"Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been unkind enough to throw upon me, that I seem to endeavour to divert more than to improve the Minds of my Readers. Now, as I take it, the Aim of every Person, who pretends to write (tho' in the most insignificant and ludicrous way) ought to tend at least to a good Moral Use; I shou'd be sorry to have my Intentions judg'd to be the very reverse of what they are in reality. How far I have been able to succeed in my Desires of infusing those Cautions, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... dance once later on, but the girl he danced with was very small and insignificant ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... the same method from the Chinese laundry of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as peculiarly affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details of this breach of trust, would find ample retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended Ah ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Opera House, the only two which were left. As they looked around upon the crowded place they were for a time somewhat bewildered. They were not accustomed to seeing so many people together, and they felt very small and insignificant. Several people watched with interest the two boys who stared at everything and everybody in such undisguised wonder. But Rod and Phil did not care. They wanted to see and hear Miss Royanna and it did not matter to ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... to the mansion of her noble relative, three miles off, in a magnificent carriage that was sent for her, in which she must have felt insignificant. Perhaps she got there in time to dress for dinner, perhaps not. Wearers of uniforms wash and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... grown chill and damp by the time they approached its shores. Branchspell was on the point of touching the sea. The Island appeared to be some three or four miles in length. There were first of all broad sands, then low, dark cliffs, and behind these a wilderness of insignificant, swelling hills, entirely devoid of vegetation. The current bore them to within a hundred yards of the coast, when it made a sharp angle, and proceeded to skirt ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... earth's crust. The beds do not, as they would in that case, slope up to it. They slope up from it, to the north-west in one direction, and the south-south-west in the other; and Snowdon is a mere insignificant boss, left hanging on one slope of what was once an enormous trough, or valley, of strata far older than itself. By restoring these strata, in the direction of the angles, in which they crop out, and vanish at the surface, it is found that ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... and so, step by step, they approached until they nearly touched each other. They had left their rifles behind, and we thought that they were going to indulge in a fist fight, all of us being sorry for our champion, for he was a small and insignificant-looking man who looked as if he could be crushed with one blow by his gigantic opponent. But lo, and behold! The big Russian held out his hand which held a package of tobacco and our Austrian, seizing the tobacco, grasped the hand of the ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... disturbance inside and outside the parish, I have no doubt. But as I look back over the years, I also have no doubt that there was something much more fundamental here, at the heart of the trouble. That I was a heretic on the social question was insignificant, for Unitarians have long since learned not only to tolerate but to respect their heretics. What was infinitely more important, as I now see, was the fact that unconsciously through these years, I was coming to question not ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... irresponsible journalism lies in pandering to prejudices and antipathies, in stirring up class hatred or national jingoism. Evil motives are attributed to foreign powers; the German Emperor has designs upon South America; the Japanese are preparing to invade our Pacific Coast. Insignificant words of individuals are headlined and treated as portentous; foreign peoples are caricatured; our national "honor" is held to be in danger daily. Or the capitalists are pictured as universally ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the word rage in the English; and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original, were made to express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened, likewise, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant words in the sentence. I have known the word "and" pursued through the whole gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious "the;" and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon "then," "for," and "from," to the eternal honour ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... family heirloom. As such it belonged to him as the present holder of the property, and to him only. Attention being thus called to it, it was found to be missing, and as no one but the police seemed to be to blame for its loss the matter was hushed up and would have been regarded as too insignificant for comment, the trinket being intrinsically worthless, if Mr. Moore had not continued to make such a fuss about it. This ball, he declared, was worth as much to a Moore as all the rest of his property, which ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... with a despondent but decided air. "Rome took all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, I felt too insignificant to live and gave up all my foolish hopes ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... distressed by much that is offered in the theatres now. I have listened to the talk of an aged American acquaintance (Thurlow Weed), who had seen and known Edmund Kean, and who said that all modern tragedians were insignificant in comparison with him. I have listened to the talk of an aged English acquaintance (Fladgate), who had seen and known John Philip Kemble, and who said that his equal has never since been revealed. The present day knows what the old school ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... dispirited, bewildered, in the face of this mass; he remembered that he had not a gift for words, that he was cowardly and timid, that indifferent people would not be willing to listen and understand him, a law student in his third year, a timid and insignificant person; that genuine missionary work included ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... village. It is a straggling collection of low, red houses, lacking, unfortunately, anything which can honestly be termed picturesque; for the church stands alone, a little to the south, and the small ruin of what is called 'The Danish Tower' is too insignificant to add to the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... work so excellently full of learning; printed and bound with such eminence of skill; so noble a repository or Thesaurus of the accumulated treasures of human learning, that it sets the mind in a glow of wonder. This is the choicest garland for the brain fatigued with the insignificant and trifling tricks by which we earn our daily bread. There is no recreation so lovely as that afforded by books rich in wisdom and ribbed with ripe and sober research. This catalogue (nearly 600 pages) is a marvellous precis of the works ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... struck two millions from the civil list. The first chamber, however, refused its assent to these resolutions, the law of censorship was retained, and the saving in the expenditure of the crown was reduced to an extremely insignificant amount. In the autumn of 1832, Prince Otto, the king's second son, was, with the consent of the sultan, elected king of Greece by the great maritime powers intrusted with the decision of the Greek question, and Count Armansperg, formerly minister ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... memory may be, how can he recall an answer which he may have given weeks and weeks before? The magistrate, however, remembers it; and twenty times, if need be, he brings it up again. And as the small snowflake may become an irresistible avalanche, so an insignificant word, uttered at haphazard, forgotten, then recalled, commented upon, and ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... the only person before whom it seemed to me, from the first, that I could think and speak freely. All those who come about women like me have an interest in calculating their slightest words, in thinking of the consequences of their most insignificant actions. Naturally we have no friends. We have selfish lovers who spend their fortunes, riot on us, as they say, but on their own vanity. For these people we have to be merry when they are merry, well when they want to sup, sceptics like themselves. We ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... plundering and bloodshed. These bands of armed men went about like regular banditti, disturbing the peace of the whole country. They were not much heard of in Europe, because intercommunication and telegraphy did not exist then as they do now, and insignificant affairs of the kind were not taken much ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... her from being caught and dashed to pieces in it. So close, indeed, was she that Leslie began to seriously ask himself whether he was justified in taking the catamaran into a situation of such danger for the mere sake of an insignificant canoe; but reflecting that she was evidently light enough to enable Flora to paddle about in her without much exertion, and that it would afford the girl pleasure to do so; also that the little craft would be very useful for fishing ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... time no insignificant instrument in the hands of the Jacobite party. When he found that the sentence of outlawry was not reversed; when he perceived that he must no longer hope for the peaceable enjoyment of the Lovat inheritance, his whole soul turned to the restoration of King James; ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... Frances duchess-dowager of Suffolk, grandaughter to Henry VII. After the tragical catastrophe of her misguided husband and of lady Jane Grey her eldest daughter, the duchess was suffered to remain in unmolested privacy, and she had since rendered herself utterly insignificant, not to say contemptible, by an obscure marriage with one Stoke, a young man who was her master of the horse. There is a tradition, that on Elizabeth's exclaiming with surprise and indignation when the news of this connexion reached her ears, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... permitted to narrate a personal incident which occurred before I left Montgomery. One evening about sunset, while I was waiting in the office of the Secretary of War, for the comparatively insignificant sum of money to be provided for my expenses to England, Mr. Davis greeted me as Major. I replied: "I might ask, Mr. President, in what regiment," having in mind the well known anecdote of the subaltern who, on handing the Emperor Napoleon his chapeau which had fallen, ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... open air was necessarily associated with cant. Now I like it far the best. Not merely because it is more sanitary—till some one learns how to ventilate a building decently—but because it absolutely forces you to feel insignificant, and anxious that the great Creator should condescend to care about a mosquito like you. Moreover, I have often noticed out in the open a unity between those of different sects that was perfectly delightful. Meanwhile ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... to give the right of franchise to all householders who paid L10 a year in rates, and who qualified to serve on juries. He also proposed to disfranchise the numerous "rotten boroughs" which were in the gift of noblemen and great landed proprietors,—boroughs which had an insignificant number of voters; by which measure one hundred and sixty-eight parliamentary vacancies would occur. These vacancies were to be partially filled by sending two members each from seven large towns, and one member each from twenty smaller towns which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... the same high authority in experimental physics, let us consider the aggregate weight of these molecular machines. We will not marshal their aggregate numbers in a row, for an array of forty billions of them would make too insignificant a figure for inspection; but simply give their actual weight as computed under the French or metric system. Take, then, a million million million million of these machines, throwing in molecules and all, and they will weigh, if there is no indiscreet kicking of the beam, just a fraction between ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... suggest to me. I reminded them how Julius Caesar refused to take precautions against assassination, because life was not worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all are in the life of the world. Suppose the worse to happen, I said, addressing a portly jeweller from Cheapside,—suppose even yourself to be the victim, il n'y a pas d'homme necessaire. We should miss you for a day or ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... compensation. The mission was, indeed, doomed from the outset, and nothing more need be said of it than that in the end, to secure any treaty at all, Monroe and Pinkney broke their instructions and set aside the three ultimata. What they obtained in return seemed so insignificant and doubtful, and what they paid for even these slender compensations seemed so exorbitant, that the President would not even submit the treaty to the Senate. The first application of the theory of peaceable ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... know that I can tell you anything more than is contained in two sentences from the Chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta Family: "I feel an atom—but an atom in a solid, God-governed world, where truth is mightiest; insignificant in myself as the little mosses which flutter on these ancient stones; but yet a little moss on a great rock which cannot be shaken—the rock of God's providence and love." "God's common gifts are His most precious; ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... ones are black, and look like tiny fish-hooks. A large proportion of these Mamillarias are far more interesting in the form and arrangement of their tubercles and spines than in any floral character, and it is on this account that so many which are insignificant as flowering plants ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... years to the Russian's five. The officers of the Finnish Army were to be Finns, and this army could not be called upon to serve outside of the Grand Duchy. This was the first fundamental right of the Finns to be attacked by the Russian Government. In some mysterious way the very insignificant army of Finland "interfered with the general welfare of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... cupboard which hung over a black, sluggish canal, and was without stove or fire-place. The cost of this chamber was five marks a month, or scarcely one shilling and sixpence a week. These expenses will appear paltry and insignificant, till compared with the amount of wages received, when it will be apparent that boarding and lodging in an English hotel at eleven shillings and odd pence a week, was a monstrous extravagance; and that even an apartment in a German gasthaus, at five marks a month, was more than the slender pittance ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... attack on Willis very probably did him good; he needed a little discipline, and though he got it too unsparingly, some cautions came with it which were worth the stripes he had to smart under. One noble writer Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors before referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an American writer, "who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the atomic bomb and are completely absent in T.N.T. explosions. The light of longer wave length (visible and ultra-violet) is also emitted by a T.N.T. explosion, but with much smaller intensity than by an atomic bomb, which makes it insignificant as ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... "are endowed by nature with a wonderful instinct in finding their way. Where a European would be at a loss, they never hesitate for a moment. An insignificant fragment of rock, a pebble, a tuft of grass, a different shade of color in the sand, suffice to guide them with accuracy. During the night they go by the polar star. They never travel more than two miles ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... and profound histories written in memories of the deeds of renown and glory they have executed. An American 74-gun ship would hardly float the mountains of tomes written upon Bonaparte and his brilliant career, as a soldier and a conqueror; but how precious few, insignificant pages do we ever see of the misdeeds, tyrannies and acts of petty and contemptuous meanness so great a man was guilty of! Why should authors and orators be so reluctant to tell the truth of a great man's follies and crimes, seeing with what convenience ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... himself in a constant state of antagonism to a powerful, active, and vindictive majority in a debating body, constituted of such material as then made up the House of Representatives, wore hardly even upon the iron temper and inflexible disposition of Mr. Adams. "The most insignificant error of conduct in me at this time," he writes in April, 1837, "would be my irredeemable ruin in this world; and both the ruling political parties are watching with intense anxiety for some overt act by me to set the whole pack of their hireling presses upon me." But amid the ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... becoming attorney-general in 1782, but was elevated to the bench as chief baron of the exchequer in 1783. He was created (Irish) Baron Avonmore in 1795, and in 1800 (Irish) viscount. Among his colleagues at the Irish bar Yelverton was a popular and charming companion. Of insignificant appearance, he owed his early successes to his remarkable eloquence, which made a great impression on his contemporaries; as a judge, he was inclined to take the view of the advocate rather than that of the impartial lawyer. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... absolutely commonplace ending (the marriage of Flora to Charles Haslam), and then substituted one which, if not very brilliant, was at least ingenious and unforeseen. Thus, by defeating the expectation of a superlatively bad act, he made a positively insignificant act seem comparatively good. Such feats of craftsmanship are entertaining, but too dangerous to be ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... that he was desirous of attending divine worship in the church opposite, but added, pointing to his shabby and travel-stained attire, that, without at least a new pair of shoes and stockings, he was unfit to join the congregation. Insignificant as ever, the small, pious, dusty stranger excited no suspicion in the mind of the good-natured sergeant. He forthwith spoke of the want of Gerard to an officer, by whom they were communicated to Orange ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... to be omitted.—"Besides fish and vegetable food, these people have dogs which live upon fish, and are reckoned excellent meat by the natives of the Society Islands, to whom they are known. Thus Providence, in its wise dispensations, made even those insignificant narrow ledges rich enough in the productions of nature, to supply a whole race of men with the necessaries of life. And here we cannot but express our admiration, that the minutest agents are subservient to the purposes of the Almighty ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... attack of buildings common shell are superior to shrapnel and they are used to attack troops posted behind cover where it is impossible for shrapnel to reach them; their effect against troops is, however, generally insignificant. When filled with lyddite, melinite, &c., they are called high-explosive (H.E.) shell (see below). Common shell for modern high-velocity guns may be made of cast steel or forged steel; those made of cast iron are now generally made for practice, as they are found to break up on impact, even against ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... statues placed in sacred edifices that seem to sink under their load, and almost to perspire, when in reality they are void of sensation, and do not contribute to the stony stability, so these men would wish to look like Atlases, when they are no better than statues of stone, insignificant scrubs, funguses, dolts, little different from stone. Meanwhile really learned men, endowed with all that can adorn a holy life, men who have endured the heat of mid-day, by some unjust lot obey these, dizzards, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... unfortunately not resulted in anything. We know now that his diamonds, still to be seen about Cap Rouge, are rock crystals. The gold which he later on showed to Roberval, and which was tested, proved genuine enough, but the quantity of such deposits in the region has proved insignificant. It is very likely that Cartier would make the most of his mineral discoveries as the readiest means of ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... hear it said that this man, since the date of his conversion, from five to ten years ago, has seldom been absent from his post, and never without good reason for it. His duty may have been comparatively insignificant, "only a door-keeper," "only a War Cry seller," yet Sunday after Sunday, evening after evening, he would be present, no matter who the commanding officer might be, to do his part, bearing with the unruly, breathing hope into the distressed, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... clanking of armor and a flapping of gorgeous new mantles, warmed by the horns of parting ale that had steamed down their throats, singing and boasting and laughing, and cheered by the rabble that ran alongside, their way down to the shore lay directly over the head of this insignificant pebble. Who would have thought of avoiding it? Yet, though a score of children's feet danced over it unharmed, and sixty pairs of horses' hoofs pranced over it unhindered, when Eric reached it his good bay mare stumbled against ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... town, cut in two in its entire length by a broad, paved street. Its modest inhabitants cannot possibly look any more stupid or insignificant than ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... insignificant, insipid woman, of about forty years of age. She never reads, never talks, and I believe I am not wrong in saying, never thinks. She seems to look without seeing, and listen without hearing, and her sole occupation consists in giving her orders to her com- panion, ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... hunting and Indian fighting I have ever done, I never had anything to scare me as did that little, insignificant bear. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... the place is insignificant, and what there is consists chiefly of a transit trade, for, being really little more than a large station of camel-keepers, Harish has no trade of its own. It has, therefore, much suffered from ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... town, with a cathedral that is not very old. We are told that its bishop once sold its peal of bells, and, going down to the shore to see them shipped away, was stricken blind as a punishment for the sacrilege. Of Bangor Castle, as it originally stood, but insignificant traces remain, but Lord Penrhyn has recently erected in the neighborhood the imposing castle of Penryhn, a massive pile of dark limestone, in which the endeavor is made to combine a Norman feudal castle with a modern dwelling, though ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... in desultory and unsupported personal efforts. The use of the bayonet and very slight military instruction would have saved most of those who fell on this occasion, and would have rendered unnecessary those redoubts which delay the progress of your arms, and destroy more men in insignificant enterprises which tend to no result, than would be required for the deliverance of your country. The affairs of Greece require energy, and that remedy be at once applied to whatever ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... personality. Such subtle intermingling of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and intricate brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet without which we achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever insignificant impressions, a kind of glorified journalism, holding much the same relation to the deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev, Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the first scientific estimate of the sun's distance was derived. It appeared to be nearly eighty-seven millions of miles (parallax 9.5"); while Flamsteed deduced 81,700,000 (parallax 10") from his independent observations of the same occurrence—a difference quite insignificant at that stage of the inquiry. But Picard's result was just half Flamsteed's (parallax 20"; distance forty-one million miles); and Lahire considered that we must be separated from the hearth of our system by an interval of at least 136 million miles.[750] So ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... no fault of his own, insensible to their attractions. Take him up the mount of vision, and show him the finest scene in Nature, and, instead of taking in the whole circle of its beauty, he will, quite as likely, have his attention engrossed by something mean and insignificant under his nose. I was reminded of this, on taking a little boy, three years old, to the top of the New York Reservoir. Placing him on one of the parapets, I endeavored to call his attention to the more salient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... fancied that now he had conquered this woman, and the woman fancied that she had already sinned sufficiently to be condemned for ever. It is true she had only been walking arm-in-arm with Rudolf throughout one long hour, and they had only been talking of insignificant, comical, general topics. But oh, through it all she had felt a sinful pleasure in her heart. And what did it matter that nobody knew, she herself felt that that happiness was ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of such labor and sacrifices made its appearance in the world, which was on January 1, 1831, it was, in point of size, insignificant enough. It did not look as if its voice would ever reach beyond the small dark chamber where it saw the light. Picture, oh! reader, a wee sheet with four columns to the page, measuring fourteen inches one ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... person, or else modelled from the same formula. All had the same source of inspiration. This, however, does not militate against the moral effect of those uttering them. So far as Scotland is concerned, it must be regarded as a fair representation of the sentiment of the people. While only an insignificant part of the Highlands gave their humble petitions, yet the subsequent acts must be the criterion from which ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just conception of the nature and the extent of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place in any one group of animals or plants is quite incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a necessary process of a progressive development, entirely comprised within the ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... was done by an angel who descended from heaven expressly for the purpose. This being so, one would expect to find its home on the top of the very Mountain itself, in the chief place of the comune, and not down at an insignificant little village like Custonaci. Some have thought that to allow the Sanctuary of a Madonna Ericina to take the place of the Temple of Venus Erycina would have been to insist on a parallelism about which it was desirable to say as little as possible. Others believe ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... the dykes themselves, which are raised upon the edge of the meadows, and are quite insignificant in height, albeit of great extent otherwise. But from the bottom of the dykes to the edge of yonder sparkling water, there is a bare beach, full three miles in extent. What does this mean? What are these dykes for, if the enemy is so far off? The answer to this query ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... that the tutor, whom we took to be forty, is a young man, some years under thirty. My governess, to whom I had handed him over, remarked on the beauty of his black hair and of his pearly teeth. As to his eyes, they are velvet and fire; but he is plain and insignificant. Though the Spaniards have been described as not a cleanly people, this man is most carefully got up, and his hands are whiter than his face. He stoops a little, and has an extremely large, oddly-shaped head. His ugliness, which, however, has a dash of piquancy, is aggravated ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... ere long on the horizon of Sweetwater Bluff. Insignificant at first, it suddenly spread over the sky and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... wear in a public conveyance. We roar through a wonderful and exciting world, and all the while we sit with glazed eyes and cotton-wool in our ears, and think about ourselves. They were mostly men in Jay's 'bus at that moment; they were almost all alike, and all insignificant, but not one of them knew it. Such a lot of men could never be loved by ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... dissipates these objections. Both Grijalva and Cortes note the powerful current of the Rio de Tabasco, carrying fresh water six miles out to sea, as is observed to-day,[7-1] and this is not in the least applicable to the insignificant stream flowing out of the Dos Bocas. M. Charnay was misinformed when he stated there is no island at the mouth of the Rio de Tabasco. There are in fact two, one, long and narrow, known as the Isla de Grijalva, the ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton
... in every thought and feeling as they once had been. No unkind words had passed on either side, at least none which could really be regarded as such, for the trifles which had gradually produced this feeling of separation were almost too insignificant to call forth absolute unkindness; yet still they did ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the eggs are laid, recover themselves when the double saw of the oviduct is removed. Sometimes, but by no means always, you may see between the fibres a tiny glistening patch like a touch of dried white of egg. This is only an insignificant trace of some albuminous secretion accompanying the egg or facilitating the work of the double saw ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Washington paper said: "There were a good many men in the audience and they did not look much as they do in the comic papers. The suffragists' husbands in caricature are consumptive, cadaverous, insignificant mortals, trailing around in the wake of rambunctious and overwhelming wives; but most of the men who mixed themselves up with this convention looked as if they could not very easily have been dragged there if they had not wanted to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... not make the tree good, so good works must follow the new birth, although they do not make man accepted before God; but as the tree must first be good, so also must man be first accepted before God by faith for Christ's sake. The works are too insignificant to render God gracious to us for their sake, if He were not gracious to us for Christ's sake. Therefore James does not contradict St. Paul, and does not say that by our works we merit, etc.] And here to be justified ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... age I realized that I had exceptional abilities. Only a fool underestimates his capabilities. My brain power was greatly above the average. I know that I was born to succeed. My appearance was the only thing against me. I was quiet and insignificant—utterly nondescript.... ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... "like all social theories and practical mass movements, Socialism produces certain divergent schools, bastard offshoots clustering around the main trunk of the tree, large in number and variety, but insignificant in size and strength. Thus we hear of State Socialism, Socialism of the Chair, Christian Socialism ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... time to watch for the lines of ducks crossing the sky, and be ready to find black ducks in the oddest places—even in insignificant rain pools deep in the woods. In the early spring the great flocks of grackles and redwings return, among the first to arrive as they were the last ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... laughing quietly. "My ideas are pretty well-known; but I am too insignificant a fellow for what I say to be noticed. Now if it ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... the slope of a green down, and stood still and then sat down in pure astonishment. Was this Stonehenge—this cluster of poor little grey stones, looking in the distance like a small flock of sheep or goats grazing on that immense down! How incredibly insignificant it appeared to me, dwarfed by its surroundings—woods and groves and farmhouses, and by the vast extent of rolling down country visible at that point. It was only when I had recovered from the first shock, when I had got to the very place and stood among the stones, that I began to experience ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... experience has furnished the debtors with ways and means to evade the force of this statute, and to secure their estate against the reach of it, which renders it often insignificant, and consequently, the knave against whom the law was particularly bent gets off, while he only who fails of mere necessity, and whose honest principle will not permit him to practise those methods, ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... particular person. It might be the veriest trifle. Some found it, it seemed, in the colour of an eye; some in the modulations of a voice, the curve of a lip, the shape of a hand, the lines of a body in motion. Whatever it chanced to be, it was, in most cases, an insignificant characteristic, which, for others, simply did not exist, but which, to the one affected by it, made instant appeal, and just to that corner of the soul which had hitherto suffered aimlessly for the want of it—a suffering which nothing but this ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the young gentleman in question?" he asked, in a tone that roused Dick's ire. To tell the truth, he was a little disappointed by Nan's choice. It was not so much Dick's want of good looks, but in Sir Harry eyes he appeared somewhat insignificant; and then a scowl is not always becoming to a face. Dick's bright genial expression was wanting; he looked a little too like his father at this moment ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... than pretty," he said to himself, affecting to be critical when he was indeed convinced. "Her mouth is fabulous, but it is well shaped and the rest is perfect—no, the nose is insignificant, and one of those yellow eyes wanders a little. These are not perfections. But what does it matter? The whole is charming, whatever the parts may be. I wish she would not go to that horrible ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... told me that all this would happen to me some day, and said I should lose my sight by the hand of Ulysses. I have been all along expecting some one of imposing presence and superhuman strength, whereas he turns out to be a little insignificant weakling, who has managed to blind my eye by taking advantage of me in my drink; come here, then, Ulysses, that I may make you presents to show my hospitality, and urge Neptune to help you forward on your journey—for Neptune and I are father and son. ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... was as though she had grown all at once into something more in his eyes than Mrs. Fountain's little stepdaughter, who was, no doubt, useful as a nurse and a companion, but radically unwelcome and insignificant none the less. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... behind, and at the sides, one after another of the "town" rushing out dealt Tom a blow and vanished again into the crowd. For a moment or two he kept his head and temper; the assailants individually were too insignificant to put out his strength upon; but head and temper were rapidly going;—he was like a bull in the arena with the picadores sticking their little javelins in him. A smart blow on the nose, which set a myriad of stars dancing before his eyes, finished the business, and he rushed after ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to throw into the dust heap our hope that humanity will some day reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will appear but an insignificant speck on earth, well and good! Then let us be patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics; but we ought, at least, not to clothe ourselves in the mantel of Faust, in our pretentious sweep through space. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... the universe to us, and our splendour to the universe; that we carry about in every particle of us a spiritual germ which is not the spiritual germ of our father or our mother or any of our remote ancestors; so that what we take is insignificant beside what ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... regarded it as not only injurious to the royal dignity, and to his sister, but also to himself; therefore to anticipate his father, he said, "Sir, I hope your majesty will forgive me for daring to ask, if it is possible your majesty should hesitate about a denial to so insolent a demand from such an insignificant fellow, and so scandalous a juggler? or give him reason to flatter himself a moment with being allied to one of the most powerful monarchs in the world? I beg of you to consider what you owe to yourself, to your own blood, and the high rank ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... in no measure due to any lack of dash or courage on the part of our indomitable Infantry. Practically every Officer of the attacking Battalions was killed or wounded, and a large proportion of the men, and but an insignificant proportion fell alive into the hands of ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... that Decimus was not inclined to yield, left him to the charge of his brother Lucius, and himself proceeded against Caesar and Hirtius. The two armies faced each other for a number of days and a few insignificant cavalry battles occurred, with honors even. Finally the Celtic cavalry, of whom Caesar had gained possession along with the elephants, withdrew to Antony's side again. They had started from the camp with the rest and had gone on ahead as if intending to engage separately those of ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... anything for some time, but all looked helplessly to where the vessels—from this elevation insignificant among the tumbling waters—were pounding ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... for reprinting this somewhat insignificant Book is, that certain parties, of the pirate species, were preparing to reprint it for me. There are books, as there are horses, which a judicious owner, on fair survey of them, might prefer to adjust by at once shooting through the head: but in the case of books, owing to the pirate ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... heavily upon him. From daybreak to dusk he was cooped within a little insignificant room which looked out upon a little insignificant street. His window, however, though it promised little diversion, was his one resource. Gaydon was a man of observation, and found a pleasure in guessing at this and that ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Mr. Morris, Treasurer, persuaded Congress to form a bank (the Bank of North America) with a capital of $10,000,000, of which $400,000 should be turned over to help the national finances. The capital was too insignificant and the course of politics too unpropitious to accomplish this end. However, the example encouraged the States to take up their paper money. Upon the adoption of the United States Constitution the issuing of paper money ceased, and gold and silver were ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... insignificant, and, at this time of year, desolate-looking town, in the bosom of the mountains, where we were fain to lodge for the night as we best could, having good reason to congratulate ourselves on our precaution in taking provisions, particularly bread, wine, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant- looking person he knew of who ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... all under the feudal system of government, the chieftainship is hereditary, and although the chief is usually the greatest ass, and the most insignificant of the tribe in appearance, the people pay a deference to him which is truly astonishing.... I feel the benefit often of your instructions, and of those I got through your kindness. Here I have an immense practice. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... and named curtly a sum which was in itself so insignificant that any other person than Heyst would have exclaimed at it. And even Heyst could hardly keep incredulity out of his politely modulated voice as he asked if it was a fact that Morrison had not that amount ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... to field. Yet he was never satisfied with gaining; for the little he had, looked so small compared with the wealth of the world, after the whole of which his heart really panted, as to appear at times actually insignificant. Thus, as he grew older, he set a value upon what he had, as the means of gaining more, and in his parting with money, did so at the expense of a daily ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... it is more delicate and agreeable in flavour than any of the land-cresses; the leaves are of a pale tender green, winged and slender; the plant looks like a green cushion at the bottom of the water. The flowers are yellow, cruciform, and insignificant; it makes a very acceptable salad in the early spring, and at the fall of the year. There are also several species of land- cress, and plants resembling some of the cabbage tribes, that might be used as spring vegetables. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... the Carsons in the fulfilment of an aspiration. Mrs. R. Gordon Carson bored him. Her fussy conscious manners bespoke too plainly the insignificant suburban society in which she had played a minor part. He came because Dr. Lindsay had told him casually that Louise Hitchcock was in town again. He arrived late, when the lecture was nearly over, and lingered in the hall on the fringe of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... feeling. A crown of thorns is twisted around the brow. But this figure, as well as the whole of the outside and inside of the church, stands in great need of being repaired. The towers are low, with insignificant turrets; the latter evidently a later erection—probably at the commencement of the sixteenth century. The eastern extremity, as well indeed as the aisles, is surrounded by buttresses; and the sharp-pointed, or ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... murdering the greatest statesman of the Eastern hemisphere was simply grotesque. Moreover, she had most distinctly not wanted to deprive China of a distinguished man. She had expressly stipulated for an inferior and insignificant mandarin, one that could be spared and that was unknown to Reuter. She supposed she ought to have looked up China at the Wedgwood Institution and selected a definite mandarin with a definite place of residence. But could she be expected ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... insignificant looking creature, not at all the sort of person one would associate with threats of the kind that Ruth Morton had been receiving. She appeared to be greatly ashamed of her sudden collapse, and kept insisting, in spite of her evident ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... just at the very smilax of that awful adventure. But really, Clytie, so many things have happened since, and every minute is so full of pleasures or catastrophes, that, as I look back, that one seems almost insignificant. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... first copper-work was established on the banks of the Tawy, about a century ago, Swansea was comparatively an insignificant village. It is therefore to this branch of industry the town and port are chiefly indebted for their remarkable rise and progress. The population in 1801 was only about 6000; while in 1851, if we include the copper-smelting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... assist him in cleaving to the brisket Geoffrey De Burgh; and Ealfried's great grandfather, the gigantic Ullafrid, had required no other arms than those which nature gave him to hurl from the top of his own castle a cousin of the base invading Norman. To her all modern English names were equally insignificant. Hengist, Horsa, and such like, had for her the only true savour of nobility. She was not contented unless she could go beyond the Saxons; and would certainly have christened her children, had she had children, by the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... only a few insignificant shops remain open even in the poor districts of London; sweets you can purchase, and tobacco, but not much else that is sold across an ordinary counter. The more noticeable becomes the brisk trade of public-houses. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... task or to die in the attempt. From my youth I had been inured to hardships and endurance in wild sports in tropical climates, and when I gazed upon the map of Africa I had a wild hope, mingled with humility, that, even as the insignificant worm bores through the hardest oak, I might by perseverance ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... rats. If we multiply twenty-two by twenty, we shall have four hundred; four hundred accomplices let loose in the old church of the Capuchins, where Fario has stored all his grain, will consume a not insignificant quantity! But be lively about it! There's no time to lose. Fario is to deliver most of the grain to his customers in a week or so; and I am determined that that Spaniard shall find a terrible deficit. Gentlemen, I ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... like Trojans, and, sitting beneath the wisteria tree that climbed the southern wall of the cottage, Mrs. Bittacy with her knitting watched them, calling from time to time insignificant messages of counsel and advice. The messages passed, of course, unheeded. Mostly, indeed, they were unheard, for the workers were too absorbed. She warned her husband not to get too hot, Alice not to tear her dress, Stephen not to strain his back with pulling. Her mind hovered ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... "repelled by that appearance of insincerity and shallowness of tone which seems its inevitable drawback," because "the mind of the reader always bent to pick up clews receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art." They hoped to find a new way of handling the old tale of mystery, so that they might get the profit without paying the price. But already in his criticism of 'Barnaby Rudge' had Poe showed why disappointment was unavoidable, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... accusative "dust of the ground" is, as some say, a mere appositive, or, as others explain it, the accusative of matter. When the account calls man dust of the ground, or a being formed of dust, the difference is infinitely insignificant, whether the earthly matter out of which God formed man who is dust of the earth, was an animal organism or not; whether man was formed {316} directly or indirectly out of the earth, and whether ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... he had been the property of one Abalene Morris, a person of color, who would have explained himself as engaged in the hauling business. On the contrary, the hauling business was an insignificant side line with Mr. Morris, for he had long ago given himself, as utterly as fortune permitted, to that talent which, early in youth, he had recognized as the greatest of all those surging in his bosom. In his waking thoughts and in his dreams, in health and ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... The apparently insignificant event that initiated the extraordinary series of adventures, of which this is the narrative, occurred about the hour of 8 a.m. on a certain day of September in the year of our Lord 19—; and it consisted in the delivery by the postman ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... here—that's made for the most part in Brummagem)—a 'Brum' sovereign may be bought for about four-and-six; a bad crown piece for a good bob; a half-crown for about fippence; a bob for two pence half-penny, and so on. As for the sixpennys and fourpennys, we don't make many on 'em, their wallie bein' too insignificant." Mr. Joe then proceeded with some further remarks for the benefit ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... destruccion * * * del ano 1645" tells us, "when first founded, Manila consisted of wooden houses roofed with a certain kind of palm leaves, the same which the natives use in their buildings." Hence the damage done by these earthquakes must have been insignificant. Much more terrible were the losses caused by conflagrations which within a few years twice wiped out the ...
— Catalogue of Violent and Destructive Earthquakes in the Philippines - With an Appendix: Earthquakes in the Marianas Islands 1599-1909 • Miguel Saderra Maso
... time, one or two adventurous travellers pushed into Asia, and men began to ascertain that the world was not the insignificant disc, or cylinder, or ball they had deemed it. Perhaps one of the chief among those adventurous travellers was Marco Polo, a Venetian, who lived in the latter part of the thirteenth century. He made known the central and eastern portions ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... said nothing about making a present to any one of even the most insignificant of his opals! And the one which Major Jones now handed round was certainly a magnificent stone. Peter Ruff examined it with the rest, and under the pretext of studying the setting, gazed steadfastly at the inside through his eyeglass. Major Jones, from ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to his uneasy pacing, but now with an irrational and supporting sense of duty done. He had dug his grave that morning; now he had carved his epitaph; the folds of the toga were composed, why should he delay the insignificant trifle that remained to do? He paused and looked long in the face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance. Could the thing continue? What bound him now? Had he no rights?—only the obligation to go on, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... spurious article; whence it comes, that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the animal palmed off on the unsophisticated as genuine has nothing of the real stuff in his constitution, but is simply a shallow imitation, compounded according to prescription,—one part common cur-terrier to two parts insignificant French poodle. And so I take leave of the Skye terrier with a caveat emptor to the purchaser who does not want to be sold while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... it—the word that Turguenieff's people are constantly uttering—is another. Moreover, in the dearth of commanding traits and stirring events, there is a continual temptation to magnify those which are petty and insignificant. Instead of a telescope to sweep the heavens, we are furnished with a microscope to detect infusoria. We want a description of a mountain; and, instead of receiving an outline, naked and severe, perhaps, but true and impressive, we are introduced to a tiny field ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the war; and the treaty of peace with the United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that the end at which they aimed had been fully reached. In half their great effort against the world-power of Britain they had utterly ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... the dancer are far from insignificant to the character he is representing. Their expression should be strictly conformable to his subject. The eye especially should speak. Thence it is that the Italian custom of dancing with uncovered faces, cannot but be more advantageous than that of dancing masked, as ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... can excuse—the apparent want of taste, of humanity, of decency, in proposing the inquiry at a meeting over which the person chiefly concerned would naturally preside, unless he were warned to absent himself. Nobody cares for the contemptible point, the wholly insignificant question, whether allusion to Mr. Gerrish's variety store was intended or not. What we are all anxious to know is whether he represents any considerable portion of this society in his general attack ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Eminent Person "humoured his reputation," and the anxiety with which that Eminent Person concealed his true character, I found my young illusions very rapidly fading. On one occasion, when George Eliot was very much pestered by an unknown lady, an insignificant individual, who had thrust herself somewhat pertinaciously upon her, she turned to me and asked, with a smile, for my opinion? I gave it, rudely enough, to the effect that it was good for "distinguished people" to be ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... it was made up of rigid old women, withered and graceless, whose conversation turned on the differences which distinguished various preachers and confessors, on their own petty indispositions, on religious events insignificant even to the "Quotidienne" or "l'Ami de la Religion." As for the men who appeared in the Comtesse de Granville's salon, they extinguished any possible torch of love, so cold and sadly resigned were their faces. They were all of an ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... stood in its midst; a circular platform, surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people were sitting in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in the regular old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a small and remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European ships, retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The sight was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed, soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground, laughing and talking, with their knees ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... I did not dare. Then I was too poor a man, too insignificant to dare to lay bare to you the thoughts, the fears, the hopes that were ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... spite of their fire and smoke, appear but insignificant pigmies compared to that mighty mountain which rises in their neighbourhood—the majestic Chimborazo. We could see far off its snow-white dome, free of clouds, towering into the deep blue sky, many thousand feet above the ocean; while on the other side its brother, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the sun; the drowsy yesterdays which preceded it; with the picture of this very man who in the past had never stood to her for anything but a pleasant companion at tea, the present situation seemed absurd and unreal. What was she that her insignificant actions should be of such moment? She had but one object in mind: to place Danbury without the power of all this strife, and she was even balked in that. For the first time she realized fully what a serious crisis he had precipitated. But it was too late for her ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Seventh: Human progress is due to intellectual activity, which continually changes and expands, rather than to moral agencies, which from the beginnings of society have been more or less stationary. Eighth: In human affairs in general, individual efforts are insignificant, and great men work for evil rather than for good, and are moreover merely incidental to their age. Ninth: Religion, literature, art, and government instead of being causes of civilization, are merely its products. Tenth: The progress of civilization ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... man, who was sent to France as the official representative of the Afro-American press by the Committee on Public Information, has written many of the incidents, and told others from the rostrum. He has told how the small insignificant, crowded freight cars in which the soldiers traveled looked like Pullman parlor coaches ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... is too insignificant to be sought as an ally where there are so many parties," he replied, indifferently. "Those two are with Anjou, who may have use for as many adherents as he can get one of these days. They say he is always meditating rebellion with the Huguenots or the Politiques, or both, and I don't blame ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the astonishing fatuity which marked their comments. Billy Fairfax had made the remark about the ship's cat a dozen times. And a dozen times, it had elicited from the others a clamor of similar chatter, of insignificant haphazard detail which began ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... drawn over my mind, through which he could neither judge of my good nor bad qualities. How, then, can I flatter myself, or do the Count Sobieski so great an injury, as to imagine that he could conceive any preference for so insignificant a being as ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Only for an instant, and it was insulated inside. Even so it must be uncomfortable—and the process would be repeated outside. The doctor wasn't taking any chances. "Try to sleep," he said. "Ring if there's a change in your condition—even if you think it's insignificant." ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace
... usual on such occasions, by the friends of the movement. It was called "a great concourse of citizens," but Hamilton, who was then in Philadelphia, and whose truthfulness has never been questioned, placed the number at an insignificant figure. In a letter to a friend, he said, "It is seldom easy to speak with absolute certainty in such cases, but from all I could observe, or have been able to learn, I believe the number would be stated high at a hundred persons." Of a meeting convened ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... has been called unpicturesque, owing to its low central tower and insignificant pinnacles. It is, however, a huge building, and its interior is so richly decorated that it more resembles a cathedral than a parish church. It possesses the finest fan-vault in existence, covered with gilded bosses and heraldic ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... your disparaging remarks about this "insignificant little island." Do you realize that this same "insignificant little island" is four times bigger than Scotland, and that it has under its dominion a large section of Labrador? If, as the local people say, "God made the world in five days, made Labrador ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... other Powers, and seek justice there? Yes, thank God! justice is still to be found, even for the most insignificant; but it is precisely the justice which will convict us. If we want justice, we must be in a position to ask it ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... which can come in to dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening, the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery soul',—contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the scheme of 'making ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... of a universal lover, and too little of an enthusiast, that he has an irritating and ungentlemanly habit of seeing blemishes in the greatest, a pottering and peddling fancy for discovering beauties in the most insignificant; that he lacks the exclusiveness and the fastidiousness of intellectual aristocracy, the fervour and rapture of aesthetic passion. To this, one can answer little more than, "It may be so." Certainly ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... working talent. They know how to deal with the facts before them, to put things into a practical shape, and they value men only as they can forward the work. But some new man comes there, who has no capacity for helping them at all, is insignificant, and nobody in the committee, but has a talent for speaking. In the debate with open doors, this precious person makes a speech, which is printed, and read all over the Union, and he at once becomes famous, and takes the lead in the public mind over all these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... seemed rather to indicate a confidence that the Governor General would punish as was fitting the impertinence of the intruders from Kaintock. He bestowed only a single glance upon them, as if his victory over such insignificant opponents were already assured. The blood slowly rose to the faces of Paul and Henry, but they were about to witness an extraordinary exhibition ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was no better than a gambling-hell and drinking-booth, the dry goods side of his enterprise being almost insignificant. For he knew that the more surely his customers could indulge in such pastimes in comparative comfort the more surely he would keep them. So he made these things the basis of his trade. But there were other needs to be provided for. Therefore, on the completion of his new saloon, and ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the water could not proceed any higher. The water being found partly fresh, Mr. Chaffers took the dingey and went up two or three miles farther, where she also grounded, but in a fresh-water river. The water was muddy, and though the stream was most insignificant in size, it would be difficult to account for its origin, except from the melting snow on the Cordillera. At the spot where we bivouacked, we were surrounded by bold cliffs and steep pinnacles of porphyry. I do not think ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... cease to behold. Out of small matters like these are all moral joys built up, and these are profounder far than intellectual or physical joys. Translate into words the feeling that spurs on the hero, and how trivial it seems! Insignificant too does the idea of duty appear that Cato the younger had formed, when compared with the enormous disturbance it caused in a mighty empire, or the terrible death it brought on. And yet, was not Cato's idea far greater ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... thing for him," Runnels ran on, evidently warmed to his subject. "She's made his reputation; he has money and position. For my part, I'd rather remain insignificant and have a real wife, even if she does have hysterics over a ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... we do not think we {223} are wrong in saying that they leave a great many minds singularly ill at ease, in a condition of vague but unmistakeable discomfort, oppressed by the vastness of the universe as revealed by science, feeling lost and utterly insignificant in this illimitable expanse of worlds on circling worlds, and aeons upon exhaustless aeons. It was possible, when the universe was regarded as a comparatively small affair, with our earth as its veritable centre, to think oneself of sufficient ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... scandal that in a country like this, where the vast majority are religious, you are quarrelling so much about the trifles that separate you, that the only way to peace seems to be to take religion out of the schools altogether, and train the children only in morality, allowing an insignificant minority to have its way? Why! we have done better than that in India, we Theosophists. Hindu Theosophists have founded there a College in which, despite all their sects and all their religious quarrels, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant |
