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Seldom   /sˈɛldəm/   Listen
Seldom

adverb
1.
Not often.  Synonym: rarely.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Seldom" Quotes from Famous Books



... name. We two were all, And as we were not left quite destitute We bore up well. In the summer time I worked Sometimes a-field. Then I was famed for knitting, And in long winter nights my spinning wheel Seldom stood still. We had kind neighbours too And never felt distress. So he grew up A comely lad and wonderous well disposed; I taught him well; there was not in the parish A child who said his prayers more regular, Or answered readier thro' his catechism. ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... the various social gatherings connected with them are among the most important resources of the planter's life. H——'s nearest European neighbours were seven miles away, and he said that he could seldom entertain visitors at Tji Wangi, because of the scarcity of game in the neighbourhood. Indeed, the loneliness of the life is its great objection. The case of the Dutch planters is rather different. They are often married, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... recalled, but not invested with their former privileges. The constitution became more or less democratic. It is true that Sparta, who lent her powerful aid in destroying tyrannies, aimed at replacing them by oligarchies—but the effort seldom produced a permanent result: the more the aristocracy was narrowed, the more certain was its fall. If the middle class were powerful—if commerce thrived in the state—the former aristocracy of birth was soon succeeded by an aristocracy ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... early year, was drawn by a team wearing the ancient harness with bells under high hoods, or belfries, bells well attuned, too, and not far inferior to those rung by handbell men. The beat of the three horses' hoofs sounds like the drum that marks time to the chime upon their backs. Seldom, even in the far away country, can that pleasant ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... united. The effect of Rosemary on the most casual beholder, was always one of radiance. The mass of her waving hair was bronze, said her friends; it was red, it was gold, it was all of these. Her eyes were like her mother's, a violet blue, but dancing, drenched in tears or black with storm—seldom patient eyes. She lived intensely, did Rosemary, and sometimes she hurt herself and sometimes she hurt others. She could be obstinate—wanting her own way with the insistence of a driving force; that was the Willis will working in her, Winnie said. All the Willis children had that trait, Winnie ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... own way, but don't make a noise!" he sank into a gentle doze, and the rest of the party relapsed into trivial gossip, some of which I give for what it is worth by way of illustration. It shows Ideala at about her worst, but marks a period in her career, a turning-point for the better. She was seldom bitter, and still more rarely ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... the earth; and Professor Proctor tells us it will take Jupiter millions of years to become as cool as the earth, while the moon was as cool as the earth millions of years ago. Here is a picture of the planet; but its surface is changing so constantly, that it seldom appears the same on two nights in succession. Jupiter at present is wrapped in enormous volumes of thin cloud that rises up from a melted and boiling mass in the centre. Professor Newcomb supposes that there is only a comparatively ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... but Lizzie made the best of it. It was her desire to cheat Lady Fawn into a good opinion, and she was not disappointed when no good opinion was expressed at once. It is seldom that a bad person expects to be accounted good. It is the general desire of such a one to conquer the existing evil impression; but it is generally presumed that the evil impression is there. "Oh, Lady Fawn!" she said, "I will so strive to make ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... Advocate of Holland, he always gratefully and copiously acknowledged the privilege of being guided and sustained in the difficult paths he had to traverse by so powerful and active an intellect. I have seldom alluded in terms to the instructions and despatches of the chief, but every position, negotiation, and opinion of the envoy—and the reader has seen many of them—is pervaded by their spirit. Certainly the correspondence of Aerssens is full to overflowing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... had been taught to see good will. If they did not go quite solid, the other side might point to the evolution of the political idea in every dissentient—a gladdening spectacle, indeed, on which, however, the other side seldom ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Mountains are seldom equally accessible from all sides. Rarely does the crest of a system divide it symmetrically. This means a steep, difficult approach to the summit from one direction, and a longer, more gradual, and hence easier ascent from the other. It means also in general ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... with the show was a trying one. In the first place, he was kept so carefully under cover, literally as well as figuratively, that he seldom saw the light of day except at dawn or through the space between sidewall and top. At night he rode over rough, muddy roads in the tableau wagon, stiff and sore from the violent exercise of the day,—for ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... shaken off, wherever the acquisition of money is concerned. The mechanical processes of his forefathers have no charm for the modern manufacturer, when he can attain his object more economically by a recent improvement. Neither does he go blindfold upon a mere chance,—seldom even upon a sagacious conjecture,—unless there be some good grounds for its formation. In every successive stage of his operations, he is awake to the slightest appearance of defect; and he hesitates not a moment in abandoning ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... her brother, and endeavored—not without success, as is the way with women—to blind herself to his faults. She saw him seldom, however, and in her solitary musings in the far-off Manor House of Tilly, she invested him with all the perfections he did and did not possess; and turned a deaf, almost an angry ear, to tales whispered ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Pennington looked up sourly as a clerk entered his private office. "Well?" he demanded brusquely. When addressing his employees, the Colonel seldom bothered to assume his ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... there was a thief in the pantry, might hurt good manners by breaking out into a giggle. However, all for a considerable time was quiet, and the ceremony was performed; little Nancy, our niece, handing the bairn upon my arm to receive its name. So, we thought, as the minister seldom made a long stay on similar occasions, that all would pass off well ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... now growing up to be a young man; his father and mother were dead, and his brothers and sisters lived widely scattered, and seldom heard any tidings of each other, and still more rarely met. But the white snake had grown dearer to him than his brothers and sisters, and his thoughts were with her by day, and he dreamed of her ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... pass for a "perfect figure" of a bird. The seasonableness of her coming, however, and her civil, neighborly ways, shall make up for all deficiencies in song and plumage. After a few weeks phoebe is seldom seen, except as she darts from her moss-covered nest beneath some bridge ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... carpet. There were several sofas and chairs stiffly arranged round the walls; but no tables, save low maidahs of carved wood inlaid with pearl, such as they had seen in Cairo bazaars and hotels. The windows were closed, and the air heavy, as in a room seldom used. The two seated themselves close together, on one of the ugly sofas facing a door through which the beckoning negress had gone out. There was no sound except the harsh ticking of a huge, bulbous clock, all gilding and flowers, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... well acquainted with the growing economic maturation and apparent ability of the colonies to bear heavier taxes. George III, who disliked Grenville immensely, the more so because he had been forced to accept the Whigs, described him as a man "whose opinions are seldom formed from any other motives than such as may be expected to originate in the mind of a clerk in a counting house." An astute observer might have told George that with the national debt at L146,000,000 and rising, a man with the logical mind of a counting ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... office next morning Sloan found the essay in his pocket and looked around the city-room for D.K.T. The staff poet-clown was no daylight saver; professing to burn the midnight oil in the interest of his employer, he seldom drifted in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... furnishes just the luminous half-gloom, the deeply significant chiaroscuro, that the painter requires in order to give the most poignant effect to his last and most thrilling conception of the world's tragedy. As is often the case with Tintoretto, but more seldom with Titian, the eloquent passion breathed forth in this Pieta is not to be accounted for by any element or elements of the composition taken separately; it depends to so great an extent on the poetic suggestiveness of the illumination, on the strange ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... his constant haunt, and in more senses than one was he a leg. No opera-dancer could be more agile, more nimble; scarcely, indeed, more graceful, than was Jerry, with his shoeless and stockingless feet; and the manner in which he executed a pirouette, or a pas, before a line of carriages, seldom failed to procure him "golden opinions from all sorts of dames." With the ladies, it must be owned, Jerry was rather upon too easy terms; but then, perhaps, the ladies were upon too easy terms with Jerry; and if a bright-eyed fair one condescended to jest with ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of Richmond was not without enterprise even in those days of war and want, and it was seldom lacking in interest. If not news, then the pungent comment and criticism of Raymond and Winthrop were sure to find attentive readers, and on the day following Prescott's interview with the Secretary they furnished to their readers an ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... and perfunctory, alas for our human disabilities and infirmities! The power of the leader to forget himself, to gather up into his heart the common needs of those who are listening, and pour them out before God, is sometimes wanting. Not seldom we may find ourselves wishing for those forms of prayer, sanctified by centuries of use, in which the Christian church, in all the lands of earth, has made known its requests to God. These are always dignified and reverent; every ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... proves that, save against permanent fortifications, there is a point where the usefulness of these abnormally large guns ceases. While we were discussing this specimen of Bertha Krupp's handicraft, the door opened and General Gouraud entered the room. Seldom have I seen a more striking figure: a tall, slender, graceful man, with a long, brown, spade-shaped beard which did not entirely conceal a mouth both sensitive and firm. But it was the eyes which attracted and held one's attention: great, lustrous eyes, as ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... Cursecowl paid, like a gentleman, for the four panes he had broken, he drove into me, I can assure him, in a most forcible and striking manner, the truth of the old proverb—which is the moral of this chapter that "listeners seldom hear anything ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... Bromehall held it 'by the sergeanty of finding our Lord the King, whensoever he should hunt in the forest of Dartmoor, one bow and three barbed arrows. And it was let at five shillings a year rent.' One would imagine that King Edward I can seldom have found time to amuse himself so far west, and the tenant would not find the conditions ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... comparative obscurity is one of the strangest phenomena of American letters. Despite his high achievement, he is seldom discussed, or even mentioned. Back in 1899 he was already so far forgotten that William Archer mistook his name, calling him Henry Y. Puller. Vide Archer's pamphlet, The American Language; New ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... suffering inner man,— crying out, in the intervals of intoxication and brutal excesses, like Jonah from the bosom of hell. To this lingering consciousness the sympathy and kindness of benevolent and humane spirits seldom appeal in vain; for, whatever may be outward appearances, it remains true that the way of the transgressor is hard, and that sin and suffering are inseparable. Crime is seldom loved or persevered in for its own sake; but, when once the evil path is entered upon, a return is in reality extremely ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... time by the succession of ideas. If this is true the time must have been longer and seemed shorter in Edison's laboratories than anywhere else. The great inventor seldom carried a watch and seemed not to like to have ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... is of American origin and comes from the cotton ports of the old Southern States. It was well known to every sailor down to the time of the China Clippers. My version is that of Capt. John Runciman, who belonged to that period. I have seldom found it known to sailors who took to the sea after the early seventies. The tune was sung in very free time and with great solemnity. It is almost impossible to reproduce in print the elusive subtlety of this haunting melody. In North-country ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry

... by this time, the young orator was placed in the midst, and began to read aloud his manuscript, or rather to recite it, for after the fire of his subject began to animate him, he seldom looked at the paper. ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... some girl," replied Ralph, who seldom went to call on a girl. "Scoot now, Sister—I'm going out on the porch and read. You've made poor old Dick half an hour late ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence

... must render any markings upon the disk of the planet beyond the reach of our best telescopes; and indeed this appears to have been a matter of common experience. Though the surface has been often scanned for traces of spots, we seldom find mention that any have been distinguished. Consequently the period of rotation has yet to be determined. It is true that an approximate value was assigned by Mr. T.H. Buffham from observations with a nine-inch reflector in 1870 and 1872. but the materials on which the computation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... "Not in person. I seldom enter a theatre now. But I am of course familiar with her appearance from the photographic portraits of her. They are in all the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... them, and bowed on all sides, as he walked from group to group of his adherents. Seldom, indeed, had his heart beat so high! His end perhaps was very near, but it should at least be worthy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Dorothy looked from one to another. She would have liked to choose Nancy, but she thought how few of the girls ever chose Arabella, and she held out her hand to the playmate who seldom was favored. ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks

... iarres: and in the end, after sundry meetings, the Emperour finding himself not satisfied to his liking, for that the ambassadour had not power by his commission to yeeld to euery thing that he thought fit, as a man whose will was seldom wonted to be gainsayd, let loose his passion, and with a sterne and angry countenance tolde him that he did not reckon the Queene of England to be his fellow: for there are (quoth ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... flocks on the church roof to take their departure, and Ulrich would fain have gone with them, no matter where. He could not feel at home in the monastery and among his companions. Always first in Richtberg, he was rarely so here, most seldom of all in school, for his father had forbidden the doctor to teach him Latin, so in that study ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... an inclination towards arbitrary power; they agreed in a hatred of innovation; they agreed in the principle that free discussion should be discouraged, and that the country should be governed with a high and strong hand. On these principles Lord Oldborough always acted, but seldom spoke, and the Duke of Greenwich continually talked, but seldom acted: in fact, his grace, "though he roared so loud, and looked so wondrous grim," was, in action, afraid of every shadow. Right glad was he to have his political vaunts made good by a coadjutor of commanding talents, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... by a generosity seldom found in her peers, pardoned you to some degree your theft of her spouse; she pardoned you in order to be agreeable to him, and to prove to him that, being his most sincere friend, she could not bring herself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... hunting usually about twice a-week; for the old forester complained of stiffness and rheumatism, and not feeling so active as he used to be. Humphrey now accompanied Edward perhaps one day in the week, but not more, and they seldom returned without having procured venison, for Edward knew his business well, and no longer needed the advice of Jacob. As the winter advanced, Jacob gave up going out altogether. He went to Lymington to sell the venison and procure what was ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... any cause, two sorcerers fell out, they seldom exercised their spells upon each other; ascribable to this, perhaps,—that both being versed in the art, neither could hope ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... family; after a time I learned that he had obtained employment in a distant village. The next tidings I heard of him was that he had been implicated in a petty robbery, and had run away. His impulsive disposition rendered him very easy of persuasion, for either good or evil; and he seldom paused to consider the consequences of any act. From what I could learn of the matter it seemed he had been enticed into the affair by some designing fellows, who judged that, owing to his simplicity, he would be well adapted to carry out their wicked ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... some five miles long and a mile across. In times of frost it not unfrequently became partially frozen, but owing to the current of the river which passed through it, it seldom froze so completely as to allow of being traversed on skates. This, however, was an extraordinary frost, and the feat of the adventurer on New Year's Day had been several times ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... two years with Dr. Glennie, during which time he does not appear to have made great progress in his studies, owing to the too frequent amusements procured for him by his over-fond mother. But though Mr. and Mrs. Glennie saw the child very seldom after he left them, they always remained much attached to him, and followed his career with much interest, owing to the fine qualities which they had loved and admired ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... and techniques, suffused with a creative urge engendered by new philosophical insights and the excitement of discovery. During the seventeenth century, the ideas relating to the generation and development of organisms were quite diverse, and there were seldom criteria other than enthusiasm or philosophical predilection to distinguish the fanciful from the feasible. Applying a well-known phrase from another time to seventeenth-century embryological theory, "It was the best of times, it was the worst ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... ninety chapters (lviii. to cxlvii.) are wholly taken up by the incidents of less than four months, the four summer months of 1825. The first twenty-two years of the author's life are far from commonplace. The interest is well sustained, but is seldom intense,—at no point is the author's memory sufficiently teeming to cause an overflow; but with the conclusion of his sojourn in London, May 22nd, 1825, commences an itinerant life, the novelty of which graves ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... went through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker, which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... series of notes of customs and beliefs obtaining among the lower and lowest classes of the people, and not being the direct teaching of any religious or academic body. These notes are very unequal in value, owing to the manner in which they have been made. They are often accidental, they are seldom if ever the result of trained observation, and they are often mixed up with theories as to their origin and relationship to modern society and modern religious beliefs. To a great extent the two first ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... like these. Maud Murray was there. Maud Murray with the milkmaid cheeks and curly black hair, the typical country girl of bounding life aid spirits, the type so often seen upon the stage and so seldom elsewhere. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... cousin of Channing's and lives somewhere in Virginia on the Rappahannock River, miles from a railroad, and has never been to New York alone before. I thought I had told you she was coming, but I see you so seldom lately that I forget what I tell you and what I don't. The children think it's inhuman. After a while you won't know how to behave in company, and what will your old books and your money ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher

... enterprises in the conquest of the earth had for their beginning just such a bargaining away of the paternal cow for the mirage or true gold far away! I have been telling you more or less in my own words what I learned fragmentarily in the course of two or three years, during which I seldom missed an opportunity of a friendly chat with him. He told me this story of his adventure with many flashes of white teeth and lively glances of black eyes, at first in a sort of anxious baby-talk, then, as he acquired the language, with great fluency, ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppression by the mere terror of his great name The Pope himself was forced to preach humanity and moderation to Popish princes. For a voice which seldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless favour were shown to the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle of Saint Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the evening of their last meal together had come—a cloudy evening with wind—which indeed was very seldom absent in this elevated place. How permanently it was imprinted upon his vision; that look of her as she glided into the parlour to tea; a slim flexible figure; a face, strained from its roundness, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... chimney was natural. The bitterest enemy of the chieftain never questioned his courage, and, knowing how chagrined he must feel over his mishap, they could understand the desperate feeling that prompted the deed, the like of which was seldom if ever known before. ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis

... for ladies a tabouret—[Ladies having the privilege of seats upon small stools in the presence.]—seldom come to me, not liking to appear but in full dress. I begged them to be present as usual at an audience, which I was to give to the ambassador of Malta, but not one of them came. When the late Monsieur and the King were alive, they were more assiduous; they were not then so much accustomed ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... Chivalry, the soldiers of the guard of Norham stood in the castle yard, with reversed pike and spear. Minstrels and trumpeters were there, the welcome was prepared, and as the train entered, a clang sounded through turret and tower, such as the old castle had seldom heard. ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins

... the enemy submarine commanders. The moral effect of the constant apprehension that one is being "stalked" is considerable. Indeed, the combination of our aircraft and our submarine patrols led to our vessels reporting, regretfully, that it was very seldom that German submarines were found on the surface in daylight, and towards the end of 1917 quite a large proportion of the attacks on merchant ships ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... the first instance turn him from his sin: human sorrow is not all or always godly sorrow. Although the prodigal was in want, he did not return to his father. Convictions and terrors in the conscience seldom bring the wanderer at once to the door of mercy: he generally tries in succession several other methods in order to obtain relief. As the prodigal attempted to keep body and soul together by the most desperate and ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... the fiasco I was just rewarded with. If you try to penetrate to the depths of the mystery, yards underground, by blowing up the termitary with gun powder, the only way of getting to the heart of things—you destroy the termites. Strays are seldom seen; in order, again, to avoid light and air-exposure, they tunnel underground or build tubes above ground to every destination. Always they keep hidden and secret. Always they work from within, which is why walls and boards they have devoured ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... various parts of our island, frequently related to the Quaker families in their way the cruelties they had seen and heard of in their own country. English ministers were also frequently going over to America on the same religious errand. These, on their return, seldom failed to communicate what they had learned or observed, but more particularly relative to the oppressed Africans, in their travels. The journals also of these, which gave occasional accounts of the sufferings of the slaves, were frequently published. Thus situated ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... at each other. There was something mysterious about Chrissie's brother. She seldom alluded to him, and she had lately removed his photograph from her dressing-table. The girls always surmised that he must be a conscientious objector. They felt that it would be a terrible disgrace to own a relative ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... hypocrisy, of "Perfide Albion," is seldom explained to other people by men of our race, and we Americans and Englishmen have taken little pains to make it clear. We should not be surprised, therefore, if we are misunderstood. We have been easily first so long that ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... study of our collections that ornaments of stone were seldom used by the inhabitants of Chiriqui. There are a few medium sized beads of agate and one pendant of dark greenish stone rudely shaped to resemble a human head. Ornaments of gold and copper were ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... state of mind he could hardly lay claim to any distinct personality, seeing that that personality was forever merging itself and getting lost in the more clearly perfect identity of Sah-luma, whom he regarded with a species of profound hero-worship such as one man seldom feels for another. To call himself a Poet NOW seemed the acme of absurdity; how should such an one as he attempt to conquer fame with a rival like Sah-luma already in the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... for he had seen Custer fighting at the front in the sixties. Frances Coleman, the prettiest girl he had ever seen, sold him the newspaper. After that, he seldom went through Albany without visiting the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... entertained the highest esteem for each other. But our circumstances being different, I could not indulge in all the excesses of extravagance that he did, but made better progress in my studies. He attended all the gay parties and fashionable places of amusement, while I seldom spent an evening from home. He was tall, manly, and possessed of regular and beautiful features—these, with his unlimited wealth, made him a welcome guest in every circle, and extremely ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... not to be wondered at, for she seldom alludes to it. He died years ago, before I can remember, but she always grieves for him; that was the reason," she added, reflectively, half to herself, "that she always loved Harry better than she ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... aside as unfit for this busy, striving world; especially if they are more of a passive than an active character. The affections are strong and their foundations lie deep: but they are not—such affections seldom are—wide-spreading; nor do they show themselves on the surface. Indeed, there is little display of any of the amenities of life among this wild, rough population. Their accost is curt; their accent and tone ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the open air, before the after-glow had faded from the peaks. There was something almost pathetic in her desire to make the very most of such rare moments. Her eagerness so clearly told him that such holidays came but seldom in her life. He urged her, however, to eat, and when she had done they went out together and sat upon the bench, watching in silence the light upon the peaks change from purple to rose, the rocks grow cold, and the blue of the sky ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... only resource that offered was that of sending Mary for a few months to her mother. True, it was a painful necessity; for Mrs. Douglas seldom heard from her sister-in-law, and when she did, her letters were short and cold. She sometimes desired "a kiss to her (Mrs. Douglas's) little girl," and once, in an extraordinary fit of good humour, had actually sent a locket with her hair in a letter by post, for which Mrs. Douglas ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... Not seldom has a youth been turned from the way of integrity by the influence of a single friend. Endowed as man is, the weight of his being effects the most astonishing results. Witness Stratton's conversation with the drunken bookbinder whom we know as ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the prospect of another week or so of that infernal existence of shattering noise, flying death-splinters, and sickening sights and smells. There he will have to be constantly on the watch, meals and sleep can only be snatched at precarious intervals, and seldom without disturbance; if there is anything more nerve-racking than the scream of shells and the hail of shrapnel it is the lull that follows, when he waits for the enemy's rush to begin. And yet, the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... startled and distressed by pictures of a happier time, that travel far to fool and tantalize the suffering heart. I sat with the child, and gazing full upon him, beheld him not, but—a vision of my father's house. There sits the good old man, and at his side—ah, how seldom were they apart!—my mother. And there, too, is the clergyman, my first instructor. Every well-remembered piece of furniture is there. The chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated by me for its age, and for our long intimacy. I have known it since first I knew ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... course Willis would not be confidential before a third person. He's like the fox that lost his tail. It was bad tact in me; I see it now; what a thing it is to have tact! it requires very delicate tact. There are so many things I wished to say, about Indulgences, about their so seldom communicating; I think I must ask him about the Mass." So, after fidgeting a good deal within, while he was ostensibly employed in making tea, he ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... nightfall; there the pitch-burner received them as his guests, and they were assured by him that along the Devil's Hollow, correctly speaking, they could reach the town. These people, inhabitants of the pathless forest seldom saw bread or flour, yet they were not starving. Because all kinds of smoked meat, especially eels, which abounded in all swamps and mud holes, they had in plenty. They treated them liberally, in exchange, holding out greedy hands for the biscuits. There were among ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... had been rendered beautiful by the work of engineers, architects and gardeners. Nature, on this estate, had been forced, for the natural soil was stony and sterile, in keeping with the mountains and the shallow valleys in this part of the little and seldom-heard-of ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... without champagne, Dress-suit, and party-collar, We would honor o'er viands plain Grateful our "grand old scholar"! When all quiet are wind and wave, Seldom we see this pilot brave;— When storm-surges our ship might whelm, He takes ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... appointed exercise, written with a steadily improving hand. To my surprise, I never found a single error in the spelling. Of course, when, advancing a step in the process, I made her write from my dictation, she did make blunders, but not so many as I had expected; and she seldom ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... of the Wyandots, chosen to the council by the other women, the heads of the families, look upon you and admire you for your strength, your courage and your wisdom. Seldom does Manitou give so much to a single warrior, and, when he does give, then it is not so much for him as it is for the sake ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... to Tunis was a feat of which Europe was proud. Charles V. seldom suffered from depreciation of his exploits, and, as Morgan quaintly says, "I have never met with that Spaniard in my whole life, who, I am persuaded, would not have bestowed on me at least forty Boto a Christo's, had I pretended to assert Charles V. not to have held this ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... the summit of the Cordilleras, thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. We caught sight of numbers of wild asses, which inhabit this mountainous region. The hoof of the animal is divided like that of a pig. They are very shy, so that even the Indians are seldom able to approach near enough to kill them; and they are also very swift ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston

... classes, the rich and the poor. The poor are generally very poor, because, not being necessary to the rich, who have slaves to do all their work, they get no employment from them. Being thus unsupported by the rich, they continue poor and low spirited. They seldom get money; and indeed, what little they do get, is laid out in brandy to raise their spirits, and not on books and newspapers to get information. Hence they know nothing of the comparative blessings of their own country, nor of the great dangers which threaten ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... number of houses in late years testifies to its popularity; but there is still an almost unlimited extent of open ground which cannot be covered; and with wood and water, common and hill, there will always be an element of freshness and openness in Putney seldom to be obtained ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... the life which he lived, and the certainty of death if he attempted to return home, could not all of them prevail upon him to lay aside the thoughts of coming back again to London, and there giving himself up to those sensual delights which he had formerly enjoyed. Opportunities are seldom wanting where men incline to make use of diem; especially to one who had been bred as he was to the sea. So that in a year and a half after ms being settled there, he took such ways of recommending himself to a certain captain as induced him to bring him home, and set ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... use to urge overcrowding as a ground for reforming educational methods. Few people are stirred by what to them is a purely abstract question. They see nothing to indicate its existence, and they know nothing of its evils. They seldom walk down the dreary avenues of bricks and mortar which contain the houses of the working classes; and if they do, they scarcely realize the fact that inside the humble, dingy little dwellings whole families are crowded into single rooms, share each other's beds, and are even ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... apart, six miscreants, each watched by a beast-jailer; ministers to them all, an old woman and a page; and in the wine cellar, forty-three animals, creatures more grotesque than ever brain of man invented. None dared approach its gates, and seldom ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... to put you up there. One advantage of membership is that its roster includes experts in every known line of erudition, from scarabs to skeeing. For example, I am now going to telegraph for aid from old Millington, who seldom misses a book auction and is a human bibliography of the wanderings of all rare volumes. I'm going to find out from him what British publication of the late seventeenth century in Latin is very valuable; also what volumes of that ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... anxious, consciously diffident. The, in a sense, abnormal element in her relation to Faircloth darted down on her, so that she could not but remember how slight, after all, was her actual acquaintance with him, how seldom—only thrice in point of fact—had he and she had ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... great effect when he delivered judgment. He had another advantage for acquiring grave reputation. He was a very unpleasant man. He could be rude if you contradicted him; and as few persons wish to provoke rudeness, so he was seldom contradicted. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... away, should be visible by one last act of shameless insult to the crowd. The fifteenth century believed, as we have said, everything that is cruel and horrible, as indeed the vulgar mind does at all ages; but such brutal imaginings have seldom any truth to support them, and there is no such suggestion in the actual record. Isambard and Massieu heard from one of the officials that when every other part of her body was destroyed the heart was found intact, but was, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... the answer, but the general public does not. Even some of you have made the mistake of planting one tree by itself and expecting it to produce. This seldom happens. Mixed plantings of several varieties or several seedlings planted close together is the safe rule ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... those cheerful towns that appear always clean and bright under the dullest skies, so that when the sun shines every view seems freshly painted and blazing with colour. The freshness of the atmosphere, too, is seldom tainted with those peculiar odours that some French towns produce with such enormous prodigality, and Lisieux may therefore claim a ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... known as Great-Aunt Grantley, who had money to bequeath to the heir, occupied with Hippias the background of the house and shared her candles with him. These two were seldom seen till the dinner hour, for which they were all day preparing, and probably all night remembering, for the Eighteenth Century was an admirable trencherman, and cast age aside while there was a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and cleaning up, instantly began. Ingrained soldierly cleanliness of the men was displayed. Without any order, and in spite of their weariness, whenever they were halted over an hour in the daylight—which had very seldom happened—they would immediately set about shaving, and cleaning themselves and their rifles. They shaved with the cold water, poured from their water-bottles into the lids of their canteens. There was a vast rubbing of bolts, and "pulling through" ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... there is some moisture in the vegetation on which they feed; for in one year of unusual drought we saw herds of elands and flocks of ostriches crowding to the Zouga from the Desert, and very many of the latter were killed in pitfalls on the banks. As long as there is any sap in the pasturage they seldom need water. But should a traveler see the "spoor" of a rhinoceros, or buffalo, or zebra, he would at once follow it up, well assured that before he had gone many miles ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... looked up to at Mt. Hebron you had to lead a distasteful, colourless life of hypocrisy and piety such as I have seldom seen anywhere before. Under cover of their primitive Christianity I never found more pettiness. First, you prayed and hymn-sung yourself into favour, and then indulged in sanctimonious intrigue to keep yourself where ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... seventy-five years old, occupied every Lord's Day teaching a large class of youth in the Sabbath-school. But you must remember that for six days in the week he nobly toiled as a printer, from eight in the morning until six at night. And he seldom missed the prayer-meeting, or other gatherings of the Church. He was, indeed, a worker that ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... pictures in all stages of completion,—fragments of landscape, and portraits of all the members of the family circle, more or less caricatured according to Bessie's mood when she executed them. A strong patent-lock secured the door of this treasure-house, and seldom was any one admitted save Hugh. In vain had Tom bored holes in the walls, in vain had Gem pleaded pathetically through the key-hole, Bessie was inexorable and the door was closed. Chalked upon the outside of this fortress were some of Tom's sarcastic comments intended ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... resumed the command. He called a council of war; and their determination was, that it would not be expedient to leave Cadiz, unless they had reason to believe themselves stronger by one-third than the British force. In the public measures of this country secrecy is seldom practicable, and seldomer attempted: here, however, by the precautions of Nelson and the wise measures of the Admiralty, the enemy were for once kept in ignorance; for as the ships appointed to reinforce the Mediterranean fleet were despatched singly, each as soon as it was ready, their collected ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... he was dying, "My God, I have wasted life; it is just that Thou recall it." There remained only Fenelon in the first rank, which Massillon did not as yet dispute with him. Malebranche was living retired in his cell at the Oratory, seldom speaking, writing his Recherches sur la Verite (Researches into Truth), and his Entretiens sur la Metaphysique (Discourses on Metaphysics), bolder in thought than he was aware of or wished, sincere and natural in his meditations as well as in his style. In spite of Flechier's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... yet as far from me as though they dashed through some Martian city, and their occupants as removed from my ken as the inhabitants of the farthest planets. Indeed, even in the commoner throng about me I knew no one. It was seldom that I was called on to doff my hat, and then to some of the queer old women who were moulding away in the corners of Miss Minion's boarding-house or to Miss Tucker hurrying ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... yellow dog began to bark furiously, the three children ran like frightened sheep, since they seldom saw strangers there, and immediately a slatternly looking woman with the customary thin face of the "poor white trash" of the South made her ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... seldom all at home together. Two of my brothers are abroad, and some of the girls are at school. It is a very ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code

... little mine, though he seldom dignified it by that title. He speculated upon the amount of gold he might yet hope to wash out of that gravel streak, though he had held himself sternly back from such mental indulgence all the spring. He felt that he was going to need every grain of gold he could glean. He wanted his ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... at four on the veldt. The Boers had retired from the line they held. A long ride to water after unharnessing; nothing much to eat. Williams and I have taken to ending the day by boiling tea (from tablets) over the embers of the cook's fire, or on one of our own if we have any fuel, which is very seldom. How the cooks get their wood is a mystery to me. The Kaffir drivers always have it, too, though there are no visible trees. We always seem to sit up late, short though our nights are. A chilly little group gathers sleepily round the embers, watching mess-tins full of nondescript ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... met him again at the garden gate for a last good-by. Young people who had been well brought up did not play at love-making in those days, though they might be warm friends. A girl seldom gave or received caresses until the elders had signified assent. An engagement was quite a solemn thing, not lightly to be entered into. And even to himself Cary seemed very young. All his instincts were those of a gentleman, and in his father ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... however, because of the truth that is in them, not because of the error which is likely to be mixed with it, and even the weakest effort after connection embodies an important truth. When we smile over absurd stories of forced "correlation," we seldom stop to think of what went on before the Kindergarten existed, for instance the still more absurd and totally disconnected lists of object lessons. One actual list for children of four years old ran: Soda, Elephant, Tea, Pig, Wax, Cow, Sugar, Spider, Potatoes, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... of China represented in Fig. 52. The farmer owning this orchard had just finished cutting two large bundles of limbs for the sale of the leaves in the village. He stated that his first crop ordinarily yields from three to as many as twenty piculs per mow, but that the second crop seldom exceeded two to three piculs. The first and second crop of leaves, if yielding together twenty-three piculs per mow, would amount to 9.2 tons per acre, worth, at the price named, $59.34. Mulberry leaves must be delivered fresh as soon as gathered ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... then. Thank goodness that doll came when it did, for I'm tired of 'amoosing' small girls as well as old ladies," said Cis, busy with her beads, yet sorry she had been so petulant with patient little Button, who seldom reproached her, being a cheery child, and blessed with a ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... self-made and self-secure, who will not traffic with the literature that touches his life work, is seldom so confined to his own little shop that he will not, for recreation, take holiday tours into the literature of other men's lives and labors. The man who does not like to read any books is, I am confident, seldom found, and at the risk of slandering a patriot, ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

... it was time for her to get her dinner ready. Indeed, there was not much leisure for Mrs. Field all day. She seldom sat down for long at a time. From morning until night she kept up her stiff resolute march ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... and with a check apron over her patched gown. The sailor boy, who was her sole earthly stay, was washed overboard in a late tempest. This couple from the palace and the almshouse are but the types of thousands more who represent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for the upper parts. Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity and its own humility, that the noble and the peasant, the beggar and the monarch, will waive their pretensions to external rank without the officiousness of interference on our part. If pride—the influence of the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Watersoons are at war with the Snake Indians & Seauex, and were at war with the Ricares untill we made peace a fiew days passd.- The Mandans are at War with all who make war on them, at present with the Seauex only, and wish to be at peace with all nations, Seldom the agressors- ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... resigned. Having been unjustly criticised by certain political leaders, and his motives impugned for remaining so long in the Cabinet, he at once sought vindication in a speech delivered in Faneuil Hall, defining his position, in which he poured out a torrent of eloquence seldom equalled, and in which he clearly indicated the chagrin that even a great man may feel when he is made the subject of unjust suspicion ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... deck the praise receive, But meagre thanks the others; As honest men they seldom grieve, And envy not their brothers; A common cause they gladly serve, Though in a lowly station, From path of duty never swerve— ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... monarchy, viewed him with distrust and jealousy, as "the veteran general of the revolution." He was not a very active member of this legislative body; for he was convinced it would be in vain to attempt restoring the constitution of 1789. He seldom attended the assembly: but on several questions, when he was present, discovered the same political sentiments which directed his conduct in the early days of the revolution. The minister offered a proposition for establishing ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... large hall of entrance. It was full of people, and the buzz of business was heard on all sides. Ellen had for some time past seldom gone a-shopping with her mother, and had never been in this store but once or twice before. She had not the remotest idea where, or in what apartment of the building, the merino counter was situated, and she could see no one to speak to. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... me to her side, and a faint smile showed she was glad to see me. I knelt reverently down, as one would kneel beside one already dead. She spoke first, clearly and easily, as it seemed. People who are ill from fever seldom ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... that I can get out," said Peter to himself. "He is seldom wrong—I will try." Suiting the action to the word, he put his head out between the bars. "Where my head can go my body can follow, but my body ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... have saved the situation; but Lady Ann Warblington's abilities in that direction stopped short at leaving everything to Mrs. Twemlow and writing letters in her bedroom. When Lady Ann Warblington was not writing letters in her bedroom—which was seldom, for she had an apparently inexhaustible correspondence—she was nursing sick headaches in it. She was one of those hostesses whom a guest never sees except when he goes into the library and espies the tail of her skirt ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Mrs. Gosnold's other hand, was a wiry roan virgin who talked too much but seldom stupidly, exhibited a powerful virtuosity in strange gestures, and pointedly designated herself as a "spin" (diminutive for spinster) apparently deriving from this conceit an amusement esoteric to her audience. Similarly, she indulged ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... the sympathies of the ordinary business world may be from the red man's record, even it is moved at times by his fate, and stirred by his persistent, his inevitable romance. For the Indian's record is the background, and not seldom the foreground, of American history, in which his endless contests with the invader were but a counterpart of the unwritten, or recorded, struggles of all ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... he often looked for him; and Mr. Hind tells me he has seen the planet but once with the naked eye—though this perhaps is not a very remarkable circumstance, since the systematic worker in an observatory seldom has occasion to observe objects with the ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... variety, generally cultivated for its peculiar, egg-like fruit, which usually measures about three inches in length, and two inches or two and a half in diameter. Skin, or shell, white. It is seldom used as an esculent; though, in its young state, the flesh is quite similar in flavor and texture to that of the scolloped varieties. "If trained to a trellis, or when allowed to cover a dry, branching tree, it is quite ornamental; and, in its ripened state, is quite interesting, and attractive ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... right, will be ready upon any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them. They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change, weakness and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer itself. He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little, who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the world. Sec. 225. Secondly, ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... in this respect been adopted, that all the women (those of the peasantry alone excepted) lead nearly as secluded a life as the Osmanli ladies of Constantinople or Smyrna. On venturing abroad, which they seldom do, unless when the knessi or humaum (church or bath) are the limits of their excursions, they are so closely shrouded in the izar, or long white garment, which, coming over the head and hiding the face, falls in numerous folds to the ground, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... they cannot be called 'gregarious', seldom more than five, or ten at most, being found together. It has been said, on good authority, that they occasionally assemble in large numbers, in gambols. My informant asserts that he saw once not less than fifty so engaged; ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... evident that an action is specifically better, if better results can follow from it; and specifically worse, if it is of a nature to produce worse results. On the other hand, if the consequences follow by accident and seldom, then they do not increase the goodness or malice of the action: because we do not judge of a thing according to that which belongs to it by accident, but only according to that which belongs ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... attract the careless and please the fastidious; it contains enough of Eternal Life to save the reader's soul.... My services on the Lord's day always leave me with a pain in the chest, and such a great degree of general relaxation, that I seldom recover it till Tuesday. The society still meet every night at my quarters, and though we have lost many by death, others are raised up in their room. One officer, a lieutenant, is also given to me, and ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea

... put the extreme case, to point out what must ensue, according to the feelings of our nature, if care is not taken to prevent its occurrence. There is a cruelty, a more than cruelty, in parents bringing up their children with ideas which seldom can be realised, and rendering their future lives a pilgrimage of misery and ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat



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