"Quality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the composition of any place's name, we may be pretty certain that the place is remarkable either for its rites or situation, and attended with some of the circumstances [119]above-mentioned. Many instances may be produced of those denominated from the quality of their waters. In the river [120]Silarus of Italy every thing became petrified. The river [121]Silias in India would suffer nothing to swim. The waters of the [122]Salassi in the Alps were of great use in refining gold. The fountain at [123]Selinus in Sicily was of a bitter saline taste. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... III replied that in his quality of sovereign prince the duke in his temporal administration was quite independent and was answerable for ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but, Miss Evelyn," said he smiling "the impropriety did not in those cases, I presume, attach itself to the other quality. The graceful manner was strictly proper to its ends, was it not, however the ends ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... well enough, but imagination was not his strongest quality and the best parlor had more charms for him. In that parlor were the trophies of Captain Shadrach's seafaring days—whales' teeth, polished and with pictures of ships upon them; the model of a Chinese junk; ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... upon madness. Of such things talk thou not; leave war and all strife of immortals aside." [Footnote: Pind. Ol. IX 54.—Translation by E. Myers.] And the same note is taken up with emphasis, and reiterated in every quality of tone, by such writers as Euripides ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... me that this is a peculiar refinement of bliss; most people talk about Rome in the same way. It is evidently only a sort of idealized form of loafing: a passive life in Rome, thanks to the number and the quality of one's impressions, takes on a very respectable likeness to activity. It is still lotus-eating, only you sit down at table, and the lotuses are served up on rococo china. It 's all very well, but I have a distinct ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... and usually rose an hour before dawn. He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrunk from no toil. He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance. Like most of his nation, he was fond of play, and cared little for the quality of those with whom he played; though, when his antagonist could not afford to lose, he would allow himself, it is said, to be the loser; a mode of conferring an obligation much commended by a Castilian writer, for its delicacy. *23 [Footnote 23: Garcilasso, Com. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... would die very suddenly. Upon hearing that, the father was inflamed with zeal for the honor and worship of the true God whom he was preaching. Asking them whether all trees around about had that quality of inflicting death on him who touched them, accidentally or designedly, they answered "Yes." Then elevating his voice, he gave them a fervent discourse against the delusion under which they were laboring; and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... circumstances of the close of this aeon. Was He "soothsaying"? It remains that He perpetually and most emphatically claimed to be the exact Fulfilment of predictions which, on any hypothesis, were then ages old. Was He mistaken in their character and quality? ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... would be sufficient for him. Ay, though I used not my knife at all, but only my hardened fist. Would it not be a fine revenge, say you, thus to kill him? It was on account of my strength of arm that he laid toils for my capture, and for that alone he most valued me. Why not, then, prove its quality upon himself? With a single blow I could crush in his proud head like an egg shell. Then let them kill me—I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... eighty feet high, and you look down from their roadway upon the red-tiled roofs of large eight or nine-story houses beside and below them. Nearly or quite every house in Edinburgh is built of stone, which is rather abundant in Scotland, and often of a fair, free, easily worked quality. Many even of the larger houses, especially in the old town, are built of coarse, rough, undressed stone, often of round, irregular boulders, made to retain the places assigned them by dint of abundant and excellent mortar. In ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... earthworms round a watch enclosed in a case of transparent celluloid, which has curiously dulled and blanched with age. Then a little round mirror, and another square one; this last, though broken, is of better quality, and bevel-edged. A flask of essence of turpentine, a flask of mineral oil nearly empty, and a third flask, empty. A German belt-plate, bearing the device, "Gott mit uns"; a dragoon's tassel of similar origin; half wrapped in paper, an aviator's ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... on the side of the shelving beach, which was nothing but a mass of heavy rock that had rolled down from the mountainsides. It was a wild scene enough, and the roar of the waters as they crashed through this narrow pass added to the oppressive quality of it. ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... What quality is it, though, that so moves and stirs us when Mr. Burroughs recounts some of the simple happenings of his youth? What is it in his recitals that quickens our senses and perceptions and makes our own youth alive and real? It is paradise regained—the paradise of one's lost youth. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... but not high; and in that direction the land continued, far as the eye could reach, a narrow but graceful valley, along which the settlers had scattered their humble habitations, with a profusion that bespoke the quality of the soil and the comparative facilities of intercourse, Immediately on the bank of the lake and at its foot, stood the village of Templeton. It consisted of some fifty buildings, including those of every description, chiefly built of wood, and which, in their architecture, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... as the people took notice to one another, something so uncommonly noble in her air, and in her person and behaviour, that they were sure she was of quality. And having no servant with her of either sex, her eyes, [her fine eyes, the gentlewoman called them, stranger as she was, and a woman!] being swelled and red, they were sure there was an elopement in the case, either from parents ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality.) ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... in many single examples, to correspond with two really distinct cases. The derivative varieties are distinguished from the parent-species by some single, but striking mark, and often this attribute manifests itself as the loss of some apparent quality. The loss of spines and of hairs and the loss of blue and red flower-colors are the most notorious, but in rarer cases many single peculiarities may disappear, thereby constituting a variety. This relation of varieties to the parent-species is gradually increasing in importance ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... did not deter farmers from the culture of the potato; on the contrary, it increased rapidly after that period, and we now find it, for the first time, recognised as a rotation crop. They preferred to turn their attention to improve its quality and productiveness, and to take measures for its protection from frost, rather than to abandon its culture. And, indeed, it was as much a matter of necessity as choice that they did so. The potato, on a given area, supplied about four times as much food as any ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... course at the first base by one of the shrillest shrieks of "Stop!" that ever burst from human lung. The next time the ball was hit she set him going again by a companion shriek; and with others of a like piercing quality (they seemed to flow from her lungs in an inexhaustible abundance) she guided him safely round the bases and home. From the blundering, stumbling way he ran, her shrieks seemed to be the only things in the world of which he ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... a writer's productions, it is not directly necessary to know the subject on which he has thought, or what it is that he has said about it; that would imply a perusal of all his works. It will be enough, in the main, to know how he has thought. This, which means the essential temper or general quality of his mind, may be precisely determined by his style. A man's style shows the formal nature of all his thoughts—the formal nature which can never change, be the subject or the character of his thoughts what it may: it is, as it were, the dough out of which all the contents ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... felt a sneaking admiration for Crane. The son-of-a-bitch had a disarming quality of honesty. If he planned to knife you, he drove straight ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... further appears that the number of men reported missing—that is, those who have fallen into the hands of the enemy or who have become marauders—is much greater in the reserve battalions than in the first line units. This is evidence of the inferior quality of some of the reserves now being brought up to reinforce the enemy field army, and it is all the more encouraging, since every day adds ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... you," the King said, attentively regarding them with the royal eye, "and you are not so very large; I hardly think you are a quorum. Moreover, I never heard of you until you came here; whereas Wayoff is noted for the quality of its pork and contains hogs of distinction. I shall send a Commissioner to ascertain ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... a nitrogenous ration lay many more eggs but of smaller size and poorer quality than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... may remark, in conclusion, that the phenomena produced by this power arise from the action of opposing surfaces through intervening media; that the excitement impels the surfaces towards each other; and that all the phenomena grow out of the motive quality of intervening bodies, whose surfaces are alternately attracted by the comprehending excited surfaces, or out of the want of perfect smoothness in the opposing or excited surfaces. Electricity is in fact the phenomena of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... It is to be feared that, of the two modes in which the cause may operate, the last (b) is the most frequent, or at all events sufficiently so to render all propositions, ascribing a self-repairing quality to the calamities which befall the laboring-classes, practically ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... them those statesmanlike gifts which accomplished the successful accommodation of a more varied series of novel and entangled situations than has, perhaps, fallen to the lot of any other public man within our own memory. Especially might be named that rare quality of a strong overruling sense of the justice due from man to man, from nation to nation; that 'combination of speculative and practical ability' (so wrote one who had deep experience of his mind) 'which peculiarly ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Lincoln was given this supreme vision. He did not hate the man from whom he differed. Weakness was as foreign as wickedness to his strong, gentle nature; but his courage was of a quality so high that it needed no bolstering of dark passion. He saw clearly that the same high qualities, the same courage, and willingness for self-sacrifice, and devotion to the right as it was given them to see the right, belonged both to the men of the North and to the men of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the Grail is in certain phases a food-supplying talisman it is not one of the same character as the cauldrons of plenty; also while the food supply of these latter has the marked characteristic of quantity, that of the Grail is remarkable rather for quality, its choice character ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... Town. Don Fabio gave his Servant Orders, That Aurelian should not be stinted in his Expences, when he came up to Years of Discretion. By which means he was enabled, not only to keep Company with, but also to confer many Obligations upon Strangers of Quality, and Gentlemen who travelled from other Countries into Italy, of which Siena never wanted store, being a Town most delightfully Situate, upon a Noble Hill, and very well suiting with Strangers at first, by reason of the agreeableness and ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... advance to the world of Brahma. He who cannot—alas!—is born again as worm or as fly; as fish or as fowl; as lion or as boar; as bull or tiger or man; or as something else—any old thing, as we should say—in this place or in that place, according to the quality of his works and the degree of his knowledge; that is, in accordance with the doctrine of Karma. Similarly the M[a]itri Upanishad (vi. 38) sketches salvation as follows: When a mortal no longer approves of wrath, and ponders the true wish, he penetrates the veil that encloses the Brahma, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... the mart (our readers will remember that we have already described it) he finds the children undergoing a very minute examination at the hands of several slave-dealers. As Mr. Forshou, the very polite man-seller, is despatching the rougher quality of human merchandise, our hero advances to the children, about whose father he asks them unanswerable questions. How interesting the children look!-how like a picture of beauty Annette's cherub face glows forth! Being seriously concerned about the child, his countenance wears ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... narrow ribbon of blue, and she carried a pink feather fan, and the wreath about her forehead was of lilies-of-the-valley. She had done a day's scouring for them, and they had come out of the summer hat of one of the white ladies on the coast. This insured their quality, and no doubt contributed somewhat to the quiet serenity with which she bore herself as, with her little head held like that of the Venus of Milo, she danced down the center of the room, holding her flounces in either hand, and kicking the floor until she kicked ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... hand, like a pork-pie, between two of the places at table. "Allons, a table!" We fall to. The meal is abundant and of excellent quality. The sound of conversation mingles with those of emptying bottles and filling jaws. While we taste the joy of eating at a table, a glimmer of light trickles through a vent-hole, and wraps in dusty dawn a piece of the atmosphere and a patch of the table, while ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of war, and occasionally a debate in Parliament. At this he shook his head and asked whether too much had not recently been asked of her. I admitted that she had done a very considerable amount of work for so young a Muse in the past year, though its quality was doubtful, and I hastened to add that I was the less to blame as she had wasted not a little of her powers upon others without asking my leave; notably upon the knife-boy and ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... the return of the menstruation affect the milk? The quantity is lessened, the infant is not satisfied. Sometimes the quality is affected and the child may suffer from restlessness, colic, and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... was amazed thereat, he and all who were present with him in the Divan, whilst fire was kindled in the Vizier's heart for envy of Alaeddin, so that he was like to die. Then, after the Sultan had heard Alaeddin's compliment and had seen the greatness of his quality and his modesty and eloquence, he strained him to his bosom and kissed him, saying, "It irketh me, O my son, that I have not known thee [466] before to-day." So, [467] when he saw Alaeddin on this fashion, he rejoiced in him with an exceeding joy and at once bade ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... office in the Netherlands was that of captain-general or supreme commander. This quality was from earliest times united to that of stadholder, who stood, as his title implied, in the place of the reigning sovereign, whether count, duke, king, or emperor. After the foundation of the Republic this dynastic form, like many others, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was not the original text of the Gospels, as maintained by Dr. Hort, I claim to have established from an examination of the quotations from the Gospels made by the Fathers. It has been proved that not only in number, but still more conclusively in quality, the Traditional Text enjoyed a great superiority of attestation over all the kinds of corruption advocated by some critics which I have just now mentioned[622]. This conclusion is strengthened by the verdict of ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... They are much stained and smoked, and the mice have eaten them sadly, so that I can make little of them. They seem to be letters, and some fragments of what did take place in the life of a young woman of quality from the North of England. I find frequent mention made of Cousin Christopher, who is also spoken of as a soldier in the wars with the Turks, and as a Knight of Jerusalem. Poorly as I can make out the meaning ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... everything!" My simple cry, "Ah!" was the expression of emotion, the unconscious, involuntary expression; it was not art. It did not formulate my emotion definitely, and although it was an expression of emotion, it had no power to communicate the special quality of it. So soon, however, as I composed the elements in the landscape, which stimulated my emotion, into a distinct and coherent whole and by means of that I tried to convey to my friend something of what I was feeling, my expression tended to become art. My medium of expression ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... our own servants; but it is handy to have the wine and other things within call, and if we always do as well, we shall have good cause to feel mighty contented; for barring that we are rather crowded, we are just as well off here as we were at home, saving only in the quality of the spirits. Now, Father, we cannot ask you up there, seeing that it is your own village, but if you would like to take a walk through the camps we should be glad to show you what there is to be seen, and can give you a little of the real cratur. It is not much ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... one which makes us the most directly happy is a genial flow of good spirits; for this excellent quality is its own immediate reward. The man who is cheerful and merry has always a good reason for being so,—the fact, namely, that he is so. There is nothing which, like this quality, can so completely replace the loss of every other blessing. If you know anyone ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and tortuous places of this life, the human heart is the most dark and tortuous; and of all human hearts none are less clear, more intricate than the hearts of all that class of people among whom Bianca had her being. Pride was a simple quality when joined with a simple view of life, based on the plain philosophy of property; pride was no simple quality when the hundred paralysing doubts and aspirations of a social conscience also hedged it round. In thus going forth with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that to depend on grace alone, and the inner change it had effected in answer to prayer, was to rest, too often, in a vain security. The new convert was the same as to the essential evil quality of his life as before his conversion—or turning round to go the other way—and if he stood still where he had turned, and did not, in a new life of practical obedience to Divine laws, walk forward in the Heavenly road, his conversion would avail him nothing. Not that he was left alone ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... they rode into the city together and went to the Harker Building. It was in an area dense with non-telepaths each one showing that telltale cleft of anxiety in his forehead but briskly going about his business as if anxiety were actually a liveable quality. Newbridge had the same look but there was a nonetheless reassuring ease to the way he greeted them. He was tall and white-haired and his face frequently assumed an abstracted look as if his mind were ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... explaining himself, and of unlocking his heart, it is pretty clear that wine has got the upper hand. An hour later, all the men in the company were the best friends in the world, addressing each other as great men and bold spirits, who held the future in their hands. Lucien, in his quality of host, was sufficiently clearheaded to apprehend the meaning of the sophistries which impressed him ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... prosper; and, by constantly offering none but the best quality of goods for sale, in a very short time I had so much to do, that my whole time in the day was occupied with out-door business, and I was forced to sit up at night with my sister to prepare work for the knitters. At one time, we ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... burning homes and bleeding hearts and crushed hopes he marched to his renown. The forces of the empire were allied with Denmark and Poland against him. With skill and energy which can hardly find a parallel in the tales of romance, he baffled all the combinations of his foes. Energy is a noble quality, and we may admire its exhibition even though we detest the cause which has called it forth. The Swedish fleet had been sunk by the Danes, and Charles Gustavus was driven from the waters of the Baltic. With a few transports he secretly ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... 156.—The presence of the robes of honour. These are ever carried in procession, and their number denotes the rank and quality of the chief, or of the individual to whom they ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... she expected—that was not it; in the glance of his eager dark eyes there was a quality that took her completely by surprise—that took her breath away. This in one of the sex ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... or failure of the book should be based upon the quality of the themes which the pupils write. Criticisms and suggestions will be welcomed from those ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... salt being apt to preserve flesh from corruption, signified, that the friendship which was then begun should be firm and lasting; and some, to mention no more different opinions concerning this matter, think, that a regard was had to the purifying quality of salt, which was commonly used in lustrations, and that it intimated that friendship ought to be free from all design and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... I, wipin' my mouth, "to confiscate that piece of furniture, but justice is justice."—"Ye've not got ut yet," sez he; "there's the fight between."—"There is," sez I, "an' a good fight. Ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my regimint for the dinner you have given this day." Thin I came hot-foot to you two. Hould your tongue, the both. 'Tis this way. To-morrow we three will go there an' he shall have his pick betune me an' Jock. Jock's a deceivin' fighter, for he is all fat to ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... generally procure yeast once a week, or month, from brewers, and if not convenient to be had in this way, they often use such as is used by country women, for baking bread, without paying any regard to the quality, or whether sour; with such, tho' generally bad, they proceed to make their daily yeast, and often continue the use of it, until the grain will no longer yield a gallon of whiskey to the bushel, and so often proceed in this miserable and indolent mode of procuring and renewing yeast, to the great ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... any wild animal, is our patron of the feast. He has wanted for many a day to say something in the ear of Matilda Vercelli. Bringing up the leveret to my bedside, and opening the lips, and cracking the knuckles, and turning the foot round to show the quality and quantity of the hair upon it, and to prove that it really and truly was a leveret, and might be eaten without offence to my teeth, he informed me that he had left his mother in the yard, ready to dress it for me; she having been cook to the prior. He protested he owed the crowned ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... hope I shall be even with them. So walked to Redriffe, drinking at the Half-way house, and so walked and by water to White Hall, all our way by water coming and going reading a little book said to be writ by a person of Quality concerning English gentry to be preferred before titular honours, but the most silly nonsense, no sense nor grammar, yet in as good words that ever I saw in all my life, but from beginning to end you met not with one entire and regular sentence. At White Hall Sir G. Carteret was out of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... City there are conspicuous instances of the same thing. Nearly all the better-class native houses are very substantially framed in wood, the spaces within the frames being filled in with bricks, set in either mud or mortar, according to the quality of the house. The framework of a two-or three-storied house is often completed, sometimes including the roof and tiling, before the brickwork has been commenced. In different parts of the city may be seen ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... see the struggle between the idea that unrestrained sex indulgence produces abundance and the idea that it produces excess, lewdness, and harm. We can still trace to the metaphorical use of "mother," "father," and "son," and also to the use of the same words to express the possession of a quality in a high degree, or a tie of destiny, some of the most important concepts of our ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... as an epoch-making play; and this view is not unjustified. As to plot, it tells little more than how an intercepted letter enabled a father to follow his supposedly studious son to London, and there observe his life with the gallants of the time. The real quality of this comedy is in its personages and in the theory upon which they are conceived. Ben Jonson had theories about poetry and the drama, and he was neither chary in talking of them nor in experimenting with them in his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden in his time, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... here) $66,000 and must wait considerably for results (in case there shall be any). I tell him about it and he finds no fault, utters not a sarcasm. He was born serene, patient, all-enduring, where a friend is concerned, and nothing can extinguish that great quality in him. Such a man is entitled to the high gift of humor: he has it at its very best. He is not only the best friend I have ever had, but is the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a hero, a hero in the only true and in the most extensive sense, resembling what history or fable has represented, rather as the offspring of the imagination than a personage that could have real existence, so entirely was every great and good quality comprehended ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... invited to the dinner given to celebrate Claes's return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The company quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the quality of the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes. The three families, thus united through the happiness of their children, seemed to vie with each other in contributing to the splendor of the occasion. The parlor was soon filled with the charming gifts that are made to bridal ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Gabriele Arcangelo, some said, judging by the honey-tongue; San Bastiano, others considered him, who went by his comely proportions; and these gained the day, since his beardless face and friar's frock induced the idea of innocence, which Sebastian's virgin bloom also taught. The quality of his sermons did not grow threadbare under this adventitious criticism: he kept a serene front, lost no authority, nor failed of any unction. There was always a file at his confessional; and at Corpus Christi, when in the pageant he actually ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... you kindly. A master should go with his ship," and he touched his sparse white hair which showed his scalp, and nodded his head, staring out over the bay as if in a reverie. The colour was bleached out of his failing eyes and they had a habit of roving about unsteadily, a quality common in old sailors and probably acquired in a lifetime of ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... original foundation of the high price of those metals, or of the great quantity of other goods for which they can everywhere be exchanged. This value was antecedent to, and independent of, their being employed as coin, and was the quality which fitted them ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... was of volatile quality; before he arrived at his stateroom he had recovered his gaiety of spirit. He glanced ironically at the closed door of Golden Beard as he fitted his key ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... soldiers who must defend the place were not under cover they would perish from the heat, as would likewise those who should undertake to erect the fort. The stone for the most of the rampart is so suitable in quality that, wherever a ball strikes, the wall remains unhurt, nor is any other injury inflicted. There is no fear that an attack by a battery can do as much damage as if the stone were hard and resisting. The balls cannot be fired so as to strike, without great difficulty, as the fort ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... glad to be kept awake so. On the supreme day we came downstairs hiding delicious yawns, and cordially pretending that we had never been more fit. The day was different from other days; it had a unique romantic quality, tonic, curative of all ills. On that day even the tooth-ache vanished, retiring far into the wilderness with the spiteful word, the venomous thought, and the unlovely gesture. We sang with gusto "Christians awake, salute the happy morn." We did salute the happy ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... the conversation to Scott some time afterward, and it drew forth a characteristic comment. 'Pooh!' said he, good humoredly; 'how can Campbell mistake the matter so much? Poetry goes by quality, not by bulk. My poems are mere cairngorms, wrought up, perhaps, with a cunning hand, and may pass well in the market as long as cairngorms are the fashion; but they are mere Scotch pebbles, after all. Now, Tom Campbell's ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the action of two important components of the Army of Natal. Each of these was led by a dangerously brave man, whose impetuosity crippled the tactical scheme and whose method of working his command was, at least, unusual. If in Hart and Long, who commanded the Artillery, the quality of personal courage had been less prominent it is probable that Colenso would not have filled up the cup of Stormberg and Magersfontein in that ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... calamities," says Thucydides, "always have been and always will be, while human nature remains the same. Words cease to have the same relations to things, and their meanings are changed to suit the ingenuities of enterprise and the atrocities of revenge. Frantic energy is the quality most valued, and the man of violence is always trusted. That simplicity which is a chief ingredient of a noble nature is laughed to scorn. Inferior intellects succeed best. Revenge becomes dearer than ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... older ones kept to a high standard, which would make French goods sell readily in foreign markets. He argued justly that if foreigners could be induced to buy French goods, these sales would bring gold and silver into the country and so enrich it. He made rigid rules as to the width and quality of cloths which the manufacturers might produce and the dyes which they might use. He even reorganized the old medival guilds; for through them the government could keep its eye on all the manufacturing that was done, and this would have been far more difficult if every one had been free ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... explored; in mountainous regions as on the plains, the Philanthus follows an unvarying diet: she must have the Hive-bee, always the Bee and never any other, however closely various other kinds of game resemble the Bee in quality. If, therefore, when exploring sunny banks, you find beneath the soil a small parcel of mutilated Bees, that will be enough to point to the existence of a local colony of Philanthus apivorus. She alone knows the recipe for making potted Bee-meat. The Crioceris was but now teaching us all ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the stage he ought to be, and there was not a doubt but that Schwarz saw it, too. Now that he, came to think of it, he had more than once been aware of a studied coolness in the master's manner, of a rather ostentatious indifference to the quality of the work he brought to the class: and this he knew by hearsay to be Schwarz's attitude towards those of his pupils in whom his interest was waning. If he, Maurice, wished to regain his place in the little Pasha's favour, he must work like a coal-heaver. But ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... her healthful beauty, beaming with excitement, her superb figure undulating gracefully to the restive movements of her horse. I could have prostrated myself before her, in a wild worship of her beauty. She had that quality which is so rare in woman, but so admirable where it exists,—entire fearlessness; for it is a most absurd mistake to suppose that masculine virtues can not co-exist in woman with the most lovable, feminine delicacy. Partly her unblenching ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... company was holding us unduly! How often we rush from one public engagement to another without any proper interval for renewing our strength in waiting on the Lord, as though God cared more for the quantity than the quality ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... boys," Captain Manley said, "and shows that you are cool as well as plucky. One quality is as valuable as the other. There is every hope that you will do the regiment credit, boys, and you may be sure that we shall give you every chance. And now good-bye for ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought, or a thought that they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual face as a beacon burning on a hill-top, and, climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... rubbish. The pottery found here, like that at "El Moro," is "painted with bright colors, in checks, bands, and wavy stripes; many fragments show a beautiful polish. A few pieces were discovered larger in size, inferior in color and quality, but indicating a more fanciful taste. United, they formed an urn with a curious handle; a frog painted on the outside and a butterfly within." In the same neighborhood, on the summit of a cliff twenty feet high, was another old ruin "strongly walled around." In the centre was ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... wait three hours—from twelve o'clock until three, in which interval I drank brandy and water, and slept like a top. It is delightful travelling for its speed, that malle poste, and really for its comfort too. But on this occasion it was not remarkable for the last-named quality. The director of the post at Boulogne told me a lamentable story of his son at Paris being ill, and implored me to bring him on. The brave doubted the representations altogether, but I couldn't find it in my heart ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Doctor about the quality of the mutton," said the Colonel gravely; "but I'm getting anxious about these shooting-trips, gentlemen. Your guides belong to one or other ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... loveliness.... However, I must do them the justice to say, that they are modest in the highest degree, and in this point form the completest contrast with the women of Nukahiva and of Otaheite.... The characteristic quality of an Aino is goodness of heart, which is expressed in the strongest manner in his countenance; and so far as we were enabled to observe their actions, they fully answered this expression.... The dress of the Ainos consists chiefly of the skins of tame dogs and seals; but I have seen some ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dream'd that was the new city of Friends, Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest, It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... place fourteen times. She nursed all 14 of her children up to the time that she found herself pregnant again, and during the pregnancies after the first the flow of milk never entirely ceased; always after the birth of an infant she was able to nurse it. The milk was of good quality and always abundant, and during the period between her first pregnancy to seven years after the birth of her last child the menses had never reappeared. She weaned her last child five years before the time of report, and since then the milk had still persisted in spite of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... thought they saw hazel nuts among the shruberry, but it is more than probable they were mistaken. A few bad grapes were sometimes brought to us, but the party who went from hence to Chu-san met with abundance of this fruit, and of very good quality, growing upon standards erected in the several canals and forming a shade under which the barges ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... gifts come," he said. "This was rather a sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like this just as her brain was failing. And yet that failure doesn't affect the quality of her love. Is it something that shines through the poor tattered fabric? Anyhow, it has nothing to do with her brain. It is she herself, somehow, not anything of hers, that wants me. And you ask if I ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the images, show how simply religious the age still was—that this widespread artistic activity was a religious enthusiasm also; those early sculptors have still, for their contemporaries, a divine mission, with some kind of hieratic or sacred quality in their ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... unaccustomed to woman's society but able to be at his ease and boisterous in the midst of a crowd of men. Domini thought that he would be timid even of men. Yet it never struck her that he might be a coward, unmanly. Such a quality would have sickened her at once, and she knew she would have at once divined it. He did not hold himself very well, but was inclined to stoop and to keep his head low, as if he were in the habit of looking much on the ground. The idiosyncrasy ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... found in other newspapers, and indeed it went about Great Britain later and found its way to the Colonies. "An Oriental Omen" it was headed, and Madame's only regret appeared to be that it could not be held to be distinguished by the quality of absolute truth. But there it stood in print, and there was the name of Hilbert and Co., the old established firm, making a speciality of manufacturing military accoutrements, dating from the glorious year of Waterloo, ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... afterwards Marechal de La Meilleraye, that he could not endure him. He did not imagine that the Cardinal would ever look upon a man who, though his first cousin, was of a mean extraction, had a most contemptible aspect, and, if fame says true, not one extraordinary good quality. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... essential character, however disguised, is that of a philosopher and moral poet, whose study has been human nature, and whose delight is in all that is beautiful, tender, and mysteriously sublime in the fate or history of man. Humor is the ruling quality of his mind, the central fire that pervades and vivifies his whole being. The chief productions of Jean Paul (the title under which he wrote) are novels, of which "Hesperus" and "Titan" are considered his masterpieces. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... figured, are from mounds in Louisiana. As will be noticed, the ornamentation is quite artistic. The ware is of a good quality, and they are good examples of the Mound Builders' art. The form with the long neck is perhaps a water-cooler. When filled with water, and allowed to stand, some of the water passes through the pores, and evaporating, keeps the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... pupils have seen that the life-sustaining quality of the air is used up by combustion and respiration. To bring in the subject of purification by plants, ask them why all the oxygen in the world is not exhausted by the people and the fires in it. After the subject has been explained, the following experiment ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... which the preacher must come before his preaching can reach its highest possibilities, both as to quality and results; and in which he must abide if his ministry has to remain upon the heights, is that of the supreme distinction of the message he has to proclaim. It is a divine message which has been divinely entrusted to him for conveyance to his fellow-men. In ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... I was different. From my earliest recollection my sleep was a period of terror. Rarely were my dreams tinctured with happiness. As a rule, they were stuffed with fear—and with a fear so strange and alien that it had no ponderable quality. No fear that I experienced in my waking life resembled the fear that possessed me in my sleep. It was of a quality and kind ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... accomplishment of a result so desirable is demanded by the highest public considerations. The Constitution contemplates that the circulating medium of the country shall be uniform in quality and value. At the time of the formation of that instrument the country had just emerged from the War of the Revolution, and was suffering from the effects of a redundant and worthless paper currency. The sages of that period were anxious ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... previous. Yet Father Jose was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually on the look-out for the marvelous, gave him a certain advantage over the practical and material-minded. He instantly detected the diabolical quality of his visitant, and was prepared. With equal coolness and courtesy he ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... choice of the Chinese philosophy and the rejection of Buddhism was not because of any inherent quality in the Japanese mind. It was not the rejection of supernaturalism or the miraculous. The Chinese philosophy is as supernaturalistic as some forms of Buddhism. The distinction is not between the natural and the supernatural in either system, but between ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... speaker vied with the last in culling from his vocabulary of hard words, terms sufficiently expressive of their feelings toward the government, but do as well as they might, even with the aid of the poorest quality of whiskey and education, evidently of many years among the lowest of the low, not one of them could out-do the Chicago Times. The only parties who could approximate it were Gov. Harris of Maryland, and Long of Ohio, who were most decidedly in favor of secession. The ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... arranged in two rows and between them, in the center, was a single couch raised above the others. Fifty men and women lay as if but resting for the hour, smiles on their peaceful faces but weary shadows beneath their eyes. There was an un-human quality about them which was lacking in ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... was on the main street, on the river bank, and in the evening the little shops on either side started playing nasty, cheap European phonographs the noise of which was most disagreeable. Most of the records were of Chinese music, the harsh quality of which was magnified tenfold by the imperfections of the instruments. When the nerve-wracking concert became intolerable, they were always good enough to stop it ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... carpetbaggers and scalawags had put devilment in some of dem ig'nant niggers and dey thought dat if dey leave, de U.S. gwine to give dem a plantation atter de war had ceased, and plenty mules to make dem rich, like quality white folks. So by dat time dey was a-raring to git moved off. But I stay on wid Miss Sallie, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... and rose. She feared him, feared him as she might have feared any loathly, venomous thing; but she was not in the least spiritually afraid of him. Contempt and disgust only emphasised the quality of her courage. She confronted ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... But I have come to believe that I was somewhat mistaken in that boy in Yokohama. He lacked something that this chap has—an elusive quality that is hard to put a name to but which is one of the big essentials ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the moment; she had not the faintest idea that the money difficulties would be used to put an end to it on his side. When he had broken it off, saying that he feared her father was right, and that it was for her sake, she was terribly pained, seeing at once that his love was not of the same quality as hers. But when, in less than a week after that, he told her of his other engagement, it very nearly broke her heart, as the phrase goes. Yet she cured herself; and considering how young she was, she had an astonishing power of self-control; ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... it has the same properties as blue and merges into black. There remained, then, the paler greens, such as peacock, cinnabar or lacquer, but the light banishes their blues and brings out their yellows in tones that have a false and undecided quality. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the note he had elicited. It had a quality of infinite distance in it, and, soft as it was, he somehow felt it must be audible for miles round. It was a sound, too, that seemed to have the power (which many scents possess) of forming pictures in ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... enthusiasm for bolts and bars, which the undiscerning have found so tedious, the great majority of Mr Kipling's stories would never have been written at all. A powerful turbine excites in Mr Kipling precisely the same quality of emotion which a comely landscape excited in Wordsworth; and this emotion is stamped upon all that he has written in this kind. There is a passage in Between the Devil and ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... whole work of this vast establishment is carried on by dividing the workmen into small companies, under the superintendence of an officer responsible for the quantity and quality of ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... other one,' cried an old dame, 'him wi' the white face an' the clothes like a prince. He's one o' the Quality, what's come a' the way froe Lunnon to testify to the Protestant creed. He's a main pious gentleman, he is, an' if he had bided in the wicked city they'd ha' had his head off, like they did the good Lord Roossell, or put him in chains wi' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ill become any writer to adopt an apologetic tone in introducing the work of another pen than his own, and indeed I have no thought of apologia where Nicholas Freydon's writing is concerned. On the contrary, it is out of respect for my friend's quality as a writer that I am moved to a word of explanation here. It is this: there are circumstances, sufficiently indicated I think in the text of the book and my own footnote thereto, which tended to prevent my performance of those offices for my friend's work which are usually expected of one who is ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... productions, the Substances of Plants from their Essences; that is to say, the weighable and measurable body of the plant from its practically immeasurable, if not imponderable, spirit, I find in my three volumes of close-printed chemistry, no information what ever respecting the quality of volatility in matter, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... excuse, promising to bring it another day. A few nights afterward Ma asked her once more for the money, and then she drew from her sleeve two pieces of silver, each weighing about five or six ounces. They were both of fine quality, with turned-up edges, [38] and Ma was very pleased, and stored them away in a cupboard. Some months after this he happened to require some money for use, and took out these pieces; but the person to whom he showed them said they were only pewter, and easily bit off a portion of one of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... The voice seemed reassuring—its quality and the annunciation of the words bespoke for its owner considerable claim to refinement. The youth had halted again, but he now crouched to one side fearing to reveal his presence because of the bloody crime he thought he had committed; ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... their tenants, so it was the custom for kings to receive gifts from their nobles. Elizabeth received a goodly share of her wardrobe as gifts from her courtiers, and if the quality or quantity was not satisfactory, the givers were unceremoniously informed of the fact. In 1561 she received at Yule a present of a pair of black silk stockings knit by one of her maids, and never after ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... to every eyebrow at court, and I tell you this moonshine is—moonshine pure and simple. Matthiette, I love you too dearly to deceive you in, at all events, this matter, and I have learned by hard knocks that we of gentle quality may not lightly follow our own inclinations. Happiness is a luxury which the great can very rarely afford. Granted that you have an aversion to this marriage. Yet consider this: Arnaye and Puysange united may sit snug and let the world wag; otherwise, lying here between ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... on which the book is to be printed has now to be considered: First, the size of the page, i.e. the apportionment of the margins around the page of letter-press, is decided. Second, the quality of paper to be used, and the surface or finish is then selected; and finally, the bulk or thickness that the book must be, to make a volume of proper proportions, is determined. The paper is ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... to say that Mantua and Plevna were the most effective instances, largely because those strongholds lay near the most natural and easy line of advance for the invaders. Metz and Ladysmith possessed fewer advantages in this respect; and, considering the strength of the fortress and the size and quality of his army, Bazaine's conduct at Metz must rank as the weakest on record; for his 180,000 troops "contained" scarcely more than ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... administered her; and is gone off in foul shrieks, and pangs of the interior,—let no man ask whitherward! 'SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT AVOIR DE L'ESPRIT (Can a German possibly have sharpness of wits)?' Well, yes, it would seem: here is one German graduate who understands his medicine-chest, and the quality of patients!—Dauphiness got no pity anywhere; plenty of epigrams, and mostly nothing but laughter even in Paris itself. Napoleon long after, who much admires Friedrich, finds that this Victory of Rossbach ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... origin. When I saw him returning to the store, in anticipation of the reproof I should receive, I started for the rear door; but the Doctor, entering before I reached it, called me back, and in a most excited manner declared that we had discovered real nutmegs, and nutmegs of a very superior quality. He had no doubt that Yellowstone lake was surrounded by nutmeg trees, and that each of our incrustations contained a veritable nutmeg. In his excitement he even proposed to organize a small party to go immediately to the locality to gather nutmegs, and had an interview with Charley Curtis ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... "sad civility" once Garrick sate To see a Play, mangled in form and state; Plebeian Shakspeare must the words supply,— The actors all were Fools—of Quality. The scenes—the dresses—were above rebuke;— Scarce a Performer there below a Duke. He sate, and mused how in his Shakspeare's mind The idea of old Nobility enshrined Should thence a grace and a refinement have Which passed these living Nobles to conceive,— Who with such apish, base gesticulation, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... by the Court on grounds which ill accord with the doctrine of enumerated powers: the power to legislate in effectuation of the "rights expressly given, and duties expressly enjoined" by the Constitution;[11] the power to impart to the paper currency of the Government the quality of legal tender in the payment of debts;[12] the power to acquire territory by discovery;[13] the power to legislate for the Indian tribes wherever situated in the United States;[14] the power to exclude and deport aliens;[15] and to require that those who are admitted be registered and fingerprinted;[16] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... was of a robust and well-proportioned frame, in age a little over forty, rather swarthy in complexion, with long moustaches and a full beard, and, in short, his appearance was such that if he had been well dressed he would have been taken for a person of quality and good birth. On entering he asked for a room, and when they told him there was none in the inn he seemed distressed, and approaching her who by her dress seemed to be a Moor he her down from saddle ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "hatcheled" and that of being "woven," that it exceeds my powers to delineate. All around me seemed to be in a state of inextricable confusion, out of which order finally appeared in the shape of a piece of cambric, of a quality that brought the workmen far and near to visit it. We were a single family of only twelve, in this rare fabric, among which I remember that I occupied the seventh place in the order of arrangement, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... disagreeable idea that he was facing a detective. Then he saw that this secular disguise draped the familiar form of his old friend, the former Bishop of Princhester. Scrope was pale and a little untidy; he had already acquired something of the peculiar, slightly faded quality one finds in a don who has gone to Hampstead and fallen amongst advanced thinkers and got mixed up with the Fabian Society. His anxious eyes and faintly propitiatory ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... fact equally uncommon, which, though it has no relation to his life, ought to be preserved. Sir Richard Steele having one day invited to his house a great number of persons of the first quality, they were surprised at the number of liveries which surrounded the table; and after dinner, when wine and mirth had set them free from the observation of rigid ceremony, one of them inquired of sir Richard, how such an expensive train of domesticks ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... such people, yet one had to believe they existed; people who really cared that a bride with whom they had no acquaintance (why a bride? Did that make her more interesting?) had taken her life; and that a baronet (also a perfect stranger) had had his marriage dissolved in a court of law. What quality did it indicate, this curious and inexplicable interest in these topics so tedious to himself and to most of his personal acquaintances? Was it a love of romance? But what romance was to be found in suicide or divorce? Romance Gideon knew; knew how it girdled the world, heard the beat ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... all manly sports and exercises, so as, if possible, to beat the actual professors of each game, or feat of skill on their own ground. Yet here also he should avoid mere habits of display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and not an athlete. Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he does and says. In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every form of affectation: 'Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and show that what he ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... with a faint smile. She spoke with great deliberation, but very clearly, and there was in her voice some hidden quality, indefinable in words, yet both musical ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Stepanda's compared to this? [Brightening up and undoing the parcels] Just look here,—see the quality! ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... himself, with a little smile and sigh,—that a more or less solitary habit had, by long familiarity, become pleasant. Actual loneliness he had never experienced, because it was not in his nature to feel lonely. His well-balanced intellect had the brilliant quality of a finely-cut diamond, bearing many facets, and reflecting all the hues of life in light and colour; thus it quite naturally happened that most things, even ordinary and common things, interested him. He was a great lover of books, and, to a moderate ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... watched him and guessed and wondered. After he had gone to his room for the night, she would hear him pacing the floor, back and forth, back and forth. She asked no more questions, however; minding her own business was a specialty of Keziah's, and it was a rare quality in Trumet. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had made the expediency of any measure the quality which, combined with legality, was sufficient to establish its constitutional character, he naturally labored this point with especial diligence. He dwelt upon the great importance of strengthening the judicial element in the House, since it was the great ultimate court of appeal. ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... early morning in summer has some quality which seems to go straight to the heart. I felt intensely happy. There lay the barge, the sun shining on the clean deck, and from the dewy edges of the old ropes, and from the barge-master's zinc basin and pail put out to ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... indeed perceive the influence of Tennyson in the delicacy of the craftsmanship, and the influence of Wordsworth in the deep and sympathetic treatment of Nature; but Hayne's study of these great bards had been transmuted into poetic culture, and is reflected only in the superior quality of his work. There is no case of conscious ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... he asked. "Martin reports it poorer in quality than ever, but Sir George will have it that it is ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... matter of a moment, like that of being sure of wine of the quality thou namest; or, if it be, thou canst first dispatch thy master's business, and then to the port, in quest of Stefano. That the purchase may not fail, I will take a mask and be thy companion, to see the Calabrian. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I will, indeed, allow him courage, and on this account we so far give him credit. We have more respect for a man who robs boldly on the highway, than for a fellow who jumps out of a ditch, and knocks you down behind your back. Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... bank of the river opposite Bingen was very steep and high, and was terraced from top to bottom for vineyards. In fact, this part of the river is more celebrated, perhaps, than any other for the excellent quality of the grapes which it produces. It is here that are situated the famous vineyards of Rudesheim and Johannisberg. In fact, the whole country, for miles in extent, is one vast vineyard. The separate fields are divided from one another ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... still in great measure evident; thus 'moon' or 'earth' expressed 1, there being but one of each; 2 might be called 'eye,' 'wing,' 'arm,' 'jaw,' as going in pairs; for 3 they said 'Rama,' 'fire,' or 'quality,' there being considered to be three Ramas, three kinds of fire, three qualities (guna); for 4 were used 'veda,' 'age,' or 'ocean,' there being four of each recognized; 'season' for 6, because they reckoned six seasons; 'sage' or 'vowel,' for 7, from the seven sages and the seven vowels; and so ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... that she had chosen to love that thief, who stole the memories of her glorious moments as he had stolen her good repute and peace of mind, and crept away with the loot to the tomb on the hillside where his son could not pursue him. As he thought of the unmitigated quality of his mother's lot he hated other women for their cheerful lives; and Ellen, who had felt that his mood had turned from her, and was watching his face, said to herself: "He has some trouble that he is ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme of life. An air of dominion cloaked her finely. She had long been queen of her surroundings and law-giver to her great family. Royalty is a quality, one of Nature's gifts, and there one might behold it as truly as if Victoria Regina Imperatrix had passed by. The natural instincts common to humanity were there undisguised, unconcealed, simply accepted. We had seen a royal progress; ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett |
