"Ranker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very hard, at first, to understand the class distinctions of British army life. And having understood them, it was more difficult yet to endure them. I learned that a ranker, or private soldier, is a socially inferior being from the officer's point of view. The officer class and the ranker class are east and west, and never the twain shall meet, except in their respective places ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... a hill of foam. A cheer was heard struggling in the tempest, and glancing over his left shoulder, Sir Gervaise perceived the Carnatic shooting out of the smoke, and imitating his own movement, by making another and still ranker sheer to leeward. At the same moment she set her main-sail close-reefed, as if determined to outstrip her antagonist, and maintain her station. None but a prime seaman could have done such a thing so steadily and so well, in the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker.... Assume a virtue if ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... and vigorous, but by that vast flood of water which God had spread out over the earth, and by its long abiding there, all saps were diluted; the air, charged with too dense and heavy a moisture, bred ranker principles of corruption. The early constitution of the universe was weakened, and human life, from stretching as it had formerly done to near a thousand years, grew gradually briefer. Herbs and roots lost their primitive ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... do 'is watchin' without it showin' plain; 'E learns to save a dummy, an' shove 'im straight again; 'E learns to check a ranker that's buyin' leave to shirk; An' 'e learns to make men like 'im so they'll ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... and in all its degrees. The separation suggested, he permits not to be attempted at all, until he shall charge his angels to accomplish it at the end of the world. In my judgment, to contend for the right of excluding some of the ranker tares, after admitting that this parable bears upon the subject of ecclesiastical discipline, tends not only to perplex the student, but to throw a reflection on the authority of the Word. I see only two doors open: either cease to hold that the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... perusal of it might enable him to recover his lost equanimity. In so doing he caught sight of the last page, which contained the photographic items. Braithwaite's face stared up at him. Above it was printed the caption, "Youngest Ranker ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Baltimore, he himself being a stockholder therein. And so thorough is my conviction of this principle, and so corrupting and pernicious do I deem the example which he has thereby set to future Committees of Ways and Means, to cite as precedents for yet ranker rottenness, that, if there were a prospect of his remaining in office longer than till the close of the present session of the Senate, I should deem it an indispensable, albeit a painful, duty of my station, to take the sense of this house on the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... orb of all the earth, God rest the lady fowl that gave thee birth! Fit missile for the vilest hand to throw— I freely tender thee mine own. Although As a bad egg I am myself no slouch, Thy riper years thy ranker worth avouch. Now, Pickering, please expose your eye and say If—whoop!— (Exit egg.) ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... than two millenniums ago, only the grass was for a while a little ranker on the plain. Olivet lifts the same outline against the pale morning twilight as when David went up its slope a weeping exile. The pebble that we kick out of our path had thousands of years of existence ere we were born, and may lie there unaltered to all appearance for centuries after ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... way to be good or bad, their generally superior knowledge—their knowledge of more things—enables them to commit greater excesses than the savage could widi the same opportunity. The civilized philanthropist wreaks upon his fellow creatures a ranker philanthropy, the civilized scoundrel a sturdier rascality. And—splendid triumph of enlightenment!—the two characters are, in civilisation, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... pulmonary hospital. The odor increased till we were obliged to open the windows and sit beside them in order to breathe comfortably. This was the preparatory fumigation, in order to remove the ranker seeds of plague, after which the milder symptoms will of themselves vanish in the pure air of the place. Several times a day we are stunned and overwhelmed with the cracked brays of three discordant trumpets, as grating and doleful as the last gasps of a dying donkey. At ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor |
