"Buffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down Corinth (to "encourage the other Greeks") and sent a Roman governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which protected Rome's ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... angler, dancer, Prig of cackler, prig of prancer; No swigman, swaddler, clapper-dudgeon; Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon; No whip-jack, palliard, patrico; No jarkman, be he high or low; No dummerar, or romany; No member of the family; No ballad-basket, bouncing buffer, Nor any other, will I suffer; But stall-off now and for ever All outtiers whatsoever; And as I keep to the foregone, So may help me ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... never yours to give," said Leonard, laughing jovially at his wit. "Old Steinwein—you remember his death. It was in all the papers; the eccentric old buffer, who was touched in the upper story, and used to give so much time and money to Jewish affairs, setting up lazy old rabbis in Jerusalem to shake themselves over their Talmuds. You remember his gifts to the poor—six shillings sevenpence each because he ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... say you have guessed—by my filling up one of those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede. He was quite flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in the atelier and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money. I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... old buffer!" was equally free from any gloss of eloquence, but he hooked his hand in the doctor's arm as he made ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... hated the idea of signing under such a man, but an instinct told him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person; and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer. All children know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... as he expressed it, had impressed him so remarkably. Langley replied that he did not quite know, but he thought the effect was largely due to the man's teeth. But all the same he was "a very entertaining old buffer." ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... went out and she was left alone. A flagman, hat in hand, passed through the car. The shock of the engine coupler striking the buffer hardly disturbed her reverie; for her ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... also eliminated a buffer between the Soviet Union and Pakistan and presented a new threat to Iran. These two countries are now far more vulnerable to Soviet political intimidation. If that intimidation were to prove effective, the Soviet Union could control an area of vital strategic and economic significance to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "I love you better because you're young and unformed. I can help you, dear, and you can help me, of course; I'm a dreadful old buffer in many ways. I'm forty, you know, and you're such a child. How old ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Nothing but a friendly understanding between England and Russia, which should clearly define the respective spheres of influence, will save the integrity of Persia. That country should remain an independent buffer state between Russia and India. But to bring about this result it is more than necessary that we should support Persia on our side, as much as Russia does on hers, or the balance is bound to go in ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what new ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... all right," answered the batteryman, with easy assurance. "Maybe he has gone round by the road. Even if he hasn't, I've seen him make that in one jump many a time. He's an active old buffer ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... no good talking now of buffer States, because the German conscience cannot respect them. Buffer States are just anvil States. At any rate, very considerable annexations of German territory by Belgium and France are now inevitable, and Holland must expect a much larger and stronger Belgium to the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... emphasis. "I wish there were any hope of my becoming such a fine old buffer in my decadence,—it would be worth living for if only to look at myself in the glass now and then. He rather startled me when he threw down that knife, though. I suppose it ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... (4 pounds: 6 shillings); no carpet was to be seen in his house, and for a long time there was no whitewash on the walls of the rooms. Ordinarily he partook of the same fare with his servants, and did not buffer his outlay in cash for the meal to exceed 30 -asses- (2 shillings); in time of war even wine was uniformly banished from his table, and he drank water or, according to circumstances, water mixed with vinegar. On the other hand, he ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... occasionally demands. Who has not suffered from their enervating effects? We are not all possessed of that mental abstraction which La Fontaine succeeded in carrying with him throughout life, forming a buffer from which all idle talk rebounded. He was once asked to dinner by a 'fermier-general' to amuse the guests. Thoroughly bored, La Fontaine ate much and said little, and rising very early from the table said that he had to go to the Academy. 'Oh,' said his host, 'but you are much too early ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... same when they first come. Presently you will grow accustomed to its invigorating tone, and quiet down. It is caused by the dry air. We are a long way from the Atlantic, and these mighty mountains to the west act as a buffer to the moisture-laden air from ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his father ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... got to get this, Brydges! The stage driver's told one of my men, already! Every bar-room buffer in the country side will ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... in the old hole, Bunny. More of these magic-lantern advertisements ... and absolutely the worst bit of taste in town, though it's saying something, in that equestrian statue with the gilt stirrups and fixings; why don't they black the buffer's boots and his horse's hoofs while they are about it? ... More bicyclists, of course. That was just beginning, if you remember. It might have been useful to us.... And there's the old club, getting put into a crate for the Jubilee; by Jove, Bunny, we ought to be there. I wouldn't lean ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... sidetracked," he said. "That K isn't in his name by accident. Look at it,—a regular buffer of a letter! Tell you what, you may monkey with Charles; but when you hit the K look ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... unexpectedly within reach of the ball, braced up his energies for a kick; but seeing O'Riley coming down towards him like a runaway locomotive, he pulled up, saying quietly to himself, "Ye may take it all yer own way, lad; I'm too old a bird to go for to make my carcass a buffer for a madcap ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... some success, but before long it became clear that the current was too strong and that the bitterness of faction was to prevail. I am so constituted that factious thought and effort dishearten and disgust me. At many periods of my life I have acted as a "buffer'' between conflicting cliques and factions, generally to some purpose; now it was otherwise. But, as Kipling ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... They were in no danger from Indian raids, and they had small pity for their brethren on the western frontier. Between them and the encroaching Indians lay a population, mostly German, that acted like a buffer state to them; and notwithstanding that every post brought in urgent appeals for help, they passed the time in wrangling with the Governor, in drawing up bills professing to be framed to meet the emergency, but each one of them containing the clause through which the Governor was forced ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... said. "You've been a buffer between us and the enemy more than once, but it took a mind like Stonewall Jackson's to keep moving you around so you would stand between the armies of the enemy and make the Yankees fight, only one army at ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... satisfied with banishing the ex-conqueror to his island exile, but wished to present any possibility of another Napoleon arising to renew the wars which had devastated and impoverished them. Consequently they agreed to make a kingdom which might act as a buffer between France and the rest of Europe; and to this end they decreed that Belgium and Holland should be one. But in doing this, the statesmen or politicians concerned failed to take into account certain factors and facts which must inevitably, in the course of time, undermine their ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... have struck the ground with a "dull thud," but for an unexpected buffer in the shape of one of his brother warriors, who happened to be standing directly under. As a consequence, the sprawling figure came down on the head and shoulders of the astounded Comanche, who collapsed with a feeling that must have made ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... essential in a lever: it must be rigid; otherwise it will bend, and power will be lost. Now, if the foot were a rigid lever, there would be missing two of its most useful qualities. It could no longer act as a spring or buffer to the body, nor could it adapt its sole to the various kinds of surfaces on which we have to tread or stand. Nature, with her usual ingenuity, has succeeded in combining those opposing qualities—rigidity, suppleness, and elasticity or springiness—by resorting ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent |
