"Reality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight of land, at sea, changes everything," I went on. "It always affects me as waking up from a dream. It's a return to reality." ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... profoundly pondered, nor too carefully discussed; and at the urgent request of not a few of our better readers, we purpose examining it anew in a course of occasional articles, convinced that its crisis has at length come, just as the crisis of the Church question had in reality come when the late Dr. M'Crie published his extraordinary pamphlet;{6} and that it must depend on the part now taken by the Free Church in this matter, whether some ten years hence she is to posses any share, even the slightest, in the education of the country. We ask our readers severely ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of Cinderella paled to the complexion of a sordidly realistic narrative of commonplaces; contemplating them, Sally, for the sake of her self-conceit, felt constrained to adopt an aloof, superior, sceptical pose. Conceding freely the incredible reality of this phase of her history, she none the less contended that in it no more true permanence ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... matter of seconds, had become spoil of the sea, and her crew and passengers had vanished forever from the sight of men. Yet Prester Kleig lived on, knew that he lived on, and that there was an element, too strong to be disbelieved, of reality in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... God was all Papa, Papa was not all God. He was only a bit of him. He meant that if God was the only reality, Papa wouldn't ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... those who worked hard. To them, luck came in the shape of what they had earned. There were exceptions here and there, as there are to every rule; but the majority of these, he soon found, were more in the seeming than in the reality. Generally speaking—and of course to this rule there are likewise exceptions, or as the Frenchman said, "All generalizations are false, including this one"—a man got in this world about what ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which, in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in art is created by what Raphael so well describes,—namely, THE IDEA OF BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether its plastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the servile imitation of Nature is ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... failed to bestow on him his faithful admonitions, although they were not always heeded. The death of Marshal Duroc was an event so grievous and so totally unexpected, that we remained for some time uncertain whether to believe it, even when the only too evident reality no longer permitted us ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... and would have been false as regarded my own feelings. In fact, the utter shadowyness of our relations to each other, even after our meetings through seven or eight years had been very numerous, but of necessity had been very brief, being entirely on mail-coach allowance—timid, in reality, by the General Post-Office—and watched by a crocodile belonging to the antepenultimate generation, left it easy for me to do a thing which few people ever can have done—viz., to make love ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Philadelphia have been a dream for many years, and spasmodic efforts have been made from time to time to produce the reality, but as yet nothing tangible has resulted. The idea has been too inchoate to develop much enthusiasm, and year after year our citizens have returned from enjoying the delights of foreign gardens, and mildly wondered, in the true Philadelphia style, why we should not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Reformers of every kind make an amount of noise in the world these days out of all proportion to their numbers. They deceive themselves, and to a certain extent they deceive others. The wish to see their splendid visions a reality leads to the belief that they are already on the point of being victors over the hard-to-move and well-intrenched powers that be. As to the quality of his thinking and the soundness of his reasoning, the idealist is ahead of the world all ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... like strange imaginings. Teeny-bits jumped from bed and opened the door of the closet. The little marks that he and Doctor Wells had made with the paper-knife were sufficient evidence to bring back the reality of each incident and to plunge Teeny-bits into a gloomy perplexity from which not even the crisp brightness of the November day or the prospect of the Jefferson game could divert ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... Charles V., divided Germany into two great political and religious parties, and recognized the independence of each. The Protestants were no longer looked upon as rebels, but as men who had a right to worship God as they pleased. Still, in reality, all that the Lutherans gained was toleration, not equality. The concessions of the Catholics were made to necessity, not to justice. Hence, the treaty of Augsburg proved only a truce, not a lasting peace. The boundaries of both parties were marked out by the sword, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... out, sullenly, she worked hard to be a great lady. But skill came not to her, and hope dwindled; only the dull effort remained. One accomplishment she did master—to wit, the vapours: they became for her a dreadful reality. She lost her appetite for the fine hot dishes. All night long she lay awake, restless, tearful, under the fine silk canopy, till dawn stared her into slumber. She seldom scolded Betty. She who had been so lusty and so blooming saw in her mirror that she was pale and thin ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... many years, that it exhibits the style of such an age, that it has beheld such and such great events, there is no reservation to be made at all. In the castle of Falaise we may adopt, word for word, the most vehement of Mr. Ruskin's declamations on this head. The man who turns the ancient reality of the twelfth century into a sham of the nineteenth deserves no other fame than the fame which Eratostratus won at Ephesus, and which James Wyatt won in ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... thing, like light or sweet sound. And yet it has always the sense that it is not yet quite found, that it is there waiting for a moment to declare itself, within reach of the hand and yet unattained. It is so real that it makes me doubt the reality of everything else in the world, and it removes for an instant all sense of the jarring and inharmonious elements of life, the pitiful desires, the angers and coldnesses of fellow-mortals, the selfish claims of one's ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... among mankind," said her husband. "In reality, it is frightful pride and overweening arrogance to think that we shall live for ever—become like God. These were the serpent's wily words, and he is ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... she had made a reality of her cousin's imaginary romance, believing, like her mother, that Lisbeth would never marry; and now, within a week, this visionary being had become Comte Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a certificate of birth, the wraith had solidified ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... as the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not the time to relate the truth; and I should reject any colouring of the truth. No account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... merged into one dazzling glow and my heart kept time to the rhythm of the music. When the music stopped, the glorious illumination seemed to go out and leave only a little straggling light from a few badly smelling kerosene lamps. The beautiful, fantastic music had been in reality only a harsh horn accompanied by a concertina or some other stupid instrument jangling vile music. The young boys and girls were all a common, stupid lot, and the odour of the stock yards permeated the room. But when the mystical music begins again, and the dance ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... white rose pinned over her heart. When the service was over, and the people had streamed out, and the brilliant lights were replaced by a radiance, faint and soft, Anita remained on her knees, praying. Broussard remained on his knees, too, thinking he was praying, but in reality worshipping Anita. Presently, she rose and passed out into the cold, gray dawn. Broussard went out, too, meaning to intercept her and walk home with her. But at the door Kettle appeared, carrying in his arms the After-Clap, now nearly three years old, and capable ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... Providence that gives us different things to love? In the purchase of my farm both Horace and I got the better of the bargain—and yet neither was cheated. In reality a fairly strong lantern light will shine through Horace, and I could see that he was hugging himself with the joy of his bargain; but I was content. I had some money left—what more does anyone want after a bargain?—and I had come into possession of the thing I desired most ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Owen, smiling. 'I simulated the motions to myself and every one else: and there was a grain of reality, after all; but neither you nor I ever knew how much was mere imitation and personal influence. When I outgrew implicit faith in you, I am afraid my higher faith went with it—first through recklessness, then through questioning. After believing ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saw his unshaken resolution in this apparently slight action; but others who read his design in their own ambition, translated it differently, and deemed it only an artful rejection of the appendages of royalty, to excite the impatience of the people to crown him in reality. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... where the capital of the Principality of Wales was to be found on the map. [Laughter.] Wales is a single and indivisible entity with a life of its own, drawing its vitality from an ancient past, and both, I believe, in the volume and in the reality of its activity, never more virile than it is today. [Cheers.] But I do not know that there is any general agreement among Welshmen as to where their capital is to be found, [laughter, and a voice, "Here,"] and without attempting as an outsider to differentiate ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... are called par excellence Evangelical writers. And yet it is perfectly true that there is a sense in which the latter may fairly claim the epithet 'Evangelical' as peculiarly their own; for they made what had sunk too generally into a mere barren theory a living and fruitful reality. The truths which they brought into prominence were not new truths, nor truths which were actually denied, but they were truths which acquired under the vigorous preaching of the revivalists a freshness and a vitality, and an influence over men's practice, which they had to a great extent ceased ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the supposition that Oedipus has never inquired into the death of his predecessor on the throne. But such flaws are external, not essential. On the whole, I can only say that the work of translation has made me feel even more strongly than before the extraordinary grip and reality of the dialogue, the deftness of the construction, and, except perhaps for a slight drop in the Creon scene, the unbroken crescendo of tragedy from ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... weave around Ransford. Now he was faced by the fact that it was not going to yield anything in the way of help—it was a secret no longer, and it had yielded nothing beyond the mere knowledge that John Braden, who was in reality John Brake, had carried the secret to Warchester—to reveal it in the proper quarter. That helped Bryce in no way—so far as he could see. And therefore it was necessary to re-state his case to ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... appropriating phrase, "Our God" (1 Thess. ii. 2, iii. 9; 1 Cor. vi. 11). As in the still more personal phrase, "My God," which we find about seven times in his writings, St. Paul expresses his consciousness of personal possession and the blessed reality of fellowship with God. "This God is our ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... two, father and son, stood face to face, apparently deep in thought, but in reality examining one another with mutual distrust, each striving to gather something of ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... great difficulty in obtaining 'the twelve good rules,' but at length purchased them at some London bookstall to adorn the whitewashed parlor of 'The Three Jolly Pigeons.' However laudable this may be, nothing shook my faith in the reality of Auburn so much as this exactness, which had the disagreeable air of being got up for the occasion. The last object of pilgrimage is the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... three o'clock when we got to that point, and I was getting very tired, and, strange as it may appear, curiously doubtful about my own existence. I had for some time been coming to the conclusion that he did not quite believe in my reality; and after he had dismissed my account of the black races as being untrustworthy, he said, half to himself, that quite probably I was nothing more than an hallucination, a thought projection of his own mind. And after that I got more and ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... 1993 constitutional revision that furthered devolution into a federal state, there are now three levels of government (federal, regional, and linguistic community) with a complex division of responsibilities; this reality leaves six governments each with its ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... many a one, whose sympathy I had experienced, would have helped me to the utmost of their means. A false shame prevented me from confessing what I endured. Still happiness filled my heart. I read then for the first time the works of Walter Scott. A new world was opened to me: I forgot the reality, and gave to the circulating library that which should have provided me with ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... despite the heat of recurring electoral and parliamentary combats, much that is fundamental or permanent in the demarcation which sets off the two major parties the one against the other. Even the names "Liberal" and "Conservative" denote in reality much less than might be supposed. During the generation which began with the Reform Act of 1832 the Liberals, indeed, extended the franchise to the middle classes, reformed the poor law, overhauled the criminal law, introduced a new and more satisfactory scheme of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... is derived from a story long current, that the monument was built by Demosthenes as a place of retirement. It was in reality a monument erected in honour of Lysicrates, and the musicians or actors who carried off the palm in musical or dramatic entertainments. This monument is interesting as being the oldest existing specimen of the Corinthian order of architecture. The frieze, of which there are specimens before the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... The reality had been sadly different. Miss Wickham had disclosed herself as being a hard, self-centered, worldly woman who considered that in furnishing her young companion with board, lodging and a salary of thirty pounds a year, she had, to ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... trunk was taken away on a cart, and the whole family followed it towards the station. Trina came last. In her wondering eyes one could see that despite all the preparations she did not yet believe the reality of the coming journey. Cornelli had begged Mrs. Halm so urgently to let her go, too, that the child's wish had been granted. Cornelli had been willing to take the responsibility for the unexpected guest. Mux was so excited that ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... Nature really is. We see the reality behind the appearance—the content within the outward form. We are not for the moment concerned with the cause but with the character of Nature. We see the "I" behind the outward manifestation and representation. And if we have sympathy and ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... would he have taxed with either inconsistency or unkindness, that nature which cannot act otherwise than she does. Perhaps of all the ideas that can be infused into the mind of man, none is more really subversive of his true happiness, none more incompatible with the reality of things, than that which persuades him he is himself a privileged being, the king of a nature where every thing is submitted to laws, the extent of which his finite mind cannot possibly conceive. Even admitting it should ultimately turn out to be a fact, he has yet no one positive evidence to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... the enthusiasm reaching its height when the Boeotian appears with his ducks and his eels. This ecstasy can best be understood by those who have seen the capture of a sutler's wagon by hungry Confederates; and the fantastic vision of a separate peace became a sober reality at many points on the lines of the contending parties. The Federal outposts twitted ours with their lack of coffee and sugar; ours taunted the Federals with their lack of tobacco. Such gibes often led, despite the officers, ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... spoken very innocently, but was in reality a keen thrust at Hemstead, who had so recently stated his prospective income at that sum. That the others understood it as such was shown by their significant glances, as they ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... has fifteen thousand men?—what if he has twenty thousand?—What if McDowell is preparing to cross the Potomac? And now, on the seventeenth, Patterson is at Charlestown, creeping eastward, evidently going to surround the Army of the Shenandoah! Patterson is the burning reality and McDowell the dream—and yet Johnston won't move to the westward and attack! Good Lord! we didn't come from home just to watch these chestnuts get ripe! All the generals are ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... room, putting little touches here and there; and if she were a little pale, the dusk soon hid it. Mrs. Trafford had no fault to find with her daughter that evening; nevertheless she did not feel easy; she thought girlish pride was bidding her conceal the wound, and that in reality her child ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... left for the foul love of the papist high-priest, and it was a chaste spell and a restraining grace. Still he partook a little of the rich repast which had been prepared, and feigned so long a false pleasance, that he almost became pleased in reality. The dame, however, was herself at times fearful, and seemed to listen if there was any knocking at the door, telling my grandfather that his Grace was to be back after he had supped at the castle. "I thought," said she, "to have had you here when he was at the burning ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... a planet might be seen if anyone would look for it. He gave his results to a professor of astronomy at Cambridge. Now, it seems an easy thing to say to anyone, 'Look out for a planet in such and such a part of the sky,' but in reality, when the telescope is turned to that part of the sky, stars are seen in such numbers that, without very careful comparison with a star chart, it is impossible to say which are fixed stars and which, if any, is an intruder. There happened to be no star chart of this ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... family, would be copied by another in a similar emergency, without being aware of its ever being done before. Were I engaged in a work of fiction, I might let fancy reign and endeavor to amuse, but this is not the object. Let us endeavor then to be content with truth, and not murmur with its reality. When we take a survey of the astonishing regularity with which they construct their combs without a teacher, and remember that the waxen material is formed in the rings of their body, that for the first time in life, without an experienced leader's direction, they apply a claw to detach ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... was that fellow," cried the fat man who in reality had bought his interest in the bicycle company after the age of forty. Tapping himself on the breast he paused as though overcome with feeling. Tears came into his eyes. The young workman had become a reality to him. "All day I ran about the little shop ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... in Philadelphia, who had claimed to be the only true church of God, but who were in reality of the synagogue of Satan, were to cease their opposition to the Christians, and to seek instruction and protection from them—recognizing the love of God to Gentiles as well as to Jews. History is silent respecting the fulfilment of this; but there is no reason ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... current should have driven us to the eastward with so much strength, for the whole squadron computed that we were ten degrees to the westward of this land; so that in turning, by our reckoning, about nineteen degrees of longitude, we had not in reality advanced half that distance: And now, instead of having our labours and anxieties relieved by approaching a warmer climate, and more tranquil seas, we were forced again to steer southwards, and had again ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... man," says Mark Volokov, the wolfish outlaw who quotes Proudhon and talks about "the new knowledge, the new life." This rascal, whose violent pursuit of the heroine produces the tragedy of the book, is a much less convincing figure, though he also represents a reality of Russian life then, and ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... I should have discovered all this long ago if I had believed it was aught but a girl's nervous fancies; but mammy's corroboration assures me it was reality. Now I shall take such steps that she will never be annoyed again," he said, sternly; and suited the action to the word by giving up the room next his own, an airy dressing-room, to Dainty's use, making it perfectly safe by having in a carpenter to attach a wire to the young ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... me half-an-hour first," Ralph answered. There was an ease and grace always present in his intercourse with women, and a power of saying that which he desired to say,—which perhaps arose from the slightness of his purposes and the want of reality in his character. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... himself listening with a strained attention as the theme stole out of them, for it chimed with his mood. He had been restless and disturbed in mind before Gordon had flung his veiled hints at him, and the reality underlying his comrade's badinage had a further unsettling effect. He did not know what the music was, but it seemed in keeping with the throb of the sea against the crag and the fitful wailing of the pines. There was a suggestion of effort and struggle in it, and, it seemed ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... the highest canyons of the Sierras, was in reality a plateau of table-land, embayed like a green lake in a semi-circular sweep of granite, that, lifting itself three thousand feet higher, became a foundation for the eternal snows. The mountain genii of space and atmosphere jealously guarded its seclusion and surrounded it with illusions; ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... about the wonderful discovery of Floyd Westwood through a birthday rose, and found that an address in the letter was identical with one which her cousin had given her. She began to feel the pleasant reality of kinsfolk, and when the little man went home she waved him a happy good-night from the piazza, quite as if there were no such ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... Spontaneity—that subtle element of all that is lovely and enchanting—had flown away at the first suspicion of constraint. Some sweet illusion that had always hung like a halo over this grand decision evaded her consciousness; the glorious ideal had become a reality and lost all its enchantments in ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... beware, Lest in the strong name of "reality" You mock yourselves anew with shapes of air, Lest it be you, agnostics, who re-write The fettering creeds of night, Affirm you know your own Unknowable, And lock the winged soul in a new hell; Lest it be you, lip-worshippers ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... were sincere, she showed herself to be of that affectionate, conscientious, emotional type Ellen so cordially detested; besides, she held her head too high. If on the other hand, she were shamming, and were in reality endowed with a measure of the Howe shrewdness, that ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... "often predominated over his science; while both were mingling in his intellectual habits, each seemed to him to confirm the other. Prone to the mystical lore of what was termed the occult sciences, which in reality are no sciences at all, since whatever remains occult ceases to be science, Dee lost his better genius." I shall refer the reader to this popular work instead of attempting an original paper on the ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... out! It is like the secret of singing in perfect tune, or of playing the violin as Joachim can play upon it. In literature, as in music, there is at times a certain indescribable tone of absolute reality which carries the reader away and for the moment absorbs him into the mind of the writer. Some metempsychosis takes place. It is no longer a man or a woman turning the pages of a book, it is a human being ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... without a certain pleasure for a number of years, one is accustomed to find on returning to it that it is not quite so delightful as one had imagined. In the years of abstinence one had built up too glowing a picture, and the reality turns out to be something much more commonplace. Pleasant, yes; but, after all, nothing out of the ordinary. Most of us have made this discovery for ourselves in the last few months of peace. We have been doing the things which we had promised ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... his own will but that of God. But before self can be consciously abandoned, the consciousness of self must be realised. Before self-will can be surrendered, its existence must be realised. And self-consciousness, the recognition of the existence of the will and the reality of the self, comes relatively late both in the history of the community and in the personal history of the individual. At first the existence of the individual will and the individual self is not recognised by the community and is not provided for in the community's worship ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... album, while others were using the stereoscope. For my own part, I was staring at an engraving in a dark corner of the parlor, where I could not have made out much of its purpose if I had desired, but in reality I was thinking of the joyous company of my own kith and kin, hundreds of miles away, and regretting that I ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... expression, apart from Parliament, in the Commission of the Kirk. It was argued, on their side, that the Commissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that the conditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in reality evaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just cause for war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war, nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied with Malignants, Prelatists, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Weed his good genius; but in reality Weed has ruined Seward. Now Mr. Seward supports strategy, imbecility, and McClellan. The only explanation for me is, that Seward, participating in all military counsels and strategic plans, and not understanding any of them, finds it safer to back ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... one living except my father, and with the same sort of affection that I feel for him. You ask me to tell you the secret feelings of my heart: the only secret feeling of which I am conscious is—a wish not to marry, unless I could see in reality such a person as——But that I knew was only a picture, a dream; and I thought that I ought at least to sacrifice my foolish imaginations to you, who have done so much for me. I knew that it would be the height of ingratitude to refuse you; and besides, my father told me that you would not accept ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... This was in reality the first time that a sea passage had been made by sky, and the gravity of their situation must not be under-estimated. We are so accustomed in a sea passage to the constant passing of other vessels that we allow ourselves to imagine that a frequented ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... mood of failure and disappointment that the Popish Plot found him. Of its reality he made no question; "a plot," he says emphatically, "there was." But his cool good sense saw how the truth had been "dashed and brewed with lies." What stirred him more was, as he believed, the return of anarchy. Puritan as his training had been ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... simply send his card by post. This distant rejoinder practically ends the brief acquaintance without any discourteous rebuff. It is one of the mistakes of the vulgar to be rude and gruff in order to repel an undesired acquaintance. In reality, nothing freezes out a bore more effectually than the icy calm of dignified courtesy. There are exquisitely polite ways of sending every undesirable person to limbo. The perfect self-command of the well-bred man enables him to do this to perfection, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... brought about the terrific grouping of circumstances which the great Lover-witness used as the tremendous climax of both wooing and witnessing. No one doubts the reality of Jesus' witness to the Father's love before men. And no one, who has had any touch at all with Him, doubts the tremendous pull upon one's heart of such a wooing appeal as that Calvary climax of witnessing ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... few light duties ostensibly to "make her feel at home," but in reality, she knew, because the aunts felt she needed their instruction. She was asked if she would like to wash the china and glass; and regularly after each meal a small wooden tub and a mop were brought in with hot water and soap, and she was expected to handle the costly heirlooms under ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... nothing to do with that silent consciousness of God. This place, this appeal, was fantastic, childish, beside that event that had that afternoon sent Carfax into space. Let these men hurry to the wood, let them find the sodden body, let them face then the reality of Life. . ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... could be done, he said to himself, telling himself at the same time that all that had been passing in his own mind was no more than a vague speculation. A man is apt to speculate on things which have no reality to him, till ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... his orderly back for pack-mules to carry the two black-tailed deer they had killed. After a wild scramble through bogs we began to ascend a narrow valley with the creek on our left. Jack Baronette "guessed some timber might have fell on that trail." Trail there was none in reality, only steep hillsides of soft scoriae, streaming sulphur-vents and a cat's cradle of tumbled dead trees. Every few minutes the axes were ringing, and a way was cleared; then another halt, and more axe-work, until we slipped and scrambled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... returned Coronado, aware that his uncle was insolvent in reality, and that his estate when settled would not show the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... doctor in attendance on him grew more and more anxious as to the state of his mind. There was no appearance of any positive derangement of intellect, but there was a mental depression—an unaltering, invincible prostration, produced by his absolute belief in the reality of the dreadful vision that he had seen at the masked ball—which suggested to the physician the gravest doubts about the case. He saw with dismay that the patient showed no anxiety, as he got stronger, except on one subject. He was eagerly desirous of seeing Nanina every day by his bedside; ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... arms! He distinctly heard himself scream as he started up in affright; he could not tell where he was; the spectre faded and the furniture and hangings transformed themselves into their familiar reality. He could not lie down again, and rose and dressed himself. He was not the man to believe that the ghost could be a revelation or a prophecy, but, nevertheless, he was once more overcome with fear, a vague dread partly justifiable by the fact of Madge, by ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... spare her. He thought that she was tired of looking after Granville, when in reality she was only bored. As for her fits of sullenness and irritation, he had been initiated into their mystery on his wedding-day. The sullenness, the irritation had ceased so unmysteriously that Ranny in his matrimonial wisdom ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... and easy to bear because they were backed by a dream that each day, however relentless in its toil, brought closer to reality. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... you this. If the time comes when you must lay down the fiddle and the bow, because your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten-foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and, after dallying awhile with eye-glasses, come at last to the undisguised reality of spectacles,—if the time comes when that fire of life we spoke of has burned so low that where its flames reverberated there is only the sombre stain of regret, and where its coals glowed, only the white ashes that cover the embers of memory,—don't ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the window the notable characters whom Allan pointed out to him in the Edinburgh Exchange. He now removed to a better shop, and set up for his sign the heads of Ben Jonson and Drummond, who agreed better in figure than they had done in reality at Hawthornden. He established the first circulating library in Scotland. His shop became a centre of intelligence, and Ramsay sat a Triton among the minnows of that rather mediocre day —giving his little senate laws, and inditing verses, songs, and fables. At forty-five—an age ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... ever been before, overwhelmed by the disaster which had come upon the young lovers through the foolish brawls of their foolish elders; and it was not until an impatient woman had prodded him in the side that he returned to reality. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... mingled with his limited thinking and tranquil emotion before nature, there was a large element of spiritual activity, and this had kept him mentally alive. He had heard of spiritism, and his own experience led him to acceptance of its reality. In his solitary life, in the unbroken silence which reigned around him, he heard mysterious voices, and only the year before he had heard one say that he was wanted at home. He paid no attention to it, thinking it only an illusion, but, after ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... The Germania of Tacitus, for instance, is used by historians to interpret the later development of Teutonic institutions. But this inquiry involves a good deal of abstraction and an artificial limitation of view. In reality, the people of Germania were never left to themselves at all, were never beyond the influence of Southern ideas; and the history of the influence of Southern ideas on the Northern races takes up a larger field than the isolated history of the North. Nothing in the world is more ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... light was as they could imagine the light of heaven—a pure lucent yellow as of the early primrose, but diaphanous and almost transparent, as though this, which seemed to them light, was itself in reality but an outer veil hiding the still greater glory behind. The curtain lifted but a span, and the lower rim of it curved in a gentle arch from the middle of Guernsey to the filmy line of Alderney. All ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... and Terrasson, supposing Sarpedon to assert that he dies in the middle of the fleet (which was false in fact) are kind enough to vindicate Homer by pleading in his favor, that Sarpedon, being in the article of death, was delirious, and knew not, in reality, where he died. But Homer, however he may have been charged with now and then a nap (a crime of which I am persuaded he is never guilty) certainly does not slumber here, nor needs to be so defended. {'Agon} in the 23d Iliad, means the whole extensive area in which the games were exhibited, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... adventurous boy the free outlaw life of this daring lad of nine centuries ago may seem alluring. But "life in the greenwood" had little romance for such old-time outlaws as Brian Boru and Robin Hood and their imitators. To them it was stern reality, and meant constant struggle and vigilance. They were outcasts and Ishmaels—"their hands against every man and every man's hand against them,"—and though the pleasant summer weather brought many sunshiny days and starlit nights, the cold, damp, and dismal days took all the poetry out ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... In Ely's "The Past and Present of Political Economy" (p. 9) it is clear the new school do not differ so much in reality as in seeming from the methods of the English ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... exceptional knowledge of Indian traits and characteristics and his ability to trade and treat with them so tactfully, was one of the boy drivers of the stage coach that crossed the plains while the West was still looked upon as "wild and wooly," and in reality was fraught with numerous, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... in the catalogue, and that No. 1, "Horse Fair"—fare—is represented after a realistic fashion by a handful of oats and a wisp of hay. No. 2, which he expected to find a spirited marine sketch, is in reality only a toothbrush lying beside a jack-plane; while the supposed companion picture, "Caught in a Squall Off Yarmouth," is represented by a red herring. No. 4, "The Last of Poor Dog Tray," is a sausage, and the exhibitor particularly begs that no gentleman ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... Pablo, a further run of eleven days brought them to another uninhabited rock, which they called Tiburones, from the quantity of sharks observed in the neighborhood. There was neither food, nor water to be had there, and a voyage of unknown duration, in reality not less than 5,000 English miles, was yet to be accomplished before a trace of land was again to greet their yearning gaze. Their sufferings may best be told in the quaint and touching words in which ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... the bifurcated root of the tongue. This fissure is called the glottis. At the bird's fiat, it can be opened and closed and made to assume a great variety of forms. Moreover, just in front of it there is a fold of mucous membrane called the epiglottis, which is in reality a tiny trapdoor closing over the opening when necessity requires. When the bird swallows food or drink, this little flap shuts down, and prevents the entrance of any clogging substance into the windpipe to choke ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... dervishes, having thrown off their cloaks, again folded their arms across their breasts, and bowing three times, re-commenced walking before the high priest, bending low as they passed his seat, and kissing his hands, which were joined together. The whirling at length began in reality: at first with folded arms, then with one arm extended, the other slightly bent, and held so as to form an obtuse angle at the elbow. Thus, with closed eyes and erect body, these singular people whirled round and round on one leg, making a pirouette with the other, and proceeding by degrees ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... glad it seems so to you," said Goethe. "There are, however, few men who have imagination for the truth of reality; most prefer strange countries and circumstances, of which they know nothing, and by which their imagination ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a strong current of sentiment among the students themselves. The brains of the institution were enlisted on that side; and it was manifest that hence-forth the best class of students would be satisfied with nothing less. The controversy was at an end. What remained was to make the idea a reality. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... head. She was white and shaken. The reality was even worse than she had expected, and the thought of Cecil's bitterness of disillusion weighed on her like a nightmare. She tried to speak, but her lips trembled and Erskine drew near with a quick word ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... this time we were getting excited and with one accord the guests arose to see the result. Father became uneasy at her long silence and came out in time to see her reel against the railing of the stairs. She had read the note and realized that her great desire had at last become a reality and her birthday had brought her the long-wished-for piano. This is what she read in ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... at each other with caressing eyes, smiling with the automatism of love; but in reality they were sad, with that sweet sadness which in itself constitutes a new voluptuousness. Luna, influenced by the positivism of her race, was gazing into the future, while Aguirre was content with the present moment, not caring to know what would be the end of this love. Why trouble oneself ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that lovely prayer has its special reality. Thus "Give us this day our daily bread" causes him to think, not so much of getting wages on the morrow as of the kindly fruits of the earth that lie in the trees and bushes like anonymous gifts, and ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... spell-bound maiden skimming over the blue waves in an enchanted shallop to some blest island, where waited a magical berry that would set her free. How should they understand that this holiday picnic was in reality a pilgrimage. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... hunting, brings it strange seeds to play with, and makes it necklaces and other ornaments." The young children themselves "seem fully to reciprocate the affection of their parents; but as they grow older, the affection on both sides seems to cool, though, in reality, it perhaps only becomes less demonstrative" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... applauded for thus asserting her just prerogative, and setting herself free from an arbitrary cabal, by which she had been so long kept in dependence. The duke of Beaufort went to court on this occasion, and told her majesty he was extremely glad that he could now salute her queen in reality. The whole whig party were justly alarmed at these alterations. The directors of the bank represented to her majesty the prejudice that would undoubtedly accrue to public credit from a change of the ministry. The emperor and the states-general interposed in this domestic revolution. Their ministers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Hume had been misled by turning his attention to Physics, and that his own good sense would have saved him from his conclusion had he thought rather of Mathematics. Kant's solution of the problem, based mainly on the reality of Mathematics, and especially of Geometry, is the ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... dreary house in John Street, Bloomsbury, these four dwelt together; a family in appearance, in reality a financial association. Julia and Uncle Joseph were, of course, slaves; John, a gentleman with a taste for the banjo, the music-hall, the Gaiety bar, and the sporting papers, must have been anywhere a secondary figure; and the cares and delights of empire ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to show great fortitude, but it was all an imposition upon the public. The beadle, who performed, had filled his left hand with red ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of his whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality not hurting him at all. This being perceived by Mr. Constable Hinschcomb, who followed the beadle, he applied his cane, without any such management or precaution, to the shoulders of the too merciful executioner. The scene immediately became more interesting. The beadle ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Rome and the rock strongholds of robber barons, or in the sky-aspiring hotels of modern times and in the boozing-kens of sailor-town. Just so were these men, empire-builders in the Arctic Light, boastful and drunken and clamorous, winning surcease for a few wild moments from the grim reality of their heroic toil. Modern heroes they, and in nowise different from the heroes of old time. "Well, fellows, I don't know what to say to you-all," Daylight began lamely, striving still to control his whirling brain. "I think I'll tell you-all a story. I had a pardner wunst, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... tell from minute to minute whether we were planning for a world of solid reality, or telling ourselves fairy tales about this prospect of life. So much seemed possible, and everything we could think of so improbable. There were lapses when it seemed to me I could never be anything but just the entirely unimportant and undistinguished young man I was for ever and ever. I couldn't ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... absurd thing into his belief. But when he meets in poetry with expressions of Neptune's rending the earth to pieces and dicovering infernal regions, ("See Iliad," xx. 57.) he will be able to check his fears of the reality of any such accident; and he will blame himself for his anger against Apollo for the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... back to occupy the place. The two used to roam the grounds together and spent many happy hours there. They visited to and fro; you see Monroe lived across yonder within sight of his friend's home. The great of the past take on reality when you actually set foot upon the ground they have trod. Places come to life when we see them with our own eyes. That's the purpose of these great highways, the Park-to-Park highways that connect the scenes of ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... above our heads, has never faded from my memory, nor have the faces of the old women in their black sunbonnets upturned to him, nor the drooping shoulders of the old men sitting in the amen corner with bowed heads. Somehow, there was a reality about the whole scene that we did not have at home with all the fine music ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... stores of knowledge and acquire an ever-increasing mastery over the forces of nature. Here the national domain is offered and held in millions of separate freeholds, so that our fellow-citizens, beyond the occupants of any other part of the earth, constitute in reality a people. Here exists the democratic form of government; and that form of government, by the confession of European statesmen, "gives a power of which no other form is capable, because it incorporates every man with the state and arouses ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... an absorbing task for a psychologist to trace the various stages by which an impossibility was changed into a reality. Wyatt's coolness and matter-of-fact determination were his chief weapons. His popularity and reputation for lawlessness helped him. A conversation which he had with Neville-Smith, a day-boy, is typical of the way in which he forced his point of ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... for stepping-stones were in reality the remains of a submerged forest, and no doubt, if John could have discovered their whereabouts, would have afforded him a tolerably secure footing, but they were indistinguishable now beneath the brown, swirling waters. Oh! he ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... ahead of him. No breath of wind stirred the stinging dead air. His snowshoes became great weights upon his feet which sought to drag him down, down into immeasurable depths of soft warm snow. The slope which in reality was a very easy grade assumed the steepness of a mountain side. He wanted above all things to sleep. He glanced backward. 'Merican Joe's team had stopped, and the Indian was fumbling listlessly with his pack. Halting his own dogs, the boy hastened back. The effort taxed his strength to the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... regions midway between wakefulness and slumber. Through her mind meanwhile there passed a whirling phantasmagoria, an interminable procession of figures, of memories, real yet unreal, convincing yet unconvincing. When she did at last lose all awareness of reality the effect was merely to enhance the vividness of those phantoms, to lend substance to her vaporous visions. Constant brooding over the treasure had long since affected Dona Isabel's brain, and as a consequence she often dreamed about it. She ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the same peculiarly lovely tones. She often looked back at me over her shoulder, but had an air of evading me. All at once, with surprise and delight, I remembered that she might be found in actual existence, in real flesh and blood. I deserted the image for a week in the hope of finding the reality. I paced Fifth Avenue; I went to the dry-goods stores; I attended the theatres. Often I seemed to see her before me—the picturesque hat, the long plume, the rich mantle and dress. At such moments while I pressed forward my heart beat. When the cheek turned toward me and the eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... passed by the close vote of eighty-nine to eighty- three. A change of three votes, however, would have consigned the invention to oblivion. Another year witnessed the triumphant success of the test of its practicability. The invention vindicated its character as a substantial reality; it was no longer a chimera, a visionary scheme to extort money from the public coffers. Mr. Morse was no more subjected to the suspicion of lunacy, nor ridiculed in the Halls of Congress, but he had to give large shares of its profits to Amos Kendall and F. O. J. Smith before he could make his ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... benevolent face, frank and simple in his manners, and not at all like a hero. His conversation was not brilliant, indeed I do not know apropos to what, I suppose to the climate, but it chiefly turned on medicine. There cannot be a greater contrast, both in appearance and reality, than between him and Santa Anna. There is no lurking devil in his eye. All is frank, open, and unreserved. It is impossible to look in his face without believing him to be an honest and well-intentioned man. An unprincipled but clever writer has said ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... control, situated in the commander's turret, is in reality the brain of the boat. When the alarm signal is heard to change the course from surface navigation to subsurface navigation, several previously designated members of the crew take their post of duty in ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... shadow which Just now was here is that one passing thither, Or whether the facts be what we said above, 'Tis after all the reasoning of mind That must decide; nor can our eyeballs know The nature of reality. And so Attach thou not this fault of mind to eyes, Nor lightly think our senses everywhere Are tottering. The ship in which we sail Is borne along, although it seems to stand; The ship that bides in roadstead is supposed There to be passing by. And hills and fields Seem fleeing fast astern, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... of a good action; but we have no proof that the woman who gave it to Geronimo had any certain knowledge of its efficacy. However, Mary, we will still hope. Your sweet voice has mitigated my sorrow. May my poor nephew be restored to me. The happiness I expected in my old age may yet be a reality. You, Mary,—pure image of piety, goodness, and love,—you will be my child! And when old Deodati will be called to leave this world, he will see you and Geronimo by his dying bed, like two angels, pointing out to his expiring ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... a grim reality," he replied. "You see, when the Spanish officials were turned out of Washington, they'd the impertinence to take the title of my book ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... said, it is of no use to try to pretend to sympathy or feelings. It cannot be done successfully. "Nature is forever putting a premium on reality." What is false is soon detected as such. The thoughts and feelings that create and mould the speech in the study must be born again when the speech is delivered from the platform. Do not let your words say one thing, and your voice and attitude another. There ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... therefore take his repose at night without having to attend to the furnace. Besides this the master has the satisfaction of knowing that the oven will always be hot enough if he simply attends to the time of lighting the gas—a consideration of no small moment. It is no mean testimony to the reality of Mr. Booer's success that Mr. Loeber, having seen his difficulties and troubles from the beginning, and marked how they have been overcome, is content to acknowledge that even this first example is capable of turning out bread in a condition to be sold over the counter. There ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... were preachers of morality—a noteworthy phenomenon in a persecuted tribe. "How pure and strong its ethical principles were is shown by its religious poetry as well as by its practical Law. What pervades the poetry as a high ideal, in the application of the Law becomes demonstrable reality. The wrapt enthusiasm in the hymns of Samuel the Pious and other poets is embodied, lives, in the rulings of Yehuda Hakohen, Solomon Yitschaki, and Jacob ben Meir; in the legal opinions of Isaac ben Abraham, Eliezer ha-Levi, Isaac ben Moses, Meir ben Baruch, and their successors, and in the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... selection of books. The aim was to put really good literature into the hands of the poor in such a way that they would grow to love that literature. People, after all, are not so unlike. A really good book, a book that is human, that touches our sense of rugged reality, or the fancy or imagination which is native to us and as real as anything in us, is sure of a welcome among all classes of people, if it is couched in intelligible terms. I chose some books that I happened to have read myself, but soon coming to the end of the list of which ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... again, the Senator talked to us informally, as though we were in reality his children as he had said we were to be. It was an earnest talk, about his ideals of what the University was yet to be, and his hope for their fulfillment; of economy and judicious living; and of endeavor to be of use to the world. It was a privilege to stand there ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... had been much to her in those restless days when a dark doubt lay over its deep reality. She had found a passing cheer and relief in them, then. Now, she was so sure, so quietly content! It was a joy too sacred to ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose, and now it has been shaken, and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice and ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... proposed in the table for the station district because in the province that estimate would be almost impossible to make. Different missions have different ideas, and their estimates have for themselves some reality; but they have no reality for others, and a mere average of the estimates given for all the missions of the province would have still less reality. It would be an absurd guess, meaning nothing. If we want to judge progress ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... Ireland; and the great preparations of forces, ships, artillery, and warlike stores, then notoriously making in the ports of France opposite to the British coasts, together with the language of the French ministers in some foreign courts, left little room to doubt the reality of such a design; that his majesty had augmented his forces both by sea and land, and taken proper measures and precautions for putting his kingdom in a posture of defence; that, in order further to strengthen himself, he had made a requisition of a body of Hessian troops, pursuant to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... impossible [he writes] for me to describe to you my feelings on entering this miserable desert, this scene of desolation and horror.... My anticipations were almost (p. 102) infinitely short of the reality, and I can truly say that the first appearance of this seat of the national government has produced in me nothing but absolute ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... him the true temper for a good husband, a kind father, and an honest executor. All the great people you see make considerable figures on the 'Change, in Court, and sometimes in Senates, are such as in reality have no greater faculty than what may be called human instinct, which is a natural tendency to their own preservation, and that of their friends, without being capable of striking out of the road for adventures. There is Sir William Scrip was of this sort of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken |
