and with some warmth and show of contempt exclaimed loudly, "I dinna ken much aboot the game, but ye dinna ken a wee bit. Mon, ye're standing on the wrong side of the baw! Awa' to the other side!" Golfers at the beginning of a round are proverbially susceptible to small influences, and when a player is accustomed to lean somewhat upon his caddie, as even some of the best occasionally do, I can well imagine that such a trivial matter as this is enough to mar a ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... were, however, and still are, utilised in enabling the great pyramid to stand on the very utmost verge of its commanding hill, within the limits of the two required latitudes, as well as over the centre of the land's physical and radial formation, and at the same time on the sure and proverbially wise ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... comedy with the tragic dagger, and it falls to earth a shrivelled nothing. And the reason that no melodrama can be great art is just that it is a compromise between tragedy and comedy, a mixture of tragedy with comedy and not comedy with tragedy. So in drama, the middle course, proverbially the safest, is in reality the most dangerous. Now I maintain that in Beau Austin we have an element of tragedy. The betrayal of a beautiful, pure and noble-minded woman is surely at once the basest act a man can be capable of, and a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... Premiership), and served impartially under moderate Whigs and crusted Tories, finding, perhaps, no very material difference between their respective creeds. The experiences of the hen that hatches the duckling are proverbially pathetic; and great must have been the perplexity of this indeterminate statesman when he discovered that his only son was a young man of the most robust convictions, and that those convictions were frankly democratic. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... If comparisons are proverbially odious, they must be specially so if drawn out upon insufficient data. I must not, therefore, on such a flying inspection, go very deeply into my comparative analysis. And yet, under all the circumstances, the subject is one for which I feel ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... all, like an enthroned spirit, rises AEtna. His giant form can be seen from elevated grounds in the most remote parts of the island, and the mariner can discern his snowy crown more than a hundred miles. But Sicily abounds in luxuriant plains and charming valleys, and its soil is proverbially rich: it once bore the appellation of the Granary of Rome; and it is now said that if properly tilled it would produce more grain than any country of its size in the world. Its beauty and fertility were often celebrated ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... since John Marrot had driven it had the Lightning so nearly resembled its namesake. The pace was increased to seventy-five and eighty miles an hour. It was awful. Objects flew past with flashing speed. The clatter of the engine was deafening. A stern chase is proverbially a long one; but in this case, at such a speed, it was short. In less than fifteen minutes John came in view of the fugitive—also going at full speed, but, not being so powerful an engine and not being properly managed as to the fire, it did not go so fast; its pace might have been forty or forty-five ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,—through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor thus describes the trip ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... landowners. At the end of 1920 there were as many as ninety associations of tenant farmers, and sixty of these had been started for the specific purpose of representing tenants' interests against landowners. Strikes of tenants began and continue. The end of this movement of a proverbially conservative class is not ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... in England until the second year of Edward the Sixth's reign, 1548. In our modern times the domestic herb is associated rather with those who come into the world than with those [408] who go out of it. Proverbially the Parsley-bed is propounded to our little people who ask awkward questions, as the fruitful source of new-born brothers and sisters when suddenly appearing within the limits of the family circle. In Suffolk there is an old belief that to ensure the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... brought no serious business, then time was a burthen; existence a weariness; and the hungry soul, which craves some outward satisfaction, was found fallen back upon itself and preying upon its own vitality. Are not the idlest of men proverbially the most miserable? And is not the young woman often to be seen passing restless from place to place, because exempt from the necessity of industry, till vanity and envy, growing rank in her vacant mind, makes her far more ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... impulse closely allied to the artistic—namely, the desire for speculative truth, as manifested in the lives of scientific and philosophic thinkers. These men—such as Kant and Hegel, for example—have been proverbially, and often ludicrously, indifferent to the material details of their existence. Who can suppose that the disinterested passion for truth, which had the effect of making these men forget their dinners, will stimulate others to devote themselves to the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... Stern necessity, proverbially known as "the mother of invention," and practically the step-mother of ministers' daughters, had made me eke out the silken facings of the front with cambric linings for the back and sleeves. Accordingly, in the full blaze of the concert-room, there sat I, "accoutred as I was," in motley ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... of Venice renders it impossible to bring horses into the town; accordingly, the Venetians are proverbially bad riders. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... manifests any resentment, against the persecutor. He was "in the isle that is called Patmos:"—but he does not say who sent him there. Historians tell us that he was banished by Domitian, the Roman emperor; others say, by Nero; but the former is more probable. This island is proverbially barren. It is situated among a number of islands in the Aegean sea, a point of the Mediterranean running northward between Europe and Asia, and not very remote from most of ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... ashore with no regular duties to perform, such as they had on board ship, it was most urgently necessary that employment of some sort should be made for them; not only to keep them out of that mischief which the evil one is proverbially said to find "for idle hands to do," but also to prevent them from dwelling on ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... Othello, as Coleridge pointed out, is not a constitutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in The Winter's Tale. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because, as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Othello feels the same helplessness. Trained up in wars from his cradle, he could ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... by his scratching the place, though he could not understand why it lasted so long. Mr. Hutchinson concludes that all the evidence tends to show that the disease had probably been communicated from the blood of an infected person through the bite of the insect. It thus appears that even the proverbially trivial fleabite may at ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Poor people are proverbially compassionate and liberal, so that the old man generally got a few coppers, and often some good woman bade him come into her cottage, and let ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... clout Lawson knocked a home run, and, as there was a man on third, that two. From then on the Cardinals seemed to find themselves. They began coming back in earnest, and everyone "got the habit." Even Joe, proverbially poor hitters as pitchers are supposed to be, did his share, and, by placing a neat little drive, that eluded the shortstop, he brought ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... or military vaticination' is proverbially unsafe, and therefore to be carefully avoided by all judicious inquirers, and especially by practical statesmen, it must at the same time be admitted that some of the general laws controlling such events are well understood; and whenever all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... unusually fortunate, I think, in our domestic surroundings. Servants are proverbially the bete noire of American ladies, and the prospect of having to train some unskilled specimens of foreign peasantry weighed heavily, I fancy, upon our beautiful Ida in her new responsibility of a young Dame Chatelaine. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... faithless, lacking even that honor which proverbially obtains in the society of criminals—a consideration of such a possibility was intolerable, as much so as the suspense of ignorance. He could not, would not, believe her capable of ingratitude so rank; and fought fiercely, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... answer? Why it can't possibly be that this woman has been fool enough to refuse you? She surely can't be looking out after a bishop. But I see how it is, Mr Slope. Widows are proverbially cautious. You should have let her alone till the new hat was on your head; till you could show her the key of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... air is broken into bodies of similar configuration, and these are rolled up and down with the fragments of the voice; as it is proverbially said, One daw lights with another, or, God always brings like to like. Thus we see upon the seashore, that stones like to one another are found in the same place, in one place the long-shaped, in another the round are seen. So ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... aware that this estimate of the queen is quite at variance with the views which have obtained the widest currency; but it is the estimate which history, carefully read, seems to require us to adopt. Catharine's plans were proverbially narrow in their scope, never extending much beyond the immediate present. After the catastrophe, which had perhaps been the result of the impulse of the moment, she was not, however, unwilling to accept the homage of those who ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... of interest, or without demanding far more than an adequate security. Count Timascheff, a Russian nobleman, was evidently rich; to him perhaps, for a proper consideration, a loan might be made: Captain Servadac was a Gascon, and Gascons are proverbially poor; it would never do to lend any money to him; but here was a professor, a mere man of science, with circumscribed means; did he expect to borrow? Certainly Isaac would as soon think of flying, as of lending money to him. Such were the thoughts that made him receive all Rosette's approaches ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... invariably poor so far as money is concerned, owing to their love of ease, these children of nature are proverbially hospitable, and you are welcome as his guest until you eat his last bit of food unless you offer him compensation therefor; if you do that his wrath knows no bounds, as I ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... envy, as authors; hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness seem to preside over science. Their political opinions step in, and increase the undue preponderance; and, to crown all, they are more influenced by money, being proverbially more in want of it than others. How, then, is it to be expected that reviews can be impartial? I seldom read them myself as I consider that it is better to know ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... is filled up nowadays; but at its southern extremity the village of Foz still preserves a remembrance of it. Trained in this severe school, the soldiers acquired such a reputation for sobriety and laborious assiduity, that they were proverbially called Marius's mules. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... only unhinge his stomach. Then to the head-carver he said: "What you had best do is to serve me with what they call ollas podridas—and the rottener they are the better they smell!" The others he addressed proverbially thus: "But let nobody play pranks on me, for either we are or we are not. Let us live and eat in peace and good fellowship, for when God sends the dawn, he sends it for all. I mean to govern this island without giving up a right or taking a bribe. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... as Yorke (such was my late interlocutor's name) professed to be of the advantages of birth, in his secret heart he well knew and fully appreciated the distinction his ancient, if not high lineage conferred on him in a mushroom-place like X——, concerning whose inhabitants it was proverbially said, that not one in a thousand knew his own grandfather. Moreover the Hunsdens, once rich, were still independent; and report affirmed that Yorke bade fair, by his success in business, to restore ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... of such beauty as Zoe's is proverbially limited; but the limit to its power, while it does last, has not yet been discovered. It is a fact that, as soon as she came close to the table two male gamblers looked up, saw her, wondered at her, and actually jumped up and offered their seats: ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... for them! however loudly their throats were shouting forth the sway proverbially held by Albion and her sons over the waves, on this occasion at least the said waves seemed determined upon ruling these particular three Britons with a rod of antimony; for barely a few seconds after the last ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... country, where she had no connections, returned with confirmed force. How friendless she was! But slenderly supplied with money, of course. A daring possibility had darted into his mind. It was an irresistible temptation,—and sailors are proverbially reckless. Matrimony hitherto had never entered into his views. It would entail leaving the navy and living with his uncle, who, though kind, was arbitrary enough, and would have very decided opinions upon whom his choice should fall. Connection, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... distinction of having published in Shakespeare's lifetime the only expression of resentment that is known to have come from the dramatist's proverbially "gentle lips." Shakespeare (Heywood wrote) "was much offended" with an unprincipled publisher who "presumed to make so bold with his name" as to put it to a book of which he was not the author. And Beeston had direct concern with the volume called An Apology for Actors, to which Heywood ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... further than words, and put his good will beyond all question. So saying, he made a signal, and forthwith a beautiful young horse, of a brown color, was led, prancing and snorting, to the place. Captain Bonneville was suitably affected by this mark of friendship; but his experience in what is proverbially called "Indian giving," made him aware that a parting pledge was necessary on his own part, to prove that his friendship was reciprocated. He accordingly placed a handsome rifle in the hands of the venerable chief, whose benevolent ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... possibility of his father's return to sanity and his office, he felt that he could never regard his position as wholly satisfactory; on the other hand, though a sick lion may possibly be compared with a live dog, a defunct lion is proverbially out of the running. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... listless, to conceal what ideas they may happen to have, to try to appear stupid, if they are not so, throwing all the burden of the conversation on the lively, vivacious, good- humored girl, or the more accomplished married woman, who may be the next neighbor. Women's wits are proverbially quick, they talk readily, they read and think more than the average young man of fashion is prone to do; the result is a quick and a ready tongue. Yet the art of keeping up a flow of agreeable and ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... thought strange by the unreflective that these rural spectators should so have approved and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean of Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired foreigner; but, besides that Riccabocca, after all, had become one of the neighborhood, and was proverbially 'a civil-spoken gentleman,' it is generally noticeable that on wedding occasions the bride so monopolizes interest, curiosity, and admiration, that the bridegroom himself goes for little or nothing. He is merely the passive agent in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... of British troops and ships from the continent to the Leeward Islands. Reinforcements had given the British fleet in America a numerical superiority, which for the time imposed a check upon d'Estaing; but Byron, proverbially unlucky in weather, was driven crippled to Newport, leaving the French free to quit Boston. The difficulty of provisioning so large a force as twelve ships of the line at first threatened to prevent the withdrawal, supplies ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... robbers, dragons, are proverbially stupid, and a clever hero with more wits than brawn has no difficulty in thoroughly frightening them. Grimm's story of "The Brave Little Tailor" (No. 20), with its incidents of "cheese-squeezing," "bird-throwing," ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... energetic champions of the slave-mongers of the South. The young lord, it is well known, stepped down from the lofty pedestal of a bad pedigree to marry the fair, but portionless daughter of an English judge; his father is proverbially mean and stingy, and the young lord himself proportionately poor; and in the intervals of his strenuous advocacy of the claims of the Rebels to European recognition he laudably ekes out his very narrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... house to house, and the pain of being observed by the whole street, while the footman is examining him from the area. Some few may be seen in England about the inns of court, where the locality is favorable (where, however, the owners of the chambers are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the harvest must be poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,—fat, smooth-tongued, and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who would be insulted almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as their ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... concept of the foibles of humanity. The greatness of others is of small importance in comparison with one's own. The one who ignores this truth is continually pulling a cat by the tail, and this is proverbially a hard task. Hartwell's plan was first to create an impression of his own importance in order that it might excite awe, and then, by gracious condescension, to arouse a loyal and respectful devotion. Considering the object ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... however, proverbially fragile, and, in nine cases out of ten, appear made, like children's toys, only to be broken. Certain it is, that in the present instance mine were rendered of none avail, and, for any good effect that they produced, might as well never ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... immediate predecessor of Wright as state comptroller and United States senator. Each possessed rare talents, but they were totally dissimilar in mental traits and political methods. Both were statesmen of scrupulous honesty, who despised jobbery. Marcy was wily and loved intrigue. Wright was proverbially open and frank. Marcy never trained himself to be a public speaker, and did not shine in the hand-to-hand conflicts of a body that was lustrous with forensic talents. A man's status in the United ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... nineteenth century were those of Carl Maria von Weber, whose work will be considered later, and the great song writer, Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). This remarkable man was born of poor parents in Vienna, or near it, his father being a schoolmaster, earning the proverbially meager stipend of the profession in Germany at that time, amounting to no more than $100 or $200 a year. The family was musical, and the Sundays were devoted to quartette playing and other forms of music. The boy Franz early showed ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... said. Soldiers are proverbially silent, preferring deeds to words. So, for nearly ten minutes, the handshaking proceeded. At last Douglass, with a warning nod and several gestures, brought the temporary chairman to ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... legislature, so as to prevent the full exercise of its constitutional powers. Each legislature, under a just sense of its responsibility, must judge for itself; and if it think proper, it may revise, or amend, or absolutely undo the work of any predecessor. The laws of the Medes and Persians are said proverbially to have been unalterable; but they stand forth in history as a single example where the true principles of all law have ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... from her own seat to the one next her niece, and, kindly taking her hand, observed, "You should not suffer the impetuosity of your brother to affect you so much; boys, you know, are proverbially ungovernable." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... people raised on fish and Johnny-cake, amid the stunted pine swamps and sand-hills of that Lord-forsaken country—Lev never increased it. Lev had an uncle, an old bachelor, without "chick or child," and was reported to be pretty well off. Old man Gunter was proverbially mean, and as usual, heartily despised by one half of the people who knew him. He had a small estate, had lived long, and by his close-fisted manner of life, it was believed that Gunter had laid by a pretty considerable pile of the root of all evil, for something ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... which has been proverbially said to lead to as much evil as any impulse that agitates the human bosom, must be held responsible for only too many of those crimes which from time to time outrage society, for, as the authors of "Guesses at Truth" have remarked, "jealousy is said to be the offspring of love, yet, unless the parent ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... (see Fig. 60). Inferior animals distinguished for breadth between the ears are not only cunning and treacherous, but very excitable and irritable. The head of the Fox is remarkable for its extreme width at the region of Fear. He is proverbially crafty and treacherous, always excitable, and so variable in temper that he can never be trusted. He is a very timid thief, exceedingly suspicious, irregular in habits, and frequently driven by hunger ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... their house from the fire, with which we left the alarmed Elwood and his wife contending, was, indeed, easily overcome by dashing pails of water over the roof. But scarcely had they achieved this temporary triumph in one place over an element proverbially terrible when it becomes master, before it was seen kindling into flickering blazes on the roof of the barn and the locks of hay protruding from its windows and the crevices between the logs of which it was built. Here, also, they soon ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... are proverbially famous for the facility with which they attract animals towards them. Bates and Wallace also mention having seen, on several occasions, jaguars perfectly tame, roaming in and out of the huts, as their smaller feline ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is proverbially elaborate," I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, "but in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the really excessively ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... doctor in New England villages is proverbially old, so the doctor in small Colorado towns twenty-five years ago was generally young. Dr. Archie was barely thirty. He was tall, with massive shoulders which he held stiffly, and a large, well-shaped head. He was a distinguished-looking man, for that part ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... not seem to have understood the character of the frigate. Her people were not keeping so good a look-out as were Lord Claymore's crew; when they did, all sail was crowded in flight. Away she went before the wind. A stern chase is proverbially a long one; a tub can sail with the ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... the subtle evils of our times, whereby the weak are corrupted into effeminate fools and the strong into abominable bullies. John Carvel's Latin has survived his school-days, and his manliness has outlived the university. He belongs to that class of Englishmen who proverbially speak the truth. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... was rather to future possibilities. Young blood is proverbially hot, and I thought it wise ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... proverbially careless as to his habits," Herndon writes. "In a letter to a fellow lawyer in another town, apologizing for his failure to answer sooner, he explains: 'First, I have been very busy in the United States Court; second, when I received ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... orange-tree is considered young at the age of a hundred years. The pulp of the orange consists of a collection of oblong vesicles filled with a sugary and refreshing juice. The orange blossom is proverbially chosen for the bridal wreath, and, from the same flower, an essential oil is extracted hardly less esteemed than the celebrated ottar of roses. Of all marmalades, that made from the Seville orange is the best. The peel and juice of the orange are much used in culinary preparations. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... South are proverbially musical. They might well be called, in that section of the country, a race of troubadours, so great has ever been their devotion to and skill in the delightful art of music. Besides, it is now seen, and generally ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... George, the third Lord Seaton, again allied his house with that of Stuart, by marrying the Lady Margaret Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Buchan, and granddaughter of Robert the Second. In consequence of these several intermarriages, it was proverbially said of the house of Seaton, "the family is come of princes, and reciprocally princes are come of the family." And these bonds of relationship were cemented by services performed and honours conferred. The devotion of the Seatons to Mary, Queen of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... these signs were a canonical part of the story by the time Euripides wrote. Every one who knew the story of Orestes' return at all, knew of the hair and the footprint. Aristophanes in the Clouds (534 ff.) uses them proverbially, when he speaks of his comedy "recognising its brother's tress." It would have been frivolous to invent new ones. As a matter of fact, it seems probable that the signs are older than Aeschylus; neither ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... quotes some lines from this author, which allude to the liberality of Cimon with something of that patron-loving spirit which was rather the characteristic of a Roman than an Athenian poet. Though he himself, despite his age, was proverbially of no very abstemious or decorous habits, Cratinus was unsparing in his attacks upon others, and wherever he found or suspected vice, he saw a subject worthy of his genius. He was admired to late posterity, and by Roman critics, for the grace and even for the grandeur of his hardy verses; ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in its credulity. What the former says about doubting on account of inaccuracy in the detail of the phthisical symptoms, is a mere fetch, as the Cockneys have it, in order to make a very few little children believe that it, the Post, is not quite so stupid as a post proverbially is. It knows nearly as much about pathology as it does about English grammar—and I really hope it will not feel called upon to blush at the compliment. I represented the symptoms of M. Valdemar as "severe," to be sure. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... dusk of Christmas Eve and they were all in Jean Lawrence's room at No. 16 Chestnut Terrace. No. 16 was a boarding-house, and boarding-houses are not proverbially cheerful places in which to spend Christmas, but Jean's room, at least, was a pleasant spot, and all the girls had brought their Christmas presents in to show each other. Christmas came on Sunday that year and the Saturday ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Mrs. Peachum, are 'bitter bad judges' of the characters of men; and men are not much better of theirs, if we can form any guess from their choice in marriage. Love is proverbially blind. The whole is an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it is that the greatest favourites with the other sex are not those who are most liked or respected among their own. I never knew but one clever man who was what ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... has never seen? To attempt such a thing—to base art on mathematics—argues (some one is sure to say) an entire misconception of the nature and function of art. "Art is a fountain of spontaneous emotion"—what, therefore, can it have in common with the proverbially driest, least spontaneous preoccupation of the human mind? But the above definition concludes with the assertion that this emotion reaches the soul "through various channels." The transit can be effected ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... could reason in favor of a privilege which goes proverbially by favor, the young maid was gone upon the winding path, with the pitcher truly balanced on her well-tressed head. Then Pet sat down and watched her; and she turned round in the distance, and waved him ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... planter is called "Xivaro." He is the proud possessor of a sweet-heart, a gamecock, a horse, a hammock, a guitar and a large supply of tobacco. He is quick tempered but not revengeful, and he is proverbially lazy. ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... example, improve his muscles by athletics, and his brain by education. The use of organs enlarges and strengthens them; the disuse of parts or faculties weakens them. And so great is the power of habit that it is proverbially spoken of as "second nature." It is thus certain that we can modify the individual. We can strengthen (or weaken) his body; we can improve (or deteriorate) his intellect, his habits, his morals. But there remains the still more important ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... a mighty hunter, and his luck was proverbially marvellous. But as everything goes by contrary in Brittany, to wish a Breton hunter good luck was the very worst thing you could do him. Bad luck was certain to follow—if not that very day, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... eye grew dark, and Terry frowned. Had the douanier been insolent, my peppery Irishman would have been insolent too, perhaps, in the hope of cowering the man by truculence more swashbuckling than his own; but he had been as polite as his countrymen proverbially are, if not goaded out of their suavity. "Look here, Prince," said Terry, hanging onto his temper by a thread (for he also was hungry), "suppose you leave this matter to me. If you'll take the ladies to the best hotel in town, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... feelings of the British Public are proverbially interested in every endeavour to obtain "a Free Stage and Fair Play." The Council of the Dramatic Authors' Theatre seek to achieve both, for every English Living Dramatist. Compelled, by the state of the Law, to present on the Stage a high Tragic Composition ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various

... about not liking it. Of course some people won't like it. Some people never like any new way of doing things. Food habits are proverbially ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... in it, that he could never have leasure to cut his haire, or pare his nailes: nor would I have his noble manners obscured by the incivilitie and barbarisme of others. The French wisdome hath long since proverbially been spoken of as verie apt to conceive study in her youth, but most unapt to keepe it long. In good truth, we see at this day that there is nothing lovelier to behold than the young children of France; but for ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... principles;" and that is the class they generally see. When northerners go to the south to reside, they prove very apt scholars. They soon imbibe the sentiments and disposition of their neighbors, and generally go beyond their teachers. Of the two, they are proverbially ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... mid-ocean. What was all this bustling, restless, driving multitude around her like, but the waves of the sea, to which Scripture likens them? and the roar of their tumult almost bewildered her senses. Proverbially there is no situation more lonely to the feeling than the midst of a strange crowd; and Diana, sitting at her window and looking down into the busy street, felt alone and cast adrift as she never had ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... "hereditary disease" that my system will eventually come into its own and will ere long be recognized as the most rational and effectual therapy ever applied since the beginning of the art of healing. It may be years before it is accorded the proverbially tardy acknowledgment of the "orthodox" schools, but that it will, nay must be eventually adopted is virtually a foregone conclusion—that is, if it be indeed the function or policy of the physician of the future to adequately seek to succour ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... excellence, the famous partisan of that region. While Sumter stands conspicuous for bold daring, fearless intrepidity and always resolute behavior; while Lee takes eminent rank as a gallant Captain of Cavalry, the eye and the wing of the southern liberating army under Greene; Marion is proverbially the great master of strategy—the wily fox of the swamps—never to be caught, never to be followed,—yet always at hand, with unconjectured promptness, at the moment when he is least feared and is least to ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... wished to narrate. Reminiscences come crowding in unbidden, and, like the flickering lights of the Will-o'-the-wisp, they tend to lead the wayfarer far astray from the path he had originally traced out for himself. "Jack-o'-lanthorn" is proverbially a fickle guide to follow, and should I have succumbed to his lure, I can only proffer my excuses, and plead in extenuation that sixty years is such a long road to re-travel that an occasional deviation into a by-path by elderly feet ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... differently, that they could not understand each other's conversation. This is literally the case at present between the provincial inhabitants of remote parts of England. Indeed the language peculiar to the metropolis, or the cockney dialect, is proverbially ridiculous. The Londoners, who look down with contempt upon all that have not been bred and born within the sound of Bow, talk with unconscious absurdity of weal and winegar, and vine and vindors, and idears, and ask you owyou do? and 'ave ye bin taking ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... charge of two of the ladies; fate must determine which! Cuthbert Aston—a youth unaccustomed to deny himself any gratification upon which he had set his mind—had probably resolved that it would not be he! But fortune is proverbially fickle. The train was crowded and seats were at a discount. It was impossible for all five to travel together. Violet—with a woman's perversity, perhaps, because of Cuthbert's evident intention, or, it may be, to show a deliberate preference for Murray—contrived that the latter should accompany ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... and it is also cooler than aft when the vessel is under weigh. The quarters of the crew are aft; and I was surprised to see how clean and neat everything on board was kept, the more so that the ship's company consisted entirely of Malays, who are proverbially careless and dirty in these matters. She had but two European officers, the captain and engineer. The former, Captain K., who had been in these seas for many years, had some interesting tales to tell of the old pirate days, ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... between two plates of clear glass, so that both sides can be inspected. The handwriting of the scrivener in the body of the instrument is quite distinct and legible, considering its antiquity. The signature of Shakespeare appears at the bottom of each sheet. The chirography of men of genius is proverbially bad, generally from its fluent facility, but the autographs of Shakespeare are clumsy, uncouth, and awkward, their disconnected and sprawling letters seeming to have been formed with difficulty by fingers unfamiliar with the use of the pen. They may perhaps ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... statesman, many of the transactions of the winter increased his conviction of the peril in which every interest in the whole kingdom was placed, if the headlong folly of the Assembly could not be restrained, and if even, proverbially difficult as such a course is, some of its acts could not be rescinded; while one transaction, which, more than any other that had yet taken place, showed the greatness of the queen's heart, much sharpened his ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... his later days. Since the wandering Comstock and Curry, proverbially unfortunate discoverers, like Marshall, pointed to hundreds of millions for the "silver kings," along Mount Davidson's stony, breast, he gambles daily. The stock board ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... soldier of the seventh and eighth centuries. He was governor of Chaldaea (Irak Arabi), under the fifth and sixth Khalifs of the Ommiade dynasty, and was renowned for his cruelty, but appears to have been a prudent and capable administrator, who used no more rigour than was necessary to restrain the proverbially turbulent populations of Bassora and Cufa, Most of the anecdotes of his brutality and tyranny, which abound in Arab authors, are, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... by what I didn't find out with that screen I just put out. It didn't reach them, and it went so far that the distance is absolutely meaningless, even expressed in parsecs. Well, a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, and I guess this one isn't going ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... dwell on its material and civilizing rather than its spiritual aspects. They do not, as officials, feel that the salvation of men from sin and the command of Christ to evangelize all nations are within their sphere. Moreover, diplomacy is proverbially and necessarily cautious. Its business is to avoid risks, and, of course, to advise others to avoid them. The political situation, too, was undeniably uncertain and delicate. The future was big with possibility of peril. In such circumstances, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... to know who John Hobb was, and the Doctor was forced to acknowledge him a quite mythical character, whose name in that part of the world stood proverbially for incompetence. After that when any of the four made a mistake he or she was promptly dubbed John Hobb. For once the unwritten law was unobserved, and it was long past ten when the party broke up, Eve and the Doctor having captured the best of a series of rubbers. After they had gone Wade ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... wife could tell you that the cottage door has never been darkened by her presence: that she indeed would not acknowledge her if passed by chance on the road. For the landlady sails forth to the adjacent town in all the glory of those fine feathers that proverbially make the fine bird. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... surprise poor passengers, and butchering all who have the misfortune to fall into their hands. These excepted, all the rest of the natives are in general pusillanimous, and had rather quarrel than fight, being so poor in spirit, in comparison with Europeans, that the Mogul often says, proverbially, That one Portuguese will beat three of them, and one ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... Pharmacists are proverbially neat-handed, as Mr. Martindale would say, and their habit of conducting dispensing operations which involve the dexterous manipulation of very small quantities of material fit them admirably to undertake volumetric and other rapid analytical determinations. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... Massa, who were proverbially infamous as informers, are represented by Juvenal as dreading a still ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... feels most deeply his utterances are the most commonplace, and an Englishman is proverbially incapable of expressing his feelings. In the supreme moments of their lives, it is true, a few men, and those not always the most sincere, may speak eloquently; but for the most part a proposal of marriage from an Englishman is—as it should be—a clumsy thing. Peter Ogilvie could ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... ground. And of course, having thus begun by calling it bad names, I will not for a moment insult the intelligence of my readers by supposing them to share so foolish a delusion. I beg to state from the outset that I write this article entirely for the benefit of Other People. You and I, O proverbially Candid and Intelligent One, it need hardly be said, are better informed. But Other People fall into such ridiculous blunders that it is just as well to put them on their guard beforehand against the insidious advance of false opinions. I have known otherwise good and estimable men, indeed, who ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... from harboring the notion that malingering and mental disease are mutually exclusive, we are beginning to look upon malingering itself as the expression of an abnormal psychic make-up. Furthermore, far from believing, as of old, that the proverbially insane is supposed to be totally devoid of discretion in his conduct, we know that there may be a good deal of method in madness, and that even the frankly insane malinger mental symptoms when the occasion requires ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... disgusting topic. And I think I may justly conclude, after all the scandalous charges which tea-table gossip, and long-gowned hypocrisy have brought against the slaveholders, that a people whose men are proverbially brave, intellectual and hospitable, and whose women are unaffectedly chaste, devoted to domestic life, and happy in it, can neither be degraded nor demoralized, whatever their institutions may be. My decided opinion is, that our system of slavery contributes largely to the development ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... of artists, proverbially picturesque, present few scenes more pleasant to look on than the early years in Rome of the Brotherhood of German Painters, of whom Overbeck and his friend Cornelius were the leaders. Exiles in some sort from their native land, they entered Italy as ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... already made some reference to Aqueducts, which were among the noblest and most beneficial works that any ruler of Italy could accomplish. Ravenna, situated in an unhealthy swamp where water fit for drinking was proverbially dearer than wine[69] was pre-eminently dependent on such supplies of the precious fluid as could be brought fresh and sparkling from the distant Apennines. Theodoric issued an order to all the farmers dwelling along the course ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... with her, but all her pleadings came to this,—that she should send a neighbour to watch for Tamar on the side of the moat, the young girl having assured her kind protectress, that she had nothing to fear for her, and that as the Laird was proverbially a procrastinator, he might let half the day pass, before he had settled what was to ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... mental composition—largely given to inventions of low cunning, schemes of mischief and deception, and false and mysterious pretensions. In his moral phrenology the professor might have marked the organ of secretiveness as very large, and that of conscientiousness omitted. He was, however, proverbially good natured, very rarely, if ever, indulging in any combative spirit toward any one, whatever might be the provocation, and yet was never known to laugh. Albeit, he seemed to be the pride of his indulgent father, who has been heard to boast of him as the 'genus of the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... being the most commodious room in the house. It was the day of small things for Methodism in the capital of Upper Canada. But of the religious zeal of the little company of believers, we may judge from the fact that several of the members of the society came from two to eight miles, through the proverbially wretched roads of "Muddy York," to the class meeting. [Footnote: Carroll's "Case and his Cotemporaries," Vol. ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... the poet. For it is well known that his was a divided nature, so variously endowed that complete integration was difficult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented that steady concentration of powers which poetry demands. She is proverbially the most jealous of mistresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance. At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as primarily a poet: but in the next fifteen years he had become a professor, had devoted long ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... seems almost universally to disfigure features which are none of the best or cleanest; and their whole appearance is as direct a contrast as can well be imagined, to the hale, honest Norman, or le franc Picard, as he is proverbially styled. We turned our backs upon them with pleasure, after casting back one lingering look at the noble old Circus; and soon found ourselves in the centre of the extensive plain in which Avignon stands. The forwardness of the climate, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... Art, especially of statues, are proverbially unsatisfactory; only a vague idea can be given in words, to the unprofessional reader; otherwise we might dwell upon the eager, intent attitude of Orpheus as he seems to glide by the dozing Cerberus, shading his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... man of herculean build, returned with some of it. With the luck which proverbially attends rich men, Mr. Mountenay picked up the "Z" volume at once. As he read the Zinc article it all came back to him. Leo Abraham had owned an empty zinc-mine! Was his enemy in ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... style, the more the lawyer sifted her testimony, the clearer and more evident its truthfulness and point became; until there seemed at length nothing to do but acquit the prisoner. But courts of law are proverbially fussy, and now the State's Attorney was doing his best to invalidate the testimony of the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... board the Titanic, it must be recorded that there were among the passengers and such of the crew as were heard to speak on the matter, the direst misgivings at the incident we had just witnessed. Sailors are proverbially superstitious; far too many people are prone to follow their lead, or, indeed, the lead of any one who asserts a statement with an air of conviction and the opportunity of constant repetition; the sense of mystery that ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... side, the Greeks, though very numerous, were divided between the Corinthian and the Athenian, leaving but a scant showing of green and yellow. Messala's scarlet and gold would have been but little better had not the citizens of Antioch, proverbially a race of courtiers, joined the Romans by adopting the color of their favorite. There were left then the country people, or Syrians, the Jews, and the Arabs; and they, from faith in the blood of the sheik's four, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... the events of life are proverbially very uncertain; and it may happen that you may be obliged to do without me; in which case, would it not be well for you to be prepared for such ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... a minister; her mother had been the proverbially meek little woman of history, perfectly fitted to be her father's wife. Her grandfathers on both sides of the parental tree had been ministers; she gave me a graphic sketch of the long line of concentration which she had been born into and ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

... self-originated, the source of all Christian experiences because of the work of Christ which originates them all, is the root fact of the universe, and the guarantee that our highest anticipations and desires are not unsubstantial visions, but morning dreams, which are proverbially sure to be fulfilled. God is love; therefore the man who trusts Him shall not be put ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... Richard Long, of Rood Ashton, was a fox-hunting country squire, without any other qualification to be a Member of Parliament than that of belonging to an ancient family of the county; in fact, he was proverbially a man of very inferior knowledge, remarkable only for being a stupid country squire, who, although a sportsman, scarcely knew how to address his tenants on his health being drank ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... proverbially protracted, but on dry land it has usually one end. Mine ended in Baden on the fifth (and first fine) day, rather early in the afternoon. On arrival I drove straight to the Darmstaedterhof, and asked to see no visitors' books, for the five days had taken ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... utmost in every way from whatever or whoever there was at hand in order to even approach what he hoped to accomplish. But the mere fact that Brown had come to the head of things at Elliott was cause for the schools on Elliott's schedule to regard their proverbially weak opponent with new respect ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... were of the ambitions and ideals of the Republic. The fact that many of these gentlemen—literary and otherwise—returned to their own shores better fed and with larger balances in the banks than when they departed is neither here nor there. Egyptians are proverbially created ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... practical discovery to become a scientific fact it must serve to demonstrate the error of one hypothesis, and to suggest a new one, better fitted for the synthesis of existing facts. But (some) old beliefs are proverbially obstinate and virulent in their opposition to newer and truer theories which are destined to eject and replace them. To sum up, even in our own day, chemistry rests on a less sound basis than either physics, which had the advantage of originating as late as the 17th century, or astronomy, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... causes of small-pox be removed (generally some impurity in the air or in the food), those causes will work mischief somehow. throw an eruptive disease back into the system is proverbially dangerous.... Moreover, what right has any physician to neglect the cures of small-pox, by which herbalists, hydropaths, and Turkish-bath keepers find ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... crossings, the class which had always been rowdily inclined was now far more rowdy, and that its ranks were reinforced, doubled in strength, by recruits from a class which, a few years before, had been proverbially noted for its decorous and decent reserve. And this was Sunday Night. I learned afterwards that the clergy had preached to practically empty churches. A man we met in The Times office told us of this, and my ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... many respects, we cannot but observe that we think the whole scope of its philosophy utterly unworthy of the accomplished mind of the writer; the philosophy consists of an unpardonable distorting of general truths, to suit the peculiarities of an individual, noble indeed, but proverbially morbid and eccentric. A striking instance of this occurs in the laboured assertion that poets make but sorry domestic characters. What! because Lord Byron is said to have been a bad husband, was (to go no further back for examples)—was Walter Scott a bad husband, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sentence goes forth, and the torture begins, a new but unavoidable train of evils encounters us. There is war implanted in the very bosom of society—hatred, and the giving and the sufferance of pain. And here, we presume, is to be found the reason of the proverbially severe laws of Draco, which, being instituted by a man of virtue and humanity, were yet said to have been written in blood: he desired that the threat should be effective, and that thus the evils of punishment, as well as of crime, should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... set up an ideal of aggrandizement, to fill a body of men with a fanatical enthusiasm for that ideal and then to provide an organization and discipline marvellously adapted to conquest, that is what the Prussian schoolmaster who {411} proverbially won Sadowa, and the Jesuits who beat back the Reformation, have known how to do better than anyone else. Their methods took account of everything except the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... is proverbially uncertain, Mr Thompson. That is principally the reason why I was so bent on making him confess if he had anything to confess. I can't expel a boy and ruin his whole career on mere suspicion. The matter must be proved, doubly proved, and even then I should feel uneasy ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... years ago, called the Rue de l'Empire, but republics are proverbially sensitive. Once they are established they become morbidly desirous of obliterating a past wherein no republic flourished. The street is therefore dedicated to St. Gingolphe to-day. To-morrow? Who ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... judge with becoming charity of the peculiar temptations of riches. A more generous, hospitable, intelligent, and industrious people than the inhabitants of the half-dozen bars, of which Rich Bar is the nucleus, never existed; for you know how proverbially wearing it is to the nerves of manhood to be entirely without either occupation or amusement, and that has been preeminently the case ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... exceed all the means of human knowledge to presume to analyze the influences that govern the acts of the lower animals. On this occasion, the dam, though proverbially fierce when its young is thought to be in danger, manifested no intention to attack the girl. It quitted the honey, and advanced to a place within twenty feet of her, where it raised itself on its hind legs and balanced its body in a sort ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... Great bodies are proverbially slow in their movements, and in this regard all governments seem to be great bodies. It may be that a healthy difference of opinion within a cabinet tends to cautious procedure, but that type of caution is rather trying on people whose nerves tingle ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... prevent his young master frequenting the tables, and though he kept the purse, with the exception of a few pounds, and would certainly have stood between him and ruin, he could not prevent his winning. Richard had the luck, and more, that proverbially attends young people—he had the luck of the devil; his few napoleons swelling to a great many on the very first day, and he was in the seventh heaven of happiness. The next day and the next he won largely, immensely; in vain Maitland threatened to write to his father, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... Proverbially careful and judicious in the expenditure of money, as may be supposed, in the purchase of his supplies on this occasion Doctor Hanchett quite outshone himself. Besides the indispensable pans and shovels and picks with which every man provided himself, Doctor Hanchett laid in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... France had already commenced, the old counts and marquises were thronging to our shores: not starving and miserable, as one saw them a few years afterwards, but unmolested as yet, and bringing with them some token of their national splendour. I was walking with Lady Lyndon, who, proverbially jealous and always anxious to annoy me, spied out a foreign lady who was evidently remarking me, and of course asked who was the hideous fat Dutchwoman who was leering at me so? I knew her not in the least. I felt I had seen ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... met a party of natives engaged in burning the bush, which they do in sections every year. The dexterity with which they manage so proverbially a dangerous agent as fire is indeed astonishing. Those to whom this duty is especially entrusted, and who guide or stop the running flame, are armed with large green boughs, with which, if it moves in a wrong direction, they beat it out. Their only object in these periodical conflagrations ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... not be forgotten that a certain supply exists at the fountain head, within practicable distance, which might be stored and led from the mountains to the lower lands for the purposes of irrigation. When we reflect that in the proverbially wet climate of England there is a considerable difficulty in assuring a supply of wholesome water, and that the various water companies have made enormous profits, it is not surprising that in a neglected island like Cyprus ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... incalculable. The little courtesies which form the small change of life, may separately appear of little intrinsic value, but they acquire their importance from repetition and accumulation. They are like the spare minutes, or the groat a day, which proverbially produce such momentous results in the course of a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... time sail was made, and headway got on the ship, the chase was some three miles in advance, and gliding swiftly along with a strong breeze. But though a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, the splendid sailing qualities of the Alabama soon made themselves felt, and within three hours after her helm was put up, she was within a few hundred yards of the stranger, who now hove to at the first summons from the ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... desolate. Secondly, for the continuance and perpetuity of the state it was necessary that there should be wives and children, so that when one generation should have passed away there might be another to succeed it. And, thirdly, for the preservation of order and law. Men unmarried are, in the mass, proverbially ungovernable. Nothing is so effectual in keeping a citizen away from scenes of tumult and riot as a wife and children at home. The fearful violence of the riots and insurrections of which the city of Paris ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... —the proverbially foolish bird. The speech must be spoken with breaks. Its construction ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... sentence of condemnation on the criminal is proverbially a sorrowfully-minded man; and still more would he be so had he to undertake the part of executioner as well. This is equivalent to saying that the simple pleasures are no longer with us; it must be a personal enemy now to give us any satisfaction in chastising and slaying. Perhaps by-and-by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Proverbially" :   proverbial



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