"Superfluity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suddenly, after a ten minutes' silence, "I'm going to be married at once. It will be 'a marriage in the bush,' as the Suabians call an impecunious match, since neither of us has any money; and I, at least, haven't so great a superfluity of brains that in this intelligent age of the world I am ever likely to make much by selling myself; and that is the only way any ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... lady's movements in mounting much more than might at first be thought possible. Second, from knowing no better, or from a desire to show off his strength, he may use only one hand to lift the lady, and will then almost always have cause to regret his superfluity of self confidence. Third, he may stand too far away from her, and thus bring her left foot too much forward, in which case it will be almost impossible for her to straighten her left knee. Fourth, he may also prevent her from ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... fuel, without sufficient bread. I have directed my parish priests to form for this purpose in every parish a relief committee. Do you second them charitably and convey to my hands such alms as you can save from your superfluity, if not from your necessities, so that I may be the distributer to the destitute who are ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Engineers directs his men. He can tie up any railroad with a snap of his finger if his men are not treated squarely. In such a literary dreamland an author might do one-third of his present work and get far more pay than now. Publishers and editors would not then have a superfluity of matter. They would then have to bow to the authors' trust before the desired ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... the psychological explanations of the Austrian schools and the materialistic conceptions of the classical writers. He would then find himself in a state of confusion, owing to what seemed to him to be a superfluity of explanations of value. When one understands one point of view, an added viewpoint is a source of greater clarity and a means of deeper understanding. But when one is entirely ignorant of fundamental concepts, two points of view presented simultaneously become two ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... your good fortunes are. And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. It is no small happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean; superfluity comes sooner by white ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... knowledge required to follow him through the immense range of biological and geological science which the 'Origin' covered; while, too commonly, they had prejudiced the case on theological grounds, and, as seems to be inevitable when this happens, eked out lack of reason by superfluity ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to find some one else on her side, and, as they went to bed, she said to Ethel, "Don't you wish we had some of this superfluity of the Riverses ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... would be a work of social regeneration to convince the public of the economy they might effect by such practises, to show them that elegance and propriety in themselves cost nothing—nay, more, that they demand simplicity and moderation, and therefore exclude all that superfluity ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... world to make the best of it, it is hard to find, much to admire, and anything at all to love, in these acres of dismally whitewashed walls, and long, feeble lines of arcades without capitals. The inherent vice of Belgian architecture—its lack of really beautiful detail, and its fussy superfluity of pinnacle and panelling—seems to me here to culminate. Belgium has really beautiful churches—not merely of the thirteenth century, when building was lovely everywhere, but later buildings, like Mons, and St. Pierre at Louvain; but Antwerp is not of this ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... suit it to the artificial, intellectual, and moral atmosphere which he derived from books, instead of living healthfully in the open air, and among his fellow-beings. Still he felt the pleasure of being warmed through by this natural heat, and, though blinking a little from its superfluity, could not but confess an enjoyment and cheerfulness in this flood of morning light that came aslant the hill-side. While he thus stood, he felt a friendly hand laid upon his shoulder, and, looking up, there was the minister of the village, the old friend of Septimius, to whose advice and aid it ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with second-hand bookselling, one of the more interesting is William Newton, who resided there during the earlier years of the last century. In 1712 he published Quincy's 'Medicina Statica,' at the end of which is this curious 'Advertisement' (minus the superfluity of capitals): 'Those persons who have any Librarys (sic) or small parcels of old books to dispose of, either in town or countrey, may have ready money for them of Will. Newton, Bookseller in Little ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating the situation with a ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... planes, the boiler should be well filled up with water. In descending inclined planes an extra supply of water may be introduced into the boiler, and the fire may be fed, as there, is at such times a superfluity of steam. In descending inclined planes the regulator must be partially closed, and it should be entirely closed if the plane be very steep. The same precaution should be observed in the case of curves, or rough places on the line, and in passing ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... himself to theology, and is honest and good-natured. Including Nott and Wilson, there are six Missionaries in Tahaiti alone, and only four among all the other Society Islands. Each Missionary possesses a piece of land, cultivated by the natives, which produces him in superfluity all that he requires, and he also receives an annual allowance of fifty pounds from the London Missionary Society. This Society has also sent Missionaries to Tongatabu, one of the Friendly Islands, and to Nukashiva, lately made known to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... care we had taken of her, and to the best of my belief no improprieties with her as a female have ever taken place. She was married last night to King Joey and she proceeds with him to her friends. Having a superfluity of government blankets I have taken the liberty of giving her one now and one formerly at ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Cathedral, has engaged my attention all to-day: its prodigious size, perfect proportions, and exquisite taste, ought to have detained me longer. Though the outside does not please me as well as if it had been less rich and less magnificent. Superfluity always defeats its own purpose, of striking you with awe at its superior greatness; while simplicity looks on, and laughs at its vain attempts. This wonderful church, built of striped marbles, white, black, and red alternately, has scarcely the air of being so composed, but looks like ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... compact they conceived to be that if, in the future disposition of the revenues of the Irish church, something superfluous for its legitimate and becoming uses should arise, they should, after the satisfaction of all existing interests, apply that superfluity to the religious and moral education of the people. He felt that he might consider the principle as established and conceded, that parliament had a right to deal with the revenues of the church, if it should think them superfluous for church purposes; so long as the resolution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... them, tho' they have the Name, yet Nature has not refus'd them the Advantage to make use of their Genital Parts, and to Engender as others. The Male Hermaphrodite may get Children, and the Female conceive; so that neither the one nor the other differ from Men or Women, but only by a superfluity or a deficiency of Parts, and such as does not ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... grown-up whites made fools' caps too, for children on the other side of the Atlantic? During which process we found— what all said they had never seen before—that one of the spadices carried two caps, one inside the other, and one exactly like the other; a wanton superfluity of Nature, which I should like to hear explained by ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... summary of his methods. "First I have now done as the people of God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsome and beautiful: I have shaved off his hair and pared off his nails, that is, I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter. Further, I have for the most part drawn his private carpings of this or that man to a general moral. I have Englished things not according to the vein of the Latin propriety, but of his own vulgar tongue. ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... women whom I remember to have seen, who possessed their hair in this profusion; of these, three were English, the other was a Levantine. Their hair was of that length and quantity, that, when let down, it almost entirely shaded the person, so as nearly to render dress a superfluity. Of these, only one had dark hair; the Oriental's had, perhaps, the lightest colour ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... birth and higher destinies,—how will it be possible (without raising new ghosts, in a sense) to give readers any intelligible notion?—Here, flickering on the edge of conflagration after duty done, is a poor Note which perhaps the reader had better, at the risk of superfluity, still in part take ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... of Europe the Italians had never understood or practised chivalry, save in such select and exotic schools as the Casa Gioiosa under Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua. The oath of Arthur's knights would have seemed to them mere superfluity of silliness. Onore connoted credit, reputation, and prowess. Virtu, which may be roughly translated as mental ability combined with personal daring, set the standard and ruled opinion. 'Honour ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a few hours' sleep. But slumber was out of the question; my brain was planning what might be done with the pearls I was soon to possess. Yes, there surely would be plenty for a pearl-studded tiara for the loved one awaiting me; and any superfluity might be made into ropes and collars for admiring relatives at home. Cousin Jessie had always coveted a necklace of pearls with a diamond clasp. The dainty baubles were in those sacks; there was no ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that Nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study of the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and especially with queen bees. Precisely where the French man may come in, on the genealogical tree of parthenogenesis, one hesitates ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... I shall have money enough for two. What I want is that you should kindly relieve me of my superfluity and make it over to Isabel. Divide my inheritance into two equal halves ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... attribute, the suspensive veto, which consisted of his right to suspend, for three years, the execution of the Assembly's decrees. He was an obstacle; legal, but impotent for the wishes of the nation. It was evident that the Constituent Assembly, perfectly convinced of the superfluity of the throne in a national government, had only placed a king at the summit of its institutions to check ambition, and that the kingdom should not be called a republic. The only part of such a king was to prevent the truth from appearing, and to make a show in the eyes of a people ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... degree, of the benevolent affections. We are moved to pity by the sight or knowledge of want or suffering. Our sense of fitness is painfully disturbed by the existence of needs unsupplied, of calamities unrelieved. We cannot but be aware of the adaptation of such superfluity of material goods as we may possess to beneficent uses; and it can hardly be that we shall not rest in the belief that, in the inevitable order of society, it is the predetermined design and purpose of abundance ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... the new arrivals graciously, and after a while they sat down to supper with the hired men in a big room. It was plainly furnished, but there was everything that comfort demanded, for the happy mean between bareness and superfluity had been cleverly hit, and George thought Miss Grant was responsible for this. He sat beside her at the foot of the long table and noticed the hired hands' attitude toward her. It was respectful, but not diffident. The girl had no need to assert herself; she was on excellent ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... plethoric prosperity, anon extenuated into inanition and 'short time,' is of the nature of gambling; they live by it like gamblers, now in luxurious superfluity, now in starvation. Black, mutinous discontent devours them; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the heart of man. English commerce, with its world-wide, convulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus Steam demon, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why—why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism to keep in office a Had that is so delicate it can't come ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Republican Principles, upon which the Framers of it thought they had founded it. Why should this new AEra be introducd with Entertainments expensive & tending to dissipate the Minds of the People? Does it become us to lead the People to such publick Diversions as promote Superfluity of Dress & Ornament, when it is as much as they can bear to support the Expense of cloathing a naked Army? Will Vanity & Levity ever be the Stability of Government, either in States, in Cities, or what, let me hint to you is of the ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... words, for I recognize, as far as a limited observation and a small experience allow me, the ruin of a heart full of sentiment, under the new structure that you present to the world to-day, and I also think that at that time you must have felt a superfluity of emotion. Your craving was for trust, for confidence and love, and the cynicism of your words now means something like sour grapes. Don't be offended, dear Madame d'Alberg, the thoughts suggest ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... you, and I don't believe old "Tushy" will follow us far.' By general consent he led them to the dry, sandy shore, and such as had them filled their handkerchiefs, and such as could not boast of that superfluity filled their caps, with sand. 'Now,' says Phil, 'when he comes back, and it won't be long, we'll form a line and wait till he gets his skates on, when he'll put chase for some of us. If he gets near any of us, some one sing out "Bully," and every boy ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... The Death of Maurice (SKEFFINGTON) the revolutionary experiment of a murder mystery tale that does not contain (a) a love interest, (b) a wrongly suspected hero, (c) a baffled inspector, (d) an amateur, but inspired, detective. It would be a grateful task to add that the result proves the superfluity of these time-worn accessories. But the cold fact is that, to me at least, the proof went the other way. From the first I was painfully aware of a lack of snap about the whole business, and I am more than suspicious that the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... a greater number of excellent artists than were ever known before at one period in this nation; there is a general desire among our nobility to be distinguished as lovers and judges of the arts; there is a greater superfluity of wealth among the people to reward the professors; and, above all, we are patronised by a monarch, who, knowing the value of science and of elegance, thinks every art worthy of his notice that tends to soften and humanise ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... Garget (Phytolacca decandra). Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their purple stems now and early in September. They are as interesting to me as most flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every part is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,—stem, branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are gracefully drooping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... which furnishes ungrateful bipeds of the human race with milk, butter, and cheese. Where nature had not bestowed a sufficiency of this ornamental appendage, the living and the dead contributed of their superfluity to supply the deficiency. Our ear-locks,—horresco referens!—my ears tingle and my countenance is distorted at the recollection of the tortures inflicted on them by ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Sophocles, and to analyse its excellence. In the domain of art the word 'Hellenic' implies absolute truth of form, absolute truth of taste, grace and elegance. It means the selecting and simplifying of essentials into an ideal shape; and therefore it implies the absence of all superfluity, incongruousness, bombast, extravagance or purposelessness. The Parthenon and the statue of the grey-eyed goddess standing up in faultless symmetry against the clear blue sky of Attica; Plato's Apology of Socrates ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... such; but if we regard the degree of poverty in which our Lord and His Apostles lived, we must perforce consider ourselves rich. After all, possessing honestly all that is necessary for food and clothing, ought we not to be content? Whatever is more than this is only evil, care, superfluity, wanting which we shall have less of an account to render. Happy is poverty, said a stoic, if it is cheerful poverty; and if it is that, it is really not poverty at all, or only poverty of a kind that is far preferable to the riches of the most wealthy, which are amassed with ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... should be strong and hot, with little milk and sugar. It has been drunk after this mode in some parts of Europe, but the public have nowhere, we believe, adopted it. The favorite way of taking it at a meal, abroad, is with a great superfluity of milk—very properly called, in France cafe au lait (coffee to the milk). One of the pleasures we receive in drinking coffee is that, being the universal drink in the East, it reminds of that region of the "Arabian Nights" as smoking does for the same reason; though neither ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... her husband's place without her. When she walks in the street, where mostly she drives, she walks with her eyes straight before her; to look either to the right or left, especially if a man is on either hand, is a superfluity of naughtiness. The habit of looking straight ahead is formed in youth, and it continues through life; so at least it is said, and if I cannot affirm it I will not deny it. The beautiful black eyes so ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... outlived their original use. Their extraordinary largeness and massiveness are a satire on their present fate. They weren't built with such a thickness of wall and depth of embrasure, such a solidity of staircase and superfluity of stone, simply to afford an economical winter residence to English and American families. I don't know whether it was the appearance of these stony old villas, which seemed so dumbly conscious of a change ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... The emperors excused the superfluity of their plays and public spectacles by reason that their authority in some sort (at least in outward appearance) depended upon the will of the people of Rome, who, time out of mind, had been accustomed to be entertained and caressed with such shows ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... additional disadvantage, that it spread the belief that he had acquired wealth proportionate to such architectural expenditure. Like many another man, Clarendon overbuilt himself; and his miscalculation made his contemporaries suppose him the possessor of a superfluity ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the Wedding is at hand, who thinks now of any thing but superfluity of mirth? Away with all these whining, pining Carpers, who are constantly talking & prating that the married estate brings nothing but care and sorrow with it; here, to the contrary, they may see how all minds & intentions are knit together, to consume and pass away these daies ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... and does not give a particle of true womanly grace. That necklace of pearls, if half hidden among soft laces, would be charming; but banding the uncovered neck and half-exposed chest, it looks bald, inharmonious, and out of place. White, with a superfluity of pink trimming, jewelry and flowers, I call on the outside of good taste; and if you go as you are, you will certainly attract all eyes, but I am sure you will not win admiration for these things from a single heart whose regard is worth having. Don't be hurt with me, ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... public-house in the neighbourhood, went thither every evening and enjoyed his pipe and can; being very well satisfied with the behaviour of the landlord, whose communicative temper was a great comfort to his own taciturnity; for he shunned all superfluity of speech, as much as he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... gentlemen; he has no part in our triumph. He is there, in the prisoners' pen, an outlaw, a convicted murderer, and an unconvicted assassin, the last of his race—the bullies and bad men of the border—a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the sight of man. He has outlasted his time; he is a superfluity and an outrage on our reign of decency and order. And I ask you, gentlemen, to put him away where he will not hear the voice of man nor children's laughter, nor see a woman smile, where he will not even see the face of the warden who feeds him, nor sunlight except as ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... no fault to find with the foxgloves under the apple-tree or with the ivy-leaved toad-flax that hangs with its elfin flowers from every cranny in the wall. But I protest against the dandelions and the superfluity of groundsel. I undertake that, if rest-harrow and scabious and corn-cockle invade the garden, I shall never use a hoe on them. More than this, if only the right weeds settled in the garden, I should grow no other flowers. But shepherd's ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... thrilling pleasures there are in store for us in literature when once we have cut ourselves adrift from all this superfluity of cultured opinion, and have given ourselves complete leave to love what we like and hate what we like and be indifferent to what we like, as the world ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Cavendish like a bad dream. He could not move outside the inclosure of the rectory grounds without seeing before him in the distance the high garden wall, the higher range of windows, the big trees which gave its name to the Elms. Going through the village street, he saw twice—which seemed a superfluity of ill-fortune—Lizzie Hampson, with her demure air, passing without lifting her eyes, as if she had never seen him before. Had any one else known what he alone knew, how extraordinary would his position have appeared! But he had no leisure ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... ability. Let them be seen in thee, which depend wholly from thee; sincerity, gravity, laboriousness, contempt of pleasures; be not querulous, be Content with little, be kind, be free; avoid all superfluity, all vain prattling; be magnanimous. Doest not thou perceive, how many things there be, which notwithstanding any pretence of natural indisposition and unfitness, thou mightest have performed and exhibited, and yet still thou doest voluntarily continue ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... if I did. But I like prosperous fellows, comfortable fellows; fellows that talk comfortably and prosperously, like you. Such fellows are generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a superfluity in my ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... they have known neither by experience nor by theory. For who is there, by the faith of gods and men, who would desire, on the condition of his loving no one, and himself being loved by none, to roll in affluence, and live in a superfluity of all things? For this is the life of tyrants, in which undoubtedly there can be no confidence, no affection, no steady dependence on attachment; all is perpetually mistrust and disquietude—there is no room for friendship. For who can love ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... object now was to find a sufficient sphere for the exercise of all his powers in the Church. It was no fault of his that he was unwilling to settle as curate and have no aim beyond his parish except to go to heaven at last. With his superfluity of human nature, for him to become a saint was out of the question. What then? Should he enter the realm of dogmatics, and become a learned and redoubted champion of the faith, passing his life amid exegesis? Should he renounce ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... are ordered in accordance with orthodox opinions. If anyone did not think in accordance with these he soon discovered this fact for himself. Owen saw that in the world a small class of people were possessed of a great abundance and superfluity of the things that are produced by work. He saw also that a very great number—in fact the majority of the people—lived on the verge of want; and that a smaller but still very large number lived lives of semi-starvation ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Manchester, and had discovered in it a new world, "poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious and venerable friend who alone survived in the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... present myself at a hotel, and many of the humbler hostelries refused me admittance, believing, no doubt, either that the seeds of pestilence were in my rags, or not a copper in my pocket. Indeed, to no brain but that of a very imaginative genius would the possibility of such a superfluity as a pocket suggest itself. All the beds were "full." At last I thought me of an expedient. I called for a glass of ale, for which payment in advance was duly demanded. I handed a sovereign, which at once emptied a bed, provided I slept ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... here," said Hedwig, shyly, "and he would not even glance at me until I positively insisted upon it." Nino laughed, as he would have laughed at most things in that moment, for sheer superfluity of happiness. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... acts of previous self-denial, and I wish you to be persuaded, that unless these are practised habitually and incessantly you can never be truly generous. A readiness to give that which costs you nothing, that which is so truly a superfluity that it involves no sacrifice, is a mere animal instinct, as selfish perhaps, though more refinedly so than any other species of self-indulgence. Generosity is a nobler quality, and one that can have no real existence ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... regiment, in heavy marching order, carry an overcoat with a cape, a blanket, the half of a shelter tent, and one wooden tent pole in two sections. The rifle could be used as a tent pole—so say men I talk with on the subject. On this expedition overcoats are a superfluity, and it is absurd that troops should be sent to the tropics in summer wearing exactly the same uniform they would be using throughout the winter on the frontiers of Canada. This war will, no doubt, produce ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... the Pompadour. Hence the machine-made frivolities of the most respectable homes, the hair-brushes with backs of stamped silver, the scent-bottles of imitation cut-glass, the draperies with printed rose-buds on them, the general artificial-floweriness and flimsiness and superfluity of naughtiness of our domestic art. It expresses a feminine romance to which the male indulgently consents, as if he were really the voluptuous monarch whose mistress the female, aesthetically, pretends to be. In this world of aesthetic ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... number of civilized nations, the life of the citizen is placed in the same scales with money; that the unhappy wretch who is perishing from hunger, who is writhing under the most abject misery, is put to death for having taken a pitiful portion of the superfluity of another whom he beholds rolling in abundance! It is this that, in many otherwise very enlightened societies, is called justice, or making the punishment commensurate with ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... necessary or desirable. Without the one, man, being a gregarious animal, cannot subsist: while without the other he would simply be in clover. The "statesman'' whom office does not render positively nefarious is at best an expensive superfluity. ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... hair, Close-curled, now on his bared and brawny chest, Now on his flexile, vine-like veined limbs, With iron network of strong muscle thewed, And godlike brows and proud mouth unrelaxed. Firm was his step; no superfluity Of indolent flesh impeded this man's strength. Slender and supple every perfect limb, Beautiful with the glory of a man. No weapons bare he, neither shield: his hands Folded upon his breast, his movements free Of all incumbrance. When his ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... next few days was extreme. Regiments seemed to have lost their colonels, colonels their regiments. Men of all arms and all commands were mixed in the wildest way. A constant fusillade of small arms and singing of bullets were kept up, indicative of a superfluity of disorder, if not of ammunition. One of my men was severely wounded in camp by a "stray," and derived no consolation from my suggestion that it was a delicate attention of our comrades to mitigate the disappointment of missing the battle. The elation of our people at their success was natural. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... thoughts and opinions and feelings of ordinary men upon matters of life and conduct were so different from his that he could hardly comprehend the value they had in the eyes of their possessors. Born to rank and wealth, he desired to induce every rich man to despoil himself of superfluity, and to create a brotherhood of property and service, and was ready to be the first one to lay down the advantages of his birth. Born with the most fanatical love of liberty, he looked upon all the conventionalities of the world as tyranny, and defied all restraints of ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... even more active in France than in Britain. In Britain, the spirit of improvement is chiefly evinced in public works, and in the useful arts and manufactures, and its efforts are characterized much more by superfluity of wealth than by science or refinement: in Germany this spirit is evinced in public buildings, in a superior taste, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... or a fire of kindled boughs; even the raging attacks of his pain at length exhaust themselves, and leave him in a refreshing sleep. Alas! it is the artificial refinements, the oppressive burden of a relaxing and deadening superfluity which render man indifferent to the value of life: when it is stripped of all foreign appendages, though borne down with sufferings so that the naked existence alone remains, still will its sweetness flow from the heart at every pulse through all the veins. Miserable man! ten long ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are; and yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity come sooner by white ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... abundant supply. Pray Heaven that we may be able to eat it all! for it is not pleasant to think that anything which Nature has been at the pains to produce should be thrown away. But the hens will be glad of our superfluity, and so will the pigs, though we have neither hens nor pigs of our own. But hens we must certainly keep. There is something very sociable and quiet, and soothing, too, in their soliloquies and converse among themselves; and, in an idle and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prevalent ebriety, is also confirmed by one of those curious contemporary pamphlets of a popular writer, so invaluable to the philosophical antiquary. Tom Nash, a town-wit of the reign of Elizabeth, long before Camden wrote her history, in his "Pierce Pennilesse," had detected the same origin.—"Superfluity in drink," says this spirited writer, "is a sin that ever since we have mixed ourselves with the Low Countries is counted honourable; but before we knew their lingering wars, was held in that highest degree of hatred that might be. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but, unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped into the imbroglio—a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate love of attention, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... books, collections of art and natural curiosities, and whatever else might have most interested him. Every thing was arranged with taste, simply, and in such a manner that the little space held a great deal. The furniture, presses, and portfolios were elegant, without affection or superfluity. Thus also the first thing which he recommended to us, and to which he always recurred, was simplicity in every thing that art and manual labor united are called upon to produce. Being a sworn foe to the scroll-and- shell style, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... relaxed and moist. That is the reason why a frog's skin is always moist, and why a frog requires moist air. It does not need this constantly, because, when moisture is abundant, there is a bag in which it stores up superfluity of water, to be used in any day of need. It is this water—pure and clear—which frogs or toads expel when they are alarmed by being handled. Is not enough said here, to rescue frogs from our contempt? We may add, that they are capable of understanding ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... sorts; that an unborn generation may very wisely, if not laugh, yet stare at it, and piously consider. For, alas, what is Contrat? If all men were such that a mere spoken or sworn Contract would bind them, all men were then true men, and Government a superfluity. Not what thou and I have promised to each other, but what the balance of our forces can make us perform to each other: that, in so sinful a world as ours, is the thing to be counted on. But above all, a People and a Sovereign promising ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the tympan of the dormer windows one may still see the monogram of its builder, Cottereau. The drawbridge has been made way with, and the turrets over the portal have been bound together by a diminutive balcony of stone, which, while a manifest superfluity, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... and barefooted girls tripped gayly along the streets, merry and uncomplaining; and, surrounded by velvet, silver, and marble, by every superfluity of luxury, Cornelia Graham, with a bitter heart and hopeless soul, shivered in her easy-chair before a glowing fire. The Christmas sunlight crept in through the heavy crimson curtains and made gorgeous fret-work on the walls, but its cheering radiance mocked the sickly pallor ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of the world have taken this earth of ours to themselves; they live in the midst of splendour and superfluity. The smallest nook of the land is already a possession; none may touch it ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... man of Lanuvium, called Lucius Thorius Balbus, whom you cannot remember; he lived in such a way that no pleasure could be imagined so exquisite, that he had not a superfluity of it. He was greedy of pleasure, a critical judge of every species of it, and very rich. So far removed from all superstition, as to despise the numerous sacrifices which take place, and temples which exist in his country; so far from fearing death, that he was slain in battle ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... novelty, and settle down to such pursuits as suit them best. At eight in the morning the dressing-bell rings, and a very few admirable people get up, take a walk on deck, and appear at breakfast at half-past eight. But to most this meal is rendered a superfluity by the supper of the night before—that condemned meal, which everybody declaims against, and everybody partakes of. However, if only two or three people appear, the long tables are adorned profusely ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Quincey would have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; but Rhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess. Rhoda's clothes were enough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is a superfluity, a luxury. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... Thus, as mental sensations grow, must the movements in the nervous system increase also. This is no less clear. Now, pathology teaches us that a nerve never suffers alone: and to say, "Here is a superfluity of strength," is as much as to say, "There is want of strength." Thus, every nervous movement grows through itself. Now, we have remarked that the movements of the nervous system react upon the mind, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... son, with wings for ears, Such plumes about his visage wears, Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers Such superfluity of feathers," ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... heart; I have (though in a despised weed) procured the good of all men. If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them; neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... agriculture received a great impulse. But economy was the order of the day. The king himself set an illustrious example, and even dressed in gray cloth, with a doublet of taffeta, without embroidery, dispensed with all superfluity at his table, and dismissed ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on—it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... or vice versa, and compared matter and spirit to two clocks so accurately regulated to keep time with one another, that the one struck when ever the other pointed to the hour; or, with Berkeley, they abolished the "substance" of matter altogether, as a superfluity, though they failed to see that the same arguments equally justified the abolition of soul as another superfluity, and the reduction of the universe to a series of events or phenomena; or, finally, with Spinoza, to whom Berkeley makes a perilously close approach, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the anarchists did before them, a contempt even for democracy. The literature of syndicalism teems with attacks on democracy. "Syndicalism and Democracy," says Emile Pouget, "are the two opposite poles, which exclude and neutralize each other.... Democracy is a social superfluity, a parasitic and external excrescence, while syndicalism is the logical manifestation of a growth of life, it is a rational cohesion of human beings, and that is why, instead of restraining their individuality, it prolongs and develops it."[37] ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... remarks with very boisterous mirth, whilst Mr. O'Connor simply shook his head and looked sadly upon his limbs, now shrouded in a superfluity of garments, somewhat resembling a slender thread of water in a shallow summer stream nearly wasted away and surrounded by ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... own language from the Latin, where it is spelt with a c (civitas); and to change this c into s conceals the origin and history of the word. For this reason the c is retained, although, as far as the mere expression of sounds (the primary object in orthography) is concerned, the letter is a superfluity. In cases like the one adduced the orthography is bent to a secondary end, and is ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... on chairs, a yard or so away from him, were two visitors of whom at first glance I formed a most unfavorable opinion. One was a flashily dressed, middle-aged man, with fair mustache, puffy cheeks, and a superfluity of jewelry. The other I might at first have taken for an undertaker's mute. He had an exceedingly red nose, watery eyes, and was dressed ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... backbone and of the armour of a great reptile, twelve or more feet long. This great beast had died and got buried in the sand; the sand had gradually hardened over the bones, but remained porous. Water had trickled through it, and that water being probably charged with a superfluity of carbonic acid, had dissolved all the phosphate and carbonate of lime, and the bones themselves had thus decayed and entirely disappeared; but as the sandstone happened to have consolidated by that time, the precise shape ...
— The Past Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... souls of others. I was in no wise able of myself to say the things I said. He who conducted me made me say what He pleased, and as long as He pleased. To some I was not permitted to speak a word; and to others there flowed forth as it were a deluge of grace, and yet this pure love admitted not of any superfluity, or a means of empty amusement. When questions were asked, to which an answer were useless, it was not given me. It was the same in regard to such as our Lord was pleased to conduct through death to themselves, and who came to seek for human consolation. I had nothing for them but what was ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... physician par excellence, delighting in superfine distinctions and hair-splitting definitions, and deriving even pediculi from a superfluity of the humors (f. 81d). Of course he was also a polypharmacist, and the complexity, ingenuity, and comprehensiveness of his prescriptions would put to shame even the "accomplished therapeutist" of these modern days. In dietetics too Gilbert ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... explanation of that wonderful uniformity of temperature which, happily, human imprudence cannot disturb. But the blood has a second resource for getting rid of its superfluity of hydrogen and carbon, and herein especially is displayed the beautiful foresight with which everything about us has been prearranged. We are told that wolves, when they get hold of a larger piece of meat than they care to eat at the moment, carry off what they do not ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... some innocent little scheme, such as girls are wont to indulge in when they have a superfluity of beaus, in order to extract some amusement from the situation, even if it come under the head of ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... VIOLETS clean," carolled Mary blithely. Mrs. Jimmy Milgrave, whose pew was just in front of the manse pew, turned suddenly and looked the child over from top to toe. Mary, in a mere superfluity of naughtiness, stuck out her tongue at Mrs. Milgrave, ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that nature had given him; disordered by the struggle with his bulls, it imparted a certain wild look that contrasted with his speech. Christina forgot that the man was a labourer like any other, but noted that he did not manifest the least embarrassment in their presence, or any consciousness of a superfluity of favour in their approach: she did not know that neither would his hired servant, or the poorest member of his clan. It was said of a certain Sutherland clan that they were all gentlemen, and of a certain Argyll clan that they were all poets; of the Macruadhs it was said ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... known, it is certain that all the public men of nearly two generations who figure in it would have combined into one vast and irresistible conspiracy to obtain and destroy it. There was always a superfluity of gall in the diarist's ink. Sooner or later every man of any note in the United States was mentioned in his pages, and there is scarcely one of them, who, if he could have read what was said of him, would not have preferred the ignominy of omission. As one turns the leaves he feels ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... robe of purple, empaled with gold, is Eupathes; who entertains his mind with an harmless, but not incurious variety; all the objects of his senses are sumptuous, himself a gallant, that, without excess, can make use of superfluity, go richly in embroideries, jewels, and what not, without vanity, and fare delicately without gluttony; and therefore (not without cause) is universally thought to be of fine humour. His symbol is, "divae optimae"; an attribute to express thy goodness, in which ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... gentleman making his way toward us out of the narrow creek, his conveyance being a small native canoe about fifteen feet long, roughly hewn and hollowed out of a single log, and propelled by two natives, who apparently regarded clothes as an entirely unnecessary superfluity, for they were absolutely naked. They were fine, powerful specimens of negro manhood, however, and smart fellows withal, for they propelled their ungainly little craft along at a truly wonderful pace with scarcely any apparent effort, sheering ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... There might be something in that, for she had seen it stated in their newspaper, 'The Home Journal,' that female births exceeded that of males by forty thousand annually in certain European kingdoms. The number of Popish priests also," she said, "who remain unmarried, adds greatly to the superfluity of the female sex. Hence there is no part of the wicked Popish system I regard so much contrary to God's holy word as celibacy. Celibacy!" she cried aloud; "one of the doctrines of devils, as any one can tell, who has been these twenty ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... were held in these log huts were as rude as might be expected; yet there is evidence that although there was no superfluity of law or of learning, justice was substantially administered. The lawyers came mostly from Kentucky, though an occasional New Englander confronted and lived down the general prejudice against his region and obtained preferment. The profits of the profession were inconceivably ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... resting- place. The Hotel des Invalides at Paris, and the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura at Rome, {1b} are indebted to this sentiment for the possession of relics which make those edifices the natural resort of pilgrims as of sight-seers. It were a work of superfluity to adduce further illustration of the position that the mere exhumation and reinterment of a great man's remains, is commonly held to be, in special cases, a justifiable proceeding, not a violation of that honourable sentiment of humanity, which protects and consecrates the depositaries of the ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... distinguished the members of this sect. Every superfluity and ornament was carefully retrenched: no plaits to their coat, no buttons to their sleeves; no lace, no ruffles, no embroidery. Even a button to the hat, though sometimes useful, yet not being always so, was universally rejected by them with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... kind of unnecessary thing he would be likely to repeat." He cast the subject aside as if it were a worthless superfluity and went on: "When you say there is no one suitable, you ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic vision. Mine certainly did so; and I cannot believe that our muscular vigor will ever be a superfluity. Even if the day ever dawns in which it will not be needed for fighting the old heavy battles against Nature, it will still always be needed to furnish the background of sanity, serenity, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... absorbing presence, one whom you would have instinctively noticed even in a crowd. He bore himself with that unconscious grace which people are apt to call aristocratic, being apparently never encumbered by any superfluity of arms and legs. His features, whatever their ethnological value might be, were, at all events, decidedly handsome; but if they were typical of anything, they told unmistakably that their possessor was a man of culture. They showed none of that barbaric frankness which, like ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... since only a moment before he had been in a state of mind to which the superfluity of this reference would have been the clearest thing about it, he should now have been moved to receive it quickly, naturally, irreflectively, receive it with the question: "The last possibility? Do you mean in her or ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... brave army, don't kick up a row!"— GRANDOLPHO mine, it were sheer superfluity For you to bid your forces scatter now. The troopers two, of curious incongruity, With the long drummer, and the fifer short, That formed the old stage-army were more numerous Than is your following. You have given ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... about the absurd action which melted David. He shook the hand and repeated him. Leaning over he whispered some information in Daddy's ear, Daddy beamed. And in the midst of the superfluity of nods and winks that followed David called for ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... world. You must somewhat reform your dress, upon a more grave and composed fashion; wear your cloak on both shoulders, and your falling band unrumpled and well starched. You must enlarge the brim of your beaver, and diminish the superfluity of your trunk-hose; go to church, or, which will be better, to meeting, at least once a month; protest only upon your faith and conscience; lay aside your swashing look, and never touch the hilt of your sword but when you would draw the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... people, and on the other to the blacks. The finery of the negroes was in sad contrast with the simplicity we had just seen at the Moravian chapel. Their dresses were of every color and style; their hats were of all shapes and sizes, and fillagreed with the most tawdry superfluity of ribbons. Beneath these gaudy bonnets were glossy ringlets, false and real, clustering in tropical luxuriance. This fantastic display was evidently a rude attempt to follow the example set ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... himself was a most notorious Christian. Renown, however, with him could never be a superfluity, or even a sufficiency, and he grudged the fame that these strange spiritual utterances were acquiring. He had long enjoyed the distinction of being considered a miraculous convert; his rescue from the wily enticements of Satan had ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... added, "as society must have leaders, I prefer that they should be people with brains as well as money. The ambition is quite legitimate. Do your part in civilising the drawing-room, as Arnold conceives he is doing his on a larger scale. A good and intelligent woman is no superfluity in the world of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves—with their old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings—their sums in triple columniations, set down with formal superfluity of cyphers—with pious sentences at the beginning, without which our religious ancestors never ventured to open a book of business, or bill of lading—the costly vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we are got into some better library,—are ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... certain small ways, necessary to Mr. Spence; and this conviction was confirmed by Draper's reiterated assurance of his father's appreciation. But Millner had begun to suspect that one might be necessary to Mr. Spence one day, and a superfluity, if not an obstacle, the next; and that it would take superhuman astuteness to foresee how and when the change would occur. Every fluctuation of the great man's mood was therefore anxiously noted by the young meteorologist in his service; and this observer's vigilance ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... he remarked drily. "You're not exactly in a happy frame of mind, which does not surprise me. Yes, that's the way it is. The poor people must give up their sound flesh and bone so that the enemy should not deprive the rich of their superfluity. You may bless your stars you came out of it as well ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... abundance of the external air. Next to this, there is a second natural appetite of the lungs; the breast, pouring in upon itself the breath, and being filled, is no longer able to make an attraction, and throws the superfluity of it upon the lungs, whereby it is then sent forth in expiration; the parts of the body mutually concurring to this function by the alternate participation of fulness and emptiness. So that to lungs pertain four motions—first, when the lungs receive the outward ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the Chateau, Oates, Meares's and Atkinson's two bunks came next, Meares above and Atkinson below. These two sleeping berths likewise were not conspicuous by any superfluity of scientific oddments, for Meares's work took him outside of the hut as a rule, unless he was engaged in making dog harness. Meares and Oates were the greatest friends, and these two, Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard and Bowers, were, if I remember rightly, known collectively as the Bunderlohg. ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... is far from our thoughts, that the pinching of some, should make others superfluously to abound: It is rather to bee expected of the richer sort, that they will spare and defalk, not onely the pride and superfluity, both of apparel and diet, but also a part of their lawful allowance in these things, to contribute the same as a free will offering, beside what they are obliged to, by Law or publick Order, after the example of godly Nehemiah, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... school-girl, for the morning pistolets or rolls, which were new-baked and very good, and of which a certain allowance was served to each. This allowance being more than I needed, I gave half to Ginevra; never varying in my preference, though many others used to covet the superfluity; and she in return would sometimes give me a portion of her coffee. This morning I was glad of the draught; hunger I had none, and with thirst I was parched. I don't know why I chose to give my bread rather to Ginevra than to another; nor ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Willems yet felt that there was not enough room for him inside those neat fences. The man who, during long years, became accustomed to think of himself as indispensable to others, felt a bitter and savage rage at the cruel consciousness of his superfluity, of his uselessness; at the cold hostility visible in every look of the only white man in this barbarous corner of the world. He gnashed his teeth when he thought of the wasted days, of the life thrown away in the unwilling company of that peevish and suspicious fool. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... National Guard thus enlist for the sake of plunder. It is so natural for men to believe in their right to that of which they feel the need, that the possessors of wheat thus become its monopolists, and the superfluity of the rich the property of the poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate the forest of Bruyeres-le-Chatel: "We have neither wood, bread, nor work—necessity knows ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... skins, may, if perfectly fresh, be nailed out and gone over with a saturated solution of borax, or a solution of one part borax to one-eighth part saltpetre, and left to dry in the shade for three months, after which they may be scraped, and their natural fat will, after all superfluity has been removed with plaster, etc, be found to have sufficiently imbued the under or proper skin to ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... whose enemies he so vigorously combats—the frivolous ignoramuses who have no soul for anything but debauchery; the sophistical theologian to whom Helicon, the Castalian fountain, and the grove of Apollo were foolishness; the greedy lawyers, to whom poetry was a superfluity, since no money was to be made by it; finally the mendicant friars, described periphrastically, but clearly enough, who made free with their charges of paganism and immorality. Then follow the defence of poetry, the proof that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... speaking of have rocked this planet like a cradle,—aye, and left it swinging to this day.—Still, if I were you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next suit. Elegans "nascitur, non fit." A man is born a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads that can't wear hats; there are necks that can't fit cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out collars—(Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier ambrotypes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... still the German Hansa. Chaucer's "Merchant" characteristically wears a "Flandrish beaver hat;" and it is no accident that the scene of the "Pardoner's Tale," which begins with a description of "superfluity abominable," is laid in Flanders. In England, indeed the towns never came to domineer as they did in the Netherlands. Yet, since no trading country will long submit to be ruled by the landed interest only, so in ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Committee of Public Safety refused to listen to Ferney's explanations. The Scarlet Pimpernel was only an ordinary mortal—an exceedingly cunning and meddlesome personage it is true, and endowed with a superfluity of wealth which enabled him to break the thin crust of patriotism that overlay the natural cupidity of many Captains of the Town Guard—but still an ordinary man for all that! and no true lover of the Republic should allow either superstitious terror or greed to interfere ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... whom superfluity of joy Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain, Nor weariness, the full-fed soul's annoy— Remaining in ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... all the comforts of life with a moderate fortune, which it will always be in your own power to improve, or tied for life to a monied man whom she detests, cursing her hard fate, and despising that superfluity of wealth, in spite of which she finds herself so ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... more powerfully than the dreams of his imagination or memory. How often, too, have I seen the reverse of the picture I have just drawn; when the pale unconscious corse has lain abandoned in its loveliness, and grudging hands have scantily dealt out a portion of their superfluity, to obtain the last rites for one who so lately moved, spoke, smiled, and walked amongst them! And I have felt, even then, that there were those to whom that neglected being had been far more precious than heaps of gold, and I have mourned for them who perished among strangers. One horrible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... with sufficient coherence, so as that they cannot change their places without injury to the general design. His images are displayed with such luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by a "Veil of Light;" they are forms fantastically lost under superfluity of dress. Pars minima est ipsa puella sui. The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. The reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed, and sometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... great dislike and childish impatience of his system which would be aroused among his opponents, he was fully aware, and would often anticipate the jests which the rest of the world, 'in the superfluity of their wits,' were likely to make upon him. Men are annoyed at what puzzles them; they think what they cannot easily understand to be full of danger. Many a sceptic has stood, as he supposed, firmly rooted in the categories of the understanding which Hegel resolves into their ...
— Sophist • Plato
... perpetual breakfasts, lunches, teas, and dinners, receptions, concerts, and for those who can bear it, balls till the day of twenty-four hours' pleasure begins again, with the early rites of Rotten Row. Those who have a superfluity of invitations go on at night from one house to another till they fall lifeless into bed at their own. One may fancy, if one likes, that they show the effects of their pleasure the next day, that many a soft cheek pales its English rose under the flapping panama hats among ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... figure often having its force and propriety, as justified by the law of passion, which, inducing in the mind an unusual activity, seeks for means to waste its superfluity,—when in the highest degree—in lyric repetitions and sublime tautology—"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead,"—and, in lower degrees, in making the words themselves the subjects ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... domestic architecture in the country. It was enlarged subsequently by Rich. Pomeroy (temp. Hen. VIII.), and Bishop Beckington's executors are said to have built the chapel at the other end of the Close. Regarded now-a-days as a devotional superfluity by the singers, it has been turned over to the Theological College. The chapel and muniment room above should be inspected, but admission cannot now be obtained to the hall. Before leaving the Cathedral precincts note on the same side of the road ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... in the affluence and the economy of your diction; spare no wealth that you can put in, and tolerate no superfluity that can be struck out. Remember the Lacedemonian who was fined for saying that in three words which might as well have been expressed in two. Do not throw a dozen vague epithets at a thing, in the hope that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... be printed, one thousand with a great many maps both of Virginia and New England, I presented to thirty of the chief companies in London at their Halls, desiring either generally or particularly (them that would) to imbrace it and by the use of a stock of five thousand pounds to ease them of the superfluity of most of their companies that had but strength and health to labor; near a year I spent to understand their resolutions, which was to me a greater toil and torment, than to have been in New England about my business but with bread and water, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... rather resemble Jerome than Croesus, and I prefer to riches themselves the man who is capable of despising them. With these gratifying ideas I rest contented and delighted, valuing moderation more than intemperance, and an honourable sufficiency more than superfluity; for intemperance and superfluity produce their own destruction, but their opposite virtues never perish; the former vanish, but the latter, like eternity, remain for ever; in short, I prefer praise to lucre, ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... Just large enough to allow the grace of order in domestic circumstance; just that superfluity of intramural space, to lack which is to be less than at one's ease. The fabric is sound; the work in wood and plaster tells of a more leisurely and a more honest age than ours. The stairs do not creak under my step; I am waylaid by no unkindly draught; I can open ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... to regard it as a talisman. My little sun-shade was still more fascinating to them; apparently they had never before seen one. For an umbrella they entertained profound regard, probably looking upon it as the most luxurious superfluity a person can possess, and therefore a badge of great wealth. I used to see an old squaw, whose sullied skin and coarse, tanned locks told that she had braved sun and storm, without a doubt or care, for sixty years at least, sitting gravely at the door of her lodge, with ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a plantation for the first time, he fancies himself in paradise. He is amazed by the generosity with which he is fed with fruit and fresh provisions. His new clothes, red cap, and roasting blanket (a civilized superfluity he never dreamed of), strike him dumb with delight, and, in his savage joy, he not only forgets country, relations, and friends, but skips about like a monkey, while he dons his garments wrongside out or hind-part before! The arrival ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... English Socialist writer says: "It is as plainly demonstrable as that twice four make eight that a due system of organised effort would enable your 43,000,000 of people to win from Nature an overflowing superfluity of all that man desires, without one-fourth the effort put forth now to win a beggarly subsistence so far short of what your community requires that 13,000,000 of your people live continually upon the very verge of starvation."[347] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... it a bath in the solution. Lay it in a dish, and cover it entirely with the solution, letting it remain there for a few minutes; lift it out, and again lay it on the board face downwards, and with a small sponge dab off any superfluity of liquid. Pour that which is left in the dish ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... in the register of Tunstall, Kent. There seems to have been a superfluity of members of the family of Pottman in this parish, and the clergyman appears to have been tired of recording their names in his ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... "have an infinity of plans; but de Chateauroux has a carriage, and a superfluity of Bourbon blood; and Victoria has the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Negro insolently stride Down the red noonday on such noiseless feet? Piled in his barrow, tawnier than wheat, Lie heaps of smoldering daisies, somber-eyed, Their copper petals shriveled up with pride, Hot with a superfluity of heat, Like a great brazier borne along the street By captive leopards, black and ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... intimate, acquaintance, appears to me a paragon of all the modest and retiring virtues. If among her many attractions she is possessed of a distinguishing trait, it lies in the power of her eyes. So much language do their depths contain, that to me, at least, any other is in a great measure a superfluity. I should be afraid to count up the consecutive hours we have spent in this silent converse, reading each other's hearts, as some pleasant poet has styled it, "through the windows of the soul." I would not have you suppose them almond-shaped ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong |
