"Narrowness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, and they were the great instruments of his tyranny. None of them had the talents or audacity of Strafford, or the narrowness and bigotry of Laud; but their counsels were injurious ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... kind—except the illustrated ones—but what relied more or less upon prurient matter to tickle the fancies of prurient minds. Besides, my idea is that, just at present, the Board Schools tend to a certain hardness and narrowness of character, which is perhaps softened down by the development by these papers of the lighter side of human nature. Tit-Bits, I have reason to know, has in many cases induced the study of some science or literature on the part of a man or boy who has read some interesting 'tit-bit' on one of these ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... have thrilled and impressed any other man in his present position. They seemed to intensify the hopelessness of his own situation. He had a slight feeling of creepiness about the spine as he thought of the narrowness of that escape—though, of course, the policeman might not have identified him. But some day or other it was bound to come—that accidental confrontation ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and instantaneous steering of the bicycle, combined with its narrowness, counteract, to a great extent, the advantage which the tricyclist has of being able to stop so much more quickly, for the bicyclist can "dodge" past a thing for which the rider of the three-wheeler ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... been annoyances to her ever since she could remember. Their continual nagging had fretted her, their constant restraint had chafed her, their narrowness had cramped her. To-day she saw them from a new point ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... calculated to inspire asperity into the gentlest heart. Mr. Godfrey inveighed with warmth, and sometimes with partiality, against the coldness and narrowness of the age. He said, "that men of genius, in conspicuous stations, had no feeling for those whom nature had made their brothers; and that those who had risen from obscurity themselves, forgot the mortifications ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... countless sums lay, scarcely covered by the turf beneath his feet. His mind was in an uproar with this whirl of new ideas. As he came in sight of the venerable mansion of his forefathers, and the little realm where the Webbers had so long and so contentedly flourished, his gorge rose at the narrowness ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... comes a poor devil of a dwarf stealing along the slippery rocks of the river bed, a creature with energy enough to make him strong of body and fierce of passion, but with a brutish narrowness of intelligence and selfishness of imagination: too stupid to see that his own welfare can only be compassed as part of the welfare of the world, too full of brute force not to grab vigorously at his own ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... and pride, O king, I wish thee to show regard for me![441] Employ thyself in the good of all creatures, ever remembering the mandates of righteousness. I am not reproving thee from fear or narrowness of mind or covetousness. Listen now, with these Brahmanas here, to the words of truth I utter. I do not ask for anything. I shall, however, instruct thee in the ways of righteousness. All persons will croak ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... supper; an irregularity that frightens me, who have not yet got rid of all my barbarisms. There is one, alas! I never shall get over—the dirt of this country: it is melancholy, after the purity of Strawberry! The narrowness of the streets, trees clipped to resemble brooms, and planted on pedestals of chalk, and a few other points, do not edify me. The French Opera, which I have heard to-night, disgusted me as much as ever; and the more for being followed by the Devin de Village, which shows that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... said to be addicted to all sorts of vice. So far as the black priests possess any influence, however, it is believed to be used conscientiously, and with excellent effect; nor, though provoked to smile at these queer specimens of the cloth, could I indulge the impulse without being self-convicted of narrowness and illiberally. St. Augustine, and other Fathers of the church, if I have heard aright, were of the same sable hue as the priests ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Objective-Subjective explanation follows, of course! Rachel, properly speaking, is not Rachel, but Somebody Else. Do I mind being cruelly treated by Somebody Else? You are unreasonable enough, Betteredge; but you can hardly accuse me of that. Then how does it end? It ends, in spite of your confounded English narrowness and prejudice, in my being perfectly happy and comfortable. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... aunt, who disliked my relations towards Wynne simply because he did not represent one of the great Wynne families. But the remarkable thing was that, although my mother thus yielded to my aunt's influence, she in her heart despised her sister's ignorance and her narrowness of mind. She often took a humorous pleasure in seeing my aunt's aristocratic proclivities baffled by some vexing contretemps or by some slight passed upon her by people of superior rank, especially by those ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... soon found ourselves at the stationhouse. This very neat and spacious edifice is erected on the site of the little wicket gate, which formerly, as all old pilgrims will recollect, stood directly across the highway, and, by its inconvenient narrowness, was a great obstruction to the traveller of liberal mind and expansive stomach The reader of John Bunyan will be glad to know that Christian's old friend Evangelist, who was accustomed to supply each pilgrim with a mystic roll, now presides at the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the narrowness and rigidity of their tongue; as may be seen when they drink, having to hold up their heads, and depend upon the weight of the water for transmitting ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... him, and did so only in obedience to positive orders. There surely was nothing malicious or retaliatory in that; and to condemn me for discharging the first of all military duties—viz., obedience of orders—is but to prove the narrowness of the intellect and the baseness of the character which are vaunted as so far superior to those of the "negro cadet," and which condemn him and his actions for no other reason than that they are his. How could it be otherwise than that he be isolated ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... so as not to inflict the necessary height of large rooms upon narrow halls and small rooms, which should have only a height proportioned to their size. A ten-foot room with a thirteen-foot ceiling makes the narrowness of the room doubly apparent; one feels shut up between two walls which threaten to come together and squeeze one between them, while, on the other hand, a ten-foot room with a nine-foot ceiling may have a ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... disappointed self-love swept through her. She had looked forward to the English country life; she had meant to play a great part in it. But three months had been enough to show her the kind of thing—the hopeless narrowness and Philistinism of these English back-waters. What did these small squires and country clergy know of the real world, the world that mattered to her, where people had free minds and progressive ideas? Her resentment of the milieu ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... affections of another—making himself many, or reducing many unto himself—then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... This narrowness of exposition becomes doubly evident when we give consideration to two other elements in primitive symbolism—the multivocal nature of early designs, and the misapprehensions due to ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... favourite Corneille or a text of Scripture on his lips, in 1874. Austere without severity, simple in habit without rudeness, indomitable in courage, imperious in will, gravely eloquent, he had at once the liberality and the narrowness of the middle classes, which he represented when in power. A threefold task, as he conceived, lies before the historian: he must ascertain facts; he must co-ordinate these facts under laws, studying the anatomy and the physiology of society; finally, he must ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the gods, not the wretched laws of the dead. Their doctrine of equality, of fraternity, of humanity; their defence of individualism against public authority; their repudiation of slavery, redeemed democracy from the narrowness, the want of principle and of sympathy, which are its reproach among the Greeks. In practical life they preferred a mixed constitution to a purely popular government. Chrysippus thought it impossible to please both gods and men; and Seneca declared ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... would cheerfully have gone to China, had the sloop been bound thither, came back to his bunk on the first night after a wandering stroll through the lower part of the city. It is quite possible that he would have done the same, viewing the narrowness of his purse, upon the second night, had he not encountered at noon a gentleman in close conversation with the Captain, whom he immediately recognized—though he had seen him but once before—as Mr. Brindlock. This person met him very kindly, and with a hearty shake of the hand, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... mysticism in which it is clothed even by such hard heads as Pericles and Thucydides, the mysticism of men in the presence of some fact for which they have no words great enough. Yet for all its intensity it was condemned by its mere narrowness. By the fourth century the average Athenian must have recognized what philosophers had recognized long before, that a religion, to be true, must be universal and not the privilege of a particular people. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... of the present day is for the representation of that grade of humanity of which men see the most—that type of things which could never have been but that it might pass. The demand marks the commonness, narrowness, low-levelled satisfaction of the age. It loves its own—not that which might be, and ought to be its own—not its better self, infinitely higher than its present, for the sake of whose approach it exists. I do not think that the age is ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Munchausen, gloomily. "The whole point of the story depends upon its having been Jonah's whale. Under the circumstances, the only thing I can do is to sit down. I regret the narrowness of mind exhibited by my friend Jonah, but I must respect the decision of ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... the falling drops made itself heard beneath the mill noises. In a moment the log disappeared beneath projecting eaves. Another was just behind it, and behind that yet another, and another, like great patient beasts rising from the coolness of a stream to follow a leader through the narrowness, of pasture bars. And in the booms, up the river, as far as the eye could see, were other logs awaiting their turn. And beyond them the forest trees, straight and tall and green, dreaming of the time when they should follow ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... strong body and helping each other, these people seemed to detest one another, and to lose no opportunity of snatching some little advantage or telling some scandalous tale. In fact, this in-and-in breeding seems one of the curses of village life, and a cause of stagnation and narrowness of mind. This marrying and giving in marriage is not singular to well-to-do leaders of chapel society, but goes on with equal fervour among the lower members. The cottage girls and cottage boys marry the instant they get a chance, and it is not at all ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... represent this as a piece of impolitic narrowness, and to say that its surly bigotry was rightly punished by the evils that it brought down on the returning exiles. The temper of much flaccid Christianity at present delights to expand in a lazy and foolish 'liberality,' which will welcome anybody to come and take a hand ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type; not bright, of course—you would not expect that—but good-hearted and companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and without examination also—which goes without saying. Their religion was inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... electric light is produced by the dynamo current no motor intervenes. The current is converted into heat and light by merely having an impediment, a restriction, a narrowness, interposed to its free passage on a conducting wire, as heretofore explained, very much as water in a pipe foams and struggles at a narrow place or an obstruction. Where mechanical movements are to be produced by the dynamo current the motor is always the intermediate machine. ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... boldly quarrel with their own constitution and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with because they are not big enough to grasp everything. We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us: for of that they are very capable: and it will be an unpardonable, as well as a childish peevishness, if we under-value the advantages ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... were off again: My soul already has grown quite weary Of walls and halls, so dark and dreary, The narrowness oppresses me. One sees no green thing, not a tree. On the lecture-seats, I know not what ails me, Sight, hearing, thinking, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... 'Why, Sir, you cannot account for the fancies of men. Well, how does Lord Elibank? and how does Lord Monboddo?' BOSWELL. 'Very well, Sir. Lord Monboddo still maintains the superiority of the savage life[432].' JOHNSON. 'What strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known, are better than the things which we have known.' BOSWELL. 'Why, Sir, that is a common prejudice.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, but a common prejudice should not be found in one whose trade it is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... patience was inexhaustible, his temper beyond proof. The incapacity of many in whom he had trusted, the jealousies and religious differences which prevented anything like union between the various states, the narrowness and jealousy even of those most faithful to the cause, would have driven most ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Mr. Lavender. I have never, or very seldom, noticed that narrowness in public men, nor have I ever seen them 'looking fools' as you rudely ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were mischiefs of a smaller kind, extremely pernicious to all nobleness of character, to which this Court, with all its really bright examples, was as liable as any other,—the mischiefs of jealousy, narrowness, and selfishness. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... may be conjectured from his handwriting. That neat but crowded and constrained small-hand argued a man of a good conscience, well-regulated passions, and, to use his own phrase, an upright walk in life; but it also indicated narrowness of spirit, inveterate prejudice, and hinted at some degree of intolerance, which, though not natural to the disposition, had arisen out of a limited education. The passages from Scripture and the classics, rather profusely than happily ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... girl's brow as she muttered: "He aspired to my hand,—he, who fares sumptuously in that brown-stone palace while such men as Mr. Lane are fortunate to have a canvas roof over their heads. He had the narrowness of mind to half-despise Arthur Strahan, who left equal luxury to face every danger and hardship. Thank Heaven I planted some memories ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Gospels notes two seemingly opposing characteristics of Christ's invitations,—their wideness and their narrowness. They were broad enough to include all men; yet by their conditions they were so narrowed down that only a few seemed ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... exercised for the good of his health by the stable-boy. It was expensive, but expense was not a first consideration with the Squire, and when he had once decided a matter, he was not apt to worry himself with regrets. As to Amabel the very narrowness of the white horse's escape from death exalted him at once to the place of first favorite in her tender heart, even over the head (and ears) of ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Under deep general anesthesia, however, it is impossible to differentiate between the normal reflex and a spasmodic condition, since both are abolished. Many cases of intermittent esophageal stenosis supposed to be spasmodic are due to organic narrowness of lumen plus lodgement of food, obstructive in itself and in the esophagitis resulting from its presence. The organic narrowing, congenital or ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... Oxford's student life. St. Mary's Church was the hub. Cat Street, School Street running parallel with it from High Street to the north boundary, and Schydyard Street, the continuation of School Street on the southern side of High Street, alleys of the usual medieval narrowness and mean appearance, the buildings on either hand almost touching one another, and the way dark—were the haunts of masters and scholars and all those depending on them. Students, old and young, of high station and low, are crowded in lodging-houses, many of which ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... when their ranks were embarrassed by the narrowness of the road, and it was impossible for the cavalry to act with effect, Sir James rushed upon them at the head of his horsemen; and the archers, suddenly discovering themselves, poured in a flight of arrows ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... with which I had anticipated monastic life was nothing to my disgust and misery at the realisation of its evils. The narrowness and littleness of it, the hypocrisies, all filled me with revolt; and it was only by brooding over possibilities of escape that I could avoid utter despair. At length a ray of hope came to me. My younger brother, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... should be abroad: frank, manly, and unaffected in his habits and manners, liberal and independent in his opinions, generous and unprejudiced in his sentiments towards other nations, but most loyally attached to his own." There was a provincial narrowness at that date and long after in America, which deprecated the open-minded patriotism of King and of Irving as it did the clear-sighted loyalty of ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... eruption in 1835; that on the north is named Conchagua or Amapala, taller than Coseguina, but long extinct, and covered to its top with verdure. It is remarkable for its regularity of outline and the narrowness of its apex. On this apex, a mere sugar-loaf crown, are a viga or look-out station, and a signal-staff, whence the approach of vessels is telegraphed to the port of La Union, at the base of the volcano. A rude hut, half-buried in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... however, be no impediment to the good; for they shall pass with wonderful ease and swiftness, like lightning, or the wind, Mahomet, and his Moslems leading the way; whereas the wicked, what with the slipperiness and extreme narrowness of the path, the entangling of the thorns, and the extinction of the light which directed the former to paradise, will soon miss their footing, and fall down headlong into hell, which ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... very antithesis of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we are usefully employed in cultivating our tastes, in refining them, and in defining them. We cannot be too strenuous in defining them; and, as long as we are young, the catholicity of youth will preserve us from a bigoted narrowness. In aesthetic matters—and I imagine we both understand that we are dealing with these—the youngest youth has no tastes; it has merely appetites. All is fish that comes to its net; if anything, it prefers the gaudier of the finny tribes; it is only when ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... falsehood. Of women, however, there is no general statement which is true. The one is brave to heroism, the next cowardly in a degree fantastically comic. The one is honest, the other faithless; the one contemptible in her narrowness of soul, the next supremely noble in broad truth as the angels in heaven; the one trustful, the other suspicious; this one gentle as a dove, that one grasping and venomous as a strong serpent. The hearts of women are as the streets of a great town—some ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... tiny channel which would admit at most the slenderest of straws. Inside, this conduit opens at the top of the dome of the hatching-chamber; outside, at the tip of the nipple, it spreads into a wide mouth. This is the ventilating-shaft, protected against intruders by its extreme narrowness and by grains of dust which obstruct it a little without stopping it up. I said it was simply marvellous. Was I wrong? If a construction of this sort is a fortuitous result, we must admit that blind chance is gifted with extraordinary powers ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... LATIMER. The Oxford Dons are right in supposing that no statue can be erected without a previous design; a design by a hand that has not lost its cunning. The proposed site is in Broad Street, a very suggestive name as opposed to narrowness of any sort; yet so eager are the illogical Dons in the matter of preservation of spaces, that before even the base of a clay model has been commenced, they have already prepared the ground for the reception of the statue by getting up any ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... when the blow was about to fall, before making the disclosure which should not only save Gustavus, but enable him to cast a net in which all the plotters must be caught. And he hoped that when Gustavus perceived the narrowness of his escape, and the reality of the dangers amid which he walked, he would consider the wisdom of taking another ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... What will we have for them? We have the fertility of soil; we have the natural resources; we have coal; we have gas; we have wheat land and pasture land and fruit land. Nature has done her share with a prodigality that shames our little human narrowness. Now if we had men to match our mountains, if we had men to match our plains, if our thoughts were as clear as our sunlight, we would be able to stand up high enough to see over the rim of things. In the light of what ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ancient classic idea lingered in its simplicity, its narrowness and jealousy, wherever there was any political activity. The history of Southern Italy, indeed, is mainly a foreign one—the history of modern Rome merges in that of the papacy; but Northern Italy has a history of its own, and that is a history ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... fierce wilderness along the old Southern "traces," was to be wiped out absolutely. The land was indeed to be left without law. The entire fruits of organized society were to belong to a band of outlaws. This was probably the best and boldest instance ever seen of the narrowness of the line dividing ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... high and oval; in females it occasionally gives the impression of narrowness. The forehead is well developed in both sexes. The nose is prevalently long and of medium breadth, its proportions being practically identical with those of the modern English. The ears are longer than those of any modern immigrants except the English. The mouth shows medium ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... exclusively an Englishman, and made his boast in the House of Commons that the interest of England was his Shibboleth; LINCOLN thought always of mankind, as well as his own country, and served human nature itself. Palmerston, from his narrowness as an Englishman, did not endear his country to any one court or to any one nation, but rather caused general uneasiness and dislike; LINCOLN left America more beloved than ever by all the peoples of Europe. Palmerston was self-possessed and adroit in reconciling ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... liberal in their condescensions. An attractive New York woman once said to me: "I told a man the other day that I was tired of meeting him incessantly at dinner, and that we met each other so often in this way as to make conversation a bore." Could any remark have more pungently expressed the unhappy narrowness of New York reunions? How many times has the dainty Mr. Amsterdam or Mrs. Manhattan ever met men and women of literary or artistic gifts at a fashionable dinner in Fifth or Madison Avenue? How many times has he or she met any such person at a "patriarchs' ball" or an "assembly?" Has he or she ever ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... if I ask for them! He will fall down in a fit, I am sure. Already he is vexed at my having cabled and written Lord K. for his (Maxwell's) Brigade of Gurkhas. To him I appear careless of his (Maxwell's) position and of the narrowness of his margin of safety. For the life of him K. can't help putting his Lieutenants into this particular cart. The same old story as the eight small columns in the Western Transvaal: co-equal and each thinking his own beat on the veldt the only critical spot in South Africa: and ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the other hand, it was the very sign-manual of Charlotte's genius, was, on the other, a drawback from which she did not live long enough to emancipate her nature. It is responsible for her lack of interest in what is delicate and complex; it excused to herself a narrowness of vision which we are sometimes tempted to find quite distressing. It is probably the cause of a fault that never quits her for long, a tendency to make her characters express themselves with a lyrical extravagance ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of family, and say that some one is a gentleman because he has had seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray the dulness and narrowness of vision of those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... friendship to the test, by asking a friend to lend him money merely with that view, when he did not want it.' JOHNSON. 'That is very wrong, Sir. Your friend may be a narrow man, and yet have many good qualities: narrowness may be his only fault. Now you are trying his general character as a friend, by one particular singly, in which he happens to be defective, when, in truth, his character ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... moment it was a great sorrow and a great misfortune for them. Especially for Christophe. Such virtuous intolerance, such narrowness of soul, which sometimes seems to deprive those who have the most of them of all intelligence, and those who are most good of kindness, irritated him, hurt him, and flung him back in ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... code of knightly honour—that is to say, the code of folly and brutality—the guiding principle of your conduct?—Examine it rationally once and for all, and reduce it to plain terms; lay its pitiable narrowness bare, and let it be the touchstone, not of your hearts but of your minds. If you do not regret it then, it will merely show that your head is not fitted for work in a sphere where great gifts of discrimination are needful in order to burst the bonds of prejudice, ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... old woman, and noiselessly, while Crawford lay in a half slumber, Alexa continued making the chamber more comfortable. Chintz curtains veiled the windows, which, for all their narrowness, had admitted too much light; and an old carpet deadened the sound of footsteps on the creaking boards—for the bones of a house do not grow silent with age; a fire burned in the antique grate, and was a soul to the chamber, which was chilly, looking ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... frigid face of Mrs. Barnett. It was the first time in his life he would have willingly sacrificed his personal pride for money. He would have done almost anything to get that money for Imogene Chandler. But it was useless to try to persuade the widow that she was wrong. Back of her own narrowness was Reedy Jenkins. This was Reedy's move; he was using the widow's vanity and personal greed for his own ends; and his ends were the destruction of Rogeen and the ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... be suggested that the bones had accumulated in the den through dead bodies of animals being floated in during the inundation by the waters of the lake, but in that case the remains, owing to the narrowness of the mouth of the cave, could only have belonged to small animals, and the skeletons would have been more or less complete, and there are also evidences on many of the bones of their having been broken by teeth precisely similar to those ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... And surely in that other summons there was, besides, the thrill of romance, such as the young love. There was the trumpeting to high adventure. Few there were to touch, few to remember, even the saintliest life lived in a noble narrowness, a noble silence. But the word of truth, spoken from no matter what obscurity, will rise and ring round the world, and remain forever in the pattern of men's thought. Here, indeed, was a 'bliss to die ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that it is a literal, scientific, demonstrable fact that there is not a single evil that can be named in modern life, social, religious, political, or industrial, which is not based on the narrowness and blindness of classes of men toward one another, it is very hard to sit by and watch the modern college almost everywhere, with its silent, deadly Thing-emphasis upon it, educating every man it can reach, into not knowing other men, into not ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... political movements, all require that Christian people should work side by side with men who are not possessors of 'like precious faith.' If ever there have been individuals or communities that have tried to traverse that law, they have developed narrowness and bitterness and stunted growth, and a hundred evils that we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... enemy,—but in the rear altogether of his position, amidst those wide-spreading morasses which cover the country about Arcola. This daring movement was devised to place Napoleon between Alvinzi and Davidowich; but the unsafe nature of the ground, and the narrowness of the dykes, by which alone he could advance on Arcola, rendered victory difficult, and reverse most hazardous. He divided his men into three columns, and charged at daybreak (Nov. 15) by the three dykes which conduct to Arcola. The Austrian, not suspecting that the main body ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... wisdom, one human being might almost impersonate Providence to another. Alas! love, divine as it is, can do no more than lighten the house it inhabits—must take its shape, sometimes intensify its narrowness—can spiritualize, but not expel, the old lifelong lodgers above-stairs ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... particular persons. Some are incapable of applying to them from the delicacy of their sex, some from the unsteadiness of youth, and others from the imbecillity of age. Many are precluded by the narrowness of their education, and many by the straitness of their fortune. The wisdom of God is wonderfully manifested in this happy and well-ordered diversity, in the powers and properties of his creatures; since by thus admirably ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... spacious provinces to which the old Roman virtues had taken flight, men were leading happy, useful lives, because the strong hand of the imperial government had come to save them from the inefficiency of aristocratic governors. This narrowness of view accounts ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... in the village, and, halfway down its main thoroughfare, went up a street of gloom and narrowness between dingy workshops. At one of them, shaky, and gray with the stain of years, they halted. The two lower windows in front were dim with dirt and cobwebs. A board above them was the rude sign of Sam Bassett, carpenter. On the side of the old shop was a flight of sagging, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... reserve a cent of their income, with which to meet any unforeseen calamity, 'pay too dear for the whistle,' whatever temporary benefits they may derive from society. Self-denial, in proportion to the narrowness of your income, will eventually be the happiest and most respectable course for you and yours. If you are prosperous, perseverance and industry will not fail to place you in such a situation as your ambition covets; and if you are not prosperous, it will be well for your children that ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... mean projects of avarice; not from the sallies of passion, or allurements of pleasure; still less from the benign motives of friendship and generosity. His capacity was excellent, but somewhat contracted by the narrowness of his heart; he possessed insinuation and address, but never employed these talents, except where some great point of interest was to be gained; and while he neglected to conciliate the affections of his people, he often felt ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... you tell me of, Sir, are indeed curious, both those of Atterbury and the rest; but I cannot flatter myself that I shall be able to contribute to publication. My press, from the narrowness of its extent, and having but one man and a boy, goes very slow; nor have I room or fortune to carry it farther. What I have already in hand, or promised, will take me up a long time. The London Booksellers play me all ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... narrowness of your philosophy; if you were to look with an enlarged, a thinking mind, you'd soon perceive that the distance was not so great from St. James's to St. Giles's—from the House of Commons to the House of Correction. Well, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... harvest-weather, and see in the damage done by a hailstorm a divine affliction; that they criticise it as a sad token of ecclesiastical darkness, when even church-authorities order such prayers in case of wide-spread calamities; that they fall into a passion over the {347} narrowness and the dulling influence of pedagogues who see in the histories which they relate to their pupils or put into their hands for reading, the government of an ethical order of the world which goes a little farther than the rule that he who deceives injures ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... Ben, thoughtfully, "but, speaking frankly, this limitation of your powers to the chemical action of your body only shows the narrowness of your scientific training. Had men been taught the power of the will as the underlying principle of every effect, one drug would have proved quite as efficacious as another, and bread pills would have met the ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... short-sightedness, and shirking. They lost no opportunity to show their lack of sympathy with the class from which they had sprung and to which they still belonged in reality, their devotion to the class plutocratic to which they aspired. Arthur, in losing the narrowness of the class from which he had been ejected, lost all class narrowness. The graduates from the top have the best chance to graduate into the wide, wide world of human brotherhood. By an artificial process—by compulsion, vanity, reason, love—he became what Madelene was by ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... portion of the retina. From O, in the centre of the slit, let a perpendicular O R be imagined drawn upon the retina. The motion communicated to the point R will then be the sum of all the motions emanating in this direction from the ether particles in the slit. Considering the extreme narrowness of the aperture, we may, without sensible error, regard all points of the wave A P as equally distant from R. No one of the partial waves lags sensibly behind the others: hence, at R, and in its immediate neighbourhood, we have no sensible reduction of the light by interference. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... particular type of government, our culture and education, our freedom and our democracy and our security. Every nation appears to have its own idols, its concealments and its self-deceptions, its belief in its own supremacy and divine mission, and its innocent faith in its own mores. To overcome such narrowness and perversion without introducing worse faults is a difficult problem of education. In either direction there appear to be real dangers. A nation steeped in provincial ways, plunged as we are now into the midst of world politics, has difficulties ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... atheists. He knew Bradlaugh and spoke on the platforms of that Hall of Science in which very simple and sincere masses of men used to hail with shouts of joy the assurance that they were not immortal. He retains to this day something of the noise and narrowness of that room; as, for instance, when he says that it is contemptible to have a craving for eternal life. This prejudice remains in direct opposition to all his present opinions, which are all to the effect that it is glorious to desire power, consciousness, and vitality even for one's self. But ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the long sittings, to which Ingigerd submitted from vanity, she betrayed the narrowness, the attenuation, the barrenness of her mind. In contrast with Miss Burns, Frederick perceived in Ingigerd with fearful clearness that incompleteness which is eternally rudimentary. Once she brought a letter from her mother in Paris and read it aloud. For ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... for her future, an intensely simple one, owing to the even greater narrowness of her resources, was already marked out. One advantage had accrued to her through her mother's possession of a fair share of personal property, and perhaps only one. She had been carefully educated. Upon this consideration her plan was ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... which he adopted for observing the transit, Horrox writes as follows: 'Having attentively examined Venus with my instrument, I described on a sheet of paper a circle, whose diameter was nearly equal to six inches—the narrowness of the apartment not permitting me conveniently to use a larger size. I divided the circumference of this circle into 360 degrees in the usual manner, and its diameter into thirty equal parts, which ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... marked his slaves With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red With murder, feign to stretch the other out For brotherhood and peace; and that they now Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds Are marked with all the narrowness and crime That freedom's young ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... to find myself in the neighbourhood of the yellow fever, which had lately been imported. The uncommon, early, and severe north-west winds entirely prevented it from spreading; a fortunate circumstance for the inhabitants of Boston, as, from the narrowness of their streets, great population, and other circumstances, it must have been very fatal, had it not been by this ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... the writ of habeas corpus. The other strong points in his work are its sense of narrative, its freedom from hero-worship, its independence of conventional views of Northern leaders. As to the South, it suffers from a certain Narrowness of vision due to the comparative scantiness of the material used. The same may ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... myriad phases of human character constantly passing before his eyes. But his guide, with whom familiarity with the proletarians had, in a great measure, bred indifference, hurried him away to Little Bourke Street, where the narrowness of the thoroughfare, with the high buildings on each side, the dim light of the sparsely scattered gas-lamps, and the few ragged-looking figures slouching along, formed a strong contrast to the brilliant and crowded scene they had just left. Turning off Little Bourke Street, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... reformers, still pending, finds its counterpart, in the history of philosophy, in the quarrel between realists and nominalists; it is almost useless to add that, on both sides, right and wrong are equal, and that the rivalry, narrowness, and intolerance of opinions have been the sole cause of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... narrowness of the gorge, and the steepness of its sides, there was no mode of advancing but by wading through the water; stumbling every moment over the impediments which lay hidden under its surface, or tripping against the huge roots of trees. But the most annoying ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... criticized this great interior as too much broken into compartments, and shorn of half its rightful impressiveness by the interposition of a screen betwixt the nave and chancel. It did not spread itself in breadth, but ascended to the roof in lofty narrowness. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... before I knew that a deaf child could be taught to speak, I was conscious of dissatisfaction with the means of communication I already possessed. One who is entirely dependent upon the manual alphabet has always a sense of restraint, of narrowness. This feeling began to agitate me with a vexing, forward-reaching sense of a lack that should be filled. My thoughts would often rise and beat up like birds against the wind; and I persisted in using my lips and voice. Friends ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... Her situation was dramatic in the ordinary sense of the word, very much as Nora's situation is dramatic when she knows that Krogstad's letter is in Helmer's hands. But in Chains there is not even this simple form of excitement and suspense. A city clerk, oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness of his life, thinks of going to Australia—and doesn't go: that is the sum and substance of the action. Also, by way of underplot, a shopgirl, oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness of her life, thinks of escaping from it by marrying a middle-aged ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Whatever narrowness and inconsistency individual trade unionists may be charged with regarding industrial education, the leaders of the labor movement give it their endorsement in the clearest terms. For instance, this very report, comments those international unions which have already established supplemental ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... gentleman who was reading the 'Times,' and drawing to me the leaves of the journal, so that it would be more convenient to peruse, the man insolently and arrogantly demanded of me, 'What the devil I meant?' This intolerance in the English character is owing to the narrowness of the institutions, under which men come to fancy liberty applies to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... first rank, the Empire of intellect, grew up in the domain of art and science, where German character and endeavour found the deepest and fullest expression. A great change had been effected in this land of political narrowness and social sterility since the year 1750. A literature and a science, born in the hearts of the nation, and deeply rooted in the moral teaching of Protestantism, had raised their minds far beyond the boundaries of practical life into the sunlit ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... could not see that Euripides was not a man only, he was a spirit of development. Privilege and narrowness in every form he hated; he demanded unlimited freedom for the intelligence. The narrow circle of legends, the conventional unified drama, state religion, a pseudo-democracy based on slavery he fearlessly criticised. Rationalism, humanism, free speculation were his watchwords; he was always ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... people in Holland. 'They have been sent open for me to seal, so I have been amused to see the different modes of treating that favourite subject myself.' He is to be allowed L240 a year, but he is determined not to be straitened, nor to encourage the least narrowness, but to draw on his father when necessary. Wilkes had gone to France, but had let him have some franks 'to astonish a few North Britons.' Parting for a time with Temple, whose family was now in straitened circumstances, he ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... as though I had just stepped off my whack of sentry go for my group when a kick in the ribs apprised me that it was "Stand-to." I rubbed my eyes, swore and rose to my feet. Such was the narrowness of the trench that the movement put me at my post at the parapet, where in common with my mates, I fell to scanning the top for the first signs of day ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... against future perils of the sea. For in the part of the sea which bears towards the monastery of I, there is a very great danger to those who cross, partly because of the vehemence of the currents, and partly because of the narrowness of the sea; so that ships are whirled round and driven in a circle, and thus are often sunk. For it is rightly compared to Scylla and Charybdis; I mean that by its grave and unmitigated dangerousness, evil is there the lot of sailors. When they were coming ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... Streets; Dale Street; The obstinate Cobbler; The Barber; Narrowness of Dale-street; The Carriers; Highwaymen; Volunteer Officers Robbed; Mr. Campbell's Regiment; The Alarm; The Capture; Improvement in Lord Street; Objections to Improvement; Castle Ditch; Dining Rooms; Castle-street; Roscoe's Bank; Brunswick-street; Theatre Royal Drury Lane; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... nearer to each other. And now, when South and North, Democrat and Republican, Radical and Conservative, lift their voices in one unbroken accord of lamentation; when I see how, in spite of the greed of gain, the lust of office, the strifes and narrowness of party politics, the great heart of the nation proves sound and loyal, I feel a new hope for the republic, I have a firmer faith in its stability. It is said that no man liveth and no man dieth ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... unable to fulfil my destructions"—"Instructions you mean," said the gentleman;—"Well, well, instructions if you will," admitted Chiquiznaque,—"seeing that I could not find room for the number of stitches I had to make, because of the narrowness, I say, and want of space in the visage of the merchant, I gave the cut to a lacquey he had with him, to the end that I might not have my journey for nothing; and certainly his allowance may pass for ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... seriousness.] I have returned from a very narrow life. Out on the ocean one becomes accustomed to a certain narrowness of outlook. And so, as I said, I hardly feel capable of any comment for the present and must ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... his steps, looking for a cab and swearing at the narrowness of the Rue Montmartre, where the inadequate pavements forced the foot passengers to overflow on to the roadway, which was choked with costermongers' carts, heavy motor-buses, and all that swarm of vehicles which gives a Paris street an air ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... four of them made a combined attack on Walthar, but because of the narrowness of the path they could not come at him with any better success than could one single warrior, and they too were ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... her names. He pulled himself up vigorously and walked very fast. But the heat did not quite die down and other thoughts surged up in spite of his desire to keep his head and be reasonably calm. There had been a certain narrowness in the tragic separation of two happy children if the only reason for it had been that the mother of one was a pretty, frivolous, much gossiped about woman belonging to a rather too rapid set. And ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ponder the society column not because we are snobs, but because our imaginations take fire; the dry narrowness and hard conditions of our lives are soothed as we contemplate those who have no excuse not to be benefactors; and what they should be, our imaginations, benevolent to ourselves, assure us ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... together in full harmony and co-operation, and the days of William and Lanfranc be brought back. Becket read his own character better and knew that the days of Henry I and Anselm were more likely to return, and that not because he recognized in himself the narrowness of Anselm, but because he knew his tendency to identify himself to the uttermost with ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... along the foreground, but none could fail to be impressed by the silent reverence of the congregation. No service was in process, yet many believers knelt at prayer. Here a pretty girl returned thanks for evident blessings received; there an old spinster, the narrowness of whose means forbade her expending a couple of sous on the hire of a chair, knelt on the chilly flags and murmured words of gratitude for benefits whereof her appearance bore no ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... Britain at any rate, the working man has shown himself a being of the most limited and practical outlook. His narrowness of imagination, his lack of general ideas, has been the despair of the Socialist and of every sort of revolutionary theorist. He may have struck before, but only for definite increments of wages or ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... our officials are, and however varied their origin, the danger of the narrowness and rigidity which has hitherto so generally resulted from official life would still remain, and must be guarded against by every kind of encouragement to free intellectual development. The German Emperor did good service the other day when he claimed (in a semi-official communication on the Tweedmouth ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... straitness, the narrowness, must not be understood of the gate simply, but because of that cumber that some men carry with them, that pretend to be going to heaven. Six cubits! What is sixteen cubits to him who would enter in here with all the world on his back? The young man in the gospel, who made such ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and the greatest of all, feels the pangs of despair; and then rises to ecstasies, moved by religious love; he speaks of his return to Christ with a passionate fervour, foreshadowing the great conversions of the Puritan epoch. He ponders over his thoughts "in the narrowness of night ... I was stained with my deeds, bound by my sins, buffeted with sorrows, bitterly bound, with misery encompassed...." Then the cross appears to him in the depths of heaven, surrounded by angels, sparkling ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... under this showing because the Negro does not vote with us? You know as well as I that the Negro's vote was at the bottom of all this trouble. And we will always have trouble as long as the destruction of Negro womanhood is only an indiscretion. Mrs. Fells of Georgia shows the narrowness of her soul when she cries aloud for the protection of white women in isolated sections of Georgia against lustful Negroes, when she knows perfectly well that Negro girls in Georgia need the same ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... bridge, gamble in stocks and shares and anything else, and arrange lights and colours with the skill of an artist when a suitable setting for her pretty self was concerned. She had all the charms of womanly weakness without any old-fashioned and grandmotherly narrowness; she was quite free and emancipated in mind and manners, no man had to modify his language for her; she preferred a double meaning to a single one, and a risque story to a plain one. She had an excellent taste in dinners, a critical ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... thinking that he must have been caught young, and have had a tincture of English breeding, at least, if not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and appear so much like other people. This insular narrowness is exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occurrence, and is quite as much a characteristic of men of education and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... him was a master passion. He was a man personally upright and kindly, of only moderate interest and capacity for the ordinary practical affairs of life, given to brooding on public events and ideal causes, and viewing them with a fanatic's narrowness and a fanatic's absorption. He was a belated Puritan, and his natural place would have been with Cromwell's Ironsides. His ideas were largely influenced by his reading of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament. Of the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... overhanging gables and curious timber-framing that is now at any angle but what was originally intended. There is really so much individual quaintness in these houses that they deserve infinitely more than the scurry past them which so frequently is all their attractions obtain. The narrowness and fustiness of the Rue aux Fevres certainly hinder you from spending much time in examining the houses but there are two which deserve a few minutes' individual attention. One which has a very wide gable and the upper floors boarded ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... intervals were shortening and the revels were increasing. Beatrix learned their symptoms far too quickly; she learned to know the depression and irritability which greeted her every effort to rouse and to please him. It was at such times that Lorimer made bitter revolt against what he termed her narrowness and prejudice, or burst into occasional angry petulance, if she tried to urge him to cut loose from the club and from the constantly-growing influence of Lloyd Avalons who was discerning enough to discover that ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... goes out into the dim, waste places, where on the dark mountains the straying sheep are torn and frightened and starving. I need not dwell upon how far ahead in the future His glance travels, or how magnificent and how rebuking to our petty narrowness this great word is. 'There shall be one flock' (not fold); and they shall be one, not because they are within the bounds of any visible 'fold,' but because they are gathered round the one Shepherd, and in their common relation to Him ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... just within the little archway in St. Paul's Churchyard. I complied, in a very uncomfortable state, and with a warm shooting all over me, as if my apprehensions were breaking out into buds. When I allowed him to go on a little before, on account of the narrowness of the way, I observed that he carried his head with a lofty air that was particularly unpromising; and my mind misgave me that he had found out about ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... at once, upon the slightest acquaintance with James, that while he was of the same general civilization as his neighbors, he was of a different type. In his narrowness, there was a peculiar breadth and vigor which characterized him. He had about him the atmosphere of a ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... inherited, with some other qualities, 'a vile melancholy,' which in his too strong expression of any disturbance of the mind, 'made him mad all his life, at least not sober.' Michael was, however, forced by the narrowness of his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his shop, but by occasionally resorting to several towns in the neighbourhood, some of which were at a considerable distance from Lichfield. At that time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... lay a dark silhouette; that must be a warship! But it wasn't the French cruiser we were looking for. We recognized the silhouette—dead sure; that was the Russian cruiser Jemtchug. There it lay, there it slept like a rat. No watch to be seen. They made it easy for us. Because of the narrowness of the harbor we had to keep close; we fired the first torpedo at 400 yards. Then to be sure things livened up a bit on the sleeping warship. At the same time we took the crew quarters under fire, five shells at a time. There was a flash of flame on board, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... narrowness is the attempt to manufacture "cultural backgrounds" for various important ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... possible evils upon mankind. These accusations seem to be founded sometimes upon fact, sometimes upon vague rumours and blind gossip. Generally speaking, the author of the "Secret History" seems sincere, but at the same time he shows a narrowness by confounding all Justinian's acts in one sweeping censure, and in attributing to him the most incredible refinements of political perversity. Critics have asked the question whether the author of such a work can be Procopius of Caesarea, the impartial historian of ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... bag, and Lyndall walked on before in silence, with the dog close to her side. Perhaps she thought of the narrowness of the limits within which a human soul may speak and be understood by its nearest of mental kin, of how soon it reaches that solitary land of the individual experience, in which no fellow footfall is ever heard. Whatever her thoughts may have been, she was soon ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... did not think of this then; I did not even bestow a thought upon the narrowness of our escape, or the price which the darling of my heart might be called upon to pay for this supreme act of self-defence. My mind, my heart, my interest were with Felix, in whom the nearness of death had called up all that was strongest and most commanding ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.' There is so much in this time to break down the separation between him that believeth in Christ and him that doth not; narrowness has come to be thought such an enormous wickedness, and liberality is so lauded by all sorts of superficial people, that Christian men need to be summoned back to their standard. 'Being let go, they went to their own company'—there is a natural ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... would think and that is what I complain of. It is a strain that runs through the whole of you—except perhaps the Kitten—a dreadful narrowness of vision—don't tell me your sight is good—I'm only referring to your mental outlook. It is the fatal frivolous attitude of mind that always remembers the wholly irrelevant statement that the Earl of Warwick, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... mind, smarting under the blows of Chance, whirled from that past transient wave of superstitious emotion into an opposite extreme. Now he was ashamed of his weakness, and suffered convictions proper to the narrowness of an immature intellect to overwhelm him. He assured himself that his tribulations were not compatible with the existence of a Supreme Being. Like poor humanity the wide world over, his judgment became vitiated, his views distorted under the stroke of personal ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... thus general benefactors in an age of turbulence and crime, in spite of all their narrowness and spiritual pride and ghostly arts and ambition for power, but they lent a helping hand to the peasantry. The Church was democratic, and enabled the poor to rise according to their merits, while nobles combined to crush them or keep ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... prefer the artificial to the natural in most things, and think the mind of man omnipotent. He has a great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and trees, and is for referring every thing to Utility. There is a little narrowness in this; for if all the sources of satisfaction are taken away, what is to become of utility itself? It is, indeed, the great fault of this able and extraordinary man, that he has concentrated his faculties and feelings too entirely ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... for that among others. Thence to my brother's, and there took up my wife and Ashwell to the Theatre Royall, being the second day of its being opened. The house is made with extraordinary good contrivance, and yet hath some faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the Pitt, and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am confident cannot hear; but for all other things it is well, only, above all, the musique being below, and most of it sounding under the very stage, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... encouraged on a Sunday, as it might stop the progress of Methodism, and of that fanatical spirit which appears to be gaining ground. I was surprised when I visited Yorkshire, on my way to Sweden, to find that sullen narrowness of thinking had made such a progress since I was an inhabitant of the country. I could hardly have supposed that sixteen or seventeen years could have produced such an alteration for the worse in the morals of a place—yes, I say ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Hampstead Heath. He and she were getting on famously, he felt. She already showed all the symptoms of presently wishing to become a client. Not for the world would he offend her. He turned a little cold at the narrowness ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... we received orders to move forward, and began to proceed by way of "Inverness Trench," "Bomb Alley" and "Left Boyau" to "Reserve Trench." Movement was very slow, owing to the congestion of the traffic, and the narrowness of the trenches, and took a long time to complete. There we were destined to remain for several hours, and suffered a few casualties from shell fire, apparently directed at the junctions of the trench with "Central" and "Right Boyaux." We were now nominally at the disposal ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... had no gifts of compelling fervor; he could not arouse or warm his hearers; he never touched them. He preached to them, he visited them at their homes, he prayed beside their dying and their dead, he gave such aid in their necessities as the narrowness of his means would allow, but none of them loved him or did more than stoically accept ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... by nature the strongest on the river. The height of the banks, with the narrowness and peculiar winding of the stream, placed the batteries on the hill-sides above the reach of guns on shipboard. At the time of Farragut's first attack, though not nearly so strongly and regularly fortified as afterward, there were in position twenty six[9] guns, viz.: two X-inch, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... that he was defeated by votes thrown out in Alameda and Los Angeles counties because of irregularities in the ballot—in one case his initials were printed "J. D." instead of "J, F."—in another instance, his name was printed a little below the title of the office, because of the narrowness of the ticket. If these ballots were counted for him he thinks he ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane |
