"Asset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... roads and the strength of the fortresses, to have got through without formidable opposition entailing great loss of time. This loss of time would have meant time gained by the Russians for bringing up their troops to the German frontier. Rapidity of action was the great German asset, while that of Russia was an inexhaustible supply of troops. I pointed out to Herr von Jagow that this fait accompli of the violation of the Belgian frontier rendered, as he would readily understand, the situation exceedingly grave, ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... There he had to remain nine months before he resumed his voyage; but what did he do? Chafe over the interruption and delay? Bless you, no; he seized the opportunity to master the Portuguese language, which accomplishment proved to be a tremendous asset later on, in his great constructive ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... exigencies of the case. Gradually even this modified practice underwent amelioration, until at length it dawned upon the official intelligence that a seaman who was free to respond to the summons of the boatswain's whistle constituted an infinitely more valuable physical asset than one who cursed his king and his Maker in irons. All punishment of the condign order, for contempt or resistance of the press, now went by the board, and in its stead the seaman was merely admonished in paternal fashion, as in a ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... have seen you enthused like this, before. As for Brenton, it's a mere case of burbling genteel platitudes in a marvellous voice. Even I, though I deplore the platitudes, find my own gooseflesh rising in response to his larynx. It's a tremendous asset to a man, that! Some day, when I have the time, I'll work it out into a series of equations: heart and brain and larynx as the unknown quantities to be properly equated, so much brain for so much, or so little, larynx. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... riding," the Governor called after them. "Sally's a valuable asset of this family and I'll hold you personally responsible, Comly, for her ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... strength was rendered possible owing to the relief of destroyers of the "M" and "L" classes at Harwich by new vessels recently completed and by the weakening of that force numerically. The flotilla leaders were a great asset to Dover, as, although they were coal-burning ships and lacked the speed of the German destroyers, their powerful armament made it possible for them to engage successfully a numerically greatly superior force. This was clearly shown on the ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... splendid asset to Reno. Fed by the eternal snows of the Sierra Nevadas, with a fall of 2,442 feet between Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake, it affords a water power equalled by few rivers in the U. S. A. Its power plants now supply ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... Champlain could not have tricked Hebert into the bad bargain he made, and their friendship survived the incident. But a company which transacted its business in this fashion was not likely to enjoy long life. Its chief asset was Champlain's friendship with the Indians, especially after his long sojourn with them in 1615 and 1616. Some years, particularly 1617, showed a large profit, but as time went on friction arose between the Huguenots of La ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... spread, and far more applied yearly for employment than could be accommodated. This large farm, when equipped fully, represented fifty thousand dollars more, or an investment of ninety thousand dollars, and immediately became a valuable asset of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the number? Come, speak frankly, mon fils; elle est encore jeune, plus agee que toi peut-etre, mais juste asset pour unir la tendresse d'une petite maman a l'amour d'une epouse devouee; n'est-ce pas ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... immediately followed this announcement of mine, fully confirming me in the belief that Oahika was likely to prove a valuable asset if properly manipulated. The next moment, however, one of the men jumped ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the next room—expects it, too," I went on, laughing even more disagreeably. "Your parents need money—they have decided to sell you, their only large income-producing asset. And I am willing to ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... or store at a wage which, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, may be termed lucrative, and, lacking funds wherewith to tide her over until she should acquire experience, or even until she should be fortunate enough to secure any kind of work, inevitable starvation faced her. Her sole asset was her voice; she had a vague hope that if she could ever acquire sufficient money to go to New York and buy herself just sufficient clothing to look well dressed and financially independent, she might induce some vaudeville impresario to permit ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... hue contrived to be brilliant, Mrs. Austen rustled ever so slightly. Always a handsome woman and well aware of it, she was of two minds about her daughter's looks. They far surpassed her own and she did not like that. On the other hand they were an asset on ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... or train. Partly as a result, big tracts of military land there acquired mainly when acreage was cheap—57,000 acres around the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia, are one example—form a valuable public asset for potential future use. And throughout Tidewater here and there, old estates in private hands guard their woods and fields and shores against increasing development, though more and more each year crumple before pressure ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... the folk of whom Miss Somerville writes with "that indomitable family pride that is an asset of immense value in the history of a country." They "took all things in their stride without introspection or hesitation. Their unflinching conscientiousness, their violent church-going (I speak of the sisters), were accompanied ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... he was nearly invisible. His white coat, which was simply a conspicuous curse to him when there was no snow—which was one reason, maybe, why he retired from the limelight to some lonely fastness during summer—was an incalculable asset to him in winter, and he ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Wilson was convinced that the war would end in a peace without victory, for which he intended to use his influence. The whole question was merely whether we realized these facts and would avail ourselves of them or not. Our one asset in America was the disinclination of the majority of the people for war, for otherwise—as appeared later—it would have been only too easy for the United States to make war upon us ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... in the weakness at Black's KB3 and KR3 caused by the disappearance of his KKt Pawn, as White has lost his KB. On the contrary the open file should be a distinct asset, for, having a strong centre, Black's pieces are more mobile and he is more likely to get ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... exclaimed Robert, buoyantly, his imagination, which was such a powerful asset with him, flaming up as usual. "Dry and clean, with plenty of leaves for beds, and with nice little natural shelves for food, and a pleasant little brook just outside the door. It will be pleasant to lie in our ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lived and died in the belief that he was quite ordinary. Thus is he the more greatly valued by his cronies. Thus do we pride ourselves on possessing some curious right quality to which alone he is responsive. But it would seem that either this asset of ours or its effect on him is intermittent. He can be dull and null enough with us sometimes—a mere asker of questions, or drawer of comparisons between this and that brand of cigarettes, or full expatiator on the merits of some new patent razor. A whole hour and ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... asset is the well-known aptitude shown by poodles for digging out truffles, an accomplishment of which I often read in my youth. If truffles, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... liberty of one man is gained by the sacrifice of another—then it is the enemy of humanity as well as of nature. I always consider that, in the really Socialistic state, children will not entirely belong to their parents, but will also be guarded and looked after as an asset to the world. This will, of course, give complete liberty to good parents, but it will prevent bad parents from wrecking the lives of their children, as is the case to-day, unless the parents' wickedness is so disgracefully bad that they come under the eye of the N.S.P.C.C. But ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... affections and he had very easily become the most popular native officer in the regiment. Courted and feted, shown off, and extolled for his liberality of mind and purse, his own good sense had alone prevented him from becoming completely spoiled. To the impecunious Frenchmen his wealth was a distinct asset in his favour, for racing was the ruling passion in the regiment, and the fine horses he was able to provide insured to them the preservation of the inter-regimental trophy that had for some years past graced their mess table. He had thrown himself into the life whole-heartedly, becoming more ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... conquered peoples, and to protect them in some degree against the exploitation of their conquerors. But it was the protection of a subject race doomed to the condition of Helotage; they were protected, as the Jews were protected by the kings of mediaeval England, because they were a valuable asset of the crown. The policy of the Spanish government did not avail to prevent an intermixture of the races, because the Spaniards themselves came from a sub-tropical country, and the Mexicans and Peruvians especially were separated from them by no impassable gulf ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... Ollendorff) and Scripture, are the obvious sources on which he has freely drawn for what I do not hesitate to call the most powerful and perfect of all his dramas. But on such a point a trustee and executor may be prejudiced because it is the most valuable asset in Wilde's literary estate. Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations are too well known to need more than a passing reference. In the world of art criticism they excited almost as much attention as Wilde's drama has excited ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... Green counted it as a large asset in Molly's favour that Sir Edmund Grosse was so attentive. Adela did not seriously mind Sir Edmund's indifference to herself if he were only a constant visitor at her house, but she was far from understanding the motives ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... company. Was not the pipe-making invention perfected by a Chiawassee stock-holder, who was also a Chiawassee employee, on Chiawassee time, and with Chiawassee materials? Then why, in the name of justice, was it not to be considered a legitimate Chiawassee asset? ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... field, has been betrayed into a reference in this connection (The Declining Birth-rate, 1911, p. 41) to the "increasing rarity of altruism," though in almost the next paragraph he points out that the large families of the past were connected with the fact that the child was a profitable asset, and could be sent to work when little more than an infant. The "altruism" which results in crushing the minds and bodies of others in order to increase one's own earnings is not an "altruism" which we need desire to perpetuate. The beneficial effect of legislation against child-labour in reducing ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... officer walked alone at the head of a batch of Turks, and as this was a sufficiently unusual sight, I asked one of the guards the reason. He replied that many of the Turkish battalions were commanded by German officers, whose principal asset was a firm belief in discipline as practised in the Fatherland. Hated and feared by Turkish officers, and contemptuously regarded as inferiors by officers of their own blood, in captivity neither party would own them: they ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... his career, and he was envious of men who had escaped suffering such as he had known. Out of sheer devilry he would like to pull Meredith's house about his ears and teach him that no woman of extraordinary physical attractions was a safe asset as a wife. Sooner or later, vanity would be her undoing and she would join the ranks of the fast and free. His experience was fairly wide and his faith, nil. Already Joyce Meredith coquetted delightfully. In a little while she would be ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... question, he gave the benefit of the doubt to the confidential relation in which his position placed him with authors; and his Dutch caution, although it deprived him of many a toothsome morsel for his letter, soon became known to his confreres, and was a large asset when, as an editor, he had to follow the golden rule of editorship that teaches one to keep the ears ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Sergeant Marsland's stealings, or have the misery of seeing her borne off by Holmes's big bank-account, as she probably would be. Poor Mac! He had yet to learn that a reputation as an Indian-fighter is but an ephemeral and unsatisfactory asset as an adjunct ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... "I guess you had better burn them when I am through. I'll mention one or two items. One hundred dollars for flowers; one thousand in several bills from Chicago jewellers! The articles would count as an asset. Have you ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... concerned about her health and spirits. How would she stand her solitude—absolutely alone in that house? It would not do for her to break down while he was locked up? What would become of the shop then? The shop was an asset. Though Mr Verloc's fatalism accepted his undoing as a secret agent, he had no mind to be utterly ruined, mostly, it must be owned, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... vast extension of government activities, including not only the nationalization and municipalization of many industries and services, but also that the individual workman or citizen be dealt with as the chief business asset of the nation and that wholesale public expenditures be entered into to develop his value. Mr. Webb does not think that this policy is necessarily Socialistic, for, as he very wisely remarks, "the necessary basis of society, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... know belongs to the type that becomes charitable around Christmas time. She makes a glowing pretense of aiding the poor. As a matter of fact, she really does aid them, although she regards the poor as a sort of social and spiritual asset. They afford her the double opportunity of appearing in the eyes of her neighbors as a magnanimous soul and of doing something which reflects great credit upon her character. But, anyway, she "does good," and we'll ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... perruque and the dear old face with a mask of pink and white enamel. Her eyes were blue, and keen as a hawk's, undimmed by the tears shed in secret during her tumultuous and tragic life; her teeth, each one in a perfect and pearly state of preservation, were her own, for which asset she was never given the benefit of the doubt; her tongue was vitriolic; her heart of pure gold, and she owned a right hand which said nothing to the left of the spaces between its fingers through which, daily ran deeds of kindness and streams of love towards the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... culture—all these things have stood from the beginning, as they still stand, in the way of a permanent foundation of opera in New York. The boxes of the Metropolitan Opera House have a high market value to-day, but they are a coveted asset only because they are visible symbols of social distinction. There were genuine notes of rejoicing in the stockholders' voices at the measure of financial success achieved in the first three seasons ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... their need of the vote. James C. Kelliher, former president of the National Letter Carriers' Association, spoke briefly and to the point. Miss Mary McDowell of Chicago made the principal address entitled The Working Women as a National Asset, in which she showed how little conception Congress and the Courts had of the legislation needed in their behalf and the sins of omission and commission that had ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... then, we must work to produce an entire change in our present mental attitude toward organized industries. Our present worship of industrial products, no matter how obtained, must give way to a recognition of the fact that the chief asset of a nation is its people; that a woman is more important than the clothes she makes in factories or sells in stores; and that to needlessly destroy or scrapheap a working woman is worse than to needlessly destroy ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... already distinguished. all of them belonging to New York, with two exceptions, Frank Brangwyn of London, and Arthur Mathews, of San Francisco. They were informed by Guerin that they could take their own subjects. He contented himself with saying that a subject with meaning and life in it was an asset. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... commodities with contiguous neutral nations are steel building materials, coal, and dye-stuffs. Coal dug in Belgium by Belgian miners is a distinct asset for Germany, when she exchanges it for Swiss cattle, Dutch cheese, and Swedish wood. When we consider that the great industrial combinations of Rhineland and Westphalia are not only reaping enormous munition profits, but supply the steel and coal ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... glow; at worst, callous indifference to moralizing. The assistance which may be given by history to a more intelligent sympathetic understanding of the social situations of the present in which individuals share is a permanent and constructive moral asset. ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... women like Millicent Mervill? Why had not she herself the courage to tell her what she thought of her? Probably Millicent would only smile and show her perfect teeth—they always made Meg furious, because they were even better than her own, and hers were, so she thought, her strongest asset—and say, "Poor girl! You are a little overtired"; or she would say, "You have so much to make you happy, dear, and I have so little. Don't be ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... more than borne out later, and in the capture of Jerusalem, in taking Jericho, and in forcing the passage of the Jordan this glorious Division of Londoners was always the same, a pride to its commander, a bulwark of the XXth Corps, and a great asset ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... But the people themselves would have none of him. The expedition withdrew without having produced even the semblance of a Yorkist rising. After that, James no longer felt eager to plunge into a war on behalf of the pretender: but was inclined to retain him as a political asset. When, in the following year (1497), Charles VIII.—with a precisely similar object in view— offered him a considerable sum if he would send his guest over to France, the Scots King declined. In July, however, Perkin sailed from Scotland, apparently with intent to try Ireland again, where Kildare ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... that the famous restaurants of Paris are a national asset. There was no shortage of waiters; and, though the choice of dishes was much more limited than it used to be, the real curtailment extended only to cheese, sugar, and butter. Our bread-tickets brought us as much bread as we could ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... with a dry smile, "my immediate interest in him would cease, and the Company would shrug its shoulders, and pay, and look pleasant. In the mean while he's, shall we say, 'the dear insured,' and a premium paying asset that the Company's told me off ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Another asset of the island held out by the prospectus was its great store of buried treasure. Before Harden-Hickey seized the island, this treasure had made it known. This is the legend. In 1821 a great store of gold and silver plate plundered from ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... of foreign governments—a support which was hedged round with conditions—made necessary a system of petty expedients under which practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid asset it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the market was flooded with a worthless ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... merchant continually appears. Some passages suggest that he was a state official. But this is really pressing far the interest which the state took in him. He was, doubtless, like the Jew of the Middle Ages, a valuable asset to the king. He seems to have been the usual moneylender, so much so that in many places "merchant" and "creditor" are interchangeable. A man is usually said to borrow of "his merchant," as we say "of his banker." Doubtless, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... must be humoured like a—well, like any other star's. She was pertinaciously temperamental: that is to say, spoiled; beautiful women are so, for the most part—invariably so, if on the stage. That kind of temperament is part of an actress' equipment, an asset, as much an item of her stock in trade as any trick of elocution ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... his lifelong creed. The cardinal tenet of his faith had been a belief in strength. He had first been drawn to Virginia by reason of her pluck and her power. Yet this child's very weakness was her fountain of strength. She cried out with pain, and he counted it an asset of virtue in her. She acknowledged herself a coward, and his heart went out to her because of it. The battle assignments of life were not for the soft curves and shy winsomeness of this ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... no amount of reasoning will be a sufficient guide, but for which true feeling, a kind of unconscious higher reasoning, will be the safest guide. In the library the story is the greatest social asset of the librarian, it is her best means of reaching the obscure child who seeks there some food for his spirit, it is her best opportunity to lead and direct his tastes. In the school it is the teacher's strongest personal ally. It is her wishing-ring, with which she may play fairy to herself in ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... at the moment I looked upon him only as a liability to be balanced in good time by the asset of his father's position. It was therefore with irritation I listened to his insistence on my coming to the Thario home that afternoon to meet his mother and sisters. I had no desire for purely social intercourse, last evening's outing being ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... with strenuous activity to master, in all its bearings, the significance of what had been said. This habit of the abstracted and lack-lustre eye, the while he was hard at work thinking, was a fortuitous asset which he had never up to that time learned that he possessed. Unconsciously, he dampened the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... association and assimilation it has become, as it were, a national asset, a very part and parcel of ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... war are largely the outgrowth of the fact that the minds of men are pitted against one other. Because of this, a knowledge of the manner in which the human mind seeks its way out of difficulties is a great military asset. Consideration is next given, therefore, to the natural mental processes employed (page 11) and to certain human tendencies which have been known to ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... Feversham quickly. "You mustn't forget her. Any man must have counted such a wife his most valuable asset. Here's to her! Young, charming, clever; a typical American beauty!" He stopped to drain his glass, then went on. "I remember the day Weatherbee sailed for Alaska. I was taking the same steamer, and she was on the dock, with all Seattle, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the destruction of our own democratic spirit, the balance to the world is of evil, not of good. There is another view of Imperialism expressed with brutal candour by Mr. Rhodes when he said that the flag was our best commercial asset, that trade follows the flag. Trade does no such thing. Trade follows business enterprise. Imperialism is, indeed, a policy of industrial deterioration, and by impoverishing the skill of the country and encouraging the worst forms of financial capitalism, must crush out every budding hope ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... in it decreased. When he retired—which he did the same summer that Rickie left Cambridge—it had already passed the summit of excellence and was beginning to decline. Its numbers were still satisfactory, and for a little time it would subsist on its past reputation. But that mysterious asset the tone had lowered, and it was therefore of great importance that Mr. Annison's successor should be a first-class man. Mr. Coates, who came next in seniority, was passed over, and rightly. The choice lay between Mr. Pembroke and Mr. Jackson, the one an organizer, the other a humanist. Mr. Jackson ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... nearly a year, took all my degrees—and then chucked it up and took to travelling and exploration, which was the idea that led me to qualify. Because, you see, when a man ventures beyond the pale of civilisation and has to rely absolutely upon himself, a knowledge of medicine and surgery is a big asset; indeed, had I not possessed such knowledge I should have pegged out in Central Africa, for it was solely by its means that I escaped death upon at least half-a-dozen different occasions. And the same knowledge has enabled me to save the lives of quite a number of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... is a valuable asset to our country," he had explained to the Minister. "She is married to an Englishman, who will one day be a peer in England. This was a marriage of political importance. It was a proof of the equal civilisation of our Japan with the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... old-fashioned house that since the death of his father he had gradually modernized inside to suit his tastes, despite his mother's protests against his extravagance. He rarely thought of those hard years following the death of his father, when the home was learned to be the sole remaining asset of what had been regarded as a fine prosperity; of how he had insisted on its retention; of how he had been compelled to work out of school hours; of his and his mother's reluctant surrender of the ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... lines of their old social system, reducing its changes to a minimum. They emerged out of their reconstruction operation with a Negro serf system to take the place of their old slave system. The Negro as a serf was just about as valuable as an industrial asset to the great landlords and to the small ones too for that matter, as had been the Negro as a slave. Just about as much unpaid and involuntary labor could be got out of the first as out of the last. Thus did the old master class perform their task ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... important asset in carrying on the fur trade. The object was to please the red man, not to stupefy him to such an extent that he could be swindled. With the growth of the great companies and the influx of numbers of private traders there were many bidders ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... unhappy until he was once more ensconced in his own sitting-room with his favorite books and his reading-lamp. He had seen so little of his daughter during the five years they had lived at Naples that, though in a sense he was fond of her, she was more of an embarrassment to him than an asset. Lorna realized this only too keenly. Her sensitive disposition shrank away from her father. She was shy in his presence, and never knew what to say to him. She seemed always aware of some enormous shadow that hung over their lives and darkened the daylight. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... is called a "sense of humor." That is, she had no intellectual humor; no power to enjoy the absurdities of people, no relish of their pretentiousness and inconsistencies—which only depressed her. But her joviality, Fred felt, was an asset, and ought to be developed. He discovered that she was more receptive and more effective under a pleasant stimulus than she was under the gray grind which she considered her salvation. She was still Methodist enough to believe that if ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... his value could be expressed in intelligible terms. But as a party liability, or asset,—many a good Republican wishes he knew which,—he remains an enigma. There is not one of the array of elders of either political persuasion who, while laughing at his satirical sword-play, does not watch him covertly out of the corner of the eye, trembling ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... human being on the earth is our colleague in civilisation; is a member that is of the human race, which finding itself on this earth has got somehow to make the best of it; is a shareholder in the human asset of self-consciousness which we are called upon to exploit. It would certainly be hard to find a man of what we have called enlightened opinions who would not profess, whatever his private feelings, that it is as great a crime to kill a Hottentot ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... thing; in fact, so shrewd are they, as President Boomer had long since discovered, that nothing pleases them so much as the quiet, firm assumption that they know Latin. It is like writing them up an asset. So it was that Dr. Boomer would greet a business acquaintance with a roaring salutation of, "Terque quaterque beatus," or stand wringing his hand off to the tune of "Oh et presidium et ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... being arranged to their satisfaction, they mounted amidst the shouts and screams of the boys; which was not to be wondered at, for I venture to asset that young New York had never before seen a major so strangely mounted. The noise and confusion, however, was something old Battle was not accustomed to, for, though he was an horse of uncommon good behavior, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... because you are a slave and have no redress; because your manhood is degraded; because despotic power is entrusted to the men who handle you, though they are never any better than you are, and are usually much worse, and regard you as an asset to make profit from, a thing to be driven and insulted to the last extremity and beyond it, and not as a human being. Prisons are hell because convicts are punished for trivial and whimsical reasons as much as for serious ones; and whether ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... lav-engro—a word-master. He drew up tables of every language in turn, the English word following the German, or Welsh, or whatever the tongue might be, and he learnt these off with amazing celerity. His wonderful memory was his greatest asset in this particular. He was not a philologist if we accept the dictionary definition of that word as 'a person versed in the science of language.' But his interest in languages is refreshing and interesting—never pedantic, and he takes rank among those disinterested lovers of learning ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... he offers when his race is run; he is tough, and grunts vapidly; his tail corrugates rather than curls; he eschews jewellery—his nose is free; and the land also being free, he pays no rent. But the ox was "off" (in large measure), and the pig, hitherto despised, had come to be looked up to as an asset and a "gentleman." ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... cultural development. Consequently, when the Muscovite people, instructed by the example of western Europe, shall have grown up intellectually, economically and politically to their big territory, its area will become a great national asset. Russia will come into its own, heir to a long-withheld inheritance. Many of its previous geographic disadvantages will vanish, like the diseases of childhood, while its massive size will dwarf many previous advantages of its ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... high return to the user. The example of the home has been chosen because the reader may easily carry the analysis further. The industries where costs are analyzed are now looking upon adequate and proper lighting as an asset which brings in profits by increasing production, by decreasing spoilage, and by decreasing the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... her nose in his coat: "I thought it would be an asset. I thought people would consider it romantic and it would help business. See how much that reporter made of it! Phil! Wh-wh-why are you treating ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... as bloody-minded rascals as Cromwell, I can discover none of his abilities.(699) They have settled nothing like a constitution; on the contrary, they seem to protract every thing but violence, as much as they can, in order to keep their Louie a day, which is more than two-thirds of the Asset they perhaps ever saw in a month. I do not love legislators that pay themselves so amply! They might have had as good a constitution as twenty-four millions of people could comport. As they have voted an army of an hundred and fifty thousand men, I know what their constitution will ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... took place; lands were sold at five dollars, six dollars, eight dollars an acre. The farmers began to realize that land represented wealth—that it was an asset, not a liability—and there was a rush for the cheap railway lands that had so long gone a-begging. Harris was among the first to sense the change in the times, and a beautiful section of railway land that lay next to his homestead he bought at four ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... with a grizzled moustache and dreamy eyes fixed on vacancy. His claim to notoriety, alas, lay in more than his incomparable music. Human nature at its best is a frail thing. But human nature, as typified by Private Mason, was very frail. Apart from his failing he was a valuable asset to the sing-song party; but, unhappily, it required all the resources and ingenuity of its promoters to keep Private Mason sober on ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... for sustained and accurate application to a task the object of which is apparently of very small importance, is indeed a most valuable asset to him who hopes to advance in science. Let us call to mind what a physicist does to place an instrument absolutely level; how patiently he turns first one screw and then another, tries again and again, slowly and carefully: and to what ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... straightaway back to winter quarters. Instead of going down through Fort Collins, Greeley, Denver, Pueblo, with a swing through Texas, we have canceled everything. We play this Union Pacific right through to Omaha and thence back home by direct rails. So a pair of bear cubs wouldn't be much of an asset right now." ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... beyond doubt, from his father's chronic irascibility, but the discipline of boarding-school and college had taught him to restrain at least its outward manifestations. From Simon, too, he had inherited a flair for business—an invaluable asset, thought Miss Ocky, for a man sentenced for life to ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... this, but the fact is, the one thing I pride myself on is my memory for faces. It's a hobby of mine. If I think I remember a face, and can't place it, I worry myself into insomnia. It's partly sheer vanity, and partly because in my job a good memory for faces is a mighty fine asset. It has ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... with the British colonies in a federal system, British statesmen and the educated classes in general had adopted the views expressed by Grey twenty years before. Tardily they had learnt to recognise both the essential unity of the Dutch population and the value of the country as an industrial asset of the empire. But, in the meantime, the centre of political power had shifted in England. The extension of the franchise had placed the ultimate control of British policy in South Africa in the hands of a ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... a beaver hat was a valuable asset which might be handed down to the second or even the third generation. A decent broadcloth suit would cost a man as much as he could earn in three months at the current rate of wages, after paying his board; consequently the early settler did not often indulge in the luxury ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... and to do this they were ready to immolate, if necessary, their King and Queen, and all of their own order who stayed at home to defend them. Indeed, speaking generally, they valued Louis XVI, living, cheaply enough, counting him a more considerable asset if dead. "What a noise it would make throughout Europe," they whispered among themselves, "if the rabble should ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... home. He was greatly distressed. Yet his fortunes were not ruined. His sanctity was still a valuable and, unless he chose otherwise, an inalienable asset. The renowned Sheikh had a rival—nearly as holy and more enterprising than himself. From him the young priest might expect a warm welcome. Nevertheless he did not yet abandon his former superior. Placing a heavy wooden collar on his neck, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... say you have, Simec, you meet my condition to the letter. At the very least, it will be a most important asset to the cause of my country. In either case the least I can give to help it along is my life—if that proves necessary.... When do you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... scarcely over five feet and weighed less than a hundred and ten pounds. Astride his horse, he looked still more diminutive. His mount was a young horse which he had borrowed. He carried under his arm a single book, also loaned, a copy of the criminal law.[43] His chief asset was a large fund of Yankee shrewdness ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... not, however, give to this detachment a Christian value. For it is a part of Hindu thought to condemn every emotion and sentiment, however lofty as an asset of life. It regards every desire, however noble in itself, and every sentiment, however exalted, as essentially evil; for it is a momentary barrier to that equilibrium and quiescence of soul which the Hindu has always maintained to be the highest cultivation of the self. Therefore, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... outfit were under the North Pole and frozen solid! But I can't afford to pick and choose. If I looked about for something else to do I don't believe anybody would want me. Portlaw pays me more than I'm worth as a Harvard post-graduate. And if that is an asset it's ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... books of good manners in the English language a man with "an eye to the main chance" advised his pupils to cultivate honesty, gentleness, propriety, and deportment because they paid. But it has not been until recently that business men as a whole have realized that courtesy is a practical asset to them. Business cannot be separated from money and there is no use to try. Men work that they may live. And the reason they have begun to develop and exploit courtesy is that they have discovered that it makes for better work and better living. Success, they have learned, in spite of the conspicuous ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Magistrate's room in the country. The methods of organization and control vary in the different States of the Commonwealth, but on one point the six are all agreed—that dependent and delinquent children are a national asset and a national responsibility, and any forward step anywhere has every chance of being copied. The result of Children's Courts and probation has been that, while the population of the State has greatly increased, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... looked at him thoughtfully. He was quite a young man, tall, fair-haired, and fresh-coloured, with a look about him of vigorous health that was heartening and must have been a great asset ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... what I'm going to do with it?" she flung back impatiently. "It'll be an asset—like ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Pyrenees, but not by the Saracens. Besides, Charlemagne's secretary, Eginhart, briefly mentions in his chronicles that in 778, Roland, prefect of the Marches of Brittany, was slain there.[9] Although the remainder of the story has no historical basis, the song of Roland is a poetical asset ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Edward.' With all this before her, what did she want with personality and points of view? Obviously nothing. If she brought all the grandchildren safely into the world, with their due complement of legs and arms and noses, she would be a satisfactory asset. But Mrs. Marston forgot, in this summing up, to find out whether Hazel cared for Edward more than she ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... "A third undeveloped asset in the Pittsburgh waterfront is its value for recreation and as an element of civic comeliness and self-respect. One of the deplorable consequences of the short-sighted and wasteful commercialism of the later nineteenth century lay in its disregard of what might have been the asthetic byproducts ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... across the table and, further, because he could sing and did sing while he worked—songs that rattled from his lips in a way that amused me greatly. Then, too, he could rip out words that had a new and wonderful sound in them. I made up my mind that he was likely to become a valuable asset when I heard Aunt Deel say to ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... bewildering multitude of readers, Theron felt there ought to be a chance for him. So clear did constant rumination render this assumption that the young pastor in time had come to regard this prospective book of his as a substantial asset, which could be realized without trouble whenever he got around ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... anything which this war has proved, it is the fact that the most important asset a nation or an individual can have, is the ability ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... everything which he actually understands, for they think that they would thus destroy God's power. If, they contend, God had created everything which is in his intellect, he would not be able to create anything more, and this, they think, would clash with God's omnipotence; therefore, they prefer to asset that God is indifferent to all things, and that he creates nothing except that which he has decided, by some absolute exercise of will, to create. However, I think I have shown sufficiently clearly (by Prop. ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... beg or buy that clothesline from Reddy when we go away from here, and hang it up in our clubroom, as the most valuable asset we have. Without it what would become of us, eh? Talk about your trained nurses! That fellow is a whole hospital to the tenderfoot crowd. Call to him, please, and enlist his sympathy in the noble cause of yanking us in out ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... a trifle, cleared his throat, glanced about him with pompous dignity; and then, in a sonorous and impressive tone—his best asset on the bench, for legal knowledge and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... virtuous to think how Craney had no conscience. Maybe he hadn't. He was the busiest man in South America for a while. I never knew of another to make a business asset out of earthquakes nor his equal for seeing an opening for enterprise. He was a singular man, Craney, a shrewd one, and yet romantic and given to ingenious visions. And yet again, when he talked his wildest, you'd find he had his ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... last big thing of the campaign. The rest of Monday and the Tuesday morning papers do not give us time to reply. Even if they were published to-day we should hardly have time to expose the plot, hammer it in, and make the issue an asset instead of a liability. No, you must admit it yourself. There isn't time. We must carry out the work we have so carefully planned to cap the campaign, and if we are diverted by this it means a let-up in our final efforts, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the originality, the dauntless energy, the thorough organization methods and the ceaseless campaigning of the suffrage workers, who in winning the great Empire State not only secured the vote for New York women but made the big commonwealth an important asset in the final struggle for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... and making a living and a life for herself had hardened into a fixed resolution, and she had begun serious consideration of ways and means, that she called it back into her mind. There was no use blinking the facts. The one marketable asset she would possess when she walked out of her husband's house, was simply—how ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... conquest. This dispelled whatever apprehension there was that the United States might seek to annex Mexico. Later, in asking Congress to repeal the Panama Tolls Act of 1912, the President said the good will of Europe was a more valuable asset than commercial advantages gained ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... last met, Mrs. Craigie had troubled herself very little about the child she had sent to England. When, however, she received her portrait from Sir Jasper, together with a glowing description of her attractiveness and charm, the situation assumed a fresh aspect. Lola, she felt, had become an asset, instead of an anxiety; and, as such, must make a "good" marriage. Bath swarmed with detrimentals, and there was a risk of a pretty girl, bereft of a mother's watchful care, being snapped up by one of them. Possibly, a younger ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... who flits from job to job is soon regarded as a drifter and unstable. In the military establishment an ability to adjust from job to job and to achieve greater all-around qualification by making a successful record in a diversified experience becomes a major asset in a career. Generalship, in its real sense, requires a wider knowledge of human affairs, supported by specialized knowledge of professional techniques, than any other great responsibility. Those who get to the top have to be ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... classes, just as he sees the artistic impulse flowering among the children of rough toilers in the fields. And again the question arises: Will the Japanese retain this attractive trait when they come into more intimate contact with the foreigner, who believes in courtesy mainly as a business asset rather than ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... Church, fearing the irreligiousness of health, has occupied, as you say, all the avenues of life, so that no man shall accustom himself to live without her, appealing solely to her in the hour of death. The dead provide much money, they are her best asset; but she wishes equally to reign over the living. Nothing escapes her despotism and her spying. She insinuates herself into all human concerns from the greatest to the most insignificant, she interferes in both public and private life; she baptizes the child ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
