"Proverbial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... race problem in the United States." A sociological study which within its first four pages makes this assertion must gain the reader's attention and interest at the start. That there is no solution to the race problem is a statement heard so often in America that it has become almost proverbial; that the solution is simple if our citizens would approach the problem fairly is an observation made less often; but that there is no problem would seem to be either the flippant remark of one who dabbles in sociology or the profound utterance ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... bound to be an inordinate amount of chaff mixed with the grain, and he used no winnowing machine. His simplicity and transparent honesty induced him to include everything, in fact he seemed to glory in the number of false trails he laboriously followed. He was one who might be expected to find the proverbial "needle in a haystack," but unfortunately the needle was not always there. Delambre says, "Ardent, restless, burning to distinguish himself by his discoveries he attempted everything, and having once obtained a glimpse of one, no labour was too hard ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... from Al-Hariri (Ass. of the Badawin). Ash'ab (ob. A.H. 54), a Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial for greed and sanguine, Micawber-like expectation of "windfalls." The Scholiast Al-Sharishi (of Xeres) describes him in Theophrastic style. He never saw a man put hand to pocket without expecting a present, or a funeral go by without ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Despite their proverbial control of muscle, these Indians could not conceal their astonishment at hearing so much of their affairs thus laid bare, so they said that the Pale-face chief was wise, that he must be a great medicine-man, and that what he said was all true except about ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... far, have brought me to the end of my first year at the Academy, and now we come to the events of the second. In June of 1871, the proverbial silver lining, which the darkest cloud is said to have, began to shine very faintly in the West Point firmament, and I thought that at last the darkness of my cadet life was to be dispelled by the appearance above ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Scottish Dictionary points out the frugal and temperate Scot; and, in illustration, may be contrasted with the proverbial invitation of the better feeding English, "Will you come and take your ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... social instinct and the moral sentiments which arise from social relations in man and animal are the same. Moral obligations, especially in relation to family ties and conjugal unions of animals, are in many cases sacred binders to such ties. The bear, for example, is proverbial for his conjugal faithfulness. The married life of most animals is strictly moral, and most of them are monogamists and have reached the highest form of family ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... marquis, though to be haughty or ill-bred was impossible to the blandness of his nature, had never shown to Vivian the genial courtesies he had lavished upon me, and kept politely aloof from his acquaintance; while Vivian's personal vanity had been wounded by that drawing-room effect which the proverbial winner of all hearts produced without an effort,—an effect that threw into the shade the youth and the beauty (more striking, but infinitely less prepossessing) of the adventurous rival. Thus animosity to Lord Castleton ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... derived from the ancient Manichees, spread rapidly through Provence and Languedoc. The clergy of the Catholic Church were regarded with loathing and contempt. "Viler than a priest," "I would as soon be a priest," became proverbial expressions. The Papacy had lost all authority with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Ballantrae," "The Child's Garden of Verses," and "Across the Plains" had been each of them one shade less perfectly done than they were, everyone would have seen that they were all parts of the same message; but by succeeding in the proverbial miracle of being in five places at once, he has naturally convinced others that he was five different people. But the real message of Stevenson was as simple as that of Mohamet, as moral as that of Dante, as confident as that ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... that death was so soon to end, and the thoughts of what was the worth of life. "It should be a sweet thing to have what is best and richest, if it's for a short space only." It is not a new saying, but it is not to be identified with the proverbial "a short life and a merry," with which some confuse it, and of Synge it was a true saying. There are those who, because of the irony of his writing, an irony that is new to literature, and, maybe, to ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Austrian car-wheels which have run for twenty-one years, as previously mentioned, Lobdell has a pair which have run 245,000 miles on the Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska Railway. The Fairbanks scales in great variety, both of size and purpose, and of a finish and an accuracy which have become proverbial; the Howe scales; the Goodyear boot- and shoe-machinery; Stow's flexible shaft; Lechner's coal-mining engine; Allen & Roeder's riveting-machine; and Delamater's punches and shears,—are a few more of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... down his horn after the toast, the Norman's glance happened to encounter a glance from the shield-maiden, who was passing. Taking another horn from the thrall, he bowed again, with proverbial French gallantry; then quaffed off the second measure of ale to the honor ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of a chemical manufactory. Putting up at the house of the manager of the works, we remained here two or three days, during which time we made some excursions into the heart of the mountains. One of our drives took us some miles along the side of the beautiful river Theiss, which though a proverbial sluggard when it reaches the plain, is here a swift and impetuous stream. Our object was to see the timber-rafts pass over the rapids; it was a very exciting scene, and as this was a favourable season, owing to the state of the river, we came in just ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... of shooting, trapping, and fishing as the proverbial duck takes to water, and could follow a deer trail almost in the dark. He had brought down all sorts of game, and his left shoulder showed deep scars dating back to a fierce face-to-face fight with a bear, in which he had, after a tough struggle, ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... we are in most danger of a deluge; though I wonder we so frequently complain of long rains. The saying about St. Swithin is a proof of how often they recur; for proverbial sentences are the children of experience, not of prophecy. Good night! In a few days I shall send you a beautiful little poem from ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... name has been familiar; and, to this day, the wild Arabs will tell wondrous stories about him, as they gather at night round their blazing fires. His grandeur and wisdom have ever since been proverbial; and even Jesus, when He wished to compare the lilies of the field with something very magnificent, spoke of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of vigour and have a distinct decorative effectiveness. But apart from this its appearance in the Marks of the old printers is a very striking proof of the fact that the medival legends died hard. Curiously enough, the proverbial "lion and unicorn" do not often occur together. The family of printers with whose name the unicorn is almost as closely associated as the compass is with Plantin, is that of Kerver, for it has been employed in ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... could not always prevail against the violent passions and clashing interests of those about her. As long as Drusus lived, Drusus and Antonia had been for the Romans the model of the devoted pair of lovers, and their tender affection had become proverbial; yet the Roman multitude, always given to admiring the descendants of the great families, was even more deeply impressed by the beauty, the virtue, the sweetness, the modesty, and the reserve of Antonia. After the death of Drusus, ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... us; of the person with whom life flowers and bears fruit. If this were so, the chances of our meeting that person would be small indeed; intuition would often fail; the blindness of love would then be fatal as it is proverbial. No, love works differently, and in its blindness lies its strength. Man and woman, each strongly desires to be loved, each opens to the other that heart of ideal aspirations which they have often hid till then; each, thus knowing the ideal of the other, tries to fulfil that ideal; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was much interested in this city. Its population was thirty thousand, and one third were Armenians; the rest were Koords and Turks, and there were hundreds of villages within the district. The place was proverbial for salubrity, and he saw enough to convince him that the leaven of the Gospel was working powerfully among the people. Moosh, an out-station of Bitlis, was occupied by the native pastor Simon. The truth had taken ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... are filled with the hidden meaning of the scriptures, and those who read closely and delve deeply into the works of the Bard of Avon will need no better moral teacher. His axioms and epigrams are used to-day as the proverbial philosophy of practical life, and the whole world is indebted to the sons of a carpenter and a butcher for the greatest pleasure and philosophy that has ever been ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... have felt the owner of the proverbial bull in the crockery shop—terror mingled with an overpowering sense of responsibility. All personal considerations are well-nigh merged in the realization of the danger which menaces her ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the proverbial beaver, rushing goods outdoors where they could be taken in hand by others, and placed in temporary security. A couple of the local police force had by this time reached the scene, and they could be depended on to guard Mr. Briggs' ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... during the Great War, even during those early anxious days of 1914 and 1915, had its lighter side. The astonishing cheeriness of the British soldier under the most trying circumstances has become proverbial; but his officer shares this priceless characteristic with him and displays it even amid the deadening surroundings of the big building in Whitehall. The best laugh that we enjoyed during that ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... few minutes' walk of Messrs. G. H. Mumm's—past the imposing Gate of Mars, in the midst of lawns, parterres, and gravel-walks, where coquettish nursemaids and their charges stroll, accompanied by the proverbial piou-piou—is the principal establishment of M. Gustave Gibert, whose house claims to-day half a century of existence. On this spot formerly stood the feudal castle of the Archbishops of Reims, demolished nearly three centuries ago. By whom this stronghold ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... another. "I will have it this time," said Judith fiercely to herself, too engrossed in a desire to win from the Blues to remember the most elementary rules of the game; she caught the ball and ran, yes, just ran to the goal and threw. The proverbial good luck which attends the beginner was hers, but instead of the applause which Judith expected there was a burst of good-natured laughter. She had run with the ball and all in order to throw it into ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... Iliad before him, but the chivalrous romances of the Trojan war derived from Dares Phrygius. From this source also he took the love-intrigue of Troilus and Cressida, a story at one time so popular in England, that the name of Troilus had become proverbial for faithful and ill-requited love, and Cressida for female falsehood. The name of the agent between them, Pandarus, has even been adopted into the English language to signify those personages (panders) who dedicate themselves to similar services for inexperienced persons of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... ever without such cause from you, as I will not suppose possible, you find my affections veering but a point, may I become a proverbial scoff for ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... coolly as though they were investigating alleged frauds by army contractors or were hearing evidence touching the damage to frontier settlers by an Indian raid. The intelligence and impartiality of investigations entrusted to army officers have become proverbial, and their report of the facts in the New Orleans riot arrested the attention of the North in an unprecedented degree. Every thing possible was done by the opponents of the Republican party to break the force of the damaging facts, but apparently without success. Indeed the people ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... many miracles—nothing less. My leather jacket and my tunic were cut to shreds by bits of shell, a bullet went through my cap and another grazed my head so close as to raise a red welt, but that same old "luck" which had become proverbial in the battalion, still held and I was ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... occupation that is attended with any risk of accident for either life or limb. Besides all these, it is also urged that in cities the careful inspection of their meat, and the peculiar social fabric of the family, the love and veneration for their aged, as well as their proverbial charity to their own poor and sick, and their provident habits and hygienic regulations imposed upon them by the Mosaic law, are all conditions that conspire to ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... for the most part to dissatisfied glances at the hard cloudless blue sky to windward, as it met their gaze morning after morning when they came on deck, to shrugs of the shoulders whenever the subject happened to be mentioned, and to scornful, sarcastic, or despondent allusions to the proverbial longevity and obstinacy of easterly winds in general. Except Mr Forester Dale, and he, I regret to say, made himself a perfect nuisance to everybody on board by his snappishness and irascibility. The weather was "beastly," the ship was "beastly," and his demeanour was such as to suggest ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... Behind is a wooded background, and before one are the meanderings of the Seine which in the summer sunlight is a panorama which is to be likened to no other on earth. Across the river bottom run the great tree-lined roadways, straight as the proverbial flight of the arrow, while on the horizon, looking from the celebrated terrace, one sees to-day the silhouetted outline of Paris with the Tour Eiffel and the dome of the Sacre Coeur ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... dead silence, in which you could almost have heard the proverbial pin drop, and an oldish man stepped forward and stood by the mats and baskets, his body wound round with "tapa" till it stuck out many feet from his body. The crowd broke silence with an ear-piercing yell. He then spoke, and was interrupted from time to time with cries of approval or the reverse, ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... to have taken place. But against this must be set the fact that in this area also we find two cockatoos, and on the Annan River two bees, arrayed against one another; unless it can be shown that these two birds are also proverbial foes, or that the Australian native had reached a point in his biological investigations at which he recognised that the presence of two closely allied species in a district involves a particularly keen struggle for existence (which they would, however, regard ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... MAN UNSEXED, by Mutilation or Masturbation. Eunuchs are proverbial for their cruelty and crafty and unsympathizing dispositions. Their mental powers are feeble and their physical strength is inferior. They lack courage and physical endurance. When a child is operated upon before the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... question was called "Long" from the fact that it contained sixteen beds, eight on a side, all of which were occupied by members of the Upper Fourth. Skeat, the Sixth Form boy in charge, was ill, and had gone to the infirmary; and in the absence of the proverbial cat, the mice determined to get in as much play as possible, only stopping short at performances which might attract the attention of ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... recalled by observing citizens that just before noon—seven minutes to twelve, in fact—a small cloud no bigger than the proverbial hand crossed the sun hurriedly as if afraid to tarry. At that very instant a stranger drove up to the hitching-rack, bringing his sweat-covered horse to a standstill so abruptly in front of the marshal's nose that that dignitary's hat fell ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... be a proverbial expression implying inconstancy; but the origin of the phrase is unknown to all the commentators ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... all seems too altruistic ever to come in our lifetime; but, do you know, I am awfully optimistic about it. I really believe it will come so quickly, after it once gets a good start, that it will astound us. The proverbial snowball coming down the mountain side will be as nothing to it. Everyone will want to join the procession at once. No one will want to be left out for the finger of Scorn to accuse. And, strangely enough, I believe it will be the educated and rich, in fact the ones that are now the most selfish, ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... face the new misfortune with anything like a sober measure of equanimity. Imaginative to the degree which facilely transforms the suppositional into the real, he was still singularly free from superstition. Nevertheless, all the legends clustering about the proverbial slipperiness of ill-gotten gains paraded themselves insistently. It was only by the supremest effort of will that he could push them aside and address himself to the practical matter of getting well. That was the first thing to be considered; with or without money, he must relieve the Griersons ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... v, 439 ff., manes exite paterni; cf. the Greek proverbial expression [Greek: thyraze kares] (Suidas, s.v. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... is worthy of especial notice, is, that conscience is much more readily acted upon by examples, than by precepts.—In communicating a knowledge of duty, this principle in Nature has become proverbial; but it is not less true with respect to the executive powers, in approving or reproving that which is right or wrong. It is the prerogative of conscience to excite us to approve or condemn the conduct of others, as well ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... Luperci were the priests of Lupercus. Catiline was the author of the conspiracy of B.C. 63. Cicero, the famous orator, was consul for that year and frustrated the plot. Cato the younger died at Utica in 49 B.C. In the Roman writers Catiline is always the proverbial scoundrel and Cato is always taken as the model ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Celaire was wearing her famous diamonds, which shone through the gloom like pin-pricks of fire. Garda Desmaines, the wonderful Garda, sat next to her host, her bosom and hair on fire with jewels, yet with the most wonderful light of all glowing in her eyes. A famous actor, who had thrown his proverbial reticence to the winds, kept his immediate neighbors in a state of semi-hysterical mirth. The clink of wine glasses, the laughter of beautiful women, the murmur of cultivated voices, rising and swelling through the faint, mysterious gloom, made ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The fair Marquise was more than a mere leader of wit and fashion. If she set the mode in the shape of a petticoat, or devised the sumptuous splendours of a garden fete, her talent was not merely devoted to things frivolous and trivial. She had the proverbial 'esprit des Mortemart'. Armed with beauty and sarcasm, she won a leading place for herself at Court, and held it in ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... "San Josef" at St. Vincent, and was afterwards his flag-captain at the Nile. When her approach was reported to the admiral, he exclaimed gleefully, "Here comes Berry! Now we shall have a battle;" for Berry, having been in more fleet actions than any captain in the British Navy,[131] had a proverbial reputation for such luck. The event did not belie the prediction. Five days later, on the 18th of the month, Nelson noted in his diary: "Fine weather, wind easterly; the combined fleets cannot have finer weather to put to sea;" and the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... skylight between the shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal colors into the clear harmony of light. The author of Proverbial Philosophy has a passage not unworthy of note in this connection, when he speaks of the train which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... nevertheless, that if they will ask themselves truthfully whether they find it unpleasant to dwell thus on their sorrow, they will be compelled to answer "No." Tears are as sweet as laughter to some natures. The proverbial Englishman, we know from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and the Englishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... not only living within our income, but saving something for the proverbial 'rainy day,'" Mrs. Clair said one evening, when Mr. Murray dropped in. "We have been here only three months, and have done ever so much better than I expected, thanks to your good advice; and we are all ever so much happier than I ever hoped to be ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving or two: Rebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants finding the cup in Benjamin's sack. There would be a center table, with books of a tranquil sort on it: The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies of The Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a music stand, with 'Willie, We have Missed You', 'Star of the Evening', 'Roll on Silver Moon', 'Are We Most There', 'I Would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... independence of a drunken shoemaker is proverbial, and Morrison's meek spirit soared into lordly arrogance with his earliest cups. The first warning which the community had of his change of attitude was the conspicuous and even defiant closure of his shop, and the scornful rejection of custom, however urgent or necessitous. All Equity ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the hog is called in Italian gambone, whence our English word gambon or gammon. Confounding things that differ, many think that 'gamon' in the game has the same meaning, and therefore they say—'he saved his gamon or bacon,' which is absurd, although it is a proverbial phrase of sufficient emphasis. The word Backgamon seems to be derived from the very nature of the game itself, namely, back-game-on, that is, when one of your pieces is taken, you must go back—begin again—and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Americans were; and unless we happened to meet a band of Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation. It would be far worse than the proverbial search for a needle in ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... such a happy-go-lucky, care-free collegian, for now, when he was serious, his comrades refused to believe him to be in such a state. However, quiet was obtained at last, thanks to the fact that the youths possessed all the curiosity of the proverbial cat who died thereby, and the sunny Senior plunged earnestly into his famous speech, that was destined, at old Bannister, to rank with that of Demosthenes "On The Crown," or any ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... and family waving me farewell. It was an insignificant incident over which I merely smiled at the time, but five days later I had every cause to bless those parting snaps. One often hears about life hanging by the proverbial thread, but not many lives have hung upon two snapshot photographs of all that is dearest to one, and a few inches of photographic film. Yet it was so in my case. But for those two tiny parting pictures and the unexposed fraction of film ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... essentially a strong man, and remarkably well posted in everything, both political and social, that occurs in the state, mixing far more freely than his brother with the English, towards whom his courtesy is proverbial. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... one equally defiant. It is a huge serpent of the 'Whip snake' species, which never gives way, but always takes a bold and defiant stand. It took its stand about fifty yards ahead, ready for battle, its head, and about a yard of its length, in semi-erect posture, and displaying every sign of its proverbial enmity to Adam's race. It has no poison, but its mode of attack is still more horrible, by throwing itself with electric speed in coils around its antagonist, tight as the strongest cord, and lashing with a yard of its tail, till it puts its combatant to ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... say he was aware of the proverbial character of the phenomenon. He was a very eccentric man. He treated his dogs as friends, and buried them with ceremony. He quarrelled with the cure of his parish, who remarked that he could not take ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... a fine day in the month of August, a light, fairy-like craft was fanning her way before a gentle westerly air into what is called the Canal of Piombino, steering easterly. The rigs of the Mediterranean are proverbial for their picturesque beauty and quaintness, embracing the xebeque, the felucca, the polacre, and the bombarda, or ketch; all unknown, or nearly so, to our own seas; and occasionally the lugger. The latter, a species of craft, however, much less common in the waters of Italy than in the Bay ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... positions in the shadow, one to either side, almost afraid to breathe, I cursing because the rifle quivered in my two hands like the proverbial aspen leaf. The prospect of shooting a white man—even such a thorough-paced blackguard white as Schillingschen—made me as nervous as a school-girl at ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... mots le corbeau ne se sent pas de joie" (At these words, the crow is beside himself with delight).—To realise the full force of this proverbial expression we must have ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel, though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman.' Her blunders were proverbial, as when she asked in all simplicity, 'Who was Jeremy Taylor?' and on being presented to Mrs. Sarah Austin, complimented her on having written ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... you sit still, and I'll clean house; it needs it badly. Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm so lame, too!' Jerry responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs. Crawford, whose tidiness and cleanliness were proverbial, and for the next half hour he watched the little actress as she limped around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford limped with her rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little, both to Harold and Jerry, the latter of whom ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... remained thoughtful. She knew him well, this Isidore, the son of Virginie the greengrocer. His proverbial virtue had been the delight of Gisors for several years, and served as an entertaining theme of conversation in the town, and of amusement to the young girls who loved to tease him. He was past twenty-one, was tall, awkward, slow and timid; helped his mother ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the Sun stood reared aloft on columns, glittering with gold and precious stones, while polished ivory formed the ceilings, and silver the doors. The workmanship surpassed the material; [Footnote: See Proverbial Expressions.] for upon the walls Vulcan had represented earth, sea, and skies, with their inhabitants. In the sea were the nymphs, some sporting in the waves, some riding on the backs of fishes, while others sat upon the rocks and dried their sea-green hair. Their faces were not all alike, nor ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... in a practical joke, such as Nature often plays on the children of the wilds. One calm, dark night, while they were busy in the grass, a brown owl, hunting for mice, sailed slowly by. Now, the brown owl, in spite of proverbial wisdom gained during a long life in the dim seclusion of the woods, is occasionally apt to blunder. Her character, indeed, seems full of quaint contradictions. As she floats through the moonlight and the shadows of the beech-aisles of Dollan, she appears to be a large bird, with a philosophic ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Divinity Physic, and Law; and it cannot be denied that in this matter the sarcasms of the multitude are often sustained by the indisputable evidence of history. The greed of the clergy for tithes and dues is not more widely proverbial than the doctor's thirst for fees, or the advocate's readiness to support injustice for the sake of gain. Of Guyllyam of Horseley, physician to Charles VI. of France, Froissart says, "All his dayes he was ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... civilized spectator to see how many people can be stowed away to sleep in one small igloo and under one blanket; but the proverbial illustration of a box of sardines would almost represent a skirmish line in comparison. Each one is rolled up into a little ball, or else arms, legs and bodies are so inextricably interwoven, that it would be impossible for any but the owners to unravel them. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... a half-starved German at Cambridge named Render, who had been long enough in England to forget German, but not long enough to learn English. This worthy, in spite of his deficiencies, was a voluminous translator of his native literature, and it became a proverbial saying among his intimates respecting a bad translation that it was ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... princess chose her moment, and took occasion to beg a boon of the Count of Foix, whose gallantry was proverbial; but, just as he was on the point of granting it without condition, a momentary light made him cautious "Ah! madam," said he, "I am a little man, and a poor bachelor, who have not the power to make great gifts; but that which you ask, if it be not of more value than fifty ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... from books translated in his time; or were such easy coincidences of thought, as will happen to all who consider the same subjects; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the world in proverbial sentences. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... marriage in nine cases out of ten looks like madness. Haydn's case was not the tenth. His salary from Count Morzin was only 20 pounds with board and lodging; he was not making anything substantial by his compositions; and his teaching could not have brought him a large return. Yet, with the proverbial rashness of his class, he must needs take a wife, and that, too, in spite, of the fact that Count Morzin never kept a married man in his service! "To my mind," said Mozart, "a bachelor lives only half a life." It is true enough; but Mozart had little reason to bless the "better ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... of the Carthaginian race was proverbial, but even among them he was remarkable. His head was well placed on his shoulders; his carriage was upright and commanding; his forehead lofty; his eye, though soft and gentle at ordinary times, was said to be terrible in time of battle. His head was ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... busy place, was soon rivaling the proverbial beehive. Mrs. Reist, to whom sentiment was ever a vital, holy thing, to be treasured and clung to throughout the years, had long ago, in Amanda's childhood, begun the preparation for the time of the girl's marriage. After the ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... de Wette, Maurer, Knobel, and, in substance, Hofmann also) attempt to explain the fundamental passage by the derived ones, and force upon Niphal the signification of Hithpael; so that the sense would be only that a great and, as it were, proverbial happiness and prosperity belonged to Abraham: "Holding up this name as a pattern, most of the eastern nations will comprehend all blessings in these or similar words: 'God bless thee as He blessed Abraham.'" But this explanation is, according to the usus loquendi, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... for Fil's spelling was proverbial in the form, and was often of a purely phonetic character. Miss Strong had periodical crusades to improve it, but generally gave them up as a bad job, and recommended constant use of a ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... end by some epigrammatic phrase which will fasten it firmly in the reader's memory. For instance, in Milton's sonnet On his Blindness, the central idea is the glory of patience; and the last line drives this main idea home in words so pithily adapted that they have become almost proverbial. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Fauchelevent offered and Father Mestienne paid. An offer of a drink was the evident result of the novel situation created by the new grave-digger, and it was necessary to make this offer, but the old gardener left the proverbial quarter of an hour named after Rabelais in the dark, and that not unintentionally. As for himself, Fauchelevent did not wish to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was modest and retiring in manner, affable in disposition, and benevolent to a fault. He was most beloved where best known. In business circles his integrity was proverbial, and his financial ability everywhere acknowledged. Few men have died so sincerely regretted by those ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... and maintain their credit, for the character and credit of the several States form a part of the character and credit of the whole country. The resources of the country are abundant, the enterprise and activity of our people proverbial, and we may well hope that wise legislation and prudent administration by the respective governments, each acting within its own sphere, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... had struck eleven and then twelve, and yet no sign of David or Anna, the Squire had reached for his fur cap and announced his intention of "going to look for 'em." But like the proverbial worm, the wife of his bosom had turned, and with all the determination of a ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... was forlorn there was now the stamp of desolation. The beds which had been seeded or planted a month before, and which should now have been weeded, trimmed, and hoed, were growing with an untended recklessness that had all the proverbial resemblance to moral breakdown. In the cucumber-house the vines had become rusty and limp, sagging from the twines on which they climbed in debauched indifference to sightliness. The roof of the hothouse ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... found his sister, no longer the magnificent queen whose rich toilets were as proverbial as her beauty; but a lovely, unpretending woman, without rouge, without jewels, clad in a dress of India muslin, which was confined at the waist by a simple sash ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... been written of life on a cocoa estate; and all who have enjoyed the proverbial hospitality of a West Indian or Ceylon planter, highly praise the conditions of their life. The description of an estate in the northern hills of Trinidad will serve as an example. The other industry of this island is sugar, in cultivating which the coloured labourers work in the broiling ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... to the travellers they met; but no one could answer them. The first messenger appeared on the terrace and announced to the Pharaoh that Tahoser could not be found. The Pharaoh stretched out his sceptre, and the messenger fell dead, in spite of the proverbial hardness of the Egyptian skull. A second came up; he stumbled against the body of his comrade stretched on the slabs; he trembled, for he saw ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the prisoner bad-tempered. She did not need to prove anything of the sort concerning John Borg. They all knew his terrible fits of anger; they all knew that his temper was proverbial in the community; that it had prevented him having friends and had made him many enemies. Was it not very probable, therefore, that the masked men were two such enemies? As to what particular motive actuated these two men, she could not say; but it rested with them, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... along the "benches," as the banks of a stream or hillsides are called by miners, and having a woman's proverbial curiosity, after my work was done I climbed the hill to investigate. The prospectors had left after digging a hole about six feet deep and four square, evidently having satisfied themselves as to what the ground contained. Into this hole I descended to feel of the cold, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... symbolic way of a people much given to proverbial wisdom and the dark uses of allegory. He might have meant much or nothing. As it happened, the Count de Sarrion meant ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... writing for five years but am a mood writer of the worst type. The mood comes at such uncertain times that I seem to be absolutely at the mercy of caprice. This might not in itself be a misfortune but writing is my only calling and I suffer the proverbial torments of lost spirits when I am idle. The necessity of driving myself to every piece of work, aggravated by the fact that my parents allowed my constitutional inertness to have full play, has hitherto prevented me from forming any regular habit of labor. ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... whose social career had been like that of the proverbial rocket shot up into the zenith. But a life of mere amusement was not the fashion in the circle in which she lived, and her active brain and easily aroused sympathies made her quick to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... was the same rotund, pudgy old fellow—with the long white beard and the laughing face—that children love, and on his broad back was the proverbial pack of presents. His wife, in fur from head to foot, wore a frilled fur cap, and, safely hidden behind her spectacled, rosy-cheeked mask, looked the veritable mother of all the little Santa Clauses attributed to her. The children stood silently by in their picturesque ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... succession. Of the permanent residents only the Duchess, always of High Church leanings, had of late yielded to his blandishments. She was fairly hooked. Madame Steynlin, a lady of Dutch extraction whose hats were proverbial, was uncompromisingly Lutheran. The men were past redemption, all save the Commissioner who, however, was under bad influences and an incurable wobbler, anyhow. Eames, the scholar, cared for nothing but his books. Keith, a rich eccentric who owned one of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... as flat as the proverbial pancake—a dead monotony of cultivated alluvium, square mile upon square mile of wheat, rice, vetch, sugar-cane, and other crops, amidst which mango groves, bamboo clumps, palms, and hamlets are scattered promiscuously. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... place, and they were so small, and so wild, capable of living in very tiny huts or caves, and so primitive, not building regular villages as the other Africans do, that as Ned said, they were as hard to locate as the proverbial flea. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower education, but even these asylums of piety sheltered many an ignorant monk and others who were afflicted with the proverbial monks' malady—laziness. It is to the credit of the pious members of the Roman Church in that unhappy age that they manifested such a laudable interest in the Bible. The achievement of copying the entire Bible with one's own hand in that age is so great that it palliates some of the glaring ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... experimenters were detected in the most shameless and determined impostures." This sentence fell among the savants like a bomb, and "great was the fall thereof." Some have described it as an ad captandum vulgus use of words, and others have called it rash, and unduly sceptical. It is proverbial that doctors disagree, and it would be wonderful indeed if they were of one mind on the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... boy," he said, "to trifle with the truth is always unpleasant. Besides, you are a Fentolin, and our love of truth is proverbial. But there are times, you know, when for the good of others we must sacrifice our scruples. So you told Mr. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... certainly not disadvantageous to the Porte, which seized the opportunity of annexing to its dominions some large slices of Hungarian and Venetian territory; but their ostensible object remained unaccomplished, and the proverbial salutation of the time, "God save you from the Uzcoques!" was still on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... little cigar-case at one end. Dove, as a matter of course, and without weighing the question at all, slipped a couple into his pocket. After doing this he did not feel quite so virtuous, nor so like the proverbial British workman; he jingled some of Daisy's sovereigns in his pocket, and laughed when they made a pleasant sound. Still eagerly peering at all the articles on the mantel-piece his quick eyes presently detected amongst a heap of rubbish and odds and ends Noel's valuable signet-ring; it was of ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... remain as they were left on the morning in which these illustrious men were led to their execution. On the dingy walls of stone are still recorded those sentiments which they had inscribed there, and which indicate the nature of those emotions which animated and sustained them. These proverbial maxims and heroic expressions, gleaned from French tragedies or the classic page, were written with the blood which they had drawn from their own veins. In one place ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... how fast the terror and ruin of the massacre are already burning into glory around the victim? Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen—perhaps even be—the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow men,—the practicable abolition of slavery? He had seen Tennessee, Missouri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen Savannah, Charleston, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... of temper were almost proverbial in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew immortal ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the mind if held to, and the body if cast off." Urged by the darkness and the silence of his companion, the rein of his speech had loosened. In that moment he was not Chilcote the member for East Wark, whose moods and silences were proverbial, but Chilcote the man whose mind ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... sleep. No expression of embarrassment detracted from the candor of her face, or the calm look of eyes immortalized long since in the sublime works of Raphael; here were the same grace, the same repose as in those Virgins, and now proverbial. There was a delightful contrast between the cheeks of that face on which sleep had, as it were, given high relief to a superabundance of life, and the antiquity of the heavy window with its clumsy shape and black sill. Like those day-blowing flowers, which in the early ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... which verbal tradition hath delivered down to us under the title of proverbs. It were to be wished that, instead of filling their pages with the fabulous theology of the pagans, our modern poets would think it worth their while to enrich their works with the proverbial sayings of their ancestors. Mr Dryden ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... having exhausted her experiments on the frock, the bonnet, and the hoop petticoat bought for her in London and sent like the proverbial pig in a poke, had taken to watching the Yankee peddling sloop, which, having lain for an hour at Patterson's on the Virginia shore, was now heading for the Browne place. It was pretty to see the sloop heel over under a beam wind ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... impulsive Annie Forest was the most popular girl in the school. She was always in scrapes—she was scarcely ever out of hot water—her promises of amendment were truly like the proverbial pie-crust; but she was so lovable, so kind-hearted, so saucy and piquante and pretty, that very few could resist the nameless charm which she possessed. The little ones adored Annie, who was kindness itself to them; the bigger girls could not help ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... sexual impress mostly received in early childhood often shows itself in the selection of a fetich, as Binet first asserted, and as was later proven by many illustrations,—a thing which may be placed parallel to the proverbial attachment to a first love in the normal ("On revient toujours a ses premiers amours"). Such a connection is especially seen in cases with only fetichistic determinations of the sexual object. The significance of early sexual impressions will be ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... little progress till the time we have reached, failed to arrest the quick decline of the universities both in the numbers and learning of their students. Those at Oxford amounted to only a fifth of the scholars who had attended its lectures a century before, and Oxford Latin became proverbial for a jargon in which the very tradition of grammar had been lost. Literature, which had till now rested mainly in the hands of the clergy, came almost to an end. Of all its nobler forms history alone lingered on; but it lingered in compilations or extracts ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... and New Testaments which a clever boy would be certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at church on Sundays. Shakespeare quotes or adapts biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and others, which were more recondite, were borrowed from Holinshed's 'Chronicles' and secular works whence he drew his plots. As a rule his use of scriptural phraseology, as of scriptural history, suggests youthful reminiscence ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... "My virtue has been its own reward—and punishment. If I had allowed you to go your way to the proverbial dogs, after whose society gilded youths like yourself appear to be always hankering, I should not be sitting here with cold water running down my back and surrounded by Nature in her gloomiest and dampest aspects. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... but very tough stomachs, which would require ample time to assimilate the food I intended to offer. If this were somewhat crude, that would be no objection whatever: they always mistake their mental gripings for the process of digestion. Why, bless your souls! I have known Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy" to fill one of them to repletion, for the space of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... is a woman's danger to be petty and mean, and step-mothers are proverbial all the world over, and this one's heart was not as her first smiles were. As the days and weeks grew into months, the step-mother began to treat the motherless girl unkindly and to try and come between the ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... Romans indignantly complaining, Brennus in a scoffing and insulting manner pulled off his sword and belt, and threw them both into the scales; and when Sulpicius asked what that meant, "What should it mean," says he, "but woe to the conquered?" which afterwards became a proverbial saying. As for the Romans, some were so incensed that they were for taking their gold back again, and returning to endure the siege. Others were for passing by and dissembling a petty injury, and not to account that the indignity of the thing lay in paying ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... With proverbial German thoroughness, uncle instructed me in all the tricks and secrets of his profession. He had found that the Mexicans were good buyers, if handled scientifically, for they would never leave the store until they had spent all their money. Therefore, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... genii always managed to make everything pleasant. It implies the faculty, which a few of us possess, of finding whatever we want turn up accidentally at the exact right moment. Well, I believe I must have been born with serendipity in my mouth, in place of the proverbial silver spoon, for wherever I go, all things seem to come out ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... cannot persuade this illustrious depredator to take the command of our police force, that body of life-assurers and property-protectors which has proved so singularly ineffective as a preventive service in the present case. On the well-known proverbial principle we might hope for the best results under Mr. Starlight's intelligent supervision. We must not withhold our approval as to one item of success which the force has scored. Starlight himself and a half-caste henchman have been cleverly ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... things. Poetry has a double origin in joy and utility. The "Thirty days hath September" rhyme of the English child suggests the way in which men must have turned to verse in prehistoric times as a preservative of facts, of proverbial wisdom, of legend and narrative. Sir Henry Newbolt, I gather from his New Study of English Poetry, would deny the name of poetry to all verse that is not descended from the choric dance. In my ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... and passing suddenly to a child's tears and sobbing. This solitary virtue has breathed into the Rubaiyat life. The Bible is a series of books bound in a single volume, because all relate to a single theme: history, biography, letters, proverbial philosophy, pure idyls, lofty eloquence, elegiac poetry, ethics, legal codes, memorabilia, commentaries on campaigns more influential on the world's destiny than Caesar's, epic poetry, lyrics, and a sublime drama. The Bible is not a ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... man, was my grandfather. The proverbial "threescore years and ten" was an old story with him, and even the "fourscore" awarded to the strong was receding into the distance. Yet there he sat, in his old straight-back chair, hale and bright, as he looked round on us his descendants, sons and ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... is proverbial," said Sir Charles suavely. "The King knows that while he is at the helm in Virginia, the colony is on the high road to that era of peace and prosperity which his majesty so ardently desires—for his tax-paying people. And I have thought more than once of late ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... flowing upstream. A half-proverbial expression implying that the world was being turned upside-down, when such a person could prosecute ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... Paris studio, would put the letters half-read, in his pocket, and would immediately forget all about them. After all, he couldn't interfere with Barty; he was the man at the helm, and mustn't be talked to. Also it was idiotic to keep a dog and bark yourself. Proverbial philosophy is a recognised sedative; Larry gave himself a dose or two, and straightway forgot Cousin Dick, forgot Ireland, forgot even that gratifying nomination of himself as Nationalist candidate for ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... hostilities commenced with an attack on them. While waiting I made the acquaintance of Marko, whom I found to be one of the most interesting characters I met in Montenegro. His courage and resource in stratagem were proverbial in the principality. I had a capital Ross field-glass, and amused him one day by showing its powers. He had never seen a telescope before, and his delight over it was childlike. "Why," he exclaimed in rapture, "this is worth a thousand men." "Then ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... our privies, but Englishmen? Not to mention their original treachery to the Britons, that hired by them to defend them they turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engagements, they are to this day given to treachery and murder.' The lying Saxon was, according to this authority, a proverbial expression. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Joe, smilingly addressing the house, "often wonder how we actors and professional people eat. It is proverbial, you know, that actors are always hungry. Now I am going to show you that it is easier for us to get food than it is ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... formed, in hopes of seeing some name, or date, scratched upon the surface; some clue, mayhap, to the information we so dearly longed for,—the route taken by Franklin on sailing hence, whether to Cape Walker or up Wellington Channel. But, no; the silent cliff bore no mark; by some fatality, the proverbial love for marking their names, or telling their tales, on every object, which I have ever found in seamen, was here an exception, and I turned to my vessel, after three unprofitable walks on Beechey Island, with the sad conviction on my mind, that, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... gentleman wish you to go home with them, Camille," said the Mother Superior, in the language of the convent. Her voice was kind and gentle apparently; but the child, accustomed to its various inflections, detected a steely ring behind its softness, like the proverbial iron hand in ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... du Barry, having nothing further to add, I pray God to take you to His powerful and holy keeping." After this pleasantry the king, delighted at the gay termination of a somewhat serious scene, went, or rather vanished; for to use a proverbial expression, he ran like a thief. As soon as I was alone with my sister-in-law, I told her all that had passed. "I see," said she, "that the king is fearful of offending the duc de Choiseul, and giving annoyance to his daughters. But a step must be determined on which ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... horrible in the sight. I am glad I have seen it once. Amidst all these terrifying circumstances, I endeavoured to compose my mind. It was not easy to do it; for all the stories that I had heard of the dangerous sailing among the Hebrides, which is proverbial, came full upon my recollection. When I thought of those who were dearest to me, and would suffer severely, should I be lost, I upbraided myself, as not having a sufficient cause for putting myself in such danger. Piety afforded ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Government, and the Danish people, and we feel persuaded that they will not follow the example of the National Convention. In Denmark, love of justice and respect for the sacredness of the rights of property are too deeply implanted in the soil to be easily rooted out. The proverbial honesty of Denmark is as firm as the courage, loyalty, and gallantry of which her sons have so ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... were the delight of Bellamy's! He said that Fox and Pitt reminded him of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices. When asked by some one, as he sauntered out of the house—'Is the House up?' he replied; 'No, but Burke is.' The length of Burke's elaborate spoken essays was proverbial, and obtained for him the name of the 'Dinner-bell.' Fox was talking one day at Brookes' of the advantageous peace he had made with France, and that he had even induced that country to give up the gum trade to England. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... on the stage, when chance provided her with another resource, which enabled her to reassert her position in society. She became a secret police agent, and soon was one of their most valuable members. In addition to the proverbial charm and wit of a Polish woman, she also possessed high linguistic attainments, and spoke Polish, Russian, French, German, English, and Italian, with almost equal fluency and correctness. Then she had that encyclopedic polish which impresses people much more than the most ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... gay girls had just gathered in one of the pleasant and spacious recreation rooms and were chattering like the proverbial flock of magpies—exchanging merry greetings after their vacation; comparing notes on studies, classes and roommates; discussing the advent of new teachers, pupils and improvements, when a tall, gracious woman of, perhaps, thirty-five years suddenly appeared in the doorway, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon |
