"Comparative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and, wherever the noise and fun were most abundant, wherever there was to be heard the loudest laughter and the most vehement expostulation, Macaulay was the centre of a circle which was exclaiming at the levity of his remarks about the Blessed Martyr; disputing with him on the comparative merits of Pascal, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau or checking him as he attempted to justify his godparents by running off a list of all the famous Thomases in history. The place is full of his memories. His favourite walk was a mile of field-road and lane which leads from the house to a ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... draws attention to the fact that the existence of such a universally received code of economic morality was largely due to the comparative simplicity of the mediaeval social structure, where the relations of persons were all important, in comparison with the modern order, where the exchange of things is the dominant factor. He further draws attention ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... of it, Mrs. Leith Fairfax. I never enquire after the effect of my work. I have lived in comparative seclusion; and I scarcely know what collection of fugitive notes of mine you honor by describing ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... them."[115] We then walked round the plantation, as yet in a very young state, and came back to the house by a formidable work which he was constructing for the defence of his haugh against the wintry violences of the Tweed; and he discoursed for some time with keen interest upon the comparative merits of different methods of embankment, but stopped now and then to give us the advantage of any point of view in which his new building on the eminence above pleased his eye. It had a fantastic appearance—being ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... The comparative scarcity, therefore, of lakes of Pleistocene date in tropical countries, and very generally south of the fortieth and fiftieth parallels of latitude, may be accounted for by the absence of glacial action ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... roused by the noise of the dogs, should come in their turn, and seize him as a thief? At all events, that would be comparative safety; at least, they would rescue him from these monsters. But no: nothing stirred in ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long, anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too, and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while we was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up, also, in the comparative simplicity of a republic, I am apt to be struck with even the ordinary circumstances incident to an aristocratical state of society. If, however, I should at any time amuse myself by pointing out some of the eccentricities, and some of the poetical characteristics of the latter, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Andorra's tiny, well-to-do economy, accounts for more than 80% of GDP. An estimated 11.6 million tourists visit annually, attracted by Andorra's duty-free status and by its summer and winter resorts. Andorra's comparative advantage has recently eroded as the economies of neighboring France and Spain have been opened up, providing broader availability of goods and lower tariffs. The banking sector, with its partial "tax haven" ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... turned upon anything else. Work, especially mental work, is always painful; always a thing you would shrink from if you could; but how strongly you shrink from it on a beautiful summer morning! On a gloomy winter day you can walk with comparative willingness into your study after breakfast, and spread out your paper, and begin to write your sermon. For although writing the sermon is undoubtedly an effort; and although all sustained effort partakes of the nature of pain; and although ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... thinking themselves in comparative safety—never before having been followed so far into their own country by white men—had neglected to put out any scouts. They had no idea that there were any white men in that part of the country. We got the lay of their camp, and then held a council to consider and mature a plan for capturing ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... rest of his days there, declining an invitation to return to his native country and to Paris. In 1848 he was elected to the chair of Natural History at Harvard. In 1850-51 he went on an expedition to the Florida Reefs. In 1858 he founded and organized the Museum of Comparative Zooelogy at Cambridge—and, later on, went on his important voyage to Brazil. In 1872 he founded and organized the summer school of Natural History at Buzzard's Bay. He wrote "The Fishes of Brazil," "A Study of Glaciers," "Natural History of the Fresh Water Fishes of Central ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... comparative happiness in the house of Ragnor, for though the master's letters were never much more than plain statements of doings or circumstances, they satisfied Rahal. It is not every man that knows how to write to a woman, even ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a period of comparative calm in Trenck's history. He travelled freely about Poland, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Holland, and even ventured occasionally across the border into Prussia. Twelve years seem to have ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... is poured into molds, where the block remains until hard: (3) a medium wet mixture is compressed into a mold by hydraulic presses or other means of securing great pressure. The molds used may be simple wooden boxes with removable sides or mechanical molds of comparative complexity. Generally mechanical molds, or concrete block machines as they are commonly called, will be used. There are a score or more kinds of block machines all differing in construction and mode of operation. None of them will be described ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... a continuation of diplomatic action against the British Government's interference with neutral commerce and with neutral mails. But, aside from the comparative unimportance of these issues beside the submarine assassinations, the Lusitania and similar episodes had stirred up so much indignation that not many Americans were seriously interested in action against England ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... Saxon Period, contains so few buildings of interest or importance, as to render its comparative illustration ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... you some good advice; though whether you accept it or not is a matter of indifference to me. You will observe that this hold is in comparative darkness. I say comparative, because through the hatch space a certain amount of light is projected from the deck above, and you and your men are standing in that light, whereas I am in the dark. I can see you ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... its habit cannot be satisfactorily determined. It is of a greenish colour, but this may be adventitious, although general and uniform throughout the specimen. This species differs from the above in being much larger, and in wanting the two perforations on each side above the mouth—in the less comparative size of the opening of the cell, and in the remarkable elevation of the sharp margin surrounding the upper half of the cell. In the looser aggregation, and in the form of the cells, it shows the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... brow into wrinkles, and, with reflection in his little eyes, assured his sapient brethren that "This distinguished stranger was nothing else than a secret envoy of his imperial majesty, who was come into Germany to observe attentively the situation, the comparative strength, the disagreements, and the alliances, of the various states and princes; so that the high and mighty court, at the opening of the approaching Diet, might know how to comport itself. And since the imperial court had always kept a watchful eye upon their republic, they ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... quite ruined out by the Battle of Blenheim; put under Ban of the Empire, and reduced to depend on Louis XIV. for a living,—till times mended with him again; till, after the Peace of Utrecht, he got reinstated in his Territories; and lived a dozen years more, in some comparative comfort, though much sunk in debt. Well, our Karl Albert is the son of that Anti-Marlborough Kurfurst Maximilian; eldest surviving son; a daughter of the great Sobieski of Poland was his mother. Nay, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thousands of ages has it taken the Niagara Falls to cut their way through the solid rock back from Ontario to Erie? It is highly probable that the earth has been approximately the same as it now is for many millions of years. Reaching still farther back into the past, before this state of comparative quiescence, can we not find adequate time for the gradual succession of organized beings on this earth, and for the structural differentiations which have finally resulted in the present position of things? Because we see one day succeed another with no change in the organic life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... especially in short days, a difficulty is sometimes experienced in setting the fruit, particularly the first bunch. After fruit has begun to swell on one bunch, the remainder set with comparative ease. A rather higher temperature than usual combined with free movement of the atmosphere is generally sufficient to insure fertilisation. If assistance is necessary, however, water the plants early in the afternoon, and close the house rather before the usual time. The warm atmosphere will develop ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... attention than to conceal the cover, had any straggler passed that way. The two then drew out a bark canoe, containing its seats, paddles, and other appliances, even to fishing-lines and rods. This vessel was by no means small; but such was its comparative lightness, and so gigantic was the strength of Hurry, that the latter shouldered it with seeming ease, declining all assistance, even in the act of raising it to the awkward position in which he was ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... particular, Beth could not sleep. There was a great gale blowing. It came in terrific gusts that shook the house, rattled the windows, and made the woodwork creak; then died away, and was followed by an interval of comparative quiet, broken by strange, mysterious sounds, to which Beth listened with strained attention, unable to account for them. One moment it was as if trailing garments swept down the narrow stairs, heavy woollen garments that made a soft sort of muffled sound, but there was no footfall, as of ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... beside me sighing comfortably "Que castizo es este Benavente," and then went into a volley of approving chirpings. The full import of her enthusiasm did not come to me until much later when I read the play in the comparative light of a surer knowledge of Castilian, and found that it was a most vitriolic dissecting of the manner of life of that very dowager's own circle, a showing up of the predatory spite of "people of consequence." Here was ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... circulating medium; and that neither can be disused without materially increasing the burden of debt, nor even temporarily degraded by artificial means without injurious effect upon home and international trade. But I also believe that gold and silver can only be made to maintain their comparative value by the joint action of commercial nations. Not only is there now no joint action taken by these nations to place and keep silver on an equality with gold, according to existing standards, but it has been by the treatment it has received ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... and dexterously made his comparative ignorance of the subject the cause of his attempting a sketch of what he hoped might be the character of the person whose health he proposed. Every one intuitively felt the resemblance was just, and even complete, and Lothair confirmed their kind and sanguine anticipations by ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the situation had changed from one of comparative safety to one of extreme gravity. The logs, broken loose from the upper temporary booms, now jammed against the swing and against the other logs already filling the main booms. Already the pressure was beginning to tell, as the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the coast as well as across to Ireland and the Continent, the rig was adopted very readily in place of the lug-sails. The smack was also a sloop-rigged vessel. We need not enter here into a discussion as to the comparative merits of sloops and cutters and smacks. It is enough if we state that when it was realised that a vessel of say 100 tons, sloop-rigged, with her one mast, mainsail, and two headsails and square ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... the plough, and the number of seceders daily increases. Our administration, though just and liberal, has a levelling tendency; service is no longer to be procured, and to many the stern alternative has arrived of taking to agriculture and securing comparative comfort, or enduring the pangs of hunger and death. So long as any resource remains the fatal step will be postponed, but it is easy to foresee that the struggle cannot be long protracted; necessity is a hard task-master, and sooner or later the pressure of want ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... country. It was common knowledge that there was a general scarcity of food throughout Germany, and, if the prisoners did not get as much as they ought to have, in all probability the vast majority of the German population was in a state of comparative hunger.... He could not see what advantage there was in making out that the case of our prisoners was worse than it really was, and it seemed to him little short of an act of cruelty to the relations of these unfortunate men to lead them to suppose that our men were not only in a state of ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... a very simple will," she answered. "And from the nature of it, it was not at all strange that my father should have been willing to have had it drawn by a comparative stranger, if that is what you are thinking. Summarised in a few words, the will left everything to me, and appointed my Uncle Henry as my guardian and the sole executor of the estate until I should have reached my twenty-fifth birthday. It provided for a certain sum each year to be paid to my ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... scarcity our importations of feeding stuffs from the Danube would become a most important factor, for in 1881 the Board of Trade returns show the following comparative importations:— ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... our men, with song and chorus, would exert themselves to the utmost to overtake it. Upon observing our efforts, the natives would bend themselves to their tasks, and paddling standing and stark naked, give us ample opportunities for studying at our leisure comparative anatomy. Or we saw a group of fishermen lazily reclining in puris naturalibus on the beach, regarding with curious eye the canoes as they passed their neighbourhood; then we passed a flotilla of canoes, their owners sitting ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... interest is also taken in the army and navy, owing to the fact that there is so little active service in the former and to the smallness of the latter; and woman does not care much about orders, regulations, manoeuvres and comparative strengths—she wants 'heroes,' and to know what they have done, and does not consider what the 'services' might, could, or should do. The officers who have served in India and have seen active service rank high in her estimation, but as these are few, beyond the affection bestowed ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... the election held in November 1920, for the Constituent Assembly—were extremely sweeping. While the Radicals and Democrats returned with close on one hundred members each, the Koro[vs]e['c] party met with comparative disaster, and the Star[vc]evic group was overwhelmed. With about fifty members apiece, the Communist and the Radi['c] parties gave expression, roughly speaking, to the discontent produced by the unsettled conditions—unavoidable and avoidable—of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... In a moment there were three big fires blazing, and not only were we able to cook a specially abundant dinner and drown our past troubles in a bucketful of boiling tea, but we also managed to dry our clothes and blankets. The relief of this warmth was wonderful, and in our comparative happiness we forgot the hardships and sufferings we had so far encountered. With the exception of a handful of sato, this was the first solid meal we had had for forty-eight hours. In those two days we had travelled twenty miles, each of us carrying ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... never spoken of but in terms of admiration, as the chief works of architecture, and among the noblest and most stupendous examples of what man can do when aided by science; and yet when compared with the dome of this Temple, they sink into comparative insignificance. Such is the surpassing grandeur ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... building of a canal under the auspices of the United States are under consideration. In the meantime, the views of the Congress upon the general subject, in the light of the report of the Commission appointed to examine the comparative merits of the various trans-Isthmian ship-canal projects, may ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and subdivided into streets, rows, and alleys; some respectable, others semi-genteel, but in most cases to be defined by the three degrees of comparison—dingy, dingier, most dingy; and it was under the comparative degree that a certain street, known by the name of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... originating that philosophical comparison between the object of our clothes and of his tattooing as he would have been of writing Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. Human beings in his stage of evolution never consciously reflect on the reasons of things, and considerations of comparative psychology or esthetics are as much beyond his mental powers as problems in algebra or trigonometry. That such a sailor's yarn could be accepted seriously in an anthropologic treatise shows that anthropology is still in its cradle. The same is true of that Australian's alleged answer. The ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... with Mascarin had been concluded. The sudden and unexpected good fortune which had fallen so opportunely at his feet had for the moment absolutely stunned him. He was now removed from a position which had caused him to gaze with longing upon the still waters of the Seine, to one of comparative affluence. "Mascarin," said he to himself, "has offered me an appointment bringing in twelve thousand francs per annum, and proposed to give me the first month's salary ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... winter, and it required a hardy breeding to live there in comfort. There was little of a garden, and the stables were somewhat ruinous. For the former fact the climate almost sufficiently accounted, and for the latter, a long period of comparative poverty. ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... there in comparative seclusion for a long time after that. Joan tried to think of plans, but her mind seemed, unproductive. She felt half dazed. Jim, too, appeared to be laboring under the same kind of burden. Moreover, responsibility ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... impels towards that which is least known. External appearances having been studied, the form and function of internal organs were investigated. Physiology and comparative anatomy were born and developed; researches abounded and observers abandoned the field ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... believe the written words of a dead Apostle in opposition to the words of a living Bishop, seeing that the same spirit which guided the Apostles dwells in and guides the Bishops of the Church? This at least is certain, that the later the age of the writer, the stronger the expression of comparative superiority of the Scriptures; the earlier, on the other hand, the more we hear of the 'Symbolum', the 'Regula ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to be left. In other words, it was to stand, and to stand unmolested, till it fell of its own accord, or was struck to the earth by lightning—a tragic alternative in the judgment of those who knew it for a structure of comparative insignificance, and one which, in the minds of many, and perhaps I may say in my own, appeared to point to some serious and unrevealed cause not unlinked with the almost forgotten death of that young wife to which I have ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... might almost be termed his nature, he no sooner left the college in which he had been educated, than he resumed the blanket and leggings, under the influence of early recollections, and a mistaken appreciation of the comparative advantages between the civilized condition, and those of a life passed in the forest and on the prairies. In this respect our young Seneca resembles the white American, who, after a run of six months ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... will admit, in examining the six skeptics set forth by Scott, that each is a character firmly based in historical truth; that all, with the exception of 'Bletson,' are sketched with remarkable brevity; and that a careful comparative analysis of the whole gives us a deeper insight into the secret tendencies of the author's mind, and at the same time into the springs of his genius, than the world has been wont to take. And the study of the subject is finally interesting, since ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... there were—notwithstanding the comparative sparseness of population—eighteen prisons in London alone, whereas in 1850, when Dickens was in his prime and when population had enormously increased, that number had been ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Such a course is at once more regular and more smooth of working, since a corps of subordinates has but one director, whereas a director may have a hundred subordinates. But let us put aside the question of comparative culpability. The important point is, that before us all lies the duty of rescuing our fatherland. Our fatherland is suffering, not from the incursion of a score of alien tongues, but from our own acts, in that, in addition ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... among the bric-a-brac and to discourse to him of one another's violations and interferences. By the time that he had reached home that dripping night and had put captions upon the backs of the unexpectant-looking photographs which were his trophies, he was in that state of comparative anarchy to be effected only by imaginative youth ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... minor measures, frequent repetitions of the same thought. The intellectual ear grasps all that easily, and amuses itself with the comparison of themes which are repeated in the same or in changed forms. We, on the contrary, nearly always listen to music with a dreamy, seldom with an intellectually comparative ear; therefore modern music is much more influential, but also much more dangerous, than the old. Musical pieces increase in length from year to year, in order that, during the performance of them, one may have the requisite time to dream. The composition has become infinitely more complicated. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of the Indian Territory, imperiling the whole Confederate alliance. So long as there was a strong force at Fort McCulloch and at the frontier posts of longer establishment, particularly at Fort Cobb, the Reserve Indians could be held in check with comparative ease. Hindman, ignorant of or indifferent to the situation, no matter how serious it might be for others, had ordered the force to be scattered and most of it withdrawn from the Red ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... system are growing voluminous. In Berlin, not only new bone fractures are being immediately photographed, but joined fractures, as well, in order to examine the results of recent surgical work. In Vienna, imbedded bullets are being photographed, instead of being probed for, and extracted with comparative ease. In London, a wounded sailor, completely paralyzed, whose injury was a mystery, has been saved by the photographing of an object imbedded in the spine, which, upon extraction, proved to be a small knife-blade. Operations for malformations, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... services of numbers of men of extraordinary genius would have been lost to the State, and our world's progress in science, inventions, and happiness retarded for centuries. Nay, perhaps the then comparative civilization would have been thrown back into barbarism, through the destructive play of ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... the Bible as a text book; ten prescribe Social Ethics; six prescribe Christian Evidences; three make courses in Social Service or Practical Sociology requirements; five prescribe Hebrew History; one college requires Comparative Religion; one, Sunday School Teacher Training; one, New Testament History; one, Philosophy of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... slow progress, gradually spreading from the government of Kherson to the neighboring governments of Yekaterinoslav and Bessarabia. Stray Jewish agricultural settlements also appeared in Lithuania and White Russia. But a comparative handful of some ten thousand "Jewish peasants" could not affect the general economic make-up of millions of Jews. In spite of all shocks, the economic structure of Russian Jewry remained essentially the same. As before, the central place in this structure was occupied by the liquor traffic, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... the minerals it held in solution, particularly its silex. These substances falling to the bottom, accompanied by a large proportion of the matters held in solution, particularly the mica, in consequence of the greater comparative tranquillity of the ocean, agglomerated these into more or less compact beds of rock (the mica-schist formation), producing the first crust or solid envelope of the globe. Upon this, other stratified rocks, composed sometimes ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... came first, and as it blew heavily directly out of the river, we could simply lay to and wait for it to blow over. Then a calm followed and by the time the next squall struck we were in a comparative lee. After the heaviest of it had passed, the Grand River boys clambered into their boats and with a hearty "good by" pulled away for the opening close at hand. The yawl meantime had grounded on one of the ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... A., "Comparative Fecundity of Women of Native and Foreign Parentage," Quarterly Pubs. Amer. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... will always be its chief commanders. [Footnote a: The position of officers is indeed much more secure amongst democratic nations than elsewhere; the lower the personal standing of the man, the greater is the comparative importance of his military grade, and the more just and necessary is it that the enjoyment of that rank should ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... said Berrie. "You have to take the weather as it comes on the trail." As the storm lessened she resumed the business of cooking the midday meal, and at two o'clock they were able to eat in comparative comfort, though the unmelted snow still covered the trees, and ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... recovered the power of speech rapidly. Before I had been a week in his house he was able to talk with comparative ease. He seemed to enjoy my companionship, and I spent most of my time in his library, conversing with him or conning the musty books that had long lain unread. To me this room was a fascinating and restful place. Somehow it reminded me of an old cemetery. ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... religious ballads. The fairy tales, while possessing analogies with those of other lands, have their characteristic national features. While less striking and original than, for example, the exquisite Esthonian legends, they are of great interest in the study of comparative folk-lore. More important is the poetical folk-lore of Russia, concerning which neither tradition nor history can give us any clue in the matter of derivation or date. One thing seems reasonably certain: it largely consists of the relics of an extensive system of sorcery, in the form ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Except for the comparative infrequency of the more bestial types of men and women, Judaea has always been a cosmos in little, and its prize-fighters and scientists, its philosophers and "fences," its gymnasts and money-lenders, its scholars and stockbrokers, its musicians, chess-players, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... subsoiling was not yet even a dream; and between the plowmen and their ox-teams it seemed a question as to which should loiter longest in the unfinished furrow. Now and then, the rush of the train gave a motionless goatherd, with his gaunt flock, an effect of comparative celerity to the rearward. The women riding their ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... other three Gospels lay emphasis on it as being part of His teaching, especially during the later stage of His ministry. But it does not follow that He began to think about it or to see it, when He began to speak about it. There are reasons for the earlier comparative reticence, and there is no ground for the conclusion that then first began to dawn upon a disappointed enthusiast the grim reality that His work was not going to prosper, and that martyrdom was necessary. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the reader has no means of deciding whether it is the modest reserve of the parent which pronounces them "good, without being excellent," or the fond partiality of the father which discovers them to be "good" at all. In any case, we must consider Arthur's "comparative deficiency in classical learning," for which the eminent historian seems almost to apologize, as one of his especial felicities. The liberalizing effect of travel, and a varied contact with men and things, prevented his powers from contracting themselves to a merely academical reputation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... slightly, but only at the remembrance of having confided to this comparative stranger his bosom's secret under the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... educational ideals of the West cannot be ascribed to him. Nevertheless he must be regarded, more than any other one man, as the successful pilot who avoided the difficulties which the very novelty of the situation presented. The comparative freedom from precedent offered an unrivaled opportunity to try new theories in education, and was a continual temptation to try policies which must have proved too advanced for ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... manner of subjects were touched upon, such as the comparative leniency of Catholic and Protestant governments, the position of Luther with regard to the Epistle of St. James, and other matters comparatively unimportant, in the discussion of which a great deal of time was wasted. Campion entreated his opponents to leave such ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... had no time to nurse her suspense; she could not even linger by her father's side, for there was grim and urgent work for her hands, and one by one the women crept out from behind the comparative safety of the bar and joined her. Barely a man of all those who had thronged the gambling-rooms remained unscathed, and the cries of the wounded rang in her ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... widely distant parts of the older world had met together in these countries. Here were oracle-sanctuaries which conformed to the various Atlantean oracles; here were people with the heritage of ancient clairvoyance as a natural gift, and others who were able to acquire it, with comparative ease, by training. The traditions of the ancient Initiates were not only preserved in special places, but worthy successors to them arose, who attracted disciples capable of rising to lofty levels ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... circle of the Western Church's influence the very materials which she required for the building up of a future Christendom, and which she could find as little in the Western Empire as in the Eastern; comparative purity of morals; sacred respect for woman, for family life, law, equal justice, individual freedom, and, above all, for honesty in word and deed; bodies untainted by hereditary effeminacy, hearts earnest though genial, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... contacts, and comparative affluence, however, his interview resembles the type in a number of respects—the type as I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... junior year those pupils preparing for college send for the catalogues of the colleges which stand highest in the line of work in which they are interested, and write an essay, giving the comparative value of the courses offered by the various institutions. By this means judgment takes the place of sentiment in the selection of a college. While the college preparatory pupils are engaged in writing on their college courses, pupils who are going ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... have heard the last polka at the Salle Vivienne in the evening. Paris is a city of extremes; the young Theophile who works by my side, and is an ingenious fellow and a clever workman, you will meet next Sunday in the Louvre discoursing energetically on the comparative merits of the French and Italian schools of painting; yet this same Theophile shall be the Titi of the gallery of the Porte St. Martin in the evening, who yells slang at his friend on the opposite side; and the Pierrot or Debardeur of the next ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... surrounded by people of his own principles; and as all the strength of the King's cause was concentrated about the seat of the court, every apprehension of personal insecurity was at an end. He was now, therefore, in a state of comparative comfort; man is seldom placed in a better; and in times like those I describe, a good ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... still at 47 deg. below zero. The roads were so much better, however, that we descended again to our own runners, and our lively horses trotted rapidly down the Tornea. The signs of settlement and comparative civilisation which now increased with every mile were really cheering. Part of our way lay through the Swedish woods and over the intervening morasses, where the firs were hung with weepers of black-green moss, and stood solid and silent in their mantles of snow, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... gift in SUPREME command of a case or of a career—would still doubtless come on the day I should be ready to pay for it; and till then might, as from far back, remain hung up well in view and just out of reach. The comparative case meanwhile would serve—it was only on the minor scale that I had treated myself ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... musket-shot, unable to take a hand in the hot fight that followed. Had either the Henry's crew or the buccaneers been able to send a proper broadside from their position, it seems that they must surely have blown their foe out of water, though we need, of course, to make allowance for the comparative feebleness of their ordnance in contrast to that of ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without interest for you; if you are fond of analysis, and do not shrink from dissection—you will prize 'The Ring and the Book' as the surgeon prizes the last great contribution to comparative ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and earnest upon other and higher cares than mere business; entered warmly into his father's sympathy about many political measures now occupying men's minds. A great number of comparative facts concerning the factory children in England and America; a mass of evidence used by Mr. Fowell Buxton in his arguments for the abolition of slavery; and many other things, originated in the impulsive activity, now settled into mature manly energy, of Mr. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... our "head of affairs," and such the small force he had at first to provide for. As we passed out of India, and got further from regions of comparative civilisation, his cares increased: cellar, kitchen, larder, farm-yard, tents, &c. had then to accompany our wandering steps, and the expedition gradually increased in size, until it attained its maximum of nearly forty. From this it again as gradually ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... Rome,—though he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,—Theophilus Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some work not made with hands, but into which ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... divided much more evenly among men than we are willing to believe! A mere respite from an intolerable position, a single book to keep the mind from cracking, transformed gloom and misery into light and at least comparative happiness. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... "The comparative exemption of New York from the universal fate goes to support rather than to discredit this hypothesis. It escaped the dynamite cartridge and the torch simply because in that city no recognized authority remained ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... with the minor points of his belief, and a pretence of harmonious union in a common faith. [Those who will take the trouble to look over Hull's Translation of Jahr's Manual may observe how little comparative space is given to remedies resting upon any other authority ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... forms of reptilian life associated with these coal beds, by means of which the geological horizon upon which the coal occurs may be traced through the country; so that there is a prospect of this mineral being followed along its outcrop in the Eastern Province with comparative ease by this means. It is desirable on all accounts that coal should be burned rather than timber, since the destruction of wood is harmful to the supply of water. With regard to the gold of Cape Colony, I have not ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... had pulled up anchor in Papeete, and as contrast is, after all, comparative, I felt like a New-Yorker who finds himself in Arcadia, though I had thought Papeete, on first sight, the garden of Allah. In Mataiea I realized the wonder of the Polynesian people, and found my months with the whites of the city a fit background for study of and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... tautum superest, ut legibus vestris—extincta idololatriae pereat funesta contagio." (De Error. Profan. Relig. c. xxi. p. 172, quoted by Lardner, vol. viii. p. 262.) It will not be thought that we quote this writer in order to recommend his temper or his judgment, but to show the comparative state of Christianity and of Heathenism at this period. Fifty years afterwards, Jerome represents the decline of Paganism, in language which conveys the same idea of its approaching extinction: "Solitudinem patitur et in urbe gentilitas. Dii quondam nationum, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... oath having been administered, I made the following statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the comparative triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply instructed the jury to acquit, and I left the court, without ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... material from human subjects often failed to produce serious disease in cattle was observed by a number of the earlier investigators who experimented with such virus. It was the experiments and comparative studies of Theobald Smith, however, which attracted special attention to the difference in virulence shown by tubercle bacilli from human and bovine sources when inoculated upon cattle. Smith mentioned also ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... have conspired in our history as a colony to intensify the good-nature of our people—at any rate, so far as extravagance in vicarious charity is concerned. Our sensitiveness to suffering has been greatly stimulated by the comparative absence from our towns of those sights of misery and squalor that deaden the feelings by familiarity; and the lavish life we have led since 1870 has made us free-handed to the poor and impatient of the trouble required to find out whether our charity ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... comparative measurements are interesting. Of course he had been eating for a week after the termination of his fast, so that the measurements taken on that day would be higher probably than if they had been taken seven days before, when ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... "magnification of Christ in his body" to the prisoner who sits, never alone, in the Roman lodging. It is this which effectually forbids him ever to find the days dull. Its light falls upon everything; comforts, trials, days of toil, hours of comparative repose, prospects of life, prospects of death. It quickens and concentrates all his faculties, as a great and animating interest always tends to do; it is always present to his mind as light and heat, to his will as rest and power. It secures for him the quiet of a great disengagement ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... evening, and the harvest-moon is red and round over the eastern skirt of woods. You are attending Madge to that little cottage-home where lives that gentle and doting mother, who, in the midst of comparative poverty, cherishes that refined delicacy which never comes to a ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited, that very few have the opportunity of being great. But each man can act his part honestly and honourably, and to the best of his ability. He can use his gifts, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... seemed to be blended. The scheming and selfish Mowbray, the coarse-minded and brutal Sir Bingo, accustomed to consider themselves, and to be considered, as the first men of the party, sunk into comparative insignificance. But chiefly Lady Penelope threw out the captivations of her wit and her literature; while Lady Binks, trusting to her natural charms, endeavoured equally to attract his notice. The other nymphs of the Spa held a little ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... those that trust in the Lord shall not be confounded! After all the many and long-continued seasons of great trial of faith within these thirteen years and two months, during which the orphans were in Wilson Street, the Lord dismisses us from thence in comparative abundance. His holy name be praised ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... and holds death back to see you. His self-imposed penance makes him steadfastly refuse the comparative comfort of our meagre infirmary, and it is his wish to die, where he has spent so many nights in penitential prayer. For several days, the paralysis of years has been gradually loosening its fetters, and this morning, the distressing and ghastly distortion of one side of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... strange," remarked Miss Weston to her new friend, Miss Vernon, the next morning, as they sat looking at the sea, so changed in its aspect from that of the evening before, "that I should in the company of comparative strangers, feel so little reserve. I know my aunt would chide me severely, but I have not felt so happy for many years. It may be that the influence of the ocean is so hallowed and peaceful that our souls live their truer lives, but I have never before opened my heart so fully ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... of no service to art or artists, I am not sure that it can be of no service whatever. For if it be true that art is an index to the spiritual condition of an age, the historical consideration of art cannot fail to throw some light on the history of civilisation. It is conceivable therefore that a comparative study of artistic periods might lead us to modify our conception of human development, and to revise a few of our social and political theories. Be that as it may, this much is sure: should anyone wish to infer from the art it produced ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... she smiled with just such graciousness as a woman might show in accepting a compliment from a comparative stranger. "Thank you!" ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... century. In the beginning of the ninth, Cruni'nus, their king, advanced to the gates of Constantinople; but the city proving too strong, he seized Adrianople, and returned home loaded with booty. The successors of Cruni'nus did not inherit his abilities, and the Bulgarians soon sunk into comparative insignificance. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... both when his party was in power and when it was in opposition. In 1866 Lord Derby, returning to office, had made him attorney-general, and in the same year he had availed himself of a vacancy to seek the comparative rest of the court of appeal. While a lord justice he had been offered a peerage, and though at first unable to accept it, he had finally done so on a relative, a member of the wealthy family of McCalmont, providing the means necessary for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in the past has been sordid and unstable because we were uncultured as a nation. National ideals have been the possession of the few in Ireland, and have not been diffused. That is the cause of our comparative failure as a nation. If we would create an Irish culture, and spread it widely among our people, we would have the same unfathomable sources of inspiration and sacrifice to draw upon in our acts as a nation as the individual has who believes he is immortal, and that his life here is but a temporary ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... had that peculiar bleakness that foreruns the first promise of spring. The children, that six weeks before were playing in the snow and six weeks later would be searching the turf for dandelions, were in the listless between seasons state of comparative inactivity. There was a deceptive balminess in the air that seemed merely to overlay ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... the empire in an agitated state; for the ten horns came up through the greatest political convulsions that the page of history records. When John beheld the second beast "coming up," however, the empire was in a state of comparative quiet, although fierce wars followed afterward. He stands as a symbol of Protestantism in Europe; although his power and influence afterwards extended beyond the "earth"—the Apocalyptic earth—into "the whole world." Chap. 16:14. That this beast came up upon the same territory occupied ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... having passed, during a brief season, for a youthful prodigy in the eyes of an admiring, but inconsiderate circle of friends, he would have closed his earthly career and been lamented as a genius for this world too brilliant and too good. But in this comparative state of barbarism, the boy's mind having been allowed more slowly and naturally to unfold itself; and his body meanwhile being strengthened by a life in the open air of the mountains, and by such athletic sports as well supplied the place of the games of the ancient Greeks and ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... a man of comparative substance of his son Jonas, the father had not dealt liberally by his daughter, and this had rankled in Sarah's heart. She had irritated her brother by continually raking up this grievance, and assuring him that a brother with natural feeling would, out of generosity of ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... many of these tales, not alone in isolated incidents but in continuous plots, has struck inquirers into these delightful little novels for children, as the Italians call them (Novelline). Wilhelm Grimm, in the comparative notes which he added to successive editions of the Maehrchen up to 1859, drew attention to many of these parallels and especially emphasized the resemblances of different incidents to similar ones in the Teutonic myths and sagas which he and his brother were investigating. Indeed it may be said ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above the hills, wavered against the serene, ashen evening. Howat Penny, standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the shifting, regular flight would not come close enough for a shot. He dropped the butt of his gun to the ground. Then he raised it again, examining the hammer; the flint was loose, unsatisfactory. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... accession of Henry IV, Wales had enjoyed, for nearly seventy years, a season of comparative security and rest. During the desperate struggles in the reign of Henry III, in which its inhabitants, chiefly under their Prince Llewellin, fought so resolutely for their freedom, many districts of the Principality, especially the border-lands, had been rendered all but deserts. From this ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the goals and course of all human activity, mental and physical. These instincts, being the fundamental elements of our constitution, must be clearly defined, and their history in the individual and the race determined. For this purpose, comparative and evolutionary psychology is necessary, for the life of the emotions and the play of motives in mental life are the least susceptible of introspective observation and description. "The old psychologising," says McDougall, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... us in our enquiry is: What is the source of religions? To this question two answers have been given in modern times—that of the Comparative Mythologists and that of the Comparative Religionists. Both base their answers on a common basis of admitted facts. Research has indisputably proved that the religions of the world are markedly similar in their main teachings, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... altogether lost it in rocky ground. The footmarks exceeded in size those of a buffalo, and it was apparently much larger, for, where it had passed through brushwood, shrubs of considerable size in its way had been broken down and, from the openings there left, I could form some comparative estimate of its bulk. These tracks were first seen by a man of the name of Mustard, who had joined me at the Cape, and who had there been on the frontier during the Kaffir war; he told me that he had ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... noncommittal. He had no cause for liking Henry, but would not say so to a comparative stranger, and at last he succeeded in changing the conversation. George was about moving away, when observing a little old-fashioned looking book lying upon one of the boxes, he took it up and turning to the fly-leaf read ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes |
