"By nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "It is by nature commanded to my husband not to draw from his wealth to bring about his poverty, as the old women say ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... have, quite contrary, by the chance of my birth; and hold it not either by law, precept, or any other instruction; the innocence that is in me is a simple one; little vigour and no art. Amongst other vices, I mortally hate cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the very extreme of all vices: nay, with so much tenderness that I cannot see a chicken's neck pulled off without trouble, and cannot without impatience endure the cry of a hare in my dog's teeth, though the chase be a violent pleasure. Such as have sensuality to encounter, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Aesthetics has among the Germans, by nature a speculative rather than a practical people, led to this consequence, that works of art, and tragedies more especially, have been executed on abstract theories, more or less misunderstood. It was natural that these tragedies should produce ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... they combined to acclaim her as the most trusted of all the constitutional monarchs whom the world had then seen. How could she be all that they justly claimed for her, if the whole female sex laboured under the disabilities which, according to Mrs. Humphry Ward, were imposed by nature and therefore irremediable? Nevertheless, it must not be supposed, genuine as were these tributes to Queen Victoria's political sagacity, that her example immediately cleared out of the minds of the opponents the notion that women were fitly classed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the old saying that a stump-tailed yellow dog is always the best for coons. An easy conscience is to be preferred to great riches, Carey. Be honest and you will stay out of jail. Before I go, permit me to introduce myself. I'm Bob McGraw, of No Place In Particular, and a lunatic by nature, breed and inclination. Mr. Man-who-flies-through-the-window, here are duplicate copies of my power of attorney from my fifty clients, authorizing and instructing the surveyor-general to transact ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... effects which we see in the world, have said a great absurdity; for what greater absurdity than a blind fatality which should have produced intelligent beings?" Without restricting ourselves to this simple and solid argument, let us see how they will explain man by nature. For this end, we must examine the theory of the perfected monkey, which, introduced to us by the lectures of Professor Vogt and the spirited rejoinders of M. de Rougemont, made a great noise as it descended a short time ago from the mountains of Neuchatel.[130] ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... called it, and so we suppose must we, in our extreme ignorance of the precise category of nomenclature to which the feelings that actuated him belonged. Honest man! bigoted and selfish as he was, he was neither cruel by nature nor cross-grained; and he was even moved by the pathetic and frank avowal which Barbara made to him on the state of her heart. But, though touched by her tears, he understood them not, treated them but as the natural mawkishness of girlish sentimentality; nor had her assurance that she could ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... harmonies can be imagined than those provided by nature. One may start with the brown of the earth and run into several shades of green, and from that touch upon yellow, and from yellow to orange, and from orange to red, and red to violet, and violet to the blue of the sky. Or one may follow the colorings and the proportion ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... that hinder them from acquiring this useful strength: pride, inattention, and 'mauvaise honte'. The first I will not, I cannot suspect you of; it is too much below your understanding. You cannot, and I am sure you do not think yourself superior by nature to the Savoyard who cleans your room, or the footman who cleans your shoes; but you may rejoice, and with reason, at the difference that fortune has made in your favor. Enjoy all those advantages; but without insulting ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Hispaniola and Cuba; but the captain I got the chart from said there was no very great store there, and that the natives had but little of it when the Spaniards first arrived; seeing that it took trouble and labor to obtain, and they are by nature altogether averse to hard work, and moreover place but little value on the gold. But there were rumors among them that, farther west, there was a land where gold was in great plenty; and where there was a powerful people, dressed in gay attire, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... his nicely kept nails. He speaks in a low tone, which he only raises when he forgets himself, and relies for emphasis on little restrained gestures adopted by him, together with other tricks of speech and manner, from his wife's male relations. In this he is unconscious of imitation, for he is by nature adaptable and his desire to be identified with ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... are by nature morbid; who deceive themselves if they imagine they have enjoyment from the recreations that provoke lightness of heart in the majority. Only the surface of their spirits ripples under such breezes; to stir ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... gown, Of ages rather shy. That mild, complacent-looking face,{36} Who sits his bit of blood with grace, Is tragic Charley Young: With dowager savant a beau, Who'll spout, or tales relate, you know, Nobility among. "Sure such a pair was never seen" By nature form'd so sharp and keen As H-ds-n and Jack L-g; Or two who've play'd their cards so well, As many a pluck'd roue can tell, Whose purses once were strong: Both deal in pipes—and by the nose Have led to many a green horn's woes ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... said, you will see That I couldn't wed either—in fine, By nature's unchanging decree Your daughters could ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... the most interesting town in all Spain, and stands beneath the most glorious heaven, and amidst the most delightful environs; but to effect anything, patience must be exhibited and prudence employed, and much of both. Consider my situation here. I am in a city by nature very Levitical, as it contains within it the most magnificent and splendidly endowed cathedral of any in Spain. I am surrounded by priests and friars, who know and hate me, and who, if I commit the slightest act ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... repaid for the pressure he had put upon his wife to induce her to write that note. "You may leave Lize Wetherford out of the count, my dear," he had said. "There is nothing of her discernible in the girl. Virginia is a lady. I don't know where she got it, but she's a gentlewoman by nature." ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the mercy of the most crafty of mankind. In proposing to man the changeable creeds of the theologians for a model, they weakened the moral system of human actions; frequently annihilated that which was furnished by nature; often substituted in its place nothing but the most perplexing incertitude; the most ruinous inconsistency. These systems, by the qualities which are ascribed, to them, become inexplicable enigmas, which each expounds as best suits himself; which ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... richest and finest countries in the world. For instance, the town of Coquimbo, in lat. 30 deg. S. [30 deg. 20'] a short mile from the sea, in a most delightful place. It is situated on a green rising ground, about ten yards high, formed by nature like a regular terrace, stretching north and south in a direct line of more than half a mile, turning a little at each end to the eastwards; and its principal street forms a delightful walk, having a fine prospect of the country and the bay. All this is placed in an evergreen valley, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... MASSILLON became priest by his own internal sense of vocation to the office, against the preference of his family that he should become, like his father, a notary. He seems to have been by nature sincerely modest in spirit. He had to be forced into the publicity of a preaching career at Paris. His ecclesiastical superior peremptorily required at his hands the sacrifice of his wish to be obscure. He at once filled Paris with his fame. The ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... many of them must have suffered agonizing pain; but they were all doing their best to make light of their troubles, whilst their gratitude for what was done for them was extraordinary. The Belgians are by nature a cheerful race, but these were brave men, and we felt glad that we had come out to do what we ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... a matter of real need with me, I trust I shall never be backward, being resolute by nature and well-trained in bodily exercise. Where James Bruck went, I was determined to go, also; though it might cost me some uncomfortable falls. But it was not the same with the first magistrate of Morganton, less young, less vigorous, larger, stouter, ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... standing-ground than the shifting quicksand of his own good deeds. "All this while," he writes, "poor wretch as I was, I was ignorant of Jesus Christ, and going about to establish my own righteousness, and had perished therein had not God in mercy showed me more of my state by nature." ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Whether or not distinguishable by nature of their enterprise, stock and mutual insurance companies and mutual building and loan associations, unlike fraternal benefit societies, have not been accorded the same unique constitutional protection; and, with few exceptions,[112] have had controversies ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... of. It isn't that we love the Freshman so much. When I think of some of the trash we fought over and lost I have to laugh. But we couldn't bear the idea of losing him. To sit by and watch another gang win the affections of a young fellow who you know is designed by Nature for your frat and the football team; to note him gradually breaking off the desperate chumminess that has grown up between you in the last forty-eight hours; to think that in another day he will have on the pledge colors of another fraternity and will be lost to you forever and ever ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... should have given so many years of his life to Parliament, and to official work, when his true career undoubtedly was literature pure and simple, for which no man of his time was so splendidly equipped, both by nature and by preparation. We ought to have had from him more enduring historical works, and more of his masterly estimates of the works of other men. After his retirement into private life, in 1847, he enjoyed ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... my fellow-student, inquired the cause of the palpable change in my bearing and disposition. Would that my lips had been sealed to him forever! I knew that he was honest and generous by nature, but I knew not to what extent his dissolute habits (gradually acquired by having ample means, and yielding by degrees to the temptations of vice) had perverted his good qualities. I told him of my love, and while describing ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... this village are admirably adapted for defense, so well adapted, in fact, as to suggest that we have here a fortress or purely defensive structure, still this adaptation arises solely from the selection of a site fitted by nature for the purpose, or, in other words, from an accident of environment. There has not been the slightest artificial addition to the natural advantages of ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... as I do, you would agree with me that the Senator is indeed Huskey by name and "husky" by nature. A more complete parcel of huskiness you never did see, nor a jollier, more cordial and better hearted could you ever wish to meet, for he has never allowed the musty parchment to dry up the finer faculties of his sentiments, and he can appreciate a beautiful sunset, a ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... with quality; for this is the first thing effable by us, and is, sensible. Is this then the principle of things? But it is two things, body, and quality which is in body as a subject. Which of these therefore is by nature prior? For both are indigent of their proper parts; and that also which is in a subject is indigent of the subject. Shall we say then that body itself is the principle of the first essence? But this is impossible. For, in the first place, the principle will not receive any thing from ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... was born in the County of Lincoln, of a family that was ancient; and noted to be both prudent and affable, and gentle by nature. He was educated in Cambridge; much of his learning was acquired in Pembroke Hall,—where Mr. Bradford[17] the Martyr was his tutor;—from thence he was removed to Peter House; from thence to be Master of Pembroke Hall; and from thence to the Mastership of Trinity College. About which ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... a delicacy of feeling, of thought, and of action, corresponding with the delicacy of her physical organism. God hath made her gentle by nature, and kind. She likes and longs to be loved and to love, must have some object on which she can center her affections. She admires flowers, and everything which is beautiful and delicate like herself. She has a finer imagination and more ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... delivered his message gallantly and intelligently. There were two ladies in the carriage: one of great beauty, although rather thin; the other less favored by nature, but lively, graceful, and uniting in the delicate lines of her brow all the signs of a strong will. Her eyes, animated and piercing in particular, spoke more eloquently than all the amorous phrases ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the Anglo-Saxons, they were such as might be expected in a rude people,—fierce, and of a gross simplicity. Their clothes were short. As all barbarians are much taken with exterior form, and the advantages and distinctions which are conferred by Nature, the Saxons set an high value on comeliness of person, and studied much to improve it. It is remarkable that a law of King Ina orders the care and education of foundlings to be regulated by their beauty.[33] They cherished their hair to a great length, and were extremely proud and jealous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... went straight to Georgie. That young person, frank and boisterous by nature, was not given to deceit, and, although she was reluctant at first to betray Nora's confidence, she soon acknowledged that it was a relief to her to speak the truth and the whole truth to Janetta. Her account tallied in the main with the one given by ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... French or German; and it is a notable fact that the bread is quite equal to any made in France or Germany. The wine-stores, of which there are many, are decorated with pictures of bottles, and bas-reliefs of gilded grapes—a great improvement upon the ordinary grape produced by nature. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... this epistle has made the Professor, who, as I have already hinted, is not by nature of a meek disposition, extremely angry. Indeed, notwithstanding all that I could do, he left his London house under an hour ago with a whip of hippopotamus hide such as the Egyptians call a koorbash, purposing to avenge himself upon the person of his defamer. In order to prevent ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... with a lost nugget. Elam would go along on foot, leaving his horse to follow or not as he pleased; and if he found a little pile of stones on the bank that didn't look as though it had been thrown up by nature, he would go into the bushes and perhaps be gone for an hour. We had long ago passed the pocket, and were continuing on our way slowly and laboriously up the canyon, and one day Elam startled Tom ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... found repose—a soothing, calm, and holy submission. Still the gloom of her father's spirit cast a pensive shade over her own feelings, and infused a tone of melancholy and an air of unnatural reflection into her character. By nature, Jane was endowed with a soul of unusual delicacy. From early childhood, all that is beautiful or sublime in nature, in literature, in character, had charms to rivet her entranced attention. She loved to sit alone at her chamber window in the evening of a summer's day, to gaze upon the gorgeous hues ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... upon the ground and was caught by a Weasel pleaded to be spared his life. The Weasel refused, saying that he was by nature the enemy of all birds. The Bat assured him that he was not a bird, but a mouse, and thus was set free. Shortly afterwards the Bat again fell to the ground and was caught by another Weasel, whom he likewise entreated not to eat him. The Weasel said that he had ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... fresh, and the roads through the policy hard both by nature and by frost, so that he could not let her go, and had enough to do with her. He turned, therefore, towards the sea gate, and soon reached the shore. There, westward of the Seaton, where the fisher folk lived, the sand lay ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... indeed that the extremities of the inhabited world had allotted to them by nature the fairest things, just as it was the lot of Hellas to have its seasons far more fairly tempered than other lands: for first, India is the most distant of inhabited lands towards the East, as I ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; and beasts, by nature.—CICERO. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... various degrees of moral cultivation that each nation has received? And our answer is, that we are inclined to believe the capacities for improvement of races, as of individuals, to have been differently bestowed by nature; but that none are actually incapable of culture. There is no land, however sterile, that the art of man may not make to produce fruit; but the difficulty and expense of tillage must be in proportion to the intrinsic richness or poverty of the soil. We fear that the soil of the Negroes[3], of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... every step the guidance, we had almost said, the inspiration, of those profound ideas concerning Life, which dawn upon us, indeed, through his written works, but which he has here presented to us in a more perfect language than that of words—the language of God himself, as uttered by Nature. ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I know not whither, outcast, fated At fortune's whim, A soul unholy, steep['e]d in Its mortal sin, Against the God who had created Me like to Him. 65 I am that soul ill-starred, unblest, That by nature shone in gleaming Robe of white, Of angel's beauty once possessed, Yea, loveliest, Like a ray refulgent streaming Filled with light. 66 And by my ill-omened fate, My atrocious devilries, Sins treasonous, More ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... would be a living torture. To live forever alone! Think what that must be even to a man innocent of crime, and feel how far worse than the bed of Procrustes it must be to one like me. No, holy father, let me die before the time appointed by Nature. Thus let the tender mercies of my race toward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... hard conditions of her life. She sharpened her wits involuntarily on the people about her, she gathered knowledge where she listed; her further faculty flashed forth fine rays at unexpected intervals to cheer her, and her hungry heart also began to seek satisfaction. For Beth was by nature well-balanced; there was to be no atrophy of one side of her being in order that the other might be abnormally developed. Her chest was not to be flattened because her skull bulged with the big brain ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... By nature a careful, practical man, Hubert Long now carried a small pistol in his coat pocket, but being also a fearless, independent individual, he admitted all callers and exposed himself daily to the public. It wasn't entirely personal ...
— The Deadly Daughters • Winston K. Marks
... B.C. the Celtiberians (of Middle Spain), encouraged by the successes of the Lusitanians, took up arms once more. Their most important town was Numantia, situated near the sources of the R. Durius (Douro), strongly fortified by nature and by art. Consul after consul failed to take it, until in 134 B.C. Scipio Africanus Minor, the conqueror of Carthage, was sent out to Spain to reduce the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... difficulty. This fact made him so furious that he again struck his favorite attitude. Most men have some habitual position by which they fancy that they show to the best advantage the good points bestowed on them by nature. This attitude in Crevel consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, his head showing three-quarters face, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as the painter has shown ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... he entered the library, "I insist upon it that I am not curious by nature or by habit, but what in the world made you chase that ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... theory of selection let us consider character of the races produced, as now explained, by nature. Conditions have varied slowly and the organisms best adapted in their whole course of life to the changed conditions have always been selected,—man selects small dog and afterwards gives it profusion of food,—selects a long-backed ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... the little hunchback shoemaker, opened his eyes to the truth. He was by nature suspicious. He had faith in no man. When the summons came to O'Day, Raffelo quit his bench and made his way to the saloon. His dark, swarthy face, with stubby beard, was twisted and contorted. He gesticulated continuously, sawing the air with his hands. "Ye-s—Joe Ratowsky, he ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... columns of that temple which he had raised to his own glory. But just that absoluteness with which he used everything for his own purposes roused in me homage. The power of producing was in him equal to his power of egotism. So must it be with every individuality fashioned by nature not on a model, but originally. I did not know him much, and desired a nearer acquaintance. I was certain that we should understand each other perfectly; that I should behold from nearby a magnificent monolith. Meanwhile it was stuck over with labels of various kinds of trash, and covered ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... instead of black hair, of pale instead of black skin. His features might have been hewn and hammered out with coarse, dull, broken chisels. And upon his face, in the lines and cords, in the huge caverns where his eyes hid, and in the huge gash that held strong, white fangs, had been stamped by nature and by life a terrible ferocity. Here was a man or a monster in whose presence Joan felt that she would rather be dead. He did not smoke; he did not indulge in the coarse, good-natured raillery, he sat there like a huge engine of destruction that needed ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... dispositions, which is the side of tactics most akin to strategy. On the more distinctively tactical side, in the movements of a fleet in action, he had little opportunity. As far as shown by his one battle, Cape St. Vincent, it would not appear that either by nature or cultivation he possessed to any great extent the keen insight and quick appreciation ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... by nature curious, and asked no questions. Some who knew the Barennas would have been glad to claim acquaintance with General Vincente and his daughter, but could not do so. For the Captain-General moved in a circle not far removed from the Queen ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... very unhappy position. She did what was kindest and wisest under the circumstances, accepted without remonstrance the part assigned her. The young are usually romantic, and their first impulses are generously impracticable ones. Elizabeth was not wiser than her years by nature, but she was wiser by her will. For the first few minutes it had seemed to her the most honorable and womanly thing to refuse to stand in her brother's place. But her good heart and good sense soon told her that it would be the kindest course ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... see a little shadow gathering. His speeches were growing more explicit, and sooner or later his wife would begin to notice that he was attacking the clergy. Had she no suspicion? She was by nature so self-restrained that it was impossible to tell. He knew she read his speeches, and if she read them she must have ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... a twofold revelation: (1) the truth as it is revealed by history according to the Marxian interpretation thereof, a revelation of the truth which is saving the world from the robbing impositions of the capitalistic interpretation of politics, and (2) the truth as it is revealed by nature, according to the Darwinian interpretation thereof, a revelation which is saving the world from the robbing impositions of the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... service on the land, By plain and easy demonstration I'll teach you how to make the water mount, That you may dry-foot march through lakes and pools, Deep rivers, havens, creeks, and little seas, And make a fortress in the raging waves, Fenc'd with the concave of a monstrous rock, Invincible by nature [120] of the place. When this is done, then are ye soldiers, And worthy sons ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... have been, you know. I am passionate by nature, but when I look at you, it cools and dies. I am telling you the truth when I say you have been like a healing, cooling draught to one in a fever. And I believe you have changed me altogether, now and for ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... tells him to go to his book, and he wants to go to his play. Regard the swollen lips, the skin tightened over the nose, the distortion of his shape, the angularity of his whole appearance. Yet he is not an awkward child by nature. Look at him again the moment after he has given in and kissed his mother. His shoulders have dropped to their place; his limbs are free from the fetters that bound them; his motions are graceful, and ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the sun, Sylvane twenty-four or thereabouts, Merrifield four years his senior. Sylvane was shy with a boyish shyness that had a way of slipping into good-natured grins; Merrifield, the shrewder and more mature of the two, was by nature reserved and reticent. They did not have much to say to the "dude" from New York until supper in the dingy, one-room cabin of cottonwood logs, set on end, gave way to cards, and in the excitement of "Old Sledge" the ice began to break. A sudden fierce squawking from the direction ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... more artificial ruins of the ancient metropolis of the Deccan, which are usually constructed with blocks quarried from their sides, and vie in grotesqueness of outline and massiveness of character with the alternate airiness and solidity exhibited by nature in the nicely-poised logging stones and columnar piles, and in the walls of prodigious cuboidal blocks of granite which often crest and top her massive domes and ridges in natural ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... and enumerate the endowments lavished by Nature on her "darling" of the Avon, we shall find, as in the case of Angelo, that he not only displays each separate gift, but that he displays each in its highest form and fullest measure. His own modesty ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... BOSWELL. Gibbon, when with Johnson, perhaps felt that timidity which kept him silent in Parliament. 'I was not armed by nature and education,' he writes, 'with the intrepid energy of mind and voice Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendis. Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 221. Some years before ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... honest, disinterested, liberal; of sound understanding, and of a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he shall report will be as certain as if seen by ourselves—with all these qualifications, I say, as if selected and implanted by nature in one body, for one purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding this enterprise—the most cherished enterprise of my administration—to him whom now you ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... Discussions of politics and of the principles of government never arose between these two, as they did between my father and Bright; for Bennoch, though one of the most loyal and enthusiastic of her Majesty's subjects, and full of traditional respect for the British nobility, was by nature broadly democratic, and met every man as an equal and a brother. One often finds this contradiction in Englishmen; but it is such logically only. A man born to the traditions of monarchy and aristocracy accepts them as the natural background of his ideas, just as ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... losing faith in my unknown sister that is to be, in spite of all my pleading. You say she is beautiful—that's well enough, but it comes by nature. You say she is sweet, and true, and charming—and I am willing to take it all on trust. But when you say she is noble-hearted I respectfully refuse to believe it. If she were that, you would be sure that she would know that friendship is the surest part of love, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... vicious, and to be avoided. By it the whole lower part of the chest is flattened and drawn in, instead of being distended; consequently the lower or larger part of the lungs is not inflated. It is a method never exercised by nature in a state of health, but only when, from disease, either the abdominal or chest muscles cannot act; and it is the method least efficacious in filling, as it is the one calculated to most fatigue the chest; for it compresses the vessels and nerves of the throat, and this leads ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... Saunders. You will have to look deeper than that for the spell which has been cast over my wife. Olympia afraid of creaks and groans? Olympia seeing sights? She's much too practical by nature, Miss Saunders, to say nothing of the fact that she would certainly have confided her trouble to me, had her imagination been stirred in this way. Little things have invariably been discussed between us. I repeat that this possibility should not ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... command. It was the remark of a distinguished senator that Mr. Clay's eloquence was absolutely intangible to delineation; that the most labored description could not embrace it, and that to be understood it must be seen and felt. He was an orator by nature, and by his indomitable assiduity he at once rose to prominence. His eagle eye burned with patriotic ardor or flashed indignation and defiance upon his foes or was suffused with commiseration or of pity; and it was because HE felt ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... object leaves exposed Its care can shelter. Love that's free to wed, Not wedding, but profanes the name of love; Which is, on high authority to Earth's, For Heaven did sit approving at its feast, A holy thing! Why make you love to me? Women whose hearts are free, by nature tender, Their fancies hit by those they are besought by, Do first impressions quickly—deeply take; And, balked in their election, have been known To droop a whole life through! Gain for a maid, A broken heart!—to barter her young love, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... the inhabitants of the States composing the Confederacy to remain under the authority of the Federal Government, would have perpetrated a great and indefensible wrong against the people of the South by depriving them of a right to which they were by nature entitled. This is the logic of the application of the principle of "self-determination" to the political rights at issue in the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... stature and of slight figure, Montcalm had by nature an air and manner which at once powerfully impressed those who came across him, and the rapidity with which he habitually spoke tended rather to enhance the impression. He was endowed with a singular quickness of perception, an unusually ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... buried in the archives of his own La Mancha until Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those things he stands in need of; because I find myself, through my shallowness and want of learning, unequal to supplying them, and because I am by nature shy and careless about hunting for authors to say what I myself can say without them. Hence the cogitation and abstraction you found me in, and reason enough, what you ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain. Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes spontaneously. The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature in the human breast, but they need favourable sunshine in order to germinate; and especially in the Latin nation, which was but little susceptible of poetic impulses, they needed external nurture. Nor let it be said, that, by virtue of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... lie within the shade, On grassy couch, by nature made, And listen to the warbling notes From her ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... Esther was by nature a very neat and dainty little person, with none of Penelope's dreamy indifference to her surroundings. The untidy garden with its air of neglect would have been irritating to her if it had belonged to some one else, but being their own, and feeling responsible for it, it vexed ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the banks was magnificent. Cyrus Harding and his companions could not but admire the lovely effects so easily produced by nature with water and trees. As they advanced the forest element diminished. On the right bank of the river grew magnificent specimens of the ulmaceae tribe, the precious elm, so valuable to builders, and which withstands well the action of water. Then there were numerous groups ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the country. They shone by their own light and were really the ultimate sources of authority. Seats in parliament, preferments in the church, commissions in the army belonged to them like their estates; and they seemed to be qualified by nature, rather than by appointment, to act in judicial and administrative capacities. The system of 'self-government' embodies this view. The functions of government were assigned to men already powerful ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... by the saint. The Koran makes a distinct class of those who are by nature good, and whose goodness has an influence on others, and pronounces this class to be the aim of creation: the other classes are admitted to the feast of being, only as following in the train of this. And the Persian poet exclaims to a soul ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... impecuniosity, sternness of parents, native shyness, fear of ridicule, inability of speech, and a general pervading sense of inferiority combined with an ardent desire to rise to a feeling of conscious superiority. So much had been done for him by nature that he was never called upon to pretend to anything. Throughout the county those were the lucky men,—and those too were the happy girls,—who were allowed to call him Arthur. And yet this paragon was vainly in love with Emily Wharton, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... which a man of the upper class should observe throughout the day. He lives in self-imposed seclusion, in an elaborate primitivity which is often described in moving terms that are almost convincing of actual "primitivity". Far from the city, surrounded by Nature, the Taoist lives his own life, together with a few friends and his servants, entirely according to his nature. His own nature, like everything else, represents for him a part of the Tao, and the task of the individual consists in the most complete adherence to ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... "small, yellow, one-keyed flute" which had superseded the musical reed provided by Nature, and practised upon it so fervently that a college-mate said that he "would play upon his flute like ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... must be observed, on this occasion, that no addition to water will rise into the vessels of plants, but such as will pass the filter, the pores of which appearing somewhat similar to the fine strainers of absorbing vessels employed by nature in her nicer operations; we by analogy conclude, that properties so intimately blended with water as to pass the one, will enter and unite with the economy of the other, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... and sold them for a great quantity of gold, so that he could keep house in handsome style. He gave his son the name of Panther, and when the boy was fourteen years of age he could lift thirty hundred weight with ease. Yet he was rough by nature and fond of fighting. The general of Annam, astonished at his bravery, appointed him a colonel, and in putting down a revolt his services were so meritorious that he was already a general of the ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... countenance of the stranger was of a most melancholy cast, there were not lacking hints that by nature he had been endowed with vivacity of spirit; for, as he continued, with an industry which was remarkable, to refresh himself, there were appearances, which came to the eye and the corners of his mouth, which made the observer conclude that he was not lacking the sense ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... shared freely everything they possessed with the invaders. Hospitality was with them an instinct, fostered by nature all about them; besides which it was a considerable time before they ceased to believe their guests superior beings descended from the clouds in their winged vessels. The Indians lived in villages of two or three hundred houses, built of wood and palm-leaf, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... suited his giant body. In spite of his great physique he carried no superfluous flesh, but tapered to the waist and, notwithstanding his present detachment and a seriousness that verged on sullenness, the face seemed more patterned by nature for the broad grin of good fellowship and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... has no enemies to contend with; it stands in the wilds like an island in the ocean. But the Spaniards of South America were no less isolated by nature; yet their position has not relieved them from the charge of standing armies. They make war upon each other when they have no foreign enemies to oppose; and the Anglo-American democracy is the only one which has hitherto been able to maintain itself ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... little Pilgrim, I do not mean that she was a child; on the contrary, she was not even young. She was little by nature, with as little flesh and blood as was consistent with mortal life; and she was one of those who are always little for love. The tongue found diminutives for her, the heart kept her in a perpetual youth. She was so modest and so gentle, that she always came last, so long as there was ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... remembered that he had once been happy. As soon as he was old enough he became a tulisan to avenge his wrongs, and the name of Balat spread terror in many provinces. The younger son, endowed by nature with a gentle disposition, stayed with his mother, both living on the fruits of the forest and dressing in the cast-off rags of those charitable enough to give. At length the famous Balat fell into the hands of justice, and paid a dreadful penalty for his ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... a million Private Bills who have suddenly learnt to call a coat a blouse. Taking things as they find them. Vaguely understanding. Caring less. Grumbling by custom. Cheerful by nature. Ever anxious to be where they are not. Ever anxious to be somewhere else when they get there. Without thought of sacrifice. Who have left the flag-waving to those at home. Who serve as a matter ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... head over heels in debt. Neville had done all that he could for his brother, and had paid off his debts three times, each time saving him from ruin. But it was no use. There was the very devil himself in Pemberton. He was by nature one of the meanest rascals that was ever created, though the fellow was not bad-looking. He got deeper and deeper into the mire, and at last got into a scrape so bad, so dirty, that he had to quit the Guards. It was a gambling affair of so infamous a character that it was impossible ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... have set forth. {12} So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and by that he seeth set down what order nature hath taken therein. So doth the geometrician and arithmetician, in their diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician, in times, tell you which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher thereon hath his name; and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, or passions of man; and follow nature, saith he, therein, and thou shalt not err. The lawyer saith what men have determined. The historian, what men have done. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant! dashing it to the deck, no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship's compass, and the level dead-reckoning, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... so, the pony began to what is called "buck," that is to say, instead of letting its back remain in an agreeable hollow curve, one which seems to have been made by nature on purpose to hold a human being, it curved its spine in the opposite direction, arching it as a cat would, but of course in a modified way, and then began leaping up from the earth in a series of buck jumps, all four hoofs from the ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... as her triumph may be to her personally, she frequently finds that it is resented by nature and by society. She finds that nature lays pitfalls for her, cracks the ice of her heart and sets it aflame, often for absurd and unworthy causes. She finds that the great mass of unconscious women commiserate or scorn her as one who has missed the fullness of life. She ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... years old and therefore four years older than Theobald. The younger sisters complained that it was throwing a husband away to let Christina try and catch him, for she was so much older that she had no chance; but Christina showed fight in a way not usual with her, for she was by nature yielding and good tempered. Her mother thought it better to back her up, so the two dangerous ones were packed off then and there on visits to friends some way off, and those alone allowed to remain at home whose loyalty could be depended upon. The brothers did not even suspect what was going ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... living activity of the pupil in these acts we call Industry. Its negative extreme is Laziness, which is deserving of punishment inasmuch as it passes over into a want of self-determination. Man is by nature lazy. But mind, which is only in its act, must resolve upon activity. This connection of Industry with human freedom, with the very essence of mind, makes laziness appear blameworthy. The really civilized man, therefore, no longer knows that absolute ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... Shallow by nature, and without keen perception, she yet possessed sufficient good sense to see that she had not impressed her friends with the magnificence of her apparel, and her vanity received a thrust when a friend ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... again, something less sternly than before, but still peremptorily, if she would have Messer Simone for mate, she did no more than incline her head in what Messer Folco took to be a signal of submission to his will. At this yielding he, being by nature an authoritarian, seemed not a little pleased. For the death of Dante, and the effect that death might have upon his daughter's welfare, he did not care and did not profess to care in the least. Dante as a human being was nothing to him—nothing more, at least, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... restraint upon the despotic authority of the captain, as far as corporal punishments were concerned. And it must be in the recollection of every one who served in those days, that captains, not really cruel by nature, nor more intemperate than the ordinary run of men, were sometimes led, by the mere indulgence of unlimited and unscrutinised authority, to use a degree of severity not only out of proper measure with ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... and comfortable," she said regretfully, "and I've always felt set on being free and independent. But it's no use. I'd never have a minute's peace of mind again, thinking of David living here in dirt and disorder, and him so particular and tidy by nature. No, it's my duty, plain and clear, to come here and make things pleasant for him—the pointing of Providence, as you might say. The worst of it is, I'll have to tell him so myself. He'll never dare to mention the subject again, after what I said ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... kind to her Aunt Laura, too, probably for her niece's sake; for the colonel was kind by nature, and wished to make everyone about him happy. It was fortunate that her Aunt Laura was fond of Philip. If she should decide to marry the colonel, she would have her Aunt Laura come and make her home with them: she could give Philip the attention with which his stepmother's social duties ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... purpose of animal life; and yet there is no reason to think that it is, at present, at all less fit for respiration than it has ever been. I flatter myself, however, that I have hit upon two of the methods employed by nature for this great purpose. How many others there may be, I ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... the following suggestion from the observation of a traveler: "It appears to me that the power and riches of these extraordinary districts remain yet to be fully developed. They exhibit an immense number of mighty steam-engines, furnished by nature at no cost, and applicable to the production of an infinite variety of objects. In the progress of time this vast machinery of heat and force will probably become the moving central point of extensive manufacturing establishments. The steam which has been ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the Sun accomplishes his nightly underground journey, men would be left a prey to mortal terrors in the upper world, deprived of light, their chief defence against the evil brood of darkness, were it not for his substitute, Fire, who is by nature also a being of light, and, as such, the friend of men, from whose paths and dwellings he scares not only wild beasts and foes armed with open violence, but the far more dangerous hosts of unseen enemies, both demons and spells cast by wicked sorcerers. It is in this capacity ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... young bards would have been of infinite interest to Fionn, not on account of what they had learned, but because of what they knew. All the things that he should have known as by nature: the look, the movement, the feeling of crowds; the shouldering and intercourse of man with man; the clustering of houses and how people bore themselves in and about them; the movement of armed men, and the homecoming look of wounds; tales of births, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... crossed the sky to Loch Sheuchie, or the cattle thrust inquisitive noses through some hedge, as a student snatches a mouthful from some book in passing. For these walks were his best study; when thinking of his people in their goodness and simplicity, and touched by nature at her gentlest, he was freed from many vain ideas of the schools and from artificial learning, and heard the Galilean speak as He used to do among the fields of corn. He came on people going in the same direction, but they only saluted, refraining even from the weather, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... 'A soul by nature formed to feel Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel, And bosom big with swelling thought From ancient lore's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... belong to the church, hold a relation to it, and are a part of it. Strictly speaking, and in the highest spiritual sense, they are not even "the lambs of Christ's flock;" for lambs have the nature of sheep; but the children of believers are, by nature, children of wrath, even as others. And yet, in another sense, they hold a most important relation to the flock of Christ, as no other children do. In its most important sense, they are not to the church even what they are ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... how he was furnished, though she was by nature courteous, gave him a harsh and sharp reply. He was not to be rebuffed, however, but continued to implore her love with most humble requests, until the pretty nun was forced either to lose her reputation for courtesy, or give the monk what she had granted to many others ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various |
