"Finer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of kings and emperors, and the windows were hung with red, fringed curtains—now you know what I mean. I—[breaks off a lilac sprig and holds it under MISS JULIA's nose]—I had never been inside the manor, and I had never seen anything but the church—and this was much finer. No matter where my thoughts ran, they returned always—to that place. And gradually a longing arose within me to taste the full pleasure of—enfin! I sneaked in, looked and admired. Then I heard somebody coming. There was only one way out for fine people, but for me there was another, and I ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... desire to think, feel, and act with greater delicacy, women introduced propriety in expression, finesse in analysis, keenness of esprit, psychological subtleness: qualities that surely tended to higher standards of morality, purer social relations, finer and more subtle diplomacy, more elegance and precision in literature. Therefore, preciosite in France had a wholesome influence, which was possible because woman had won for herself her rightful position, and her aspirations were ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... What then are we to think, but that God will sometime bring us up out of the literature of the lower love, into that of the higher?—that as the age of passion yields to the age of reason, so the crude love of instinct will give place to the loftier, finer, more impelling love of God? And then around that nobler love, or out of it, shall arise a new body of literature, as much more gifted as the inspiration is purer and more intellectual. Beauty, truth, and worship; song, science, and duty, will all ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... asked us if we had seen Langeais, a very noble chateau, and did the little gardienne, the pretty, dark-eyed one, take us about? Yes! that is the one he knows, they both belong to the country around Tours, than which there is nothing finer in the known world. Although living at Blois, for financial reasons, he hopes to go back to that garden spot of France and there to end his days. After which Walter, by means of gestures and signs, extracted the story of his love. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... like much gold. Who are the Arabs that the King's favour should be cast among them? The walls of their houses are canvas. Even the common snail has a finer wall ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... the next panel, we see their children, now grown, finding themselves, with Natural Selection. The man in the center, splendid in physical and intellectual perfection, attracts the women on either hand, while two other men, deserted for this finer type, display anger and despair. One tries to hold the woman by force, the other, unable to comprehend, turns ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... employment, whose wages have not been increased by it. Articles of prime necessity or of coarse quality and low price, used by the masses of the people, are in many instances subjected by it to heavy taxes, while articles of finer quality and higher price, or of luxury, which can be used only by the opulent, are lightly taxed. It imposes heavy and unjust burdens on the farmer, the planter, the commercial man, and those of all other pursuits except the capitalist ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... thought of mind to solve Why fires of lightning more can penetrate Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth. For thou canst say lightning's celestial fire, So subtle, is formed of figures finer far, And passes thus through holes which this our fire, Born from the wood, created from the pine, Cannot. Again, light passes through the horn On the lantern's side, while rain is dashed away. And why?—unless those bodies ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... theatre in Dresden, to which he belonged until his retirement in 1868. His chief characters were Hamlet, Uriel Acosta (in Karl Gutzkow's play), Marquis Posa (in Schiller's Don Carlos), and Goethe's Torquato Tasso. He acted several times in London, where his Hamlet was considered finer than Kemble's or Edmund Kean's. He died on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... de la Reina that the magnificent view of the Mediterranean, the port and city of Malaga, and the long perspective of zigzags down spurs of mountains is seen. Neither the French nor English Handbook speaks of this view with the enthusiasm it deserves. It is far finer than the view on the heights looking down on Trieste and the Adriatic.... We entered Malaga about 10 A.M.; the descent had taken about ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... perhaps, that, a little tea, or a little punch, now and then; diet, a little more costly; clothes, a little finer; and a little entertainment, now and then; can be no great matter. But remember what Poor RICHARD says, Many a Little makes a Mickle; and farther, Beware of little expenses! a small leak will sink a ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... plants. There seems to be quite a difference of opinion as to the mode of propagating them; some advocate grafting, others layering, again others from suckers only. Grafting I believe myself, will produce a finer plant and the operation of doing so seems quite successful, but a great many varieties produce so many suckers that the graft is liable to be choked or crowded out if not constantly watched, and it should not be expected of the average ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... other. In their manners, superstitions, and government, however, they have a greater resemblance to the Mandingoes (of whom I shall presently speak) than to any other nation; but excel them in the manufacture of cotton cloth, spinning the wool to a finer thread, weaving it in a broader loom, and dyeing it ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... watched by the child's bedside I learned more, Jock Stair, than any intellectual work could ever bring me, for the love I had for her, and the thought of woman's love as mother, wife, and daughter, raised me more, made me a finer man, a more uplifted one than I have ever been, even when it made me soft about my duty. It seems a bit muddled, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... of doors, when the Colonel would read aloud from Tennyson, were very pleasant. To him—if not to Mrs. Ercott—it was especially jolly to be out of Town 'this confounded crowded time of year.' And so the days of early June went by, each finer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of wood-chopping at the farmers' doors, far over the frozen earth, the baying of the house-dog, and the distant clarion of the cock. Though the thin and frosty air conveys only the finer particles of sound to our ears, with short and sweet vibrations, as the waves subside soonest on the purest and lightest liquids, in which gross substances sink to the bottom. They come clear and bell-like, and from a greater distance in the horizon, as if there were fewer impediments ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... whole party, twenty in number, were seated round the dining table, observation was possible. Agatha, as senior scholar, sat at the foot of the table, fully occupied in dispensing Irish stew. She had a sensible face, to which projecting teeth gave a character, and a brow that would have shown itself finer but for the overhanging mass of hair. Vera and Paulina were so much alike and so nearly of the same age that they were often taken for twins, but on closer inspection Vera proved to be the prettiest, with a more delicately cut nose, clearer complexion, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... bitter, though chivalrous, thought, "Better the non-existence of the human race than the continued sacrifice of its womankind"; while even the sons of the golden mean in judgment go so far as to say that not only the already acquired benefits of civilization, but finer ones and more abundant, can from now on be attained by some other process, which will involve no degradation either to workingman or to woman, and which in structural principle and human effects will differ as much from civilization as civilization itself differed ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... seemed less a bit of mere tailoring than something of an emblem, as it were; an involuntary emblem, let us say, that what seemed so good about him was not all outside; no, the fine covering had a still finer lining. Upon one hand he wore a white kid glove, but the other hand, which was ungloved, looked hardly less white. Now, as the Fidele, like most steamboats, was upon deck a little soot-streaked here and there, especially about the railings, it was marvel ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Chesapeake abounds with great plenty and variety of fish fit for foreign markets, as well as for ourselves, if we could but get the proper kind of salt to cure it. Herrings and shads might be exported to the West Indies to great advantage; and we could supply the British markets with finer sturgeon than they have yet tasted from the Baltic. And it is an allowed principle that every extension of the trade of the Colonies, which does not interfere with that of the Mother Country is an advantage to the latter; since all our profits ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... on board the Jersey, I will make one remark, and that is if you were to rake the infernal regions, I doubt whether you could find such another set of demons as the officers and men who had charge of the Old Jersey Prison-ship, and, Sir, I shall not be surprised if you, possessing the finer feelings which I believe to be interwoven in the composition of men, and which are not totally torn from the piece, till by a long and obstinate perseverance in the meanest, the basest, and cruellest of all human acts, a man becomes lost ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... dead man at this feast, and you would be his murderer. But even that, horrible as it might have been, is less a crime than the other one you have confessed. You, reared in an atmosphere where all men infinitely respect woman-kind, deliberately outrage every finer feeling of the one woman you have professed to love. That, Richard Morton, is very nearly all that I have to say to you. I have asked these gentlemen to come into the room, and to be present during ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... is scarcely one of those, if it were now to be discovered, that would not excite the greatest curiosity, and be, in the midst of the ruins to which it belongs, an object of far greater interest than a finer production which had taken its splendid but frigid position in this collection. We went to the Sistine Chapel, and saw Michael Angelo's frescoes, which Sir Joshua Reynolds says are the finest paintings in the world, and which the unlearned call great ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of some service. Do not be fastidious when so much depends upon being efficient and good. Art for art's sake may be very fine, but art for progress is finer still. Ah! you must think? Then think of making man better. Courage! Let us consecrate ourselves. Let us devote ourselves to the good, to the true, to the just; it is well for us to do so. Some pure lovers of art, moved ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... cultivation of wheat and corn, as it is not possible for him to compete with the new and fertile lands of the West. In these sixty years the wheat fields have moved from the East to the West. From 1820 to 1840 the valleys of the Mohawk and the Genesee furnished the finer flour for the cities of New York and New England. Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia supplied Baltimore and Philadelphia. Then Ohio became the chief source of supply. More recently the wheat region is the upper valley of the Mississippi, and ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... understanding of the rightness and loveliness of the lines of the cap and the exquisiteness of the choice of folds, which the critic has pointed out to him with threatening finger, he feels that life is a fuller and finer thing to live. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... barbarism of the Aryan, breaking through his thin varnish of civilization, was found, far transcending the utmost barbarism of the Indian. [Footnote: The Aryans of Europe are undoubtedly superior in humanity, courage and independence, to those of Asia. It is possible that the finer qualities which distinguish the western branch of this stock may have been derived from admixture with an earlier population of Europe, identical in race and character with the aborigines of America. See ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... supersede the tedious and elaborate process by which alone a liquid could be rendered available for the purpose of drawing on stone. The mode of drawing technically called "the ink style," consists merely of a series of lines, some finer, some thicker, executed on the white surface of the stone, with ink dissolved in water, by means of a fine sable or a steel pen, in imitation of an etching on copper. All attempts, however, at producing ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... going together that afternoon, without her mother, to look at certain out-of-the-way pictures as to which Ruskin had inspired her with a desire to see sincerely. Mrs. Tramore expressed the wish to stay at home, and the motive of this wish—a finer shade than any that even Ruskin had ever found a phrase for—was not translated into misrepresenting words by either the mother or the daughter. At San Giovanni in Bragora the girl and her companion ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... I, "and I never saw a finer brilliant than your own, one excepted; it belonged to an acquaintance of mine, a Tartar Khan. He did not bear it on his finger, however; it stood in the frontlet of his horse, where it shone like a star. He called it Daoud Scharr, which, being interpreted, meaneth ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... later, to have been looked for in the experience of one whose organization, both physical and mental, was so intensely sensitive. Tragical elements are latent in every human life, especially in the life of woman. And the finer qualities of her nature, her vast capacity of loving and of self-sacrifice, her peculiar cares and trials, as well as outward events, are always tending to bring these elements into action. What scenes surpassing fable, scenes both ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... a finer spirit dying for any cause? Marta wondered. She felt the sublimity of a great moment, an inexorable sadness. She knew that she should never forget that cheery smile or that white face. What was danger to anybody? What was death if you had ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... at the astonishment of Hopkins, which must have been reflected upon my features. "Surely my deductions are simplicity itself," said he. "It would be difficult to name any articles which afford a finer field for inference than a pair of glasses, especially so remarkable a pair as these. That they belong to a woman I infer from their delicacy, and also, of course, from the last words of the dying man. As to her being a person of refinement and well dressed, they are, as you perceive, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... other sciences, reduced to a few clear points: there are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the anatomy of the Mind as in that of the Body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice more ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... with steel in various percentages, each percentage having a very definite effect on the microstructure. For instance, a steel with 0.2 per cent carbon and 2 per cent nickel has a pearlitic structure but the grain is much finer than if the straight carbon were used. With the same carbon content and say 5 per cent nickel, the structure would still be pearlitic, but much finer and denser, therefore capable of withstanding ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... been bred to bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than their share of development,—the organs of thought and expression less than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed. A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration. You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of will and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very few of them ever become great ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we be the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us. The reason is, that its nature is more perfect, its body finer and more finished than ours, that ours is so weak, so awkwardly conceived, encumbered with organs that are always tired, always on the strain like locks that are too complicated, which lives like a plant and like a beast, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the trade of the country was lost, though many of the royal works had ceased, though the manufacture of the finer linen had left the country, the digging in the gold mines, the favourite source of wealth to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the mines near the Golden Berenice did slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war work without pause, chained together ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... brightened in the last by his second marriage (1839) with the poetess and his twenty years' friend, Caroline Bowles; as a poet Southey has few readers nowadays; full of miscellaneous interest, vigour of narrative, and spirited rhythm, his poems yet lack the finer spirit of poetry; but in prose he ranks with the masters of English prose style "of a kind at once simple and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ever so much finer," exclaimed Ruth. "What did you do that for?" She spoke as if it pained her, and Agnes laughingly replied: "Because, big sisters should always have the best things. Now don't look so doleful, Ruth, one would think you were going to be beheaded. I declare, Miss Smithers ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... has arrived at Paris, and sat with me a considerable time to-day. How very agreeable he can be when his reserve wears off, and what a pity it is he should ever allow it to veil the many fine qualities he possesses! Few men have a finer taste in literature, or a more highly cultivated mind. It seizes with rapidity whatever is brought before it; and being wholly free from passion or egotism, the views he takes on all subjects are just and unprejudiced. He has a quick perception of the ridiculous, and ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... for the executive work of others to fulfil. I can assure you she was everything to us. Her English birth gave her an instinctive insight into English character. English women seemed to know and understand her, as she knew and understood them, and there has been no finer link between the women of America and the women of the Old World than Mrs. Croly. It was my privilege to be with her personally a great deal while in London, not only when she stayed in my own house, but when I have gone back and forth with her as her guide to the many functions ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... He is a regular curly-haired, blue-eyed young Englishman in looks, and, though he is destined, if he lives, to inherit the throne of Zu-Vendis, I hope I may be able to bring him up to become what an English gentleman should be, and generally is — which is to my mind even a prouder and a finer thing than being born heir apparent to the great House of the Stairway, and, indeed, the highest rank that a man can reach upon ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... to my great surprise found them of an exquisite flavor, finer even than the cultivated fruit of Persia, sweeter and more delicate, of a different nature from the wild grapes we have been eating. My astonishment appeared to delight him, and he said with ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... less noble than his first, it is to be feared. But in all healthy natures, in all those in whom the love of beauty is keen, there must be in youth strong repudiation of the brotherhood of suffering. Time will teach a finer and deeper lesson to those that have faith and courage to receive it; yet it is well the young should defy sorrow, hate suffering, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... allow scant half pint sugared cherries to one and one-half pints of whiskey. Bottle and seal. Let stand at least two months. Open, shake bottle well and taste, and if necessary add more sugar. Seal again, and let stand another month. Is not good under three months and the older it gets the finer it becomes. ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... the bar with their tiny hammers until they beat it into threads that were as fine as the hairs of one's head. But that was not enough. They had to be as fine as the hairs on Sif's head, and these were finer than anything else. They worked on the threads, over and over again, until they were as fine as the hairs on Sif's head. The threads were as bright as sunlight, and when Loki took up the mass of worked ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... replied the still deferential Violet, "as a member of the British aristocracy, it is not to be supposed that you would view financial matters with the same eye as those of us of the Middle Classes, who, unhappily perhaps for our finer feelings, have been obliged to experience the harsh contacts of common life. Your devotion to Mr. Shaw has a romantic ardor which I can not but admire. But permit us also our enthusiasm for the perspicacity of Mr. Tubbs, to which we owe the wealth now within ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... armour, furbished and mended, his bright helmet alone new and of her own providing (out of her mother's pearl necklace), his surcoat and silken scarf all her own embroidering. As he truly said, he made a much finer appearance than he had done on the morn of his melancholy knighthood, in the poverty-stricken army ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Why is any woman unhappy? Because her love is trampled on, degraded—the spiritual part of it unsatisfied. Women are made for love and without love life means nothing to them. Women are naturally finer than men, they aspire more strongly to what is beautiful and spiritual, but their souls can be coarsened, their love can be killed. They can be driven—they have been driven for centuries (through fear of men) into lies and deceits and sensuality ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... ago. Eric and Beulah are to call for me on their way home from town. They took Peggy with them. Did I tell you that Eric is falling in love with Beulah? I am not sure whether it is the best thing for him, but I am sure it is for her. She is very happy, and blushes when he looks at her. He is finer than she, and bigger, mentally and spiritually. He is crude, but he will grow as so many American men do grow—and there are dreams in his clear blue eyes. And, after all, it is the ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... continued Mrs Okiok good-naturedly, "I will tell you again. The Kablunet is a fine man. He must be very much finer when he is fat, for he is broad and tall, and looks strong; but he is thin just now—oh, so thin!—as thin ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... disagreeable soever it may be to him; and this study leads naturally to that of polite literature. Mankind in general speak well in their respective professions. What is the reason why our magistrates, our lawyers, our physicians, and a great number of the clergy, are abler scholars, have a finer taste, and more wit, than persons of all other professions? The reason is, because their condition of life requires a cultivated and enlightened mind, in the same manner as a merchant is obliged to be acquainted ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... I'll be even with him for some of the passions he's been in with me. You see how I'll go into our shop and order dresses! (be quiet! I say he can't hear us). I'll have velvet where his sister has silk, and silk where she has muslin: I'm a finer girl than she is, and I'll be better dressed. Tell him anything, indeed! What have I ever let out? It's not so easy always to make believe I'm in love with him, after what you have told me. Suppose he found us out?—Rash? I'm no more rash than you are! Why didn't you come back from France ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... blessed sun itself. Angel Gabriel's hand was as white as silver, and in it he held a green bough with blossoms, like those that grow on the thorn bush. As for his robe, it was all of one piece, and finer than the Father Abbot's linen, and shone beside like the sunlight on pure snow. So I knew from all these things that it ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... cucullata) has nevertheless established itself in the hearts of the people from the Arctic to the Gulf as no sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere—in woods, waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool, shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and with longer leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves, folded toward the centre when newly put forth, and the five-petalled, bluish-purple, golden-hearted ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... was left alone Seeking the visible world, nor knowing why. The props of my affections were removed, And yet the building stood, as if sustained 280 By its own spirit! All that I beheld Was dear, and hence to finer influxes The mind lay open to a more exact And close communion. Many are our joys In youth, but oh! what happiness to live 285 When every hour brings palpable access Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight, And sorrow is not there! The seasons came, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... cause of that part of the lower organic world which is edible. Man is a scientific eater,—a cooking animal. Laughter and speech are not so distinctive traits of him as cookery. Improve his food, and he is improved both physically and mentally. His tissue becomes finer, his skin clearer and brighter, and his hair more glossy and hyacinthine. Cattle-breeders and the improvers of horticulture are indirectly improving their own race by furnishing finer and more healthful materials to be built into man's body. Marble, cedar, rosewood, gold, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... over a century and a half, as it still continues to be, the favourite locality of some of the chief booksellers. To-day the Strand proper only contains three representatives, in Messrs. H. Sotheran and Co., the finer of whose two shops is in Piccadilly, and Mr. David Nutt (both of whom are, however, vendors of new books, and often act as publishers), and Messrs. Walford. Within a stone's-throw of the main thoroughfare we have John Galwey and Suckling and Galloway, Garrick Street; ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape, and water-colors in vivid greens, together with manuscript books full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he brought home a new book or two, indicating his progress through different stages of history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature; and that passage was not entirely without results, besides the possession of the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... life, the splendor of their intellect. We know now that there was no such sudden reawakening, that Teutonic Europe toiled slowly upward through long centuries, and that men learned only gradually to appreciate the finer side of existence, to study the universe for themselves, and look with their own eyes upon the life around them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the two was short, and of fair complexion. He carried a knapsack, like a gentleman on a pedestrian excursion; his manners were pleasant; and he was decidedly good-looking. His companion, older, taller, and darker—and a finer man altogether—leaned on his arm and seemed to be exhausted. In every respect they were singularly unlike each other. The younger stranger (excepting little half-whiskers) was clean shaved. The elder wore his whole beard. ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... that may pave my way to work in New York or elsewhere. My craving is for the work of hard hands, but I look at mine, and fear I run more to the brain than the hands. My father must have been of finer physique than the Sioux bullet left to me; but I ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the future inroads of our climate,—a climate which is polar for a few days in January, tropical for a week or two in July, Nova-Scotian now and then in November, and at all times most trying to the finer woods, leathers, and fabrics. To make a piano is now not so difficult; but to make one that will stand in America,—that is very difficult. In the rear of the Messrs. Steinway's factory there is a yard for seasoning timber, which usually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... is badly shattered; far more so than the southern shore. But the scenery is finer. There is nothing on that side to compare with the views from Nicastro, or Monte-leone, or Sant' Elia near Palmi. It is also more smiling, more fertile, and far less malarious. Not that cultivation ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... getting something for the okasion. Our landlady, Mrs. Sharkly, has recommended us to ane of the most fashionable millinders in London, who keeps a grand shop in Cranburn Alla, and she has brought us arteecles to look at; but I was surprised they were not finer, for I thought them of a very inferior quality, which she said was because they were not made for no costomer, but for ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... this intimate association in which the two states or mental phenomena seem blended into one, which has led so many to regard the passive susceptibility, called the intelligence, as an active power, and its states as free acts of the mind. A more correct analysis, a finer discrimination of the real facts of consciousness, must prevail on this subject, before light can be let in upon the philosophy of free and accountable agency. The dividing knife must be struck between the two phenomena ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by which religious bigotry had driven out of the kingdom thousands of its most skillful Protestant workmen, the manufactures of France had before the Revolution come into full bloom. In the finer woolen goods, in silk and satin fabrics of all sorts, in choice pottery and porcelain, in manufactures of iron, steel, and copper, they had again taken their old leading place upon the Continent. All the previous changes had, at the worst, done no more than to inflict a momentary ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... yelling with laughter. Have you ever noticed how very amused people always are when you're not there? If you're in bed—ill, or in disgrace, or anything—it always sounds like far finer jokes than ever occur when you ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... "I can still see the gleam of Freia's hair—which is finer than gold. Throw on that trinket at thy belt," he signified the Tarnhelm which hung at the girdle of Loge. Loge threw it contemptuously upon the heap. Then Fafner peeped again. "Ah! I still can see her bright eyes—more gleaming than gold. Until every chink is ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... moral sentiment. He leads, in our time and country, one illustrious division, at least, in the holy crusade of the affections and the intuitions against the usurpations of tradition and theological dogma. He marks the flower, the culmination, under American conditions and in the finer air of the New World, of the reaction begun by the German philosophers, and passed along by later French and English thinkers, of man against circumstance, of spirit against form, of the present against the past. What splendid affirmation, what inspiring ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... to pines. And at last, splashing through the stiff red clay that was up to the mare's fetlocks, we came to a place called Charlotte Town. What a day that was for me! And how I gaped at the houses there, finer than any I had ever dreamed of! That was my first sight of a town. And how I listened open-mouthed to the gentlemen at the tavern! One I recall had a fighting head with a lock awry, and a negro servant to wait on him, and was the principal ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the days passed there seemed no question of their complete success. Bill fabricated his rocker, a primitive, boxlike device with a blanket screen and transverse slats below. It was faster than the pan, even rude as it was, and it caught all but the finer particles of gold. Hazel helped operate the rocker, and took her turn at shoveling or filling the box with water while Bill rocked. Each day's end sent her to her bed healthily tired, but happily conscious that she had helped ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the War made a finer blaze in the French imagination, or figured better in the French gazettes, than this of the Scalade of Prag, 25th November, 1741. And surely it was important to get hold of Prag; nevertheless, intrinsically it is no great thing, but an opportune small thing, done by the Comte de Saxe, in spite of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... nod to the shopkeeper and he drew back the curtains that protected the cases where the finer and more expensive goods were kept and began ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... matter if we have to dodge about a little to find her, mounseer, for one thing's certain: we couldn't have a finer day for a sail," observed old Tom, as we glided smoothly over the blue water, shining brightly in the rays of ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... differed, rather violently, over the fulfilment of requirements by the various illustrations. Without doubt, the most provocative of these was Mr. Steele's "Contact." Three of the Committee think it a short-story; two declare it an article; all agree that no finer instance of literature in brief form ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Napoleon and our own Grant have made heroes of the dullest clods that walk and not a man of all the thousands who marched with Sherman to the sea but lived the rest of his life with a something sweeter, braver and finer sleeping in his soul than will ever be produced by the reformer scolding of brotherhood from a soap-box. The long march, the burning of the throat and the stinging of the dust in the nostrils, the touch of shoulder against shoulder, the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... the laws it deemed fixed and immutable? Be it so! But still Nature cannot be lawless; Creation is not a Chaos. If my senses deceive me in some things, they are still unerring in others; if thus, in some things, fallacious, still, in other things, truthful. Are there within me senses finer than those I have cultured, or without me vistas of knowledge which instincts, apart from my senses, divine? So long as I deal with the Finite alone, my senses suffice me; but when the Infinite is obtruded upon me there, are my senses faithless deserters? If so, is there aught else ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the Irish people, who were so near the goal of success, wasted many years, that might have been better spent, in futile and fratricidal strife, in which all the baser passions of politics ran riot and played havoc with the finer purposes of men engaged in a struggle ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... or mercantile business. In buying or selling, in undertaking the work of import or export, a good head for figures, and an average quantity of shrewd common sense, are all that is necessary in order to win a fair share of success. But in the finer occupations, whose results are found in sculpture, painting, music and poetry, demands are made upon the imagination, the emotions, the entire spiritual susceptibility of man. The most delicate ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... he said, "or at least pretend to. I couldn't eat now. I want to talk. The man who can eat on his wedding day is a vulgarian, and dead to the finer feelings." ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... caused all the fellows that had been with Raud to be baptized save those who, not suffering this, were slain or tortured. Then King Olaf took the dragon that had pertained unto Raud and himself was her steersman, and a much larger and finer ship was she than the 'Crane': forward she was fashioned with a dragon's head and aft with a crookSec. ending in like manner as the tail of a dragon, & both the prow & the whole of the stern were ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... be less happy; you do not loset anything. A picture is ever finer for shadows and depth of perspective. You can't get anything very fine, in either art or life, from mere ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... much in every particular as is generally imagined. The greater industry of the present times has increased the number of tradesmen and laborers, so as to keep wages nearer a par than could be expected from the great increase of gold and silver. And the additional art employed in the finer manufactures has even made some of these commodities fall below their former value. Not to mention, that merchants and dealers, being contented with less profit than formerly, afford the goods cheaper ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... must be noticed that there are many physical evils which the American woman shares with the other sex, but which bear with far greater severity on her finer organization. There is improper food, for instance. The fried or salted meat, the heavy bread, the perennial pork, the disastrous mince-pies of our farmers' houses are sometimes pardoned by Nature to the men of the family, in consideration of twelve or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... of the period of the Revolution, is not less conspicuous than the truly feminine delicacy of observation and touch with which she has delineated social life in many different countries, and painted the finer shades of many widely ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... is because she can't wait. She's always going out to meet things; and then when they're not there waiting for her, she thinks they're nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If everybody were like me, there wouldn't be much done in the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... on the operation of making the sliver of cotton finer or thinner until it is ready for the final process of spinning, and incidentally to add to the uniformity and cleanliness of ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... Leverett's mother. In the old days of large families nearly everyone came to be related. It was always very cozy in Sudbury Street, and Foster Leverett was in the ship chandlery trade. Aunt Priscilla did love a good cup of tea. Whether the quality was finer, or there was some peculiar art in brewing it, she could never quite decide; or whether the social cream of gentle Elizabeth Leverett, and the spice of Betty, added to the taste and heightened the flavor beyond her ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... drawn from Vegetables, it may very easily be manifested that the spirit of Wine has not sequestred the sulphureous Ingredient from the saline and Mercurial ones; but has dissolv'd (for I take it to be a Solution) the finer Parts of the Concrete (without making any nice distinction of their being perfectly Sulphureous or not) and united it self with them into a kind of Magistery; which consequently must contain Ingredients or Parts of several sorts. For we see that the stones that are rich in vitriol, ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... influence in the conversion of the Irish as the personal character of her Apostle. Where others, as Palladius, had failed, he succeeded. By nature, by grace, and by providential training, he had been specially fitted for his task. We can still see plainly even the finer traits of that character, while the land of his birth is a matter of dispute, and of his early history we know little, except that he was of noble birth, that he was carried to Ireland by pirates at the age of sixteen, and that after five ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... pile of them!" exclaimed Frank, as he came over to see the squashes after school. "You are a capital gardener, Nat; I don't believe there is a finer lot of squashes ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... caresses— the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, womanhood. Love's baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his 'Goddess,' 'Angel,' 'Popsy Wopsy,' 'Queen of his heart.' There are finer names than these: wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity. Marriage is renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the race. 'A trick of Nature' you call it. Perhaps. But a trick of Nature compelling you to surrender ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... own age, and, generally speaking, are quiet and well behaved; but it is to be regretted that, as far as our experience goes, they can advance no farther; when their reason is taxed, they fail, and consequently appear to be destitute of those finer qualifications and principles on which both moral feeling and social order are based. It is however questionable with me whether this is not too severe a construction to put on their intellect, and whether, if the effect of ancient habits were ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... nucleus or its contents have rotated 180 deg. (fig. 199). Various stages in the development of the spermatid are seen in figures 200 to 203. The clear region and the isolated element finally disappear (fig. 202 b), and the chromatin breaks up into coarser and then into finer granules within the sperm-head. In the later stages the centrosome is clearly seen at the base of ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis (Part 1 of 2) • Nettie Maria Stevens
... when deep emotional experiences are not the privilege of the few, but the lot of many, heart break is almost commonplace. We do not notice it as it may have been noted in those chivalric days when only the few had the finer sensibilities that may make great mental suffering possible. So here in the commonplace town of Harvey, in their commonplace homes, amid their commonplace friends and relatives, two commonplace hearts were aching ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... added: "It is finer than silk or hemp linen. We make our best shiny gowns and laces out of it. Because it is so fine, it takes a long time to get enough threads to weave and work it together. The time spent in making it, explains ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... all of gold, a whole fathom broad, and a moon, too, of silver, of the same size, also two rooms full of armour, and the people there with all manner of wondrous weapons, harness, darts, wonderful shields, extraordinary clothing, beds, and all kinds of wonderful things for human use, much finer to look at than prodigies. These things are all so precious that they are valued at 100,000 gulden, and all the days of my life I have seen nothing that reaches my heart so much as these, for among them I have ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... another and for the time being, put out, he has no energies worth mentioning, to devote to anything else. And, just as no woman can understand the cold austerities of the cell into which a man must retire in order to give his finer faculties free play, so no man can possibly understand, although objective evidence may compel him to admit and chronicle it as a fact, that a woman borne along as Rose was, upon an irresistible tide of passions, memories and hopes, which all but made her absent husband actually visible to her, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a vast prairie watered by the Platte. Nothing could be finer: such fields of corn standing ungathered, such herds of cattle grazing at will! It is a superb day, and the russet-brown mantle in which Nature arrays herself in the autumn never showed to better advantage; but in all directions we see the prairies ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... hanging them in solitary glory on the wall flanked by plates of Kaga ware, at tenpence-halfpenny a-piece. Lettice's taste had been formed by her father, and was somewhat masculine in its simplicity, and she cared only for the finer kinds of art, whether in porcelain or painting. But she was fain to confess that the effect of Clara's decorations was very pretty, and she wondered at the care and pains which had evidently been spent on ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... his great "right hand," and perhaps a finer soldier than Lee himself. His men adored him as they adored no other leader. Like Cromwell he taught them to pray as well as to fight. He never went into battle without commending his way to God, and when he knelt long in prayer his men might feel certain that a great ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... on the same level with that of Jesus-Christ, is now placed in the centre of figures representing the four ages of life and striking the quarters of hours; the idea of assigning this place to the image of death is assuredly a more rational and finer one than that which prevailed in the old distribution of the figures. Childhood strikes the first quarter; Youth the second; Manhood the third, and Old Age the last; the first stroke of each quarter ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... means the last word of expressiveness of touch, "The Hall with the Four Children," as we may call it, may-stand as a permanent reference on this point. If the picture of the Spanish dancer illustrates, as it seems to me to do, the latent dangers of the Impressionist practice, so this finer performance shows what victories it may achieve. And in relation to the latter I must repeat what I said about the young lady with the flower, that this is the sort of work which, when produced in youth, leads the attentive spectator ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... the opening of the Exhibition, in Suffolk Place. It had been arranged that he should read something, and he chose the 'Thanatopsis' of Bryant. A deep silence followed; the audience crowded round him; but when he came to the closing paragraph, his admiration almost choked his voice: 'Nothing finer had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... right hand side, ten beds on the left hand side, all full. How pitiful they were, these little soldiers, asleep. How irritating they were, these little soldiers, awake. Yet how sternly they contrasted with the man who had attempted suicide. Yet did they contrast, after all? Were they finer, nobler, than he? The night nurse, given ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... critic of conventional follies, Thoreau was always a hopeful man; and no finer rebuke to the philosophy of Pessimism was ever given than in these words of his: "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... into something immeasurably more than it had ever been before, and holding in its depths a finer understanding. And with this clearer vision came a sudden new knowledge—a knowledge fraught with pain and yet bearing deep within it an unutterable ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... as if sensitive filaments of perceptions even finer than sight, touch, and hearing had found and recoiled from something strange and terrible skulking there, masked by the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... only. But that is not all. I shall call before you two gentlemen experienced in affairs of the post-office, and they will tell you that the postmarks on this envelope, both that of the town, Sydney, and that by which the postage stamp is obliterated, are cleaner, finer, and better perceived than they would have been had it passed in ordinary course through the post-office. Letters in the post-office are hurried quickly through the operation of stamping, so that one passing over the other while the stamping ink is still moist, will ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... fights were finer at Saragossa than at Madrid—that is to say, they were deadlier; and the chief interest of this barbarous spectacle lies in the shedding of blood. The Marquis de las Moras and Colonel Royas gave me some excellent dinners. The marquis was one of the pleasantest ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a long-handled shovel and pickaxe strapped on his back, and a frying-pan depending from his saddle. But no panoplied or armed knight ever seemed so heroic or independent a figure to Clarence. What could be finer than the noble scorn conveyed in his critical survey of the train, with its comfortable covered wagons and appliances of civilization? "Ye'll hev to get rid of them ther fixin's if yer goin' in for placer diggin'!" What a corroboration of Clarence's real ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... was with them like it is with plenty of folks in the States—the women always seem finer, more delercate than the men; yet they seem to like men that ain't fussy. Old Man Kimberly was a good sort; but to look at her you'd wonder why she married him. She always set up straight, away from a chair or a sofa back, and she had a face that was clean-cut, like one ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... thousand dollars, accompanied by one or more expert mechanics, may make a brilliant showing for a week or so; but when the time is up, the ordinary, cheap, country-looking, American automobile will be found a close second at the finish; not that it is a finer piece of machinery, for it is not; but it has been developed under the adverse conditions prevailing in this country and is built to surmount them. The maker in this country who runs his machine one hundred miles from his factory, would find fewer difficulties ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... you out," said the watchman in a hoarse whisper, distinctly audible to all. "He's younger nor what you are, Sam, an' the wimmen are just crazy arter young men. 'Sides which, he's a finer man altogether. An' you've had ONE wife ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... influences, read failure in every angle of the upholstery. She was incapable of the vulgar error of thinking that Hope Fenno might be induced to marry Alan for his money; but between this assumption and the inference that the girl's imagination might be touched by the finer possibilities of wealth, good taste admitted a distinction. The Fenno furniture, however, presented to such reasoning the obtuseness of its black-walnut chamferings; and something in its attitude suggested ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... heard a real New Yorker can get bored in Paris. In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... "pipe" is at once too trivial and too big to be applied to this delicate silver tube, which is perfectly straight and at the end of which, in a microscopic receptacle, is placed one pinch of golden tobacco, chopped finer than silken thread. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... too much brought about by agencies disagreeable and sordid. The Guppys, Weevles, Snagsbys, Chadbands, Krooks, and Smallweeds, even the Kenges, Vholeses, and Tulkinghorns, are much too real to be pleasant; and the necessity becomes urgent for the reliefs and contrasts of a finer humanity. These last are not wanting; yet it must be said that we hardly escape, even with them, into the old freedom and freshness of the author's imaginative worlds, and that the too conscious unconsciousness of Esther ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... gone; he cannot sleep, he can only think of her, and follow her about; he has become quite good-for-nothing as to his field work,—yet he hears all the people around laughing and saying, "Of course Vallera will get her." Only she will pay no heed to him. She is finer to look at than the Pope, whiter than the whitest wood core: she is more delectable than are the young figs to the earwigs, more beautiful than the turnip flower, sweeter than honey. He is more in love with her than the moth is in love with the lamp; she loves to see ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... naturally take advantage of the free days, and then that the annual income is over $75,000, one can form some idea of the attractiveness of this institution. Mr. Corcoran's desire was to elevate the American taste in the finer arts, and the thousands of visitors which the institution attracts, indicates to what an extent he has succeeded. The lower floor is devoted to statues and to the exhibition of sculpture. The second floor is occupied by several hundred rare and costly ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... striking of the poems of the elder Timrod are the following. Washington Irving said of these lines that Tom Moore had written no finer lyric:— ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... were already there, and their two wives were with them, both so handsome and so magnificently dressed that each looked finer than the other. ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him—one that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I should receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no finer scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... For a moment his accent was almost fierce, then he laughed the matter off, assuring this bride of a month that she made him cross with her self-depreciation, that there was no one of finer mien and manner than herself, the chosen of his heart upon whom he always looked with pride. Which subtle tribute to what was her greatest charm accomplished its end; she did forget ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... shall borrow it—you shall be even finer than he is, and yet he shall not dare to accuse ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... from the westward and prevented me from moving the ship. A bottle, containing a parchment to inform future visitors of our arrival and intention to sail on the morrow, was left upon the top of Seal Island; and the wind having moderated next day, and the weather become finer, though still squally, we then made sail out of King George's Sound to prosecute the further ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Perseus, and had his shield, I would fly up to heaven and turn Jupiter, and Apollo, and Venus into stone; then they would be too heavy to stay in heaven, and they would tumble down to earth; and then they would be stone statues, and we should have much finer statues of Apollo and Venus than any they have now ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... finer in the first months of the War than the rally of the manhood of Great Britain to the call of the country in its time of need. All classes, rich and poor, patrician and peasant, employer and workman, were uplifted by the great occasion. Through the influence ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... us to conjecture what Stephen Crane might have written about the World War had he lived. Certainly, he would have been in it, in one capacity or another. No man had a greater talent for war and personal adventure, nor a finer art in describing it. Few writers of recent times could so well describe the poetry of motion as manifested in the surge and flow of battle, or so well depict the isolated deed of heroism in ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane |
