"Innocuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always felt an intense wish to make analogous trials, but have never had an opportunity, and it is not likely that you or any one would be willing to try so troublesome an experiment. Colouring or staining the fine red breast of a bullfinch with some innocuous matter into a dingy tint would be an analogous case, and then putting him and ordinary males with a female. A friend promised, but failed, to try a converse experiment with white pigeons—viz., to stain their tails and wings with ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of the root. In order to preserve your hands from the sharp biting liquid which issues from the points, you should wrap them in linen of close texture. When once the nettle is boiled, it is perfectly innocuous; and this vegetable, so rough in its exterior, becomes a very delicate dish. We were able to enjoy this delightful variety of esculents for more than a month. Then the little tubercles of the fern became hollow and horny, and the stems themselves grew ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... it with the minimum of danger. So they waited, and talked, and ate and always from the corners of their eyes were conscious of the slightly built, inoffensive man who sat beside Lawlor near the head of the table. In appearance he was surely most innocuous, but Nash had spoken, and in such matters they were all willing to take his word ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... rag. It's a flimsy thing, composed of absorbent plastic and gooed up with a little unpolymerized resin, weighing about fifty grams. It is apparently floating harmlessly in space, just beyond the orbit of Uranus, looking as innocuous as a rag can look. But it is moving sunward at eight ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... submerged. Immediately within the embankment, on the right side of the streamlet, is the empty tower or by-wash, that dismal monument of culpable negligence. We gazed on it with a strange feeling, thinking how easy it would have been to demolish two or three yards of it, so as to allow an innocuous outlet to the pent-up waters. When we had satisfied our curiosity, we commenced a toilsome march across the hills to a valley, in which there has lately been formed a series of embankments for the saving up of water for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... maternal. The blood of infected cattle was filtered through filters made of unbaked porcelain and having very fine pores which allowed only the blood fluid to pass, holding back both the blood corpuscles and the rods, and such filtered blood was found to be innocuous. It was further shown that the rods increased enormously in number in the infected animal, for the blood contained them in great numbers when but a fraction of a drop was used for inoculation. Attempts were ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... traditions, when challenged to do so by a foreign supernaturalism so much poorer and cruder than their own? What happened was that they intrenched themselves in their system, cut themselves off from the genial influences that might have rendered it innocuous, and became sectaries, like their opponents. Enlightenment was only to come after a recrudescence of madness and by the mutual slaughter of a fresh crop of illusions, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... addressed him as 'thou.' And you have learned somewhat of the Hyndses. In consequence, your Jelnik is a mixture of South-Carolina-Viennese-Hynds-Jelnik pride, beside which Satan's is as mild, meek, and innocuous as a properly raised Anglican curate. Don't meet his pride with pride. Meet it with you, Sophy. Most of us have been loved in our time, but how few of us have been permitted really to love! That you have in full measure this heavenliest of all powers, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... far from rendering him innocuous to the Opportunist party, brought him into Parliament[2] (as the French Chambers are now called) and increased his popularity. He had been already elected deputy both from the Department of the Aisne and the Department ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... convention movement proved comparatively innocuous in June is due in part to confidence inspired by the conciliatory policy of one outstanding Northerner, Webster. "Webster's speech", said Winthrop, "has knocked the Nashville Convention into a cocked hat." ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... correct. The tiny density was still sufficient to give the Moon almost as effective an atmospheric meteor screen as the Earth's. The relatively low velocity needed to maintain vehicles in circumlunar orbits, made its danger to such vehicles small. It could help reduce speed for a landing; it caused that innocuous hiss of passage. But it could sometimes ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... futility of such matters as motor-cars, fine raiment, beautiful boudoirs and correctness smote Audrey severely. She saw that there was only one thing worth having, and that was the mysterious thing that Jane Foley had. This mysterious thing rendered innocuous cruelty, stupidity and injustice, and reduced them ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... cream-thick Essex speech and the shuffling feet, you were brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt self-possession, for he was on a mission for Istra, and he cared not for the goggling eyes of all England. What though he was a bunny-faced man with an innocuous mustache? Istra would be awakening hungry. That was why he bullied you into selling him a stew-pan and a bundle of faggots along with the tea and eggs and a bread loaf and a jar of the marmalade your husband's farm had been making these two hundred years. And you should ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... second time, and worse than the first time, she was in the way of the Baroness. Who knows what, in times when passions ran hotter than they do now-a-days, this lady might not have devised against her? As things were, it was enough if she could get her married, and render her more innocuous for the future to the peace of mind of married women. She therefore artfully urged the Assistant, in a delicate, but effective manner, to set out on a little excursion to the castle; where his plans and his wishes, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... strength of the German army. She understood it to be a combination of a warlike spirit bent on oppressing others, and supported by the best and strongest army in the world. The first would have been innocuous without the second; and the splendid German army was in England's eyes the instrument of a domineering and conquest-loving autocrat. According to England's view, Germany was exactly the counterpart of France under Bonaparte—if ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... and putting on all steam, led off through a track which had been lined with torpedoes by the rebels; but he says, "Believing that, from their having been some time in the water, they were probably innocuous, I determined to take the chance of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... were concerned, it was more tolerant than the Church had been, it must be borne in mind that the Church had already done all the rough work of emasculating its enemies, and had handed down to the State a body of very innocuous and harmless investigators. A totally erroneous conception of what constituted classical culture was thus brought about. Where any distinction was actually made, for example, later Greek thought was ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... at that moment broken. Those who had expected to see the goddess, armed with flames and sulphurous smoke, burst forth and destroy the daring heroine who thus braved her, in her very sanctuary, were awe-struck when they saw the fire remain innocuous, and the flames roll harmless, as though none were present. They acknowledged the greatness of the God of Kapiolani; and from that time few indeed have been the offerings, and little the reverence paid ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... one can say is the more's the pity. If it be true, all music would require the chastening influence of time, and its spiritual value would be akin to that of the Past and Distant; it would be innocuous, because it had lost half of its vitality. We should have to lay down music, like wine, for the future; poisoning ourselves with the acrid fumes of its must, the heady, enervating scent of scum and purpled vat, in order that our children ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... never paid very well. After the first year or so they were obliged to mortgage it, and sometimes the interest was hard to meet. But after the stormy factory years, these anxieties seemed innocuous enough and Roger and his ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... mind so long prevalent among practitioners of medicine; once let it be everywhere understood that the presumption is in favor of food, and not of alien substances, of innocuous, and not of unwholesome food, for the sick; that this presumption requires very strong evidence in each particular case to overcome it; but that, when such evidence is afforded, the alien substance or the unwholesome food should be given boldly, in sufficient quantities, in the same spirit as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... number of customers to his emporium. It is consequently pleasure of this spectacular or frivolous kind which he habitually endeavours to provide. It is Quixotic to anticipate much diminution in the supply and demand of either frivolity or spectacle, both of which may furnish quite innocuous pleasure. But each is the antithesis of dramatic art; and whatever view one holds of the methods of the American capitalist, it is irrational to look to him for the intelligent promotion of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... improving their complexions. But what was most striking to the eye was the appearance of the immense white flowers (whitened sepulchres) of the Datura strammonium, growing high out of the shingles of the river; and on this same Seriphus, outlawed from the more gentle haunts of their innocuous brethren, congregated his associates, the other prisoners, of whom, both from his size and bearing, he is ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... walked home, that night, the doctor told my sister and me that, whatever the greater world might think of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, whether innocuous or virulent, Jagger was beyond cavil flagrantly corrupting our poor folk, who were simple-hearted and easy to persuade: that he was, indeed, a nuisance which must ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... await any helpless being falling across their path. But by searching out a copperhead and imitating Cleopatra, or with patience and persistence devouring every toadstool, the same result could be achieved in our home-town orchard. When on the march, the army ants are as innocuous at two inches as at two miles. Had I sat where I was for days and for nights, my chief danger would have been demise from sheer chagrin at my inability to grasp the deeper significance of life ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... good—gentle and innocent reading. And there was Mrs. Wade's prayer-book—The Key of Heaven,—on a small table, the "Imitation of Christ" beside it. By these lay one or two oddly bound books in garish colourings, Lady O'Gara opened one. She saw it was in French—an innocuous French romance suitable for the reading ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... and stopping absorption by the surest and most harmless of intestinal astringents. Whether the astonishingly prompt and certain action of alum in this case is due wholly to its astringent action or whether alum combines with the harmful bacterial products chemically and forms an innocuous combination, I can only surmise, and it is unimportant. At any rate, when alum is administered, the onslaught of the disease is promptly stopped. Irreparable damage may already have been done if the case is a neglected one, but ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... grace, above related, was so innocuous that it need not be counted to his discredit. His was the case of the pugilist who slipped on a piece of peel and felt unable to rise: had the place been a ring, instead of a pavement, he would have been up and dancing within ten seconds. So with Anthony—had Fortune frowned, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... taken across the room, and an electrical machine will not work without a pan of coals under the cylinder. But as no part of the island is more than twenty-five miles from the sea, this continual moisture appears to be quite innocuous, its worst effect being the musty smell which it causes in everything in the mountains, where there is the most rain. Use fortunately takes from us the perception of this, or it would be quite intolerable. Perpetual summer, and the utmost glory of earth, sky, and sea, are not to be enjoyed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... so generally acknowledged by the heads of our national libraries, that it is strictly excluded from their domains, although the danger from explosion and fire, even if the results of combustion were innocuous, would be ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... he admitted, when I think of Gordon Atterbury and Everett Constable and a few others,—Eldon Parr,—who believe that religion ought to be kept archaic and innocuous, served in a form that won't bother anybody. By the way, Nell, do you remember the verse the Professor quoted about the Pharisees, and cleansing the outside ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... one. It was nothing less than the definitive introduction into astronomy of the paradoxical conception of the central fire and hearth of our system as a cold, dark, terrestrial mass, wrapt in a mantle of innocuous radiance—an earth, so ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... valued as objects of food. But these authors apparently have not considered the many accounts given by travellers of the wretched food collected by savages. I have read an account of the savages of Australia cooking, during a dearth, many vegetables in various ways, in the hopes of rendering them innocuous and more nutritious. Dr. Hooker found the half-starved inhabitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from having eaten arum-roots,[523] which they had pounded and left for several days to ferment, so as partially to destroy ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... was summoned to put on the trim shirt-waist, the short cloth skirt and close hat which Mrs. Marshall-Smith selected with care and the history of which she detailed at length, so copiously that there was no opportunity to speak of anything less innocuous. Her unusual interest in the matter even caused her to accompany the girls to the head of the stairs, still talking, and she called down to them finally as they went out of the front door, "... it's the only way with Briggs—he's simply incorrigible about delays—and yet nobody does skirts ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... deliverance, a systematic despotism had deprived the subjects of the Pope, not only of all participation in public affairs, but of the simplest and most legitimate liberties, of the most innocuous progress, and even—I shudder as I write it—of recourse to the laws. The whim of one man had arbitrarily reversed the decisions of the courts of law. And lastly, an incapable and disorderly caste had wasted the public finances without rendering an account to any one, occasionally ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... are we sprinkled with innocuous juice "Of better herbs; with the inverted wand "Our heads are touch'd; the charms, already spoke, "Strong charms of import opposite destroy. "The more she sings her incantations, we "Rise more from earth erect; the bristles fall; "And the wide fissure leaves our cloven feet; "Our shoulders form ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... from the table might have been taken for assent. It was in reality satisfaction at her own perspicacity. She had not supposed for one moment that he had been ill but in no other way could she express what she wanted to know. It was in itself an innocuous and natural remark, but the sudden gloom that fell on him warned her that her ingenuity was, perhaps, not so ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... drive its point into his own heart. But the owner of the spear recovered himself in a flash, and, seizing the blade of the weapon in his bare hand, he twisted it upward with such strength that the slender wooden shaft snapped, leaving the head in his hand and the innocuous shaft in that of M'Bongwele. At the same instant half a dozen men flung themselves upon the king, and in a trice his hands were drawn behind him, and securely bound. Then, from somewhere, two long thongs or ropes of twisted raw-hide were produced and quickly knotted ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... revealing his own misprision of treason. He would be asked 'how he knew the secret.' Godfrey's lips were thus sealed; he had neither the wish nor the power to speak out, and so his knowledge of the secret, if he knew it, was innocuous to the Jesuits. 'What is it nearer?' Coleman was reported, by a perjured informer, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... common fairness, convinced of her error. So now, says Jurgen presently, you see for yourself. Is anything changed between us? Do we not sit here, just as we were before? Why, to be sure! a kiss is now attestedly a quite innocuous performance, with nothing very fearful about it one way or the other. It even has its pleasant side. Thus there is no need to make a pother over kisses or over an arm about you, when it is more comfortable sitting so: how can one reasonably deny to a sincere friend ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Thatcher in tears failed to arrest the dark apprehensions that tramped harshly through Dan's mind. As for Bassett, Dan recalled his quondam chief's occasional flings at Allen, whom the senator from Fraser had regarded as a spoiled and erratic but innocuous trifler. Mrs. Bassett, Dan was aware, valued her social position highly. As the daughter of Blackford Singleton she considered herself unassailably a member of the upper crust of the Hoosier aristocracy. And Dan suspected that Bassett also harbored ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... sweet-faced, low-voiced nurses, and the doctor—whose coming, twice a day, was such an event. The doctor was a model husband and father, his beautiful wife a woman whom Ella knew and liked very well, but Emily had her nickname for him, and her little presents for him, and many a small, innocuous joke between herself and the doctor made her feel herself close to him. Emily was always glad when she could turn from her mother's mournful solicitude, Kenneth's snubs and Ella's imperativeness, and the humiliating contact with a society that ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... spoke out the truth of my own heart and yours. You didn't want it spoken out. You didn't want to be told you were in love. It was a thing too harsh and sweet. It frightened you to think of. You wanted us to sit for ever, like two lovers painted on a fan, fixed in an everlasting and innocuous bliss. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... that little quaver prefacing her last two words which precipitated the affair. Otherwise a question natural enough under the circumstances would have proved innocuous. But for the life of her she could not control her voice; on those simple words it broke; and so the question became confession—confession, accusation ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... every side fire was opened, the coolies blazing wildly; but as none of them had ever had a rifle in his hands before, the firing was for the most part innocuous. Yet it served to encourage them, and they drew nearer. The garrison, with only one or two defenders to each side of the house, could not keep them at a distance. The infantry began to crawl forward. The circle of foes closed in ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... kriss; a few bore spears, and about a dozen shouldered a long straight piece of bamboo. The nature of this implement the sailor could not determine at the moment. When the knowledge did come, it came so rapidly that he was saved from many earlier hours of abiding; dread, for one of those innocuous-looking weapons was fraught with more quiet deadliness than ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... relying on this spiritual authority as the only security for good government, the sole bulwark against practical oppression, and expecting that by it a system of despotism in the state and despotism in the family would be rendered innocuous and beneficial; it is not surprising, that while as logicians we were nearly at one, as sociologists we could travel together no further. M. Comte lived to carry out these doctrines to their extremest consequences, by planning, in his last work, the Systeme de Politique ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... suggested by Dr. Clarke, of intermitting intellectual effort during the menstrual period, would be inadequate whenever it was not superfluous. But in Dr. Clarke's theory this period has a peculiar influence in rendering morbific conditions that at other times are innocuous. This, in virtue of the law already quoted, that the evolution of force at one centre of the nervous system is incompatible with an evolution of equal intensity at another, since it diminishes the sum of resources ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... existence a fortnight ago. Then coming down cheerfully one morning to breakfast—it was the very day after my return from England—I found a letter from an English friend, who up till then had been perfectly innocuous, asking me to befriend Minora. I read the letter aloud for the benefit of the Man of Wrath, who was eating Spickgans, a delicacy much sought after in these parts. "Do, my dear Elizabeth," wrote my friend, "take some notice of the poor thing. She is studying art in Dresden, and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... innocuous face, with the downy mustache and ruminative eyes, and smiled irrepressibly. Then her own face ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... presence of disease, and which, after a plentiful crop of guineas had been extracted, nature was allowed to heal: the patient was then pronounced out of danger. With some persons the liniment was perfectly innocuous, and when this was the case the patient was informed that no disease need be feared. The secret of course lay in the fact that the quack used two liniments, apparently identical, one of which only contained the irritating medium. Many actually consumptive ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... signalled to the feint attack. The batteries fronting the Brakfontein ridge were withdrawn, and Wynne's brigade which, having been marched up the slope, was now marched down again, came under a heavy but almost innocuous infantry fire, which at last broke ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... when Varney, having launched Miss Carstairs and the sailing-master's wife upon a strictly innocuous conversation, came around the deck-house again, neither the candidate nor his sister was anywhere to be seen. Peter—he who had engaged to accompany the lady—stood alone on the sunny deck, staring off at the returning gig, his great hands clenched ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... congeries of meteoric fragments, and these, when exposed to the Sun's heat, throw off luminous nebulous particles that are swept by some repulsive force into space and form the appendage known as the tail. Comets may be regarded as celestial objects that are perfectly innocuous. Neither fear nor dread need be apprehended from their visits; they come to please and instruct, not to injure ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... soon be stripped of its vigor on the plea that it is barbarous. When our fathers quarreled they took a pot-shot at each other at ten paces; now disagreements involving even family honor are carried into the courts—the bloody Code Duello has been relegated to "innocuous desuetude." Texas is supposed by our Northern neighbors to be the "wurst ever," the most bloodthirsty place this side the Ottoman Empire; yet the Houston Post, leading paper of Harris county, is crying its poor self sick because some peripatetic Ananias intimated to an Eastern ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Arab fusillade was almost innocuous, it harassed the troops, keeping them on the alert all night. And when, with the first streaks of dawn, the dreary march began, all traces of the foe had disappeared. All the morning dragged along, till fatigue and the heat of the sun ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... coachmen, and other wandering tribes whose ventral insurrections are not periodically quelled by regular and comfortable meals. Country doctors, for the same reason, not unfrequently manifest a stronger predilection for their employers' bottles than their patients do for theirs. In the absence of innocuous and benign appliances, the deleterious are had recourse to exorcise the fiend that is raging within them. These views are explicable by the laws of physiology, but this is not the place for such disquisitions. One reason why the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... fearfully upon the imaginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed; but the implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity with which the virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a little less superstitious, the effects of their superstition would have been much more terrible. It was firmly believed that any one who deviated from the strict line of orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... special feature in the wounds of the campaign. At first bearing in mind that in every case a track, even if closed, led from the surface to the effused blood, one was disposed to suspect an infection of the clot of a somewhat innocuous nature. The absence of subsequent suppuration, however, was definitely opposed to this view, and suggested that the fever resulted from absorption of some element of the blood, possibly the fibrin ferment, or some form of albumose. A pronounced illustration was in fact afforded ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... much less to Balaclava. Is it not more probable that the enterprise was of the nature merely of a sort of "snap-offensive"; while as yet the allied infantry visibly pouring down the slopes of the upland were innocuous because of distance and while the sole occupants of the plain were a couple of weak cavalry brigades and a single horse battery? Ryjoff on the ridge could see in his front at least portions of the Light Brigade; its fire told him the horse battery was thereabouts too, and there were those ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... his eyes and gave him a long, peculiar look. It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity, nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do without it. It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect, flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed. M. Nioche's gaze was a profession of moral flatness. "You despise me terribly," he said, in ...
— The American • Henry James
... is not acted but only entertained; and as in this tale the story is of the sins that hover round the soul waiting to be born, so in "David Swan" the story is of the events that might happen to an unsuspecting man, but pass by innocuous after merely shadowing his sleep like a threat. To this atmosphere of life also belongs the elaborate shadow sketch, "Monsieur de Miroir," a motive often treated in literature and here more lightly handled than one would have anticipated, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... busy arranging the details of the coming of the colony, and she had neglected to visit the land office lately. Since she cannily represented the excursion as being merely a sight-seeing trip—or some such innocuous project—she failed also to receive any inkling ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... hardness of their life and the obtuseness of their sensibility reduced to a minimum the bad results of wounds and shocks, while their warfare, being free from the awful devices due to the devilry of modern man, was comparatively innocuous; even if very destructive, its destruction was necessarily limited by the fact that those accumulated treasures of the past which largely make civilisation had not come into existence. We may admire the beautiful humanity, ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... in point. Theoretically I should have here the innocuous union of three harmless chemicals; as a matter of fact I had occasion to experiment with it and learned that I had innocently produced a vicious and unheard-of poison. The stuff is of no use. It is one of those ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... obstacles in the way of securing it were overcome by the substitution of the sensitive plate for the eye. Air-tremors are thus rendered comparatively innocuous; and measurements of stellar lines displaced by motion with reference to fiducial lines from terrestrial sources, photographed on the same plates, can be depended upon within vastly reduced limits of error. Studies for the realisation of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... sideboard blazed, with old silver. The Squire himself was in full costume, and on his bosom gleamed two orders bestowed upon his ancestors by James III. and Charles III. In other respects he was rather innocuous, being confined to his chair by an attack of gout, and in the act of sipping the superannuated compound that had given it him—port. Nevertheless, his light hair, dark eyebrows, and black eyes, awed them, and co-operated with his ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... more fierce than ever arose from the little crowd of Indians, whose mounts began to partake of the excitement imparted by the ponies that had begun to tear to and fro in the narrow gulch, while after discharging another innocuous flight of arrows against the barrier of stones, about a dozen of the savages came on, yelling and belabouring their mounts, driving them nearly frantic as they ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... are the theme I have been wont to brag on; I've told how you, my now innocuous moke, Would chew the tail-board off a G.S. wagon By way of mere plaisanterie (or joke); Dubbed you most diabolical of ragers, A rampant hooligan, a fetid tough, A thing without respect for sergeant-majors— That is to say, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... into frantic speed. The idea was incredible, but it had to be true. He searched the micro-film files for three hours before he found it, in a "Who's Who" dating back to 1958, three years before the war with China. A simple, innocuous listing, which froze him to his seat. He read it, unbelievingly, yet knowing that it was the only possible link. Finally he ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... endeavoured to respect Messrs. Malone and Donne, but the slices of sponge-cake and glasses of cowslip or primrose wine she had at different times administered to Sweeting, when he came to see her in her little cottage, were ever offered with sentiments of truly motherly regard. The same innocuous collation she had once presented to Malone; but that personage evinced such open scorn of the offering, she had never ventured to renew it. To Donne she always served the treat, and was happy to see his approbation of it proved beyond a doubt by the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Leopold Travers established with that very clever and very practical representative of the rising generation, Chillingly Gordon. Between them there was this meeting-ground, political and worldly, a great contempt for innocuous old-fashioned notions; added to which, in the mind of Leopold Travers, was a contempt—which would have been complete, but that the contempt admitted dread—of harmful new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quantity, which is illimitable. Within our shanty there are certain species which make themselves felt, smelt, or otherwise apparent to our annoyance, without taking into consideration the hosts that, as far as we are concerned, are innocuous. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... innocuous enough, so I engaged in conversation with a man whom the Gay Cat had introduced as the proprietor. Much of the slang I already knew by hearsay, such as "bulls" for policemen, a "mouthpiece" for a lawyer to defend one when he is "ditched" or arrested; in fact, as ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... to the ropes. Gosling, who had been bowling unchanged since the innings began, was naturally feeling a little tired. He was losing his length, and bowling more slowly than was his wont. Norris now gave him a rest for a few overs, Bruce going on with rather innocuous medium left-hand bowling. The professional continued to jog along slowly. The novelist hit. Everything seemed to come alike to him. Gosling resumed, but without effect, while at the other end bowler after bowler was tried. From a hundred and ten ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... there's no harm done!" said the old Doctor, and wrote a prescription which was at least innocuous. He knew of no simples to cure love-sorrows; but in his heart of hearts he ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... instances, however, of the death of horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs, have been recorded; but the particular species causing death in each instance has not been noted with precision; so that there are considerable doubts with many well-informed persons whether some innocuous kinds may not, like the ringed snake of England, be classed amongst their poisonous congeners, and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... is just where the chances for a child are least that passions are grossest, basest, and most heedless, and stand in the greatest need of a sense of the gravity of possible consequences to control their play, and to render it socially innocuous. If we were to take over or assist all the children born below a certain level of comfort, or, rather, if we were to take over their mothers before the birth occurred, and bring up that great mass of children under the best conditions for them—supposing this to be possible—it ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... pure, distilled or filtered water, is the best for invalids. Hot drinks lower the temperature of the body by evaporation; excessively cold drinks check perspiration, and endanger congestion of some vital part; but water of a moderate temperature is innocuous. Even in dangerous fevers the burning thirst of the sufferer can safely be assuaged by the frequent administration of small bits of ice. In cases of incomplete nutrition, cocoa, chocolate, and other preparations of the fruit of the cocoa-palm, are invaluable adjuncts; the active principle of ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spent, of course, a period of ostensible study, as four generations of my fathers had done aforetime. But in that leisured, slatternly and ancient city I garnered a far larger harvest of (comparatively) innocuous cakes and ale than of authentic learning, and at my graduation carried little of moment from the place save many memories of Bettie Hamlyn.... Her father taught me Latin at King's College, while Bettie taught me human intimacy—almost. Looking back, I have not ever ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... that God is in everything; that we would be fools, or at best innocuous angels if there were not evil in the world for us to be ground upon and master. We are held and refined between the two attractions—one of the earth and the other a spiritual uplift. We believe that the sense of Unity is ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... bethought him of trying his skill as a doctor. Everybody became mad to consult him; no street was ever so crowded as the one he lived in, since Berners-street on the day of the hoax. He got a barrel of flour, or some other innocuous powder, packed up in little paper parcels, and thus armed he received his patients. On entering, he felt the pulse with becoming silence and gravity; at last he said, "Great fire." He then put his hand on the ganglionic centre, from which he radiated to the circumjacent parts, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... this species of asthma is so liable to recur during sleep, like epileptic fits, as mentioned in Section XVIII. 15. there was reason to believe, that the respiration of an atmosphere mixed with hydrogen, or any other innocuous air, which might dilute the oxygen, would be useful in preventing the paroxysms by decreasing the sensibility of the system. This, I am informed by Dr. Beddoes, has been used with decided success by Dr. Ferriar. See ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... removed the top of the second knuckle of Honey's right hand, shaved a piece from the wrist bone, and then proceeded to thoroughly lacerate most of the muscles of the forearm before finally lodging in the elbow. Thus was Honey Hoke rendered innocuous for the time being. He ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... columns came out with red scare heads and gory recital full of reference to "something rotten in the State of Denmark" and "damnable rascality," there was only one emasculated innocuous column given to the local event, but seven columns were steeped with the bloody details of sheep massacres and stock raids and Range Wars in other states in "the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and nutrition of this organism. In respect to its virulence, it is an extraordinary fact that it disappears entirely after eight days' culture at 42 to 43 degrees Centigrade, or, at any rate, the cultures are innocuous for the guinea-pig, the rabbit, and the sheep, the three kinds of animals most apt to contract anthrax. We are thus able to obtain, not only the attenuation of the virulence, but also its complete suppression by a simple method of cultivation. Moreover, we see also the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... an oyster from its shell; and of most of us the snail would still demand more. As the unaccustomed food proves to be good and satisfying, and also harmless, we may come to like it. That, however, which many good and eminent naturalists find to be healthful and reasonable, and others innocuous, a few still regard as most unreasonable and harmful. At present, we call to mind only two who not only hold to the entire fixity of species as an axiom or a confirmed principle, but also as a dogma, and who maintain, either ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... some pretty lines. If it be genuine, its boldness is remarkable. Great numbers of other poets appear in the pages of Martial, Statius, and Pliny, but they need not be named. The fact that verse-writing was an innocuous way of spending one's leisure doubtless drove many to it. CODRUS, or Cordus, [60] was the author of an ambitious epic, the Theseid, composed on the scale, but without the wit, of the Thebaid. The stage, too, engaged many writers. Tragedy and comedy [61] ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... on her first arrival in the neighbourhood, less haggard, a little plumper, but as he compared her dulled and faded beauty with Toni's youthful bloom he wondered, not for the first time, if her companionship were altogether innocuous. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a loop round the neck or chest of the infant. If it remain in this position, it is further stated, the mother will suffer later and the fetus will either perish or be born with difficulty. If the Hippocratic writers knew that this coiling is sometimes quite innocuous, they did not in any ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... have had doubts concerning his simile of the gamekeeper; hence in his last footnote he makes the innocuous remark: "Because the house-breaking gamekeeper fired the first shot, it is not usual to draw the conclusion that the poacher had only defensive ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... the river for the purpose. The flank of the advance being thus protected, the attack on Tangku itself began with a cannonade from thirty- six pieces of the best artillery of that age. The Chinese fire was soon rendered innocuous, and their walls and forts were battered down. Even then, however, the garrison gave no signs of retreat, and it was not until the Armstrongs had been dragged within a very short distance of the walls, and the foot-soldiers had absolutely ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Matheson and Co., by whose manager I was most hospitably and agreeably entertained. Rather an interesting incident in connection with a panther had once occurred at his house, and as this illustrates what I have previously mentioned as to the (to man) innocuous character of this animal, it may not be uninteresting to give an account of what ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the scheme of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company. In reference to this scheme the Report to the Visitors states "I may say briefly that I believe that it would be possible to render such a railway innocuous to the Observatory; it would however be under restrictions which might be felt annoying to the authorities of the Railway, but whose relaxation would almost ensure ruin to the Observatory."—"The meridional observations ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... valley a constant fire was kept up, but this was as innocuous as the bombardment from above; and when the Spaniards fell back, only three of the defenders had been in any way injured, and these were hit by the pistol balls, fired by the assailants of ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... of Hong Kong, Who never did anything wrong; He lay on his back, with his head in a sack, That innocuous old ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... every day the details of the brawls and fights of drunken men and the horrible murders which they commit, they would discontinue advertising, without warning or dissent, side by side with the atrocities, the 'innocuous beers,' the pure malt whiskies, the genuine brandies, guaranteed to prevent and cure all ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... different from the absurd exhibition which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily have said, if he was determined to compliment me, that they had "improved," "progressed," or something equally adequate and innocuous. But no. The man must needs be effusive, positively gushing. He came to me in transports. "Wonderful!" he ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... like to suggest to Mr. JOHNSON that this Mixture be administered to the Bug with a spoon, and not sprinkled promiscuously on the ground. We have drank Tea with a "green flavor," and found it comparatively innocuous; but Potatoes with a green flavor, (especially if flavored by the JOHNSONIAN method,) we should consider as doubtful, to say the least. It is the general impression that there is nothing Green in Paris; but your house painter knows ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... and there, but they are for the most part of innocuous species: three poisonous varieties only are known, and their bite does not produce such terrible consequences as that of the horned viper or Egyptian uraeus. There are two kinds of lion—one without mane, and the other hooded, with a heavy mass of black and tangled hair: the proper signification ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... The rebound from flat surfaces is also very heavy, and produces violent commotion; where as these broken, upright, columnar-looking piers seem to absorb the fury of the sea, and render its wildest waves comparatively innocuous. ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... genius to the recommendation of vice. This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and Regents. President Haven had come to see its inevitability, particularly in a state institution, and perhaps its advisability, but successive discussions had only postponed action from year to year. So it was not until January 5, 1870, that the great step was taken in the following innocuous resolution: ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... rolling high in the firmament, casting from its orb of fire the most glorious rays, so that the atmosphere was flickering with their splendour, but their fierceness was either warded off by the shadow of the trees or rendered innocuous by the refreshing coolness which rose from the waters, or by the gentle breezes which murmured at intervals over the meadows, "fanning the cheek or raising the hair" of the wanderer. The hills gradually receded, till at last we entered a plain where ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of the innocuous character of a volcano, that near them fired a gun, as the men afterwards called it, casting into the air a large flight of cinders and stones, accompanied by a sharp flash of flame. All the lighter ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... hearty welcome, and he would have found his claim of kindred eagerly allowed. But he thought he was saying a bitter and cutting thing, and (strange to say) the old lady fancied she was listening to a bitter and cutting thing. He was merely expressing a certain and innocuous truth. But though all mortals know that in this world big people meet greater respect than small, (and quite right too,) most mortals seem to find the principle a very unpleasant one, when it comes home to themselves. And we learn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Belgium, and an important, semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the south. This last was R17's work, which Mahbub had picked up beyond the Dora Pass and was carrying in for R17, who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, could not leave his post of observation. Dynamite was milky and innocuous beside that report of C25; and even an Oriental, with an Oriental's views of the value of time, could see that the sooner it was in the proper hands the better. Mahbub had no particular desire to die by violence, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... of rotten flesh, which they slyly gave their lovers to eat—with more that is still worse. Pieces of the hair and nails of the lover were boiled in oil stolen from the ever-burning lamps in the church. The most innocuous of their charms was to make a heart of glowing ashes, and then to pierce it while singing: 'Prima che'l fuoco spenghi, Fa ch'a mia porta venghi; Tal ti punga mio amore Quale io ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the whole room was rising and sinking in rhythmical motion; that the lights of King's Cobb had disappeared, and that in their place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water, the pursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the glass with innocuous fingers. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... cauldrons and unmeasured caves 150 Blow flaming airs, or pour vitrescent waves; O'er shining oceans ray volcanic light, Or hurl innocuous embers to the night.— While with loud shouts to Etna Heccla calls, And Andes answers from his beacon'd walls; 155 Sea-wilder'd crews the mountain-stars admire, And ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... would say to another that he saw no sense in people getting scared at nothing out in No Man's Land. The laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house, and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous. Liquor was prohibited. The regime was military. Soon after the bugle had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters chafing through the turbines continually ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... cares, Where the white poplar and the lofty pine Join neighboring boughs, sweet hospitable shade, Creating, from Phoebean rays secure, A cool retreat, with few well-chosen friends, On flowery mead recumbent, spent the hours In mirth innocuous, and alternate verse! With roses interwoven, poplar wreaths, Their temples bind, dress of sylvestrian gods! Choicest nectarean juice crown'd largest bowls, And overlook'd the brim, alluring sight, Of fragrant ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the vision of the great white throne and the crystal sea. The most ignorant and erroneous 'religious sentiment'—to use a modern phrase—is mightier than all other forces in the world's history. It is like some of those terrible compounds of modern chemistry, an inert, innocuous-looking drop of liquid. Shake it, and it flames heaven high, shattering the rocks and ploughing up the soil. Put even an adulterated and carnalised faith into the hearts of a mob of wild Arabs, and in a century they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... intestines presented large numbers of the ova. Similar experiments with the ova of the Oxyuris vermicularis and of the Toenia solium afforded corresponding results. Shortly after the flies had some mouldy cream, the Oidium lactis was found in their faeces. Dr. Grassi mentions an innocuous and yet conclusive experiment that every one can try. Sprinkle a little lycopodium on sweetened water, and afterward examine the faeces and intestines of the flies; numerous spores will be found. As flies are by no means particular in choosing either a place to feed or a place to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... got to Rilby Head, where they found plenty to amuse them. It was a splendid headland, rising bluff four hundred feet out of the sea, and presenting magnificent reaches of rock scenery on all sides. The boys lay on the turf at the summit, and flung innocuous stones at the sea-gulls as they sailed far below them over the water, and every now and then pounced at some stray fish that came to the surface; or they watched the stately barks as they sailed by on the horizon, wondering at their cargo and destination; ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... should bring down the sulphur contents even of concentrates so as to be innocuous to mercuric amalgamation. The sulphur left in the ore should never be allowed to exceed two ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... the fact that our papers are no longer organs but organizations. The individuality of the great editor, once supreme, has become less and less a power, till finally it vanishes into mere innocuous anonymity. To show you how far the editor has receded into public obscurity, it is only necessary to try to recall the portrayal of a modern editor in a recent play. Stage lawyers, stage physicians, and stage preachers abound; when you think of them your mind calls up a very definite ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... off, unrepining, from his wife's society), ordered him to remove her, silence her, beat her if necessary—and so save her from the unpleasant alternative of solitary confinement on bread and water until she could be, if not useful, innocuous. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... is not always possible; and one urchin with his whip will destroy more in half an hour, than the worth of a month's average domestic expenditure. Oh! how I hate the little fidgeting, fingering, dislocating imps! A bull in a china-shop is innocuous to the most orderly and amenable of them. Why did Providence make children? and why does not some wise Draconic law banish them for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... ancient rights of ownership, whenever any move is made toward their disallowance or restriction. But then, on the other hand, the movement to disallow or diminish the prerogatives of ownership is also not to take the innocuous shape of unstudied neglect. So soon, or rather so far, as the common man comes to realise that these rights of ownership and investment uniformly work to his material detriment, at the same time that he has lost the "will to believe" in any argument that does not run in terms of the mechanistic ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... unspeakable advantage. Go to the great city; thou art beautiful as the day; he is young, handsome, and amorous; he will infallibly fall in love with thee. Do thou submit to his caresses, he will perish miserably; thou (such is the charm) ransomed by the kiss of love, wilt become wholesome and innocuous as thy fellows, preserving only thy knowledge of poisons, always useful, in the present state of society invaluable. Thou wilt therefore next repair to the city of Constantinople, bearing recommendatory letters from me to the Empress ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... specimen of this innocuous sort of verse.[3] Another example may be seen in this hymn to a king: "Firm is the sky; firm is the earth; firm, all creation; firm, these hills; firm the king of the people (shall be)," etc.[4] In another hymn there is an incantation to release from ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... palm of his hand he proceeded to swallow them with a backward throw of his head. Tabloids were Mr. Purvis's only personal indulgence. He had been recommended them for his nerves, and he had swallowed so many that had they not been perfectly innocuous he must have died ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... inconsequential, incontinent, incorporeal, incorrigible, incredulity, incumbent, indecorous, indigenous, indigent, indite, indomitable, ineluctable, inexorable, inexplicable, inferential, infinitesimal, infinitude, infraction, infusion, inhibit, innocuous, innuendo, inopportune, insatiable, inscrutable, insidious, inspissated, insulate, intangible, integral, integument, interdict, internecine, intractable, intransigent, intrinsic, inure, invalidate, inveigh, inveigle, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... hills that encircle the little cove in which I had landed, heedless of the minutes and my steps, watching the sailing clouds and the cloudy sails on the horizon, listening to the musical attrition of the tidal pebbles, killing innocuous suckers. The only particular sensation I remember was that of being ten years old again, together with a general impression of Saturday afternoon, of the liberty to go in wading or even swimming, and of the prospect of limping home in the dusk ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... containing chamber in impatience, and then the holder would certainly die, choked if the fragments of the gun had not fatally lacerated him. After many days and nights, I have found the simple means to render the gas innocuous except in the direction to which we direct its flow. I have written out the formula, in the minutest particulars and in the cipher which you and I alone understand. In the same way we two share the secret ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... for a few moments I got completely entangled in the folds of one, a wonderfully slender kind, being nearly six feet in length, and not more than half an inch in diameter at its broadest part. It was a species of Dryophis. The majority of the snakes seen were innocuous. One day, however, I trod on the tail of a young serpent belonging to a very poisonous kind, the Jararaca (Craspedocephalus atrox). It turned round and bit my trousers; and a young Indian lad, who was behind me, dexterously cut it through with his ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... institutions and hurl the King from his throne. My God! You know the story of King Philip and his son Carlos. Hardly fifty years have elapsed since then. Profit by this example, and learn from this story that if the son is dangerous, you have only to render him suspected by his father, and he becomes innocuous. If the son is the enemy of his father, then the father must also be made the enemy of his son, that in this way an equilibrium be preserved. You are much too great a statesman and too acute a diplomatist not to know how to act in this matter. But the urgency of the case is pressing. You ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly taller, more commanding ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... rule, be suffering punishment unjustly; for the only count selected may be bad, or some one only of several may be bad, and the judgment ought to be reversed. What was the operation of the old rule? Most salutary and decorous. No public account was taken of the innocuous aims, so to speak, taken by justice, in order to hit her victim. If he fell, the public saw that it was in consequence of a blow struck by her, and concerned themselves not with several previous abortive blows. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... were all ready enough to take the lives of others with every accompaniment of the most atrocious cruelty, there was apparently none among them willing to contribute to the success of his party by sacrificing his own. This innocuous fusillade of the house continued for nearly two hours, during which we made no pretence of reply except when some individual, in a temporary access of courage, attempted to slip across from one piece of cover to another situated a few yards nearer the ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... dead leaves suddenly disinterred from wet mould,—as of grasses decomposing after a flood. Something saffron speckled the slimy water of the gutters; sulphur some called it; others feared even to give it a name! Was it only the wind-blown pollen of some innocuous plant? ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... deft by practise he scooped out all the sheets and tapes and put them in the box. The scanner's fingers rapidly sorted them past the eye. Hart exhaled, relieved that an innocuous drawer had been selected, and the inspector handed back the material to him. "Well, ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... silent stranger walked into his presence, looked long and steadily into his eyes, and ended forever his reign of lawlessness. Sometimes the two-gun man was "planted," sometimes he subsided into innocuous peace henceforth. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... the most vigorous trees never manifest it until they are weakened by their first crop of fruit. All are familiar with the fact that an old frost bite will swell or succumb to a temperature which will be innocuous to any other part of the body. The microscope may invariably reveal fungi in the patch of pear blight precisely as the housewife discovers the mold plant in her preserves and canned fruit, and even in the eggs of fowls, the mycelium ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... contained his rising choler and chanted monotonously, over and over: "I COULD! I COULD, TOO! I COULD! I COULD, TOO!" But their tumult wore upon him, and he decided to avail himself of the recent decision whereby a big H was rendered innocuous and unprofane. Having used the expression once, he found it comforting, and substituted it for: "I ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... the premises was an excellent one and had fully answered my expectations. But it had a defect which I had overlooked. The burglars themselves, when reduced to a condition suitable for exhibition in a show-case, were entirely innocuous. There was no danger of their making any indiscreet statements. But with the servants—female servants, too—it was quite otherwise. From the shelter of my roof they had gone forth to sow distrust and suspicion in quarters where ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... [of wampum which he had brought as ambassador] and Gietterowane committing to memory what he said."] So effective was this provision of their constitution that for more than three centuries this main cause of Indian wars was rendered innocuous, and the "Great Peace" remained undisturbed. This proud averment of their annalists, confirmed as it is for more than half the period by the evidence of their white neighbors, cannot reasonably be questioned. What nation or confederacy ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... set eyes on ye ag'in," said Jerry, with an innocuous flick of his whiplash, hitting the dasher by intent. "That War ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... matter. Now do tell me what you think, as far as you can judge from my abstract; of course many more experiments would have to be tried; but in former years I tried on the whole leaf, instead of on separate glands, a number of innocuous (This line of investigation made him wish for information on the action of poisons on plants; as in many other cases he applied to Professor Oliver, and in reference to the result wrote to Hooker: "Pray thank Oliver ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another glimpse of ... He ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Chesterfield. It was thronged with elegant ladies and gentlemen. The daughter of the happy household was playing and singing Verdi's "Ah! I have sighed to rest me;" the fond mother was turning the pages; the fond father was sighing and resting up stairs, in a state of innocuous desuetude, produced by the "music" of old Kentucky Bourbon; but he could not withstand the power of the melody below. Quickly he donned his clothing; he put his vest on over his coat; put his collar on hind side foremost; ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... had recovered sufficiently well to be able to speak. "Curl your hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but you'd still remain the Nice Boy. That's why I like you. You're as refreshing and innocuous as a lettuce salad, and you may glare as much as you like. I hope you'll never be spoilt. Come on. We shall be late for dinner." And she made him quicken his step through the ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... monster of terrible potential, yet so innocuous looking that he'd not stand out. I couldn't produce him, couldn't say where in the world he was. Nevertheless he was the basis, the motivation second only to mine. I took the long, hard way—three ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... the champion of a romance then popular) had returned from banishment in the hope, as he was perfectly innocuous, of renewing his ancient friendship with the Scottish king; and James declared that he would again have received him into his service, but for his oath, never more to countenance a Douglas. He blamed his servants for refusing refreshment to the veteran, but did not escape ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... a golden bottle, with cracked ice in a tall glass, with a crisp curl of lemon peel, ready for an innocuous libation, brought his nose down from the heights to look for the foot, found that it no longer barred the way, and ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... Native Guano Company and the Millowners' Association. The former will show all the patents used for the purification of the rivers from sewage, and the latter will display in action their method of rendering innocuous the chemical pollutions which factories pour into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various |
