"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a year would have added immensely to his worries. He would not have known what to do with it, and the voluntary cutting of his salary relieved him of a weight of responsibility. Perhaps also he was far-seeing enough to realise that he would be less the mere creature of the Egyptian ruler with the smaller than with the larger salary, while he could gratify his own inner pride that no one should say that any sordid motive had a part in his working for semi-civilized potentates, whether Chinese ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... answered Reding; "I have come to my resolution with great deliberation. It has remained on my mind as a mere intellectual conclusion for a year or two; surely now at length without blame I may change it into a practical resolve. But none of us can answer that those habitual and ruling convictions, on which it is our duty to act, will remain before our consciousness every ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... which the rites of the Roman church are held by the great bulk of Protestants was a profound secret. The idea of worshipping an image never crossed her innocent mind; and although she often knelt before her own little ivory crucifix, she had never supposed any could be so ignorant as to confound the mere material representation of the sacrifice it was meant to portray with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... self-possession disconcerted this juge d'instruction. He was asked if he were married, and had a family. He replied, 'Yes, I have a wife and eight children.' He was then shown into the back office, where the 'judges' were. These judges were mere boys, who seemed quite proud of the part they were playing, and gave themselves no end of airs, I asked the governor of the gaol soon afterwards what had been done with the gendarme. He told me that they were going to shoot him. I replied, 'Surely it can't be true. I must see the president—we ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... a house proper for our dwelling, and so went to housekeeping; we had not been long together but I found that gay temper of my wife returned, and she threw off the mask of her gravity and good conduct that I had so long fancied was her mere natural disposition, and now, having no more occasion for disguises, she resolved to seem nothing but what she really was, a wild untamed colt, perfectly loose, and careless to conceal any part, no, not the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Theological Lectures delivered in Bristol College in 1831-33) has shown that it is by thus analysing the grammatical structure, which forms the very skeleton of languages, rather than by confining our attention to mere vocabularies, that we may best detect their true affinities, and has illustrated this doctrine by a few Welsh examples. In the West of England Archaeological Journal is exhibited (I believe by the same author) the identity of verbal forms in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... though. I saw from Christian's eyes that he had nothing to be ashamed of, in looking back; I remembered Preston's virulence, and his sudden flush when somebody had repeated the word "coward," which he had applied to Thorold. I felt certain that more had been between them than mere words, and that Preston found the recollection not flattering, whatever it was; and having come to this settlement of the matter, I looked up ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... few words more to the soldiers, and taking Dick by the hand, led him up to the choir, and placed him in the stall beside his own, where, for mere decency, the lad had instantly to kneel and appear to be busy with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mortimer was one of those hapless girls who are not motherless, but what is far worse, unmothered. Her father, who lay in his bloody grave in Ireland, she had loved dearly; but her mother was a mere stranger somewhere in the world, who had never cared for her at all. To the younger ones Anne herself had been the virtual mother; they had been tended by her fostering care, but who save God had ever tended her? Thus, from ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... fragmentary and have of necessity been hastily written. The writer has been asked to state his impression of the work among the men in France. He did not go there to write but to work. He has tried simply to state what he saw and to leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. A mere statement of the grim facts at the front, if they are not sugar-coated or glossed over, may not be pleasant reading, but it is unfair to those at home that they should not know the hard truth of the reality of things as ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... talents, their eye for business and subscribers. They were much more intelligent than he. Not that they had more personality. They had perhaps even less. But in the little town they were, as the Jews are everywhere and always,—by the mere fact of their difference of race which for centuries has isolated them and sharpened their faculty for making observation—they were the most advanced in mind, the most sensible of the absurdity of its moldy institutions and decrepit thought. Only, as their character was less free than their ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... instruct us to a T in the characters and propensities of their leading personages. But, where man has no pecuniary nor ambitious interests at stake in his commerce with any class of his fellow-creatures, his information about them is extremely confused and superficial. The best naturalists are mere generalizers, and think they have done a vast deal when they classify a species. What should we know about mankind if we had only a naturalist's definition of man? We only know mankind by knocking classification on the head, and studying each man ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rewritten. If Tennyson's career had closed in 1833 he would hardly have won a prominent place among the minor poets of the present century. The nine years which intervened between the publication of his second volume and the volumes of 1842 were the making of him, and transformed a mere dilettante into a master. Much has been said about the brutality of Lockhart's review in the 'Quarterly'. In some respects it was stupid, in some respects it was unjust, but of one thing there can be no doubt—it had a most salutary effect. It held up the mirror to weaknesses ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the guests are seated. But the responsibility of host and hostess does not end when they thus furnish dinner-companions a conversational cue. "This is why," as has been well said by Canon Ainger, "a dinner party to be good for anything, beyond the mere enjoyment of the menu, should be neither too large nor too small. Some forgotten genius laid it down that the number should never be less than that of the Graces, nor more than that of the Muses, and the latter half of the epigram may be safely accepted. Ten as a maximum, eight for perfection; ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... "Never you mind; we will have her up again." "Farewell, farewell, my lord," said the Bishop of Beauvais to the Earl of Warwick, whom he met shortly after Joan's retractation; and in his words there was plainly an expression of satisfaction, and not a mere phrase of politeness. On the 29th of May the tribunal met again. Forty judges took part in the deliberation; Joan was unanimously declared a case of relapse, was found guilty, and cited to appear next day, the 30th, on the Vieux-Marche to hear sentence pronounced, and then ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... carriers—which had troubled us ever since we had left Mitla—assumed serious proportions. It was with great difficulty and much bluster that we secured the food we needed and the mozos. When the mozos came, three out of the four whom it was necessary for us to employ, were mere boys, the heartiest and best of whom was scarcely ten years old. In vain we declared that it was impossible for such little fellows to carry the burdens that needed transportation. It was plain that they were ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... lands that have the doctrine of the Creator, for there is. But, putting the East and West side by side, one need not hesitate to affirm that the reason the will power of the East is weak cannot be fully explained by any mere doctrine of environment, but must also have some vital connection with the fact that the idea of a personal almighty Creator has for long ages been wanting. And one reason why western nations have an aggressive character that ventures bold ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... leave to his direction and control the myriads of rational beings on earth, of which we, Christians, make so small a part. No, no, my countrymen, if Governor Strong will not attend exclusively to the mere affairs of the state, with its relative duties, and leave the great world to the legislation of its great Creator, you had better allow him to retire to Northampton, there to study in silence how to govern his own heart, and how to work out his own salvation, instead of continuing the ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... number, and the six attempts at murder which she made in that length of time, are, without exception, crimes quite lacking in discoverable motive. It is not at all on record that she had reason for wishing to eliminate any one of those twenty-three persons. She seems to have poisoned for the mere sake of poisoning. Save to the ignorant and superstitious, such as followed her in the streets to accuse her of having a "white liver'' and a breath that meant death, she was an unfortunate creature with an odd knack of finding herself in houses where 'accidents' happened. ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Nobility begging him to summon you, and to lay before you the inconsistency of your behaviour with the rank of the nobility to which you have the honour to belong. His Excellency Alexandr Pavlovitch, justly supposing that your conduct might serve as a bad example, and considering that mere persuasion on his part would not be sufficient, but that official intervention in earnest was essential, presents me here in this letter with his views in regard to ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... poor hinds Would have denied our Lord and fallen away. Even Perpetua, whose joyous faith Was in the later holier days to be The stay and comfort of our weaker ones, Was silent for long whiles. Perchance she shrank In the mere sickness of the flesh, confused And shaken by our new and horrible plight— The tender flesh, untempered and untried, Not quickened yet nor mastered by the soul; For she was of a fair and delicate make, Most gently nurtured, to whom stripes and threats ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... it is to speak freely of them! This is the first relief of the kind I have had. Every one is praising them; every one is following them: but to whom but you can I speak of them? Even to you, I filled my first sheet with mere surface matter. I now wonder how I could. As for the 'general opinion' of Deerbrook on the engrossing subject of the summer, you will anticipate it in your own mind,—concluding that Hester is most worshipped, on account of her ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... young man, and a young man that is in love,' said Mr. Millbank. 'This is mere rhapsody; it will vanish in an instant before the reality of life. And you have arrived at that reality,' he continued, speaking with emphasis, leaning over the back of his chair, and looking steadily at Coningsby with his grey, sagacious eye; 'my daughter ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... quoted in my fourth and fifth Lectures. The following from Giseler may be added: "God will be born, not in the Reason, not in the Will, but in the most inward part of the essence, and all the faculties of the soul become aware thereof. Thereby the soul passes into mere passivity, and lets God work." They all insist on an immediate, substantial, personal indwelling, which is beyond what Aquinas and the Schoolmen taught. The Lutheran Church condemns those who teach that only the gifts of God, and not God Himself, dwell in the believer; and the English Platonists, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... Our departments are full of survivals. Look at my tie! my apron! my boots! They are all mere survivals; yet it seems that without them I cannot ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Washington. His twelve shirts, which Eunice had ironed so nicely, were packed away with his collars and new yarn socks, and his wedding suit, which he was carrying as a mere matter of form, for he knew he should not need it during his three months' absence. He should not go into society, he thought, or even attend levees, with his heart as sore and heavy as it was on this, his last day at home. Ethelyn was not going with him. She knew it now, and never did ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... sight of her swollen eyes and red lids, and the piteous looks, of deprecating tenderness which from time to time she bent on him, left room for nothing in his heart but a great love and compassion. Whatever might be the secret of this strange caprice it was evidently no mere piece of wantonness. She was suffering from ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... respects between the working of Chinese lodges and the working of those which are more familiar to us as temples of the Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Masons. Such points of contact, however, as may be discoverable, are most probably mere coincidences; if not, and if, as is generally understood, the ritual of the European craft was concocted by Cagliostro, then it follows that he must have borrowed from the Chinese, and not the Chinese from him. The use of the square and compasses ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... himself that the New Orleans leaf in his book of experience was safely turned and securely pasted down, Griswold was nettled to find that the mere mention of the name sent creeping little chills of apprehension trickling up and down his spine. But innate stubbornness scoffed at the warning; derided and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... tale they also told; They said he gave them frankincense, Borne by some tree he loved of old; If so, he gave a mere pretence. ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... I said, "that I am an anarchistic polygamist, that I am opposed to all forms of government, that I object to any kind of revealed religion, that I regard the state and property and marriage as the mere tyranny of the bourgeoisie, and that I want to see class hatred carried to the point where it forces every one into brotherly love. Now, do I ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... undressed all night. Oh, it was the liveliest affair conceivable! And, like a true Norwegian host, I tracked LOeVBORG home; and it is only my duty, as a friend of the house, and cock of the walk, to take the first opportunity of telling you that he finished up the evening by coming to mere loggerheads with a red-haired opera-singer, and being taken off to the police-station! You mustn't have him here any more. Remember ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... miraculous. But Shakespeare makes the impression of detachment from his works. The works do not reveal the man; while in Tolstoy the greatness of the man blends with the greatness of the genius. Tolstoy was no mere oracle uttering profundities he wot not of. As the social, religious and moral tracts that he wrote in the latter period of his life are instinct with a literary beauty of which he never could divest himself, and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... and, with it, the life of the sufferer, the body rolled over on the back, and thus lay, exposing to the eyes of the lookers-on two gashes, wide and gory, on the breast, traced by a sharp knife and a powerful hand, and, as it seemed, in the mere wantonness of a malice and lust of blood which even death could not satisfy. The sight of these gashes answered the question Roland had asked of his own imagination; they were in the form of a cross; and as the legend, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... derived from the Greek, Roman, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages; and the only use we can make of their originals, is to render them subservient to the force of custom in cases in which general usage has not varied from the primitive signification. Moreover, let the advocates of a mere philosophical investigation of the language, extend their system as far as a radical analysis will warrant them, and, with Horne Tooke, not only consider adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, as abbreviations of ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... apostles, and "conferred not with flesh and blood,"—not having received his gospel of many but by the revelation of Jesus Christ—had seemed to me quite suitable to his high pretensions. Any novelties which might be in his doctrine, I had regarded as mere developments, growing out of the common stem, and guaranteed by the same Spirit. But I now saw that this independence invalidated his testimony. He may be to us a supernatural, but he certainly is not a natural, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... nothing to be gained by remaining in the barn. Tweezy was not badly hurt. The blow on the head had resulted, so far as Racey could discover (later he was to learn that his diagnosis had been correct), in a mere scalp wound. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... no doubt that our development of charity methods has reached this pseudo-scientific and stilted stage. We have learned to condemn unthinking, ill-regulated kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in mere repression much as the stern parent tells the visitor below how admirably he is rearing the child, who is hysterically crying upstairs and laying the foundation for future nervous disorders. The pseudo-scientific spirit, or ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... opinion prevailed which could not be easily accommodated. As men seldom allow much weight to the reasoning of an adversary, the construction put upon that article by the cabinet of London was generally treated in America as a mere evasion; and the removal of the negroes who had joined the British army on the faith of a proclamation offering them freedom, was considered as a flagrant breach of faith. In addition to this circumstance, the troops of his Britannic Majesty still retained possession ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... realize this double hope; and, seated on the first throne of the universe, you will adorn it for the prince; you will thus make it dearer to his subjects; you will ensure its durability for posterity. The mere presence, Madame, of Your Majesty, reveals to every eye the precious gifts of the Providence who called you to this throne. No longer, in order to admire you, are we forced to content ourself with the report of fame, and already are ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... to do You did as much, and a great deal more, for me, when I was ill in Egypt. It was a mere act ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... familiar one. Two quotations from his address at Johns Hopkins are especially worthy of attention as a part of his message to Americans. "It has been my fate to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace and called ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of Rohatzek, however, was a mere trifle compared with the ordeal by which the tribunal of Paris tried in vain to extort a confession of the would-be regicide, Damiens. Robert Damiens, a native of Arras, had been exiled as an habitual criminal, and returning in disguise made an attempt upon the life of Louis XV, January 5, 1757. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... person, cause of all the mischief that followed, for without his help I do not see what Priscilla could have done, was the ducal librarian—Hofbibliothekar, head, and practically master of the wonderful collection of books and manuscripts whose mere catalogue made learned mouths in distant parts of Europe water and learned lungs sigh in hopeless envy. He too had officials under him, but they were unlike the others: meek youths, studious and short-sighted, whose business ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... noted that he is not an opponent, an irregular: M. de Fontaines himself praises his teaching, his excellent mind, his perfect exactitude, and calls him the universitarian of the university. But he does not belong to it, he stands aloof and stays at home, he is not disposed to become a mere cog-wheel in the imperial manufactory. Therefore, whether he is aware of it or not, he does it harm and all the more according to his prosperity; his full house empties the lycees; the more pupils he has the less they have. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had finished the young dawn was paling the eastern sky, and the island, from being a mere shapeless black shadow, had changed to a deep neutral-tinted—almost black—silhouette, as clear and sharp of outline as though it had been cut out of paper, its equally dark reflection trembling on the surface of the water, and coming and ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... and defeating enemies also, the service of kings is desirable. To enter upon it for a mere living makes the thing low indeed. There must be dogs and elephants; but servants need not be like hungry curs, while their masters are noble. What say ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... should be penetrating. There is no instrument, I suppose, that carries further than the ringing clarion that is often heard on the field of battle, above all the strife; and this little church at Thessalonica, a mere handful of people, just converted, in the very centre of a strong, compact, organised, self-confident, supercilious heathenism, insisted upon being heard, and got itself made audible, simply by the purity and the consistency of the lives of its members. So that Paul, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... almost a skeleton; The sole difference it presenteth To the tree-trunks near it is, That it moves as well as trembles, Slow and gaunt, a living corse. Oh! thou venerable elder Who, a reason-gifted tree, Mid mere ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... cottonwood, stood shivering in three feet of water on what had been a league of dry land. We stood dismayed at the crumbling edge of the hill, and one hundred and seventy pairs of eyes were turned on Clark. With a mere glance at the running stream high on the bank and the drowned forest beyond, he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 'and, look here, I disagree altogether. I believe to-day has doubled our chances, but unless we alter our tactics it has doubled our risks. We've involved ourselves in too tangled a web. I don't like this inspection, and I fear that foxy old Bhme who prompted it. The mere fact of their inviting us shows that we stand badly; for it runs in the teeth of Brning's warning at Bensersiel, and smells uncommonly like arrest. There's a rift between Dollmann and the others, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... licence which is so sternly rebuked was a system in which St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith was represented as a justification of vile indulgence. Although this part of the Epistle is a paraphrase of Jude, it is not a mere reproduction. A new feature in 2 Peter is that the heretics were sceptical concerning the second coming of Christ (iii. 4). They argued that since the death of "the fathers," i.e. the first followers of Christ, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... in the wildest, most hilarious of spirits. As he had said to Joan, the thought of death had only touched upon his mind for a second; now the mere idea of it seemed ridiculous. He was going out to help in a great fight, and he was going to marry Joan. She would be waiting for him when he came back; what could ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... and Uncle Chirgwin's eyes dropping upon him as he spoke, his utterance sounded like a prophecy. So the boy's mother read it, and with a half sob, half shriek, she turned in all the frenzy of sudden maternal wrath. Her sharp tongue dropped mere vituperation, but did so with boundless vigor, and the woman's torrent of unbridled curses and threats swept that scene of storm to its close. Joan went first from the door, while Mr. Chirgwin, picking up his hat and buttoning his coat, retreated after her before ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... pretensions to monopoly set up at the moment on behalf of the universities. In a long letter written to Cullen in September 1774 Smith defends with great vigour and vivacity the most absolute and unlimited freedom of medical education, treating the University claims as mere expressions of the craft spirit, and recognising none of those exceptional features of medical education which have constrained even the most extreme partisans of economic liberty now to approve of government interference ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... mere man, as I have been taught to believe, He had no right to say these words. It would be a bitter, wicked mockery for man or angel to speak them. Oh, can it be that it was God Himself in human guise? I could ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... drawn in long before by the very scent thereof [References to Judas as the first hireling, to Simon Magus as the second, and to various texts in the Acts and Epistles proving that among the early preachers of Christianity there were men who preached 'for filthy lucre's sake,' or made a mere trade of the Gospel] .... Thus we see that not only the excess of Hire in wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious taking or giving it, though but small or mean, as in the primitive times, gave to hirelings occasion, though ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Principal Cairns is responsible. Principal Cairns claims that the life-story enshrined in Mr. Smith's poems shows the wide diffusion of native fire and literary culture in all parts of Scotland, 'happily under higher auspices than those of mere poetic impulse.' This is hardly a very felicitous way of introducing a poet, nor can we say that Mr. Smith's poems are distinguished by either fire or culture. He has a placid, pleasant way of writing, and, indeed, his verses cannot do any harm, though ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... morning, prepared to go to work. Tom drove a team which was then at the lumber camp, being cared for by the cook and foreman; Rafe was a chopper, for he had that sleight with an ax which, more than mere muscle, makes the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... drew from her corsage, where it was placed like a busk, a dirk, five or six inches long, in a case of black shagreen, with a handle of black ebony fastened with silver, a very simple handle, but perfectly handy, not a weapon of mere display. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... have sent innumerable substance— By what means got, I leave to your own conscience— To furnish Rome, and to prepare the ways You have for dignities; to the mere undoing Of all the kingdom. Many more there are; Which, since they are of you, and odious, I will not ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... deposit. The greatest quantity of peroxide is obtained on employing a concentrated, strongly acid solution of the nitrate, and a strong current. If the solution is very dilute we obtain no peroxide, or mere traces which disappear again toward the end of the process. The peroxide is deposited at first in small, dark, shining octahedral crystals; subsequently, in an amorphous state. At 110 deg. it evolves oxygen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... his place in modern European letters, and the special tendency and significance of what he did." He will, therefore, not even read these things of Heine's that he has not read, but will take the Romancero alone for his text, with a few quotations from elsewhere, With a mere passing indication of the fact that Matthew Arnold here, like every good critic of this century, avowedly pursues that plan of "placing" writers which some of his own admirers so foolishly decry, I may observe that this is a locus classicus for his own special kind of criticism. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... forcing a smile, "why conjure up visions of happiness which never can be realised? But even with you I do not think I could be happy here. There is something about the house which, when I first beheld it, filled me with unaccountable terror. Never since I was a mere infant have I been within it till to-day, and yet it was quite familiar to me—horribly familiar. I knew the hall in which we stood together, with its huge arched fireplace, and the armorial bearings upon it, and could point out the stone on which were carved my ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... has set laurels all up and down the slopes of the Forum, and has invited roses and honeysuckles to bloom wherever they shall not interfere with science, but may best help repair the wounds he must needs deal the soil in researches which seem no mere dissections, but feats of a conservative, almost a constructive surgery. It is said that the German archaeologists objected to those laurels where the birds sing so sweetly; perhaps they thought them not strictly scientific; but when the German Kaiser, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... of being trained in his engine foundry, and in his sugar refinery, which was another part of the business. I had rarely seen a more faithful and zealous set of workmen than these Russian serfs. They were able and skilful, and attached to their employers by some deeper and stronger tie than that of mere money wages. Indeed, they were treated by Sir Charles Baird and his son with the kindest and most paternal care, and they duly repaid their attachment by their zeal in his service and the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Christ; but always under the notion of innovation, heresy, schism, or some such plausible name; though Christianity allows of no name, or pretence whatever, for persecuting of any man for matters of mere religion, being in its very nature meek, gentle, and forbearing; and consists of faith, hope, and charity, which no persecutor can have, whilst he remains a persecutor; in that a man cannot believe well, or hope well, or have a charitable or tender regard to another, whilst he would violate his ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... superficial acquaintance with his writings), was one that delighted in subtleties and casuistical refinements; but a sense too large and commanding for those studies which amuse but never satisfy the higher intellect, became disgusted betimes with mere legal dialectics. Those grand and absorbing mysteries connected with the Christian faith and the Roman Church (grand and absorbing in proportion as their premises are taken by religious belief as mathematical ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Monsieur l'Abbe, if I insist. But just reflect that you owe everything to Bernadette; but for her Lourdes would still be one of the least known towns of France. And really it seems to me that out of mere gratitude the parish ought to have transformed this wretched ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... presented a feeble sketch of a century that stands out from its fellows, not as a mere continuation, or even intensification, of them—a hundred annual circuits of the earth in its orbit as little distinguished by intellectual or material achievement as those repetitions of the old beaten ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... worst of his burns were bound up with strips of shirts offered by members of the party, and his outer clothing was removed. As a matter of fact a large portion of it was so burned that it crumbled to powder at a mere touch. ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... space to give only one picture from the crowded panorama of this world-conqueror, emperor, and exile. It will serve to show the powerful magnetism of his personality—perhaps serve to explain in some slight degree the magic of the mere name of Napoleon, throughout ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... an instant did he flinch from the mere fact of dying to-day. Since he was not immortal, as he had supposed, it were as well he should die now as fifty years hence. Better, indeed. To die "untimely," as men called it, was the timeliest of all deaths ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of the pancratium in which they struggle on the ground,—for the pancratium comprises both wrestling and cuffing. Besides, it is unlikely that wrestling, being more artificial and methodical than any other sort of exercise, should likewise be the most ancient; for mere want or necessity putting us upon new inventions, produces simple and inartificial things first, and such as have more of force in them than sleight and skill. This ended, Sosicles said: You speak right, and I will confirm your discourse from the very name; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... succeeded in getting away from the inn, what could I do at Brede with no money at all?—for in that part of the country they would certainly look upon the Earl of Westport as the real owner of the property, and on me as a mere interloper; and if I could not get money on the documents in London, there was little chance of getting credit ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... York in Parliament, spoke in 1784, when Boswell wrote of him: "I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table, but as I listened he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale." The York streets are full of old houses, many with porches and overhanging fronts. One of the most ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... than to a meaning in a deeper sense—which may be a feeling influenced by some experience perhaps of a spiritual nature in the expression of which the intellect has some part. "The nearer we get to the mere expression of emotion," says Professor Sturt in his "Philosophy of Art and Personality," "as in the antics of boys who have been promised a holiday, the further we get ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... you—in working his way clandestinely into an intimacy with you. I shall not describe to you what passed; but I may say that I have found him to be a person with whom you could not hope for a day's happiness. Even apart from his habits and tastes, which are those of a mere workman, his social (and, I fear, his religious) views are such as no lady, no properly-minded woman of any class, could sympathize with. You will be better able to judge of his character when I tell you that he informed me of his having taken care, before making any advances ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Lord, 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,' Note also the strong assertion, of visible, corporeal return: 'Shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go.' That return is no metaphor, no mere piece of rhetoric, it is not to be eviscerated of its contents by being taken as a synonym for the diffusion of His influence all over a regenerated race, but it points to the return of the Man Jesus locally, corporeally, visibly. 'We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge'; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... light of contrast that I could reflect on the rusty and clumsy way in which I had previously done my thinking, and I remembered with a faint amusement that there had been a time when I considered that I had a very clear and logical mind. Logical! What did we, as mere mortals full of personal desire, know of logic? The reflection seemed infinitely humorous. My thoughts had about them a new quality of stability. They formed themselves into clear images, which had a remarkable permanence. Their power and influence was greatly increased. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... she said presently, "whom do you mean by the bird of red plumage? Is it a mere figure of speech? Or has ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and meaningless classifications, that very few readers have now the patience to dig out their numerous beauties. They are, however, still the classics of mystical theology in the Roman Church, so far as that science has not degenerated into mere miracle-mongering. ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... looked at her new groom in a manner which expressed frank astonishment. Was he in earnest, or was it mere bravado? An idea came ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... the end of the month, at the mere mention of Tommy's name, Mr. Cathro turned red in the face, and the fingers of his laying-on hand would clutch an imaginary pair of tawse. Already Tommy had made him self-conscious. He peered covertly at Tommy, and Tommy caught him at it every time, and then each quickly ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... her, she did not respect. Contempt for contempt. The people of the castle did not go abroad, but they broached their casks, spread their tables, and summoned the pipers; and where there are spread tables, good wine, and fair women, there are guests in plenty. It is true, it was a mere revel. Not one personage of note. Perhaps the same drunken set that frequented the Mitosin Castle when there were feasts there; if so, no one could afford to reproach his neighbor. At Mitosin they criticised the Lady of Madocsany, ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... the road with its lines of poplars we became madly delirious, we broke free like a confused torrent from a broken dam. Everybody (p. 213) had something to say or sing, senseless chatter and sentimental songs ran riot; all uttered something for the mere pleasure of utterance; we were out of the trenches and free for the time ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... of any reason why a man's code of morals should be different from that of a woman! When Sir Tom returned to this painful and difficult subject, the immediate question as to Lucy's strange conduct died from his mind. It became more easy, by dint of repeating it, to believe that a mere unreasonable panic about little Tom was the cause of her withdrawal. It was foolish, but a loving and lovely foolishness which a man might do more than forgive, which he might adore and smile at, as men love to do, feeling that for a woman to be thus ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... otherwise. A seat in this House, for good purposes, for bad purposes, for no purpose at all (except the mere consideration derived from being concerned in the public councils) will ever be a first- rate object of ambition in England. Ambition is no exact calculator. Avarice itself does not calculate strictly when it games. One thing is certain, that in this political game ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... power, I cannot say, but they express in their looks and words nothing which I can fairly interpret to proceed from ill-will. I have been lately not so contentious or abusive as formerly, no more than I have flattered them, and my appearance among them is from mere curiosity, and to amuse you by my recitals more than from any ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... and, this time, on pain of death if he ever came back. The King's tears were of no avail; he was obliged to send his favourite to Flanders. As soon as he had done so, however, he dissolved the Parliament, with the low cunning of a mere fool, and set off to the North of England, thinking to get an army about him to oppose the Nobles. And once again he brought Gaveston home, and heaped upon him all the riches and titles of which ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... invade Macedon once more, on his return to Epirus from Italy, was prompted, apparently, by the mere accident that the government was unsettled, and that Antigonus was insecure in his possession of the throne. He had no intention, when he first embarked in this scheme, of attempting the conquest of Macedon, but only designed to make a predatory incursion into the country ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... are to blame, for you urged and impelled me to fill a post for which I was by no means suited. I have now reason to be satisfied, and so have you! But, that you may not again attribute this fatality to my impetuous temper, I send you, my dear sir, a plain and simple narration of the affair, as a mere chronicler of facts ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... I had adopted, the holding of spiritualistic seances and matters of that sort, occupied my time, and I became more and more imbued with the strange mysticism of my belief. As the years flew by I was more and more firmly convinced that what looks like mere wood is in reality imbued with strange and awful qualities. I shall never forget that terrible evening when Siva first spoke ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... object there is always an interval, however short; whereas to possess the thing is to enjoy it. I see a thing and it tempts me; but if I see not the thing itself but only the means of acquiring it, I am not tempted. Therefore it is that I have been a pilferer, and am so even now, in the way of mere trifles to which I take a fancy, and which I find it easier to take than to ask for; but I never in my life recollect having taken a farthing from any one, except about fifteen years ago, when I stole seven francs and ten sous. The story ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... generalization. And that, perhaps, is the reason why I attached myself to the party to which I have the honour to belong. For it is, I think, the party which sees things as they are; as they are, that is, to mere human vision. Remenham, in his haste, has called us the party of reaction. I would rather say, we are the party of realism. We have in view, not Man, but Englishmen; not ideal polities, but the British Constitution; ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... days the position and trade of a spy was so little esteemed—it had been far other with the great informers of Privy Seal's day—that these men, being of the Queen's guard, would talk roughly to Lascelles, who was a mere poor gentleman of the Archbishop's if his other vocation could be neglected. Lascelles sat, his ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... remonstrated; and pronounced the opinion, perhaps too flattering a one, of the dictator, that "he could not condescend to forbid a mere matter of civility, which still left me entirely at his service." The Jew at last, in despair, rushed from the room, leaving me to the unpleasing consciousness that I had distressed an honest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... no mere thinker, no mere creature of dreams and imagination. I stamp and post letters; I buy new bootlaces and put them in my boots. And when I set out to get my hair cut, it is with the iron face of those men of empire and unconquerable will, ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... reforms. The result was the separation of the young from the old absolutely; and a new body, the State Children's Council, of 12 men and women of nearly equal proportions, had authority over the reformatories, as well as what was called the industrial school, which was to be reduced to a mere receiving home, and all the children placed out, either on subsidy or at service. Most of the old committee were appointed; but, to my great joy, Dr. Edward C. Stirling and Mr. James Smith, the most enlightened man on the Destitute Board, were among the new members. We had a paid stall, with a most ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... the choice of his judgment, but the deepest element of his life. He no more chose old ways, old paths, or the spirit of earlier times, than the trout chooses water or the Polar bear its native snows. He was born not among them, but of them, and remained till death their incarnate descendant. No mere Scotch kirkman was Archie, but a prehistoric Calvinist, a Presbyterian by the act of God and an elder from all eternity. Even his youthful thoughts and imaginations adjusted themselves to the scope of the Westminster Confession, abhorring any horizon unillumined by the gray light which flowed ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... held the sword. To mock at the folly of a nation that lets itself be cajoled by vain and empty flatteries, to preach peace to fellow-citizens enamoured of war, was to fulfil a dangerous rle, that would never have appealed, we may feel sure, to a mere ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... with his clever, well-cut face that always reminded me of a cameo, and thoughtful brow; his strong, capable hands and his rather steely mouth, the mere set of which suggested controversy of an uncompromising kind. Naturally as the Church had claimed Bastin, so medicine ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... gobbled, and ran at the girls; tried to pick up corn from the floor with his thick lips, tumbling down and rolling over in the effort; for a pouched turkey has no wings with which to balance himself. So much hilarity in the family room drew the Pawnee servants. I saw their small dark eyes in a mere line of open ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... weakened by alterations and interpolations expressing the views of the possessors or transcribers, and attributed to personages who could not possibly have written them. The presentation of these things has greatly weakened that sway of mere dogma which has so obscured the simple teachings of Christ himself; for it has shown that the more we know of our sacred books, the less certain we become as to the authenticity of "proof texts," and it has disengaged more and more, as the only valuable ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... thousands of years, namely, the combative spirit and splendid courage of the male bird. But there is a spirit abroad now which condemns cock-fighting, and to continue selecting and breeding cocks solely for their game-points seems a mere futility. The energy and enthusiasm expended in this direction would be much better employed in improving the bird's ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... bent toward each other, both robust fellows, conversing in half tones. The mother, with her arms folded on her bosom, stood at the table looking at them. All the secret tricks and passwords compelled her to smile inwardly as she thought, "Mere children still." ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... 'structural' classification is almost impossible on account of the infinite variety of mechanical combinations, and to attempt it would probably result in utter confusion, for the classes could not be defined, and the classification would be a mere digest of mechanical elements having no ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... sharply into a mass in the narrow channel of the river, where it froze. Thus, when the water on the lower side of the barrier drained off, the Niagara River and the American Fall were dry, and the Canadian Fall a mere trickle. This extraordinary condition ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... ham-and-beef shops make glad the faces of the passers-by. O those hams with their honest shining faces, polished like mahogany—and the man inside so happy all day slicing them with those wonderful long knives (which, of course, the superior class of reader has never seen) worn away to a veritable thread, a mere wire, but keen as Excalibur. Beauty used to calculate in her quaint way how much steel was worn away with each pound of ham, and how much therefore went to the sandwich. And what an artist was the carver! What a true eye! what ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... and so it was always. Our men lived there and died there within a few yards of the enemy, crouched below the sand-bags and burrowed in the sides of the crater. Lice crawled over them in legions. Human flesh, rotting and stinking, mere pulp, was pasted into the mud-banks. If they dug to get deeper cover their shovels went into the softness of dead bodies who had been their comrades. Scraps of flesh, booted legs, blackened hands, eyeless heads, came falling over them when the enemy trench-mortared their ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... trembled for your safety, and viewed you as one deprived perhaps of the protection of a husband or brother, to become the victim of an unpitying wretch, whose pretended regard for your sex, and his repeated promises of protection, were hypocritical—a mere mask to lull your fears until he could effect your ruin. His hellish designs, agreeable to his own declarations, would have been carried into effect the very morning that he last visited you, had not an all-wise ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... for the first time that he was in mid-stream; that he might not be able to breast the current; that the eddying water about him was in fact the whirlpool; that the rush of what he had deemed mere harmless rapids was the prelude to the thunderous ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... I had not thought of them! By mere chance a few years since I happened upon some of these bamboo brushes in a Japanese shop—large, long-handled brushes, with pure white hair nicely stiffened to a tapering point, which was neatly protected with a sheathing cover of bamboo. A number ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... a time, in spite of what she had seen and heard, that strange instinct which dominates the feminine mind in spite of what the mere senses affirm ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... into Buttons, Pockets and Loops unknown to their Ancestors. As insignificant as even this is, if it were searched to the Bottom, you perhaps would find it not sincere, but that he is in the Fashion in his Heart, and holds out from mere Obstinacy. But I am running from my intended Purpose, which was to celebrate a certain particular Manner of passing away Life, and is a Contradiction to no Man. but a Resolution to contract none of the exorbitant Desires by which others are enslaved. The best way of separating a Man's self from ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and happy to be alive at the mere thought of his return. The murky, lowering sky, which had depressed her a few hours before, seemed bracing and invigorating as she splashed through the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... as a matter of simple fact. The connection with Caliban had been too much for my overtrained imagination, and heaven knows what baseless theories I had woven around what was at best (or worst) a mere coincidence. For me the scarlet letter had flamed upon what I now know to have been a blameless breast, and in my excited fancy a stormy nature had suffered picturesque remorse where, as a matter of fact, only a deep and patient devotion had endured its unrecorded ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... a pize take 'em, mere outsides. Hang your side-box beaus; no, I'm none of those, none of your forced trees, that pretend to blossom in the fall, and bud when they should bring forth fruit: I am of a long-lived race, and inherit vigour; none of ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... will relate, and, to my former words Reverting, add this final prophecy. (To Io) There lieth, at the verge of land and sea, Where Nilus issues thro' the silted sand, A town, Canopus called: and there at length Shall Zeus renew the reason in thy brain With the mere touch and contact of his hand Fraught now with fear no more: and thou shalt bear A child, dark Epaphus—his very name Memorial of Zeus' touch that gave him life. And his shall be the foison and the fruit Of all the land enriched ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the wall. Fred took advantage of the opportunity and examined him narrowly as to his knowledge of German East and ways of getting there. He was in an aggravating mood that made at one moment a very well of information of him, and at the next a mere garrulous ass. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... know more about the men and women who figure in the day's news, and even about interesting persons whose success has not been great enough to be heralded in the press. What appeals to us most about these individuals is, not mere biographical facts such as appear in Who's Who, but the more intimate details of character and personality that give us the key to their success. We want to see them as living men and women. It is the writer's problem to present them so vividly that we shall feel ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... lines together; and suddenly becoming convulsed with strange excitement, they would toss up their arms, leap, fall, groan, and, seemingly, lose consciousness. Their prayers were earnest and vehement, but often degenerated to mere howls and noises. Some of both sexes had grand voices, that rang like bugles, and the very impropriety of their music made it fascinating. It used to seem to me that any of the great composers might have borrowed advantageously some of those original negro airs. In many cases, their owners ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... was flying at Kate, and I was in vain endeavouring to defend her. Once he had carried off Natty; and I saw Leo, his namesake, seated on his back and digging a spear into him. At last I started up, and was sure the sounds I heard were real, and no mere fancies of the brain. The whole of the inmates of our camp were on foot, and I heard them calling to each other. Presently there was a shot, followed by ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... their affairs, as I have seen a trustworthy and experienced old nurse rule the infinite perplexities of a room full of children. His clear-sightedness and mental grip seemed independent of age and experience, like the ability of genius. He had an imaginative eye for detail, and, starting from a mere hint, would go scheming onwards with astonishing precision. His plan, to which we were committed—committed helplessly and without resistance—was based upon the necessity of our leaving ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... while ago; and it seemed to him that she must have been in Whitwall when he first came there; and he scarce knew whether he were sorry or not that he had missed her: for though it seemed to him that it would be little more than mere grief and pain, nay, that it would be wicked and evil to be led to the Well at the World's End by any other than her who was to have brought him there; yet he longed, or thought he longed to speak with her concerning that love of his heart, so early rewarded, so speedily beggared. For indeed ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... small party might have escaped observation. At length Don Jose stopped, and getting off his mule, surveyed the side of the hill which sloped away below us. Coming back, he took the bridle of his mule, and made it leap off the path on one side on to what appeared a mere ledge of rock. "Come on," he shouted; "I will show you the way; but you must all dismount and follow the mules on foot." We accordingly got off our animals, which were made to leap down to the ledge below us, and willingly ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... poetry. In later times we suffer from the opposite difficulty. Our descendants will be able to see the general characteristics of the Victorian age better than we, who unconsciously accept our own peculiarities, like the air we breathe, as mere matters of course. Meanwhile a Tennyson and a Browning strike us less as the organs of a society than by the idiosyncrasies which belong to them as individuals. But in the normal case, the relation of the two studies is obvious. Dante, for example, is profoundly interesting to the psychologist, considered ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... I should display my interest too. Other things I heard, which I felt or feared were indeed too true: but I must still conceal my anxiety respecting him, my indignation against them, beneath a careless aspect; others, again, mere hints of something said or done, which I longed to hear more of, but could not venture to inquire. So passed the weary time. I could not even comfort myself with saying, 'She will soon be married; and then ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... will help us with the new paper," I said. "I feel really very unfit for the responsibility of such a task, but Armitage thinks I shall manage all right, and I do not wish to be a mere amateur, and shirk the hard work entailed by our propaganda. You see, I remember your words that night at Chiswick. I hope you do not still think that ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... sure o' that, Colonel. When it comes to the army, it's a mere question o' wha can strike the hardest blows; and as to kirk matters, I'm thinking men had better meddle wi' the things o' God, which they canna change, than wi' those o' the king wi' which they can wark ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... on with perfect indifference through a scene, that, under other circumstances, would have captivated my entire attention. All the stories that I had heard of mishaps in these endless prairies, recurred in vivid colouring to my memory, not mere backwoodsman's legends, but facts well authenticated by persons of undoubted veracity, who had warned me, before I came to Texas, against venturing without guide or compass into these dangerous wilds. Even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... two fingers, the while. She, on her part, was not idle, first playing with my prick, covering and uncovering its head, which soon made it stand up in all of its glory. She was profuse and loud in its praises. Then getting too excited for mere admiration, she took it in her mouth and sucked it, and manipulated it with one hand, fingering my codpiece with the other. I then found her fingers were feeling and tickling my bottom-hole. She took her mouth from off my prick, and paused a moment; then again applied her ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... of him," said Sir Charles, before Agatha could retort. "It is a mere matter of feeling, and I should not have mentioned it had I known the altered relations between him ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the huge fire sloped one way towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and ocean could behold, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing divided like a V—a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for those distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. As the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar, the fiery vault ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... and when old enough she had often read aloud in the long winter evenings. He had seemed to listen with absorbed interest, but it is difficult to say how much he grasped of the words he heard, or whether they were mere words to him with no ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... apostles, professed by their followers during the first two centuries of the church, and which is now followed by the protestant or reformed Christians. I am conscious that neither my abilities nor my education qualify me for this task. A mere mechanic, and possessing but few advantages of education, I find it very difficult to express, as I could wish, the thoughts and feelings which crowd upon my mind. But how great and numerous so ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... The mere fact that this expedition was despatched while Napoleon Bonaparte was First Consul of the French Republic, has led many writers to jump to the conclusion that it was designed to cut out a portion of Australia for occupation ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... bee, or nuts like the thrifty squirrel, it would be a prey to constant anxiety and stand in hourly danger of being plundered of its possessions, and perhaps killed for the sake of them. Therefore to speak of a Hindu's poverty as if it certainly implied want and unhappiness is mere misrepresentation born of ignorance. In all ages there have been men so enamoured of the possessionless life that they have abandoned their worldly goods and formed brotherhoods pledged to lifelong ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... dead, in order to obtain two, or even three rations. The second night was still more dreadful, and many were washed off; although the crew had so crowded together, that some were smothered by the mere pressure. To soothe their last moments, the soldiers drank immoderately; and one, who affected to rest himself upon the side, but was treacherously cutting the ropes, was thrown into the sea. Another, whom M. Correard ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... and whirl and quiver with the motley life of a huge city: beggars and jugglers, dancers and musicians, gilded youths in their chariots, and daughters of joy looking out from their windows, all intoxicated with the mere delight of living and the gladness of a new day. The pagan populace of Antioch—reckless, pleasure-loving, spendthrift—were preparing for the Saturnalia. But all this Hermas had renounced. He cleft his way through the crowd slowly, like a reluctant ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke |
