"Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as usual in such cases, had fallen upon the bravest and most forward. It was to be feared, that if they were suffered to exhaust their zeal and efforts in an object so secondary as the capture of this petty fort, their numbers would melt away by degrees, and they would lose all the advantages arising out of the present unprepared state of the government. Moved by these arguments, it was agreed that the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of savings before the old bachelor's eyes; Pons had declined happiness accompanied by so many pimples. From that time forth the Dido of the ante-chamber, who fain had called her master and mistress "cousin," wreaked her spite in petty ways upon the poor musician. She heard him on the stairs, and cried audibly, "Oh! here comes the sponger!" She stinted him of wine when she waited at dinner in the footman's absence; she filled the water-glass to the brim, to give him the difficult task of lifting it without ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the spot where they had been exposed and brought up. And there was an overflowing population of Albans and of Latins. The shepherds too had come into that design, and all these readily inspired hopes, that Alba and Lavinium would be but petty places in comparison with the city which they intended to build. But ambition of the sovereignty, the bane of their grandfather, interrupted these designs, and thence arose a shameful quarrel from a beginning sufficiently ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... being a sovereign, and with his son Tippoo Sahib. Our longest and most severe contests were with the Mahrattas, a warlike tribe of Hindus in Western India, who came first into prominence in the seventeenth century under Sivajee, a petty chieftain, and gradually advanced under various leaders till they became for a time the paramount power. Their hordes of horsemen scoured the country in all directions, north and south, east and west, demanding the chauth, the fourth part of the revenue, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... than mine?" said Barto, and he roared the 'viva' like a melodious bull. Yet Wilfrid saw that he had been recognized. In the hour of triumph Barto Rizzo had no lust for petty vengeance. The magnanimous devil plumped his gorge contentedly on victory. His ardour blazed from his swarthy crimson features like a blown fire, when scouts came running down with word that all about the Porta Camosina, Madonna del Carmine, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been disturbed," Bending said carefully, "but I don't think anything is missing, except the petty ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... on the part of Ravenscroft ended a petty controversy, which gives him his only title to be named in the life of an ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... have heard, with a smile, of the insignificant wars and uprisings in those little tropic republics. They make but a faint clamour against the din of great nations' battles; but down there, under all the ridiculous uniforms and petty diplomacy and senseless countermarching and intrigue, are to be found statesmen and patriots. Don Rafael Valdevia was one. His great ambition was to raise Esperando into peace and honest prosperity and the respect of the serious nations. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... carefully guarded himself from his own eager desire to accept it Barter's every action with the cards offered confirmation of the belief that he had taken possession of the lost notes. He was certainly a petty rascal, and there was obviously nothing but opportunity needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a larger scale. So the temptation to drop the cards upon the table, to look his companion in the face, and to ask simply, 'How about that eight thousand pounds?' grew more and more upon him, ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... resolve is made and followed; so that instead of the thorn to goad and wound, there springs up in the pathway of the Reconciled the olive or the myrtle. How sweet is the sight of human goodness, struggling to surmount the petty passions which discolor its beauty, and bending to the benign suggestions of that pure and gentle principle, peace with man! Doubtless there are many severe strivings with natural pride, before these ends can be reached; but the new ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the lack of funds, because the Government—loved by the Powers on account of its weakness—has to part with all its funds to the military chieftains who fight each other and plunder the country, as in Europe—for China must be compared with Europe, not with any one of the petty States into ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... gendarmes, and their object is more to preserve the peace in places where different races meet, animated with fanatical hatred of each other. But during the whole time of our sojourn in Montenegro, we never witnessed a single case of men arrested for petty offences, or for breaking the peace by common brawling or drunkenness. The only cases that we did see were connected with the vendetta, which still flourishes. In the course of our travels in the land we have sufficiently ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... over other strips of turf. And the world, that one looks out upon through prison bars, that is so gloriously arched in the arm of a flying buttress, or that lies prone at your feet from the dizzy heights of the rock clefts, is not the world in which you, daily, do your petty stretch of toil, in which you laugh and ache, sorrow, sigh, and go down ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... But if the petty annoyances that beset our friend in the fore part of that day may be styled harassing, those with which he was overwhelmed towards evening may be called exasperating. First of all he broke the top ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... not quite know what to make of Kitty, but hoped to break her in by and by, and meanwhile she was very gentle, and Kitty loved her, although she never could be got to see that so many restrictions and so many little petty rules were not good, but extremely bad, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... honours, even his disappointments, concur with natural graces to make him seem too distinguished (a fitter word fails me) for this world. Omnia vanitas! he seems to say, yet with a profound resignation, which makes the things we are most of us so fondly occupied with look petty enough. Omnia vanitas! Is that indeed the proper comment on our lives, coming, as it does in this case, from one who might have made his own all that life has to bestow? Yet he was never to be seen at court, and has lived here almost as an exile. Was our ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... he is neither strong enough nor clever enough for the job. He has made a wretched little whirlpool in the mighty River of Becoming, interrupting—as he imagines, in his own interest—its even flow: and within that whirlpool are numerous petty complexes and counter-currents, amongst which his will and attention fly to and fro in a continual state of unrest. The man who makes a success of his life, in any department, is he who has chosen one from amongst these claims and interests, and devoted to it his energetic powers of heart and will; ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... heart, what a long chapter we have been betrayed into! We had quite forgotten all such petty restrictions as chapters, we solemnly declare. So here goes, to give the goblin a fair start in a new one. A clear stage and no favour for the goblins, ladies and gentlemen, if ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... expressed desire was to be an artist out and out, to live like an artist, not to be troubled with the hindrances and petty restrictions of an ordinary woman's life, which she was tempted to despise, to which, if she yielded at all in her mother's house, it was with scarcely concealed reluctance and aversion. Very likely she had only the most one-sided conception of the life she would ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... be included all petty Criminals and Bridewell Birds, all which should be transported at the Expence of the County to which they belong, as also should all Convicts and Felons; and in Virginia should there be appointed proper Persons to take Care of them, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... from petty thievery to bank defaulting. Some of the possibilities are horse and automobile stealing, burglary, hold-ups, train and street-car robbery, embezzlement, fraud, kidnapping, safe-cracking, shop and bank robbery. ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... learn that the district between Hobaboe Creek and 'Stricken Heuvel' contained, in 1829, eight sugar and five coffee and plantain estates, and now there remain but three in sugar and four partially cultivated with plantains by petty settlers: while the roads, with one or two exceptions, are in a state of utter abandonment. Here, as on the opposite bank of the river, hordes of squatters have located themselves, who avoid all communication with Europeans, and have seemingly given themselves up altogether to the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.[147] Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... crowded during the dinner-hour. Barbers and their assistants, cabmen, scene-shifters, if there was an afternoon performance at the theatre, servants out of situation and servants escaped from their service for an hour, petty shopkeepers, the many who grow weary of the scant livelihood that work brings them, came there. Eleven o'clock! In another hour the bar and the room upstairs would be crowded. At present the room was empty, and Journeyman had taken advantage of the quiet time to do a bit ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... man who usually danced with some one else. And there were other girls with a Spanish strain in them—girls with a drop of blood that might have been traced back a hundred years to Madrid or Seville or Barcelona. Small wonder if such girls felt like shrieking too, sometimes. Not over petty victories, and with joy; but when their hearts broke because the bells of memory called to them from away in the barred windows of Spain, or in walled gardens, or with the shepherd ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... despotism was the warlike attitude of other similar despotic lords, who always sought to advance their own interests by the force of arms. Feudalism in form of government was the antithesis of imperialism, yet in effect something the same. It substituted a horde of petty despots for one and it developed a petty local tyranny in the place of a ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... brought into collision with broadcloth.[467] This brings us to the subject of the covers called "housses" by French upholsterers, and which may come under the head of small decorations, or rather, of petty disfigurements. The things which went by the horrid name of "antimacassars" have, however, given way to "chair-backs," and crochet has been displaced by linen veils worked in crewels. This is a step in the right direction. No well-regulated eye could do otherwise than suffer ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... "These petty devices are innocent enough," said Mdlle. de Cardoville, "and I confess that I do not scruple to have recourse to them." Then, leaning towards the door-sash, she added: "Gracious! how sad and dark are these streets. What wind! what snow! In which ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... tragedy in every death-bed;" there may be no distinction of great or little, high or low. But it is an affectation to confound what shall be with what is. We cannot dissociate ordinary incidents from the petty wants out of which they ordinarily spring, nor common language from the common-place thoughts which it usually expresses. The action in tragedy must be relative to the situation; and if the situation be one which we are unable to separate from ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... an angel. The primal burden of our race-existence, Mankind's perpetual perpetuation, Weighs on weak womanhood; we bear the race And all its natural ills, yet still our fellows, Who proudly call themselves our lords and masters, Do heap upon us petty wrongs, and load Us down with their oppressions. I cannot tell What rich reward my suffering may bring, But bide the piercing, like this patient cloth, In hope ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... any danger if our boys go below to the stateroom?" she asked the petty officer, who was holding the rope connected with the tackle ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... shall the State grant a share in the formulation and execution of its laws? Once, in communities very enlightened, in their own peculiar way, women, children, slaves, mechanics, petty traders, and hired servants were deemed quite unfit to be entrusted with such responsibilities. [Footnote: ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... foul—so that she could undo her magic on the spot. And there he sat on the woodbox, his cap between his hands, a pitiful sight. Maren had judged him aright, there was nothing manly about him, he fought with words instead of fists. The men of the Sand farm were a poor breed, petty and grasping. This one was already bald, the muscles of his neck stood sharply out, and his mouth was like a tightly shut purse. It was no enviable position to be his wife; the miser was already uppermost in him! Already he was shivering with ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... earth. It will not be opened in London. He can make up another packet to resemble precisely the one of which he robbed Dorward. Oh! it is a difficult game, I know, but it is worth playing. Remember, Louise, that we are not petty conspirators. It is your country's very existence that is threatened. It is for her sake ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... squire of the old times, having no inclination for London seasons, never wishing to keep up a second house, quite content with his position as quire of Bragton, but with considerable pride about him as to that position. He had always liked to have his house full, and had hated petty oeconomies. He had for many years hunted the county at his own expense, the amusement at first not having been so expensive as it afterwards became. When he began the work, it had been considered sufficient to hunt twice a week. Now the Rufford and Ufford hounds ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... execration of his fellow-men. And yet there exist innumerable bores scattered through the length and breadth of our happy country, and carrying on their dismal business with an almost malignant persistency. Longwindedness, pomposity, the exaggeration of petty trivialities, the irresistible desire to magnify one's own wretched little achievements, to pose as the little hero of insignificant adventures, and to relate them to the whole world in every dull detail, regardless of the right of other men ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... appears to me very happily adjusted: had it been greater there would not have been a sufficient number of lawful retailers to put a stop to clandestine sellers; and if it was lower, every petty dealer in this commodity might, by pretending to keep an alehouse, continue the practice of affording an harbour to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... draught without a particle of embellishment to redeem it. In the class there was a boy who was a very eagle, and he always read his lucubrations aloud. Oh! with what unction he read out his pretty creations! (He is now settled in a manufacturing town, and has become the most prosaic of petty bailiffs.) One day the subject given out was: "A Shipwreck." To me the words had a lyrical sound! But, nevertheless, I handed in my paper with only the title and my name inscribed upon it. No, I could not make up my mind to elaborate the subjects given to us by the "Great Ape"; ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... wet to the skin, and even on a scorching day in August that is anything but a pleasant sensation. Then, too, the way was rough, and the briers and brambles along the path scratched their hands and tore at their clothing. Ordinarily all these petty annoyances would have tended toward making them irritable and cross, but on this day all such trifles passed over their heads unnoticed. For had they not between them done a marvelous thing? To save ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... Celtic inhabitants of England. It is unlikely that they were, as was formerly supposed, all killed or driven to the mountain districts of Wales. More probably they were gradually lost among the dominating Germans with whom they merged into one people. The Saxon and Angle chieftains established petty kingdoms, of which there were seven or eight at the time when Gregory the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... dangers that were sure to beset him. Nor had he thought to search for any. Long before the judge had concluded his recital of conditions in the county Hollis had decided to meet the issue squarely. He had been able to see beyond the petty, personal side of the question; had even ignored it to get at the big, pithy principle of equal rights. The Law must come. If he could assist in bringing it he would be accomplishing something real and tangible ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hand, while I rifled their coffers, and took forth their effects; but one thing is imputed to me, which I cannot die without denying—it is asserted that I stole an extinguisher; the contemptible character of this petty theft is a stain upon my reputation, that I cannot suffer to disgrace my memory." So would I now address you for all the graver offences of my book; I stand forth guilty—miserably, palpably guilty—they are mine every one of them; and I ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... laughter as Harold related his experience at the railway-station. The Connollys had rested for several days under the ban of the most rigid boycott, and had become used to small discomforts. They faced the situation bravely, and turned all such petty troubles into jest; but the American was sorely disquieted to learn that there was only one servant in the house—an old man who for many years had blacked boots and cleaned knives for the family, and who had refused to crouch to heel under the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... it is a fact that his mouth rested exactly over one of the rings of holes; and his position seemed very satisfactory, for some reason, for he hung there motionless so long that I began to fear he was dead. All these petty pilferers may possibly have regarded the treasure as nature's own provision, like the flowers, but one visitor to his neighbor's magazine certainly knew better. This was the brilliant cousin of the sapsucker, the red-headed ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... religious is willing, not only to absolve, but even to baptize or marry the Indian, unless he gives up his slaves; for these generally are, or were, stolen from other countries, or taken in unjustifiable petty warfare, or made slaves for very small debts—of which the majority admit no other payment than their enslavement—others by usury and barter according to their custom, and by other methods, even more unjust than these. It is necessary for his Majesty to ordain some method ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... to the persuasive arguments of a life-insurance agent; he "allowed" that he was willing to bet on almost any kind of game, but declined to take a hand in one where he had to die to win. It is painful to think of the infinity of petty economies, of all the grievous deprivations, the positive hardships, undergone in so many millions of families, day by day, and year by year, to secure these policies of insurance; but, as Plato said, "the good is difficult." There is no heroism where there is no self-sacrifice. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... here," says he, "Saviol Prokofitch, you must pay the peasants what's fairly owing to them! Every day they come to me with some complaint!" Your uncle slapped the provost on the shoulder, and says he: "It's not worth while, your Worship, for you and me to waste our breath over such petty details! I have to do with numbers of peasants in the course of the year; you can understand, if I pay them a paltry farthing short, every man of them, it mounts up to thousands, and a capital thing too for me!" Think of that, sir! And the way they treat one another too, sir! They ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... years pass. When Will Shakespeare is six, he hears that he is to go to school. But not to nod over a hornbook at the petty school—not John Shakespeare's son! Little Will Shakespeare is entered at King's New College, ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... reigning heads of European families are married, and their sons are too young for Elizabeth and Amelia. I cannot marry my grown-up daughters to boys; nor can I bring a set of insignificant sons-in-law to hang about the court. My husband the emperor would never consent to bestow his daughters upon petty princes, who, instead of bringing influence with them, would derive their reflected consequence from an alliance with us. If we cannot find them husbands worthy of their station, my daughters must remain single, or ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... inoffensive islanders will nigh pass belief. These things are seldom proclaimed at home; they happen at the very ends of the earth; they are done in a corner, and there are none to reveal them. But there is, nevertheless, many a petty trader that has navigated the Pacific whose course from island to island might be traced by a series of cold-blooded robberies, kidnappings, and murders, the iniquity of which might be considered almost sufficient to sink her guilty timbers to the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... be over here. No girl has ever had her own way all her life more than you! Believe me, you have no idea what it would mean to be tied to a rope of convention that would tighten like a noose at any struggle on your part. As the wife of a man like di Valdo, you would be bound by endless petty formalities. Another thing—which your aunt has made me realize—as an American, you would have to excel the Italians in dignity in order to be thought to equal them. Things perfectly pardonable for them would finish you. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... Clear Eyes The Child in the Orchard The Source The Mountain Chapel First known when lost The Word These things that Poets said Home Aspens An Old Song There was a Time Ambition No one cares less than I Roads This is no case of petty Right or Wrong The Chalk-Pit Health Beauty Snow The New Year The Brook The Other House and Man The Gypsy Man and Dog A Private ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... people must have strangely altered, then, in five years. Our New York population has hitherto had very little of the assassin-like character. Tar and feathers are the blackguards', and have been the petty tyrants' weapons, from time immemorial, in this country; but ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... and in every direction and expression of man's activity. It is the inexhaustible fountain of that lofty energy which communicates itself to every channel that carries inspiration to life and to art. Religion is the influence that redeems the mere shallow, surface presentation,—the petty trick to capture popularity, and holds art true to its real purpose. The glory of the mediaeval art of Italy owed its greatness to religion. Cimabue and Giotto were directly inspired by that spring of a diviner life given to Italy and later to the world of that "sweet ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... yoke of the conquerors, adopting, in some degree, the manners and habits of the Arabians. On the destruction of the caliphat of Cordova, in the year 1031, the dismemberment of the Moslem territories into petty Independent kingdoms, often at variance with each other, afforded the Christians a favorable opportunity of reconquering their country. One after another the Moorish states fell before them. The Moors were driven farther and farther to the south, and by the middle of the thirteenth century ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... enough just now to catch a four-footed live deer. No sooner does a man die, but you would think he had swallowed the lead of his coffin. Come along! Lord! how helpless it is! Why, he shall no more kick at his petty devouring, no, no more than if he were a dead king! [Exit with ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... nothing could be named but he had been planning just that for years, and should by-and-by get leisure for it, and there really was not enough left to call out the energies of any one else. Not from any petty egotism, but simply from inordinate activity, he stood ready to take all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... intermediate class, called boat-steerers. One of them came in Captain Terry's boat, but we thought he was cockswain of the boat, and a cockswain is only a sailor. In the whaler, the boat-steerers are between the officers and crew, a sort of petty officers; keep by themselves in the waist, sleep amidships, and eat by themselves, either at a separate table, or at the cabin table, after the captain and mates are done. Of all this hierarchy we were entirely ignorant, so the poor ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... to the great questions on which the welfare of a nation rests, if only his own private interests be advanced. All politicians are not so small and contemptible; many are honest, as far as they can see, but can see only petty details, and not broad effects. Mere politicians,—observe, I qualify what I say,—mere politicians resemble statesmen, intellectually, as pedants resemble scholars of large culture, comprehensive intellects, and varied knowledge; they will ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... terminated, could never have arisen if Cuba had not afforded a market for slaves. As long as this market shall remain open there can be no hope for the civilization of benighted Africa. Whilst the demand for slaves continues in Cuba wars will be waged among the petty and barbarous chiefs in Africa for the purpose of seizing subjects to supply this trade. In such a condition of affairs it is impossible that the light of civilization and religion can ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... gulf doth draw What's near with it: it is a massy wheel Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... securing of an alliance with the Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry of both ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... prosecution of his ambitious designs, the influence of the monarchy had been extended over eastern and central France—from Flanders, on the north, to the volcanic mountains of Auvergne, on the south. Meanwhile the oppressed subjects of the petty tyrants, whether within or around his domains, had learned to look for redress to the sovereign lord who prided himself upon his ability and readiness to succor the defenceless. His grandson, the more illustrious Philip Augustus (1180-1223), by marriage, inheritance, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... minimal importance: it treats artificial problems in a grammatical spirit, seldom giving any proof of experience or imagination. What painters say about painting and poets about poetry is better than lay opinion; it may reveal, of course, some petty jealousy or some partial incapacity, because a special gift often carries with it complementary defects in apprehension; yet what is positive in such judgments is founded on knowledge and avoids the romancing into which litterateurs and sentimentalists will gladly wander. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... who had learned in his oligarchical profession the way to command,—"but, sir, you shall, or if you mutiny you leave our body, and then will the hangman have no petty chance of your own. Come, come! ingrate as you are, what would you be without me? How many times have I already saved that long carcass of thine from the rope, and now would you have the baseness ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sun are to the frailest tendril, no answer came to my mute appeal. My little weaknesses and childish errors were never met with that enduring forbearance which is the distinctive outgrowth of a loving maternity. My trifling joys were rarely smiled upon, my petty sorrows never shared nor soothed by that unsympathetic guardian of my youth, and so I grew up by myself in a strange sort of isolation, alienated in heart and spirit from those with whom of necessity I ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... cast Kilmer into the role of hack journalist: he would have claimed no other title. Yet he adorned Grub Street (that most fascinating of all thorny ways) with gestures and music of his own. Out of his glowing and busy brain he drew matter that was never dull, never bitter or petty or slovenly. In the fervent attack and counter-attack, shock and counter-shock of his strenuous days he never forgot his secret loyalty to fine craftsmanship. He kept half a dozen brightly coloured balls spinning in air at all times—verses, essays, reviews, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... of a National School! Consider the horror of it! I expect her brother must be a very low sort of person. If she can read and write it is as much as we need hope for. That is the worst of living in one of those petty villages, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... while, the job was finished. The petty officer in charge of the work pushed in the switch, and the pump started, sucking dry with a harsh racket. The natives twittered in surprise. Then the water came, and the pump settled down ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... is a scandal. People should be given a chance to forget. I dare say it would have been better for her if she had been turned into a scullion or something of that kind. Of course he's trying to make money in every sort of petty way, but in such a business there'll never be enough for anybody ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... elsewhere? or is this A preparation in the wond'rous depth Of thy sage counsel made, for some good end, Entirely from our reach of thought cut off? So are the' Italian cities all o'erthrong'd With tyrants, and a great Marcellus made Of every petty ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... she felt, lest its display should afterward bring humiliating regret. She told him as clearly as she could the reason why she could not become his wife, and to his unspiritual judgment it seemed a petty cause. He was accustomed to seeing a type of religion that could exist in harmony with the world, and he did not see why the fact that Winifred was a Christian and had become uncommonly interested in that sort of thing should hinder her being the best ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... intellectual pursuit. They have come to know the strength of numbers, solidly phalanxed and driving onward with singleness of purpose. These purposes may be various and many, but one and all, ever discovering new mutual interests and objects, obeying a law which is beyond them, these petty aggregations draw closer together, forming greater aggregations and congeries of aggregations. And these, in turn, vaguely merging each into each, present glimmering adumbrations of the coming human solidarity which shall ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... in Australia, where his father was clerk of petty sessions, he was seized at the age of fourteen with an intense longing to go to sea. It is possible that he inherited this passion through his mother, for her father, Charles Beilby, who was private secretary to the Duke of Cumberland, invested ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... Gray's Inn, they asked me if I could find employment for him. He was a bright, clever-looking youth, and I took him as a clerk. He came to me in May, 1827, and left in November, 1828; and I have now an account-book which he used to keep of petty disbursements in the office, in which he charged himself with the modest salary first of thirteen shillings and sixpence, and afterwards of fifteen shillings, a week. Several incidents took place in the office of which he must have been a keen observer, as ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of that island, who were divided into a great number of petty nations, under a very coarse and disorderly frame of government, did not find it easy to plan any effectual measures for their defence. In order, however, to gain time in this exigency, they sent ambassadors to Caesar with terms of submission. Caesar could not colorably reject their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was to her not one of the gay people around her could suspect, for she was obliged to fawn and smile as if she were in thorough sympathy with the scene, and to attend to her duties as hostess and to all the petty details required by so-called etiquette, in order to preserve the prestige which she had acquired ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Gian Giacomo de' Medici had hitherto acted with a single-hearted view to his own interests. At the age of thirty he had raised himself from nothing to a principality, which, though petty, might compare with many of some name in Italy—with Carpi, for example, or Mirandola, or Camerino. Nor did he mean to remain quiet in the prime of life. He regarded Como Lake as the mere basis for more arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig of events ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... avail them little: during the Terror their stipends were unpaid, and the churches were for the most part closed. After a partial respite in 1795-6, the coup d'etat of Fructidor (1797) again ushered in two years of petty persecutions; but in the early summer of 1799 constitutionals were once more allowed to observe the Christian Sunday, and at the time of Bonaparte's return from Egypt their services were more frequented than those of the Theophilanthropists on the decadis. It was evident, then, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Insignificant as these words may appear, I still regard them as entitled to be recorded—nay, I would even write them as town-motto on the gate of Goettingen, for the young birds pipe as the old ones sing, and the expression accurately indicates the narrow, petty academic pride so characteristic of the "highly learned" Georgia Augusta.[51] The fresh morning air blew over the highroad, the birds sang cheerily, and, little by little, with the breeze and the birds, my mind also became fresh and cheerful. Such refreshment was sorely ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to me? Have I no bays to crown it? No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? All wasted? Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, And thou hast hands. Recover all thy sigh-blown age On double pleasures. Leave thy cold dispute Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands, Which petty thoughts have made—and made to thee Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. Away! Take heed— I will abroad. Call in thy death's-head there. Tie up thy fears. He that forbears ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... float, Benjy would instruct him in the doings of deceased Browns. How his grandfather, in the early days of the great war, when there was much distress and crime in the Vale, and the magistrates had been threatened by the mob, had ridden in with a big stick in his hand, and held the petty sessions by himself. How his great-uncle, the rector, had encountered and laid the last ghost, who had frightened the old women, male and female, of the parish out of their senses, and who turned out to be the blacksmith's apprentice disguised ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... is seldom captious, and honesty seldom suspicious; a man capable of comprehending the whole extent of a question, disdains to divert his attention by trifling observations; and he that is above the practice of little arts, or the motions of petty malice, does not easily imagine them incident ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... appreciate, and never can forget their illustrious countryman. The lines of Tasso, "Un uom della Liguria avra ardimento," etc., and the following stanza, Tu spiegherai Colombo a urn nuovo polo, etc. are in the mouth of everyone.[117] The Hall of the Petty Council is neat, but it is the recollection of the history of this once famous Republic that renders the examination of this Palace so interesting. But now Genoa's glory is gone; she has been basely betrayed into the hands of a Government ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... like the dogs wuz atter him," then they point straight back. He was made to be eaten, and he knows it. So it is with the whole tribe of deer, and even with the horse, pampered and cared for and unacquainted with danger; his ears are a weathercock registering the drift of all his petty hopes and fears. I see the left ear go forward and prepare for a desperate shy at that wheelbarrow. He knows a wheelbarrow familiarly—there is one in his stall all day—but I am taking him a road he does not ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... think that, tired and half starved, our poor fellows will be marching to their death, leaving their enemies very little work to do beside cutting down the stragglers. Ah, depend upon it, all these little petty generals think they have a great victory within their hands without any cost to themselves, and that none of our poor fellows will ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... were all assembled to partake of some refreshments, it was delightful to find that there were not enough chairs for half the party. We borrowed each other's knives and forks too, and etiquette, that petty tyrant of ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... pledge of amnesty, were either handed over to the executioner or sent to linger for life, loaded with fetters, in some of the prison ambas. For the next three years Theodore's rule was acknowledged throughout the land. A few petty rebels had risen here and there, but with the exception of Tadla Gwalu, who could not be driven from the fastness of his amba in the south of Godjam, all the others were but of little importance, and did not disturb the ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... American colonies of England did not think of union as of a peace scheme; they had been compelled into it by war, by the necessity of self-defense. It is only such an overpowering motive which has force enough to blot out petty rivalries and minor antagonisms. If union between States belonging to the same race and not divided either by history or by serious conflicting interests could be effected only under the pressure of a common peril, we must infer "a minori ad majus" that such a powerful incentive ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... delay, to tell you how political quarrels might be otherwise settled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no law of reason can be understood by nations; no law of justice submitted to by them: and that, while questions of a few acres, and of petty cash, can be determined by truth and equity, the questions which are to issue in the perishing or saving of kingdoms can be determined only by the truth of the sword, and the equity of the rifle. Grant this, and even then, judge if it will ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the wife had yielded in the beginning not only to her husband's bad temper but also to the antagonism of her mother-in-law, which was, of course, annoying in many petty ways, she might have gained her husband's friendship, and it is possible that she might, moreover, have gained the friendship of ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... dismayed at the prospect. I prayed for cloud and storm, and darkness. Human heart! when blinded by its own petty passions, unreasoning and unreasonable; my petition was opposed to the unalterable laws of nature—it could not ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... self-assertion must, of themselves, expire. "Stand firm in the Lord." In recollection and faith surround yourselves with Jesus Christ. The more you do so the more you will find that so to be in Him is to "be of one mind in Him." In that PRESENCE self is put to shame indeed. Pique, and petty jealousies, and miserable heart-burnings, and "just pride," die of inanition there, and heart meets heart ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... He adored his wife, who thought poorly of his intellect, but highly of his heart. In domestic difficulties Wimp was helpless. He could not even tell whether the servant's "character" was forged or genuine. Probably he could not level himself to such petty problems. He was like the senior wrangler who has forgotten how to do quadratics, and has to solve equations of the second degree ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Dorothy Fair's room, had her mind not been fixed upon its one end, which was above all such petty details of existence, might well have looked about her. No such dainty maiden bower was there in the whole village as this. Madelon's own chamber, carpetless and freezing cold, with its sparse furniture and scanty sweep of white curtains ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ordinances passed by the town meeting; a town clerk, who keeps a record of the proceedings of the town meeting, and a record of births, deaths, marriages, etc.; a treasurer, assessors and collectors of taxes, constables, and various other petty officers. Several offices are frequently given to the ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... sma' matter to be entered in the records of the Burgh court as a petty law-breaker. And if I continued to feed the dog I would be ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... weary time of his stay came up, and in succession the series of injuries and petty annoyances to which he had been subjected by his cousin passed before him, strengthening ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... possibly leading him to his old weakness of resorting to liquor, but Doctor Hissong made his canvass upon a high plane, appealing to the voters from a standpoint of the duties and responsibilities involving this honor, and ignoring the petty thrusts of his opponent. ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... law had two qualities in an out-of-the-way place that have pretty well died out now. These qualities were laxity and severity—the disposition to go to extremes; and in this case some idea of the way in which the work of petty sessions was carried on will be grasped when it is told that after the examination the chairman of the bench of magistrates, an old landholder of the neighbourhood, shook hands with the squire, and then ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... summer the O'Valley Leather Company discovered that Mary Faithful made quite as efficient a manager as Steve O'Valley himself. Nor did she neglect any of a multitude of petty details—such as the amount of ice needed for the water cooler, the judicious issue of office supplies; the innovation of a rest-room for girls metamorphosed out of a hitherto dingy storeroom; the eradication of friction between two ancient bookkeepers who had come to regard the universe as ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... have overthrown? And if we turn our eyes towards our own country, how many of these instruments of Napoleon do we not see, who, after having fatigued him with their servile complaisance, have come to offer to a new power the tribute of their petty machiavelism? Now, as then, is it not upon the basis of vanity and corruption that the whole edifice of their paltry science rests, and is it not from the traditions of the imperial government that the counsels of their wisdom ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... delinquent, as the children of the gentleman to whom we allude are honest enough to acknowledge their four-footed playmate's failings to papa, who willingly compensates any damage the pastrycook may sustain from the petty depredations ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... the army, Perron reigned over it in the plenitude of sovereignty. "He maintained all the state and dignity of an oriental despot, contracting alliances with the more potent Rajahs and overawing by his military superiority, the petty chiefs. At Dehli, and within the circuit of the imperial dominions, his authority was paramount to that of the Emperor. His attention was chiefly directed to the prompt realization of revenue. Pargannahs were generally farmed; a few were allotted as jaidad to chiefs on ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... the King of Scots of the robberies and evil doings of Andrew Barton; and that it became not one prince to lay a breach of a league to another prince, in doing justice upon a pirate or thief".[60] These personal irritations and petty troubles might have proved harmless, and, had no European complications intervened, it is possible that there might have "from Fate's dark book a leaf been torn", the leaf which tells of Flodden Field. But, in 1511, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... value to the Indians. They used it simply to make ornaments, and when it was not taken from them by force, they were cheerfully willing to exchange it for beads, trinkets, hawks' bells, and any other petty trifles. Comagre was the father of a numerous family of stalwart sons. The oldest, observing the Spaniards brawling and fighting—"brabbling," Peter Martyr calls it—about the division of gold, with an astonishing degree of intrepidity knocked over the scales at last and dashed the stuff ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Jew, who seems to have been a model husband (Orientally speaking), would find no pity with a coffee-house audience because he had been guilty of marrying a Moslemah. The union was null and void therefore the deliberate murder was neither high nor petty treason. But, The Nights, though their object is to adorn a tale, never deliberately attempt to point a moral and this is one ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... keyhole view of humanity. Spiritually, Mr. Kipling may be said to have seen thousands of miles and thousands of places through keyholes. In him, wide wanderings have produced the narrow mind, and an Empire has become as petty a thing as the hoard in a miser's garret. Many of his poems are simply miser's shrieks when the hoard seems to be threatened. He cannot even praise the flag of his country without a shrill note ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... trowel, and talked about the great and enlightened public, and about the highest function of the drama, and about the duty of the artist to elevate, and about the solemn responsibility of theatrical managers, and about the absence of petty jealousies in the world of the stage. Everybody had vociferously applauded, while reporters turned rapidly the pages of their note-books. "Ass!" Edward Henry had said to himself with much force and sincerity—meaning ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... bears off the treasures deposited there, scattering dismay and ruin amidst a hundred families, the essence of his crime is that he makes the narrow principle of his selfish desire paramount over the broad principle of the public welfare, setting the petty good of his individual enrichment above the weighty good represented by that respect for the right of property which is a condition essential to the life of the community. The principle on which he acts, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... foundation-stones upon all this worldly dirt, and its dome in the clear serene of the world of Spirit. He who can mount to a clear conception of Nirvana will find his thought far away above the common joys and sorrows of petty men. As to one who ascends to the top of Chimborazo or the Himalayan crags, and sees men on the earth's surface crawling to and fro like ants, so equally small do bigots and sectarians appear to him. The mountain climber has under his feet ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... crafty than ambitious, more depraved than naturally wicked," says M. Malouet: "resentment towards the court had hurried him into intrigue; he wanted to become formidable to the queen. His personal aim was vengeance rather than ambition, that of his petty council was to effect an upheaval in order to set the prince at the head of affairs as lieutenant-general ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... red man calls the Hot Moon, that a little fleet, consisting of three small bateaux, fitted out at Montreal, and conveying a body of pale-faced warriors, under the command of one whose hair was white and whose face was seamed with scars, entered the mouth of the Oswego[A]. This petty armament was joined at the beginning of the following season of sleep by a great number of canoes that contained the traders, artizans, and labourers, with their families, together with such tools ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... tell it you now. The King of Spain, whose good fortune it is to bear sway over these provinces, has no right to govern them otherwise than the petty princes who formerly possessed them ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... right and correct them. Political corruption and "graft," they said, were rampant everywhere, destroying the country and blighting every enterprise and industry. A Young Turk told me that many manufactories would be started were it not that the rapacity of the horde of petty officials was such that all must get a share of the spoils before a license could be granted, and that paying this toll would amount to much more than the cost of the factory. From the sultan down ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... first. The stricken father was there, dragged from his dead by the petty concerns of this world which cannot bide for grief. He was as a sleep-walker. He had come into another universe. The hacienda sala, where his child lay mid tapers, where mumbled prayers arose, or this adobe, where ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... told Arthur the reason of his voyaging. He had been wed to the Princess Enora, daughter of a petty king of Britain, but on his wedding night a strong impulse had come upon him to leave all and make his penitence within some lonely wood, where he could be at peace from the world. Rising from beside his sleeping wife, he stole away, and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... him to reflect upon his present condition. All was lost! He was unfitted for the conduct of a small business, for the petty transactions and details which might suffice for one of meager wants. He would renounce the idea of that marriage which was his only salvation, and his creditors, as soon as they heard the news that this hope had vanished would fall upon him. He would find himself expelled from the house of his ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... instinctively to take the part of his weak and wronged spirit. She had early been taught to pity rather than to condemn those whom evil is destroying. In all his depravity he did not repel her, for, though proud, he had no petty, shallow vanity; and the evident fact that he ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... watchful girl observed the life of a student—its scholarly tastes, its high ideals, its scorn of worldliness and paltry aims or petty indulgences, and forever its ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... make moral experiments like you. What we feel is, that we ought all to endeavour as much as possible to introduce a more serious tone into society. We want to get rid of the selfishness, and the littlenesses, and the petty ambitions and envyings, and the scandals that go on. Don't we, Louisa, dear? And you can't think how grateful I am to Lord Fondleton for having given me the pleasure of your acquaintance. I hope I may often see you; I am sure you would do us all so much good. You will always find me at ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... my only sibling. But there was no other way, I had to put the advancement of our people over the life of anyone, even my own sister, as you must do now, putting the advancement of our people over petty differences." ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... was indeed the home of revelry. The pent-up, struggling spirits of those who had dwelt therein for months in solitude arose in the wild stampede for freedom. All petty differences between Lady Deppingham and Drusilla Browne, and they were quite common now, were forgotten in the whirlwind of relief that came with the strangers from the yacht. Mrs. Browne's good-looking eager husband revelled in the prospect of this delirious night—this almost Arabian ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... share in it, and learn to enjoy it, would be both lowering and hurtful, and you can hardly be long here without being drawn into its vortex. By GOSSIP I don't mean scandal or malignant misrepresentations, or reports of petty strifes, intrigues, and jealousies, such as are common in all cliques and communities, but nuhou, mere tattle, the perpetual talking about people, and the picking to tatters of every item of personal detail, whether gathered from ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... which his genius sprang, like a newly created species, to give a salutary shock to Gallic tastes, and lend a sturdy country vigor to the new literature, we reverence his faithfulness, his incorruptible humanity, his contempt for petty courts and faded manners, his passion for Nature, and his love of God. All these characteristics are so broadly printed upon his pages that the obsoleteness of the narrative does ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... command, and the busy seamen addressed themselves for orders to him alone. In this manner an hour was consumed, when Cecilia and Katherine appearing in succession attired in a suitable manner for their departure, and the baggage of the whole party having been already entrusted to a petty officer and a party of his men, Griffith gave forth the customary order to put the whole in motion. The shrill, piercing whistle of the boatswain once more rang among the galleries and ceilings of the abbey, and was followed by the deep, hoarse ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest, pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost laughable to me who stood onlooker and who understood. Concerning his own rages, I am convinced that they are not real, that they are sometimes experiments, but that in the main they are the habits of a pose or attitude he has seen fit to take toward his fellow-men. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... quite real as far as it goes, but it does not go very deep, so that it does not long outlive the removal of the object of regard, either through death or any other cause. Nor will Indian affection bear much strain. Petty complications in family life, trivial misunderstandings between friends of long standing, or amongst Christians some little hitch with the authorities of a mission, will sometimes result in life-long separations or bitter animosity between those who, for the time ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... along with his eight sons, formed the last relic in our province of that race of petty feudal tyrants by which France had been overrun and harassed for so many centuries. Civilization, already advancing rapidly towards the great convulsion of the Revolution, was gradually stamping ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... act; but the entrance of a party of the military into the lower portion of the tavern, induced those who had been making free with the strong liquors below, to make a rush up-stairs to their companions with the hope of escaping detection of the petty larceny, if they got into trouble on account of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... of war, mankind, wearied with slaughter, will take a few moments' repose, and then their venomous hatred will be displayed in petty and private bickerings. Some, indeed, will every now and then raise piles of wood and fagot, and burn those alive who disagree with them in religion; others will attempt the solution of inexplicable riddles; and those born for darkness will dare to ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... Gregory Fifteenth of blessed memory, that was obtained improperly, through the efforts of the religious who are in this province who are born in these regions. In it his Holiness ordained that all the elections among the said religious, from that of provincial to that of the most petty official, should be shared between the religious of these regions and those who have come from Espana at your Majesty's cost. The execution of this decree was impossible, because the number of the said religious who were born in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... a groan. What a mocker of our petty human dignity is this dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love itself a respecter of persons. This was a different Derek from the man who had stalked stiffly from the room two hours before. His pride had been ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... turned in any direction and made to answer any purpose he might see fit. No one religion is any worse than all the rest. They are all founded on ignorance, superstition and selfishness. To believe in any of these petty religions is to cast insults upon the real Creator of the universe, for a god created by the Apeman must naturally be a very inferior being. Each devout worshiper can point out the errors and absurdities of every ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... his own quarter, and to the mountains and rivers of his own domain. The victim offered by the Emperor on a blazing pile of wood was an ox of one colour, always a young animal; a feudal noble would use any fatted ox; and a petty official a sheep or a pig. When sacrificing to the spirits of the land and of grain, the Son of Heaven used a bull, a ram, and a boar; the feudal nobles only a ram and a boar; and the common people, scallions and eggs in spring, wheat and fish in summer, millet ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... perhaps, a thousand pounds sterling. Now, if we allow only half this sum to be the value, it is, notwithstanding, considerable. Every inn I entered was well supplied with silver spoons, of various sizes, and with silver four pronged forks; even those petty eating-houses in Paris, which were frequented by ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... inexperience of all that lies off the parade-ground; inexperience as of a child, yet fierceness of a man and vehemence of a Frenchman! It is long that secret communings in mess-room and guard-room, sour looks, thousandfold petty vexations between commander and commanded, measure every where the weary military day. Ask Captain Dampmartin; an authentic, ingenious literary officer of horse; who loves the Reign of Liberty, after a sort; yet has had his heart grieved to the quick many times, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... point. A prayer about ill-temper might tend to make me cross, when the effort to join my spirit with the temptation-tried souls of all ages in a solemn prayer for the Church Universal would lift me out of the petty sphere of personal vexations, better than going into my grievances even piously. I speak merely ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from his moustache. "Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India, mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn't big enough for such ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... but expressed his quiet contempt for the systematic petty insults which his jailer was now heaping on him daily. His physician had demanded that he take exercise in the open air. Miles always walked with him and never permitted an occasion of this kind to pass without directing at his helpless prisoner personal ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... committees to the other members of the congregation, and from them again to their friends and acquaintances; so that I had, in the end, a pretty formidable array of enemies. The consequence of this affair was, that I soon found myself compelled, from the petty persecutions and annoyances of all sorts, to which I was subsequently exposed, to leave the congregation altogether. However, to compensate for all these troubles and vexations, I had the good fortune, about ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... brings its petty dust Our soon-choked souls to fill, And we forget because we must And not ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... England," interrupted Beaumanoir, "permit and enjoin each judge to execute justice within his own jurisdiction. The most petty baron may arrest, try, and condemn a witch found within his own domain. And shall that power be denied to the Grand Master of the Temple within a preceptory of his Order?—No!—we will judge and condemn. The witch shall be taken out of the land, and the wickedness ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... intensified, if only by an experience of the enormity of the Passport nuisance. It has cost me precious hours already, not to speak of dollars, and is certain to cost many more of each. I have nearly concluded to given up Germany on account of it, while Italy fairly swarms with petty sovereignties and with Yankee Consuls, the former afraid of their own black shadows, the latter intent on their beloved two dollars each from every American traveler. Such is the report I have of them, and I presume ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... can see out of it is for both Philip and Charles to withdraw, and allow the Spanish to elect a Spaniard for their king; or, if they could not agree to that, which I don't suppose they could do, choose some foreign prince belonging to a petty state which stands altogether aloof from European affairs, and seat him on the throne. If, again, they would not accept him, England and France should mutually agree not to interfere in the affair, and let the Spaniards indulge ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... received (June 13) a like annuity in reward for his own and his wife's services. On the 8th of June he was appointed Comptroller of the Custom and Subsidy of Wools, Hides and Woodfells and also of the Petty Customs of Wine in the Port of London. A month before this appointment, and probably in anticipation of it, he took (May 10, 1374) a lease for life from the city of London of the dwelling-house above the gate of Aldgate, and here he lived ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various |
