"Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the author's part of such an unsuspected (by the reader) and seemingly insignificant agent for the working of Nemesis, I think shows great skill. I say seemingly insignificant because a little dog seems such a small and unlikely thing to act the leading part in a criminal's judgment and suggested ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of the church and look down from the balcony which surrounds the lantern. The height is so great that even the great dimensions of the biggest palace in the world are dwarfed in the deep perspective, and the wide gardens look small and almost insignificant. But the relative proportions of the buildings and grounds appear correctly, and measure each other, as it were. Moreover, it is now so hard to obtain access to the gardens at all that the usual way of seeing them is from ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... yet that sum which she so eagerly relinquished was, in truth, more than a twentieth part of what she had to live on. And when the whole income does not nearly amount to a hundred pounds, to give up a twentieth of it will necessitate many careful economies and many pieces of self-denial—small and insignificant in the world's account, but bearing a different value in another account book that I have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... forbade it. My next lodging was at a German hotel, where I slept in a little cupboard which hung over a black, sluggish canal, and was without stove or fire-place. The cost of this chamber was five marks a month, or scarcely one shilling and sixpence a week. These expenses will appear paltry and insignificant, till compared with the amount of wages received, when it will be apparent that boarding and lodging in an English hotel at eleven shillings and odd pence a week, was a monstrous extravagance; and that even an apartment in ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... for it does not often fall to the lot of mortal man to find in one little, insignificant figure, dwarfish alike in soul and body, such a compound of selfishness, duplicity, meanness, and vulgarity, as was centered in the object of ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... illustrate history. This illustration then leads to the third task, which is the discovery and exposition of the motives which impel individual historical personages to the performance of great historical acts, and from outwardly, apparently insignificant events in their lives to deduce their inmost thoughts and natures, and ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... he accomplish it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... this shape upon familiar subjects, and which, perhaps, were never intended to be published, and it is this which makes them so valuable, for I must confess, for my own part, that letters which are very elaborately written, and originally intended for the press, are generally the most insignificant, and very little worth any person's reading' (2 ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the prophesying for the Cyclopes till he grew old; he told me that all this would happen to me some day, and said I should lose my sight by the hand of Ulysses. I have been all along expecting some one of imposing presence and superhuman strength, whereas he turns out to be a little insignificant weakling, who has managed to blind my eye by taking advantage of me in my drink; come here, then, Ulysses, that I may make you presents to show my hospitality, and urge Neptune to help you forward on your journey—for Neptune ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... can only appear insignificant to him beside the great catastrophe which he wishes to avert; and his conscience alone dictates his duty to him. Is ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... found a finer and more complete Norman church. Arches, windows, mouldings, more elaborate and more grand may no doubt be found elsewhere; but where else can we find, as here, choir, transepts, and nave, with all the original Norman, from ground to roof, with two insignificant exceptions, remaining unaltered? It is natural to compare the three great East Anglian Cathedrals, as all have superb work of the Norman period. But at Norwich the lower arches in the choir have been rebuilt ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... the several names of the Horseshoe, Crescent, and British Fall, from its semi-circular form and contiguity to the Canadian shore. The smaller is named the American Fall. A portion of this fall is divided by a rock from Goat Island, and though here insignificant in appearance, would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... long, long while at my embarrassed countenance, and deliberately putting out my tongue, I shook my head with a bitter smile. The scales fell from my eyes: I saw clearly, more clearly than I saw my face in the glass, what a shallow, insignificant, worthless, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... sometimes invests and obliterates the great pillars which support the masses of foliage. Conspicuous at all seasons of the year,—in spring when its brown buds are swollen to bursting, or when the myriads of flowers, insignificant singly, give in the sunlight an atmosphere of purplish-brown; when clothed with light, airy masses of deep green in summer or pale yellow in autumn, or in winter when the great trunk and mighty sweep of the arching branches distinguish it from all other trees. The roots lie near the surface ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... hostile critics overlook various vital considerations. The destruction of Germany's sea-striking power at this juncture was worth literally anything that Britain could give; not perhaps in England's immediate interest, but in the interests of the Empire, without which England would occupy but a very insignificant place among the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... too insignificant to merit capture. He is beneath the wrath of the emperor. He is yet in your power. I come, ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... of the people deliberates and it thunders, it is because Jupiter does not wish that anything shall be decided on that day and the assembly must dissolve. The most insignificant fact may be interpreted as a sign—a flash of lightning, a word overheard, a rat crossing the road, a diviner met on the way. And so when Marcellus had determined on an enterprise, he had himself carried in a closed litter that he might be sure of ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... horse had improved in numbers and discipline; several cavalry officers of rank and skill had joined it, and assisted in its organization; and although deprived of its gallant leader, Don Carlos O'Donnel, who had fallen victim to his own imprudent daring in an insignificant skirmish beneath the walls of Pampeluna, Eraso, and the other Carlist generals, had now sufficient confidence in its efficiency to risk a battle in a comparatively level country. Numerically, the Carlists were superior to their opponents, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... merits, but as to the very appearance of the light, Some few thousand people had gone out to Menlo Park, and had there seen the lamps in operation at the laboratory or on the hillsides, but they were an insignificant proportion of the inhabitants of the United States. Of course, a great many accounts were written and read, but while genuine interest was aroused it was necessarily apathetic. A newspaper description or a magazine article may be ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... high lords in the land of Zenith—Dr. Dilling the surgeon, Charles McKelvey the contractor, and, most dismaying of all, the white-bearded Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times. In their whelming presence Babbitt felt small and insignificant. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... heaven. The silence of the deep woods is pregnant with mighty growths. Says Maurice de Guerin, true poet and lover of Nature: "An innumerable generation actually hangs on the branches of all the trees, on the fibres of the most insignificant grasses, like babes on the mother's breast. All these germs, incalculable in their number and variety, are there suspended in their cradle between heaven and earth, and given over to the winds, whose charge it is to rock these beings. Unseen amid the living forests ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... displeasure of his ungrateful master, from whom he had never been separated during seventeen difficult years, had proved the vanity of the little things of life. He looked at men from a distance that obscures what is insignificant, and shows ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... commerce with beautiful things and beautiful thoughts does not exist only, or even chiefly, at the moment of seeing, or hearing, or reading; nay, if the beautiful touched us only at such separate and special moments, the beautiful would play but an insignificant part ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Caroline's devotion to her insignificant little lord and master, and the eagerness with which she hastened on foot to meet him, running across the Gardens, on his return from the Continent, have been made the subject of satire. She was generally accompanied by her five daughters, ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Rest, or St. Est, whichever name rightly belonged to it, was in itself so insignificant as a 'benefice,' that its present rector, vicar, priest and patron had bought it for himself, through the good offices of a friend, in the days when such purchases were possible, and for some ten years had been supreme Dictator ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... annihilation of the wicked (based probably on a misunderstanding of certain Biblical passages[104]), it may be said that the role of the theory of extinction of the soul in the general development of religion has been an insignificant one. Beginning among the lowest tribes as an expression of belief in the universality of mortality, it assumed a punitive character in the higher savage creed, and was gradually abandoned by the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... of the house being open, Clare could hear across the yard each trivial sound of the retiring household. The dairy-house, so humble, so insignificant, so purely to him a place of constrained sojourn that he had never hitherto deemed it of sufficient importance to be reconnoitred as an object of any quality whatever in the landscape; what was it now? The aged and lichened brick gables breathed forth "Stay!" The windows smiled, the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... to Wellington, it should be said that his complaints were due to false reports that exaggerated a couple of insignificant ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... heavens with her silvery light that only a few stars of the first magnitude were visible. There was very little wind, and a heavy dew was falling; but that, after the hardship of exposure in an open boat, was a trifle so insignificant that it ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... up her lead, whether she wished it or not. "A good third of our lives here is passed in sleep. I'm not always sure that we are right in treating the mental—for certainly they are mental—experiences of that time as altogether trivial, or insignificant." ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... which probably represented public opinion much better than the former. On the whole, the conclusion is inevitably forced on the student of this first national movement against the slave-trade, that its influence on the trade was but temporary and insignificant, and that at the end of the experiment the outlook for the final suppression of the trade was little brighter than before. The whole movement served as a sort of social test of the power and importance of the slave-trade, which proved to be far more powerful than the platitudes ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... well would have exerted all their influence against it. Nor in doing so would they have acted unwisely or unjustly. Had not Rome been the residence of their Chief Pastor, that great historic city would have ceased long ago to exist, or would be known only as an insignificant village, scarcely perceptible on the map of Europe. How often has not the celebrated city been rescued from destruction by the direct agency of the Popes? How long have they not governed it with wisdom and blessed it with prosperity? ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... a little later voices were heard, and two horsemen came out of the shadows of the wood, and followed the horses upward along the bank of the river to where a little stream of fresh water tumbled down to the Kootenai. There a little camp was located, an insignificant gathering of tents, but one that meant a promising event to the country, for it was to be the connecting point of the boats that would one day float from the States on the river, and the railroad that would erelong lead ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... century as a transition period: during that time the education of the child under eight has changed much more than the education of older children, at least in the elementary school; and there have been certain marked phases that, though apparently insignificant in themselves, have marked stages ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... it guides the investigator to the discovery of new facts which, when ascertained, it seems also able to co-ordinate.[6] Nay, "Natural Selection" seems capable of application not only to the building up of the smallest and most insignificant organisms, but even of extension beyond the biological domain altogether, so as possibly to have relation to the stable equilibrium of the solar system{10} itself, and even of the whole sidereal universe. Thus, whether ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... all under the feudal system of government, the chieftainship is hereditary, and although the chief is usually the greatest ass, and the most insignificant of the tribe in appearance, the people pay a deference to him which is truly astonishing.... I feel the benefit often of your instructions, and of those I got through your kindness. Here I have an immense practice. I have patients now under treatment who have walked ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... useless. He was now beginning to understand that sheep and cows were also hollow as far as good meat was concerned; the flesh they had was only a mouthful in comparison with what they ought to have considering their apparent bulk: insignificant, mere skin and bone covering a cavern. What right had they, or anything else, to assert themselves as so big, and prove so empty? And now this discovery of woman's falsehood was quite too much for him. The world ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures from being indifferent to them; it is this which has excited so curious an interest ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the private sanctum of James Glieve, he saw a stout red-faced man, with a suspicion of side whiskers and a slight appearance of ferocity, seated at a desk. On his right, and insignificant by comparison, was a small grey-haired ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... of the plainest of men, shy, awkward, insignificant looking, with a long-featured, pleasant face, and red hair. Warren had told his wife at various times that George was "a prince," and physically, at least, Rachael found him disappointing, especially beside her own handsome husband. She knew ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... couple than the cartwright Molnar and his wife can seldom be seen. When, on Sunday, the pair went to church through the main street of Kisfalu, an insignificant village in the Pesth county, every one looked after them, though every child, nay, every cur in the hamlet, knew them and, during the five years since their marriage, might have become accustomed to the spectacle. But it seemed ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... they have been materially assisted. It is a great and an unanswerable argument in favour of a Providence that we constantly perceive that the most beneficial results are brought about by the least worthy and most insignificant agents. The purest religions would never have been established had they not been supported by sinners who felt the burthen of the old faith; and the most free and enlightened governments are often generated by the discontented, the disappointed, and the dissolute. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... right, girl," said her father. "We can thank Captain Meagher. The frustration and the exposure of that plot has increased our reputation an hundredfold. Heretofore, the Catholic population had been regarded as an insignificant element, but when the ambitions of the enemy to secure their cooperation were discovered, the value of the Catholics to the country ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... one's-self up to reverie. How terrible, we thought, must have been the scene on the mountain slopes when the enormous craters of the Teng'ger range were belching forth their death-dealing streams of lava, their showers of ashes and stones and choking sulphurous fumes! How insignificant was man before the powerful agencies of Nature! How bright were the occasional stars one saw wherever there was a break in the trees that lined our path! How wonderful that each of those stars, those planets, might be peopled by beings ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... be doing some good. I know I am of use in various ways. No doubt there is a danger of a woman's head being turned, when she reflects that a powerful Minister governing a kingdom has not considered her too insignificant to advise him; and I am sensible of it. I am, I assure you, dearest, on my guard against it. That would not attach me to him, as his homely friendliness does. He is the most amiable, cheerful, benignant of men; he has no feeling of an enemy, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a vast family of nations all of which had sprung from one stock, and of which the Babylonians and Assyrians were the most powerful representatives. The Israelites were, politically speaking, a comparatively insignificant folk surrounded by mighty empires which had attained a high degree of civilisation. The excavations which are now proceeding in oriental lands, especially the territories occupied by ancient Assyria, ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... hastily explored in 1820. These mounds have long formed the subject of animated controversies; but it was not before the year 1842 that any serious attempt was made to penetrate beneath the grass that covered them. In this year M. Botta, the French consul at Mosul, made some insignificant opening, but without discovering any remarkable remains; and rumours having reached him from Khorsabad, a few miles off, of some remains there, he caused some vigorous excavations to be made there, and, aided ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... "oil of St. John," which, like the mistletoe, heals all wounds, and is, perhaps, the mistletoe itself in its glorified aspect. Thus it is easy to understand how a title like the Golden Bough, so little descriptive of its usual appearance on the tree, should have been applied to the seemingly insignificant parasite. Further, we can perhaps see why in antiquity mistletoe was believed to possess the remarkable property of extinguishing fire, and why in Sweden it is still kept in houses as a safeguard against conflagration. Its fiery nature marks it out, on homoeopathic ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... him, and curiosity urged him to do something other than to stand staring at the saloon front. He recalled his plan to sojourn in San Andreas a few days, and incidently to ride over to the Lawrence ranch—frankly, to have another visit with Dorothy. He shrugged his shoulders. That idea now seemed insignificant, compared with ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... says Mr. Barham, that for libel on the Queen among the rest; but the grand attempt on the part of the Whigs to crush the paper was not made till the 6th of May, 1821. A short and insignificant paragraph, containing some observations upon the Hon. Henry Grey Bennett, a brother of Lord Tankerville's, was selected for attack, as involving a breach of privilege; in consequence of which the printer, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the disastrous diseases of brain and spinal cord, is surely the gravest material danger which exists. How small compared with that the thousands of deaths from crime and accidents and wrecks! how insignificant the harvest of human life which any war may reap! And all this can ultimately be avoided, not only by abstinence, but by strict hygiene and rigorous social reorganization. At this moment we have only to ask how much ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... and misty generality which consoled Cigarette for an abandonment of her sworn revenge which she felt was a weakness utterly unworthy of her, and too much like that inconsequent weathercock, that useless, insignificant part of creation, those objects of her supreme derision and contempt, those frivolous trifles which she wondered the good God had ever troubled himself to make—namely, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... harm—except perhaps when I stole the game—I fear not for the future. I shall wait patiently until my Saviour chooses to take me to himself. I can well imagine that there is not much space in heaven; but I believe that there is a small place for one so insignificant as me, where I can wait the coming of Magde, Nanna, Father, Ragnar, and all the little ones, that is if they do not hold ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... their victim, until at length the slight wound becomes a sore of great magnitude, and never heals. Mortification at length ensues, and the death of the snake is then certain. You can see that if the insects are weak and insignificant, nature teaches them a method of avenging their wrongs, and they are not slow to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... she formed was nothing else than the assassination of Peter. She saw no other way by which she could save herself from the dangers which surrounded her, and make sure of retaining her power. Her brother, the Czar John, was growing weaker and more insignificant every day; while Peter and his party, who looked upon her, she knew, with very unfriendly feelings, were growing stronger and stronger. If Peter continued to live, her speedy downfall, she was convinced, was sure. She accordingly determined that ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... pressing the call for ministers, that the large and flourishing church of Orleans, in a letter written the last day of February, proclaimed their expectation of establishing a theological school to supply their own wants and those of the adjacent regions; and it is no insignificant mark of the power with which the reformatory movement still coursed on, that the canons of the great church of Sainte Croix had given notice of their intention to attend the lectures that were to be delivered![27] In such an encouraging strain ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... have done with myself, or rather with my own insignificant present history, and come to that of the Hare. It impressed me a good deal at the time, which is not long ago, so much indeed that I communicated the facts to Jorsen. He ordered me to publish them, and what Jorsen ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... it has remained the most barbaric and least progressive of all states. Its roads and means of communication remained up till the last quarter of the nineteenth century much as they had been in the days of Osman; except along an insignificant strip of sea-coast railways were non-existent; it was bankrupt in finance and in morals, and did not contain a single seed that might ripen into progress or civilisation. Mesopotamia was once the most fertile of all lands, ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... sinewy, and muscles grown flabby from lack of active exercise, for me to lift a virgin sheet of stone from the ground to the surface of my writing-desk without a derrick, but these are, after all, minor difficulties, and I shall let no such insignificant obstacles stand between me and the great purpose I have in mind. I shall persist in the face of all in the writing of this Autobiography if for no worthier object than to provide occupation for my leisure hours which, in these patriarchal days to which I have ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... beautiful buildings in an ancient city were always the temples, colonnades, and other public structures. The houses of private individuals, for the most part, had few pretensions to beauty. They were insignificant in appearance and were often built with only one story. From a distance, however, their whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs, shining brightly under the warm sun, must have made an ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... dingy lodging-house sitting-room to see the doctor, wondering much that any one could be interested in such an insignificant matter as her health, now that her treasure was safe. She went reluctantly, murmuring that she was well enough—quite well now; and had hardly tottered into the room, when she sank down upon the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... mated with. Was it the tall youth with the commonplace good looks opposite to her? Linforth detected now a certain flashiness in his well grooming which he had not noticed before. Or was it the fat insignificant young man three seats ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... parents or preachers, eminent lawyers or business men, great politicians or writers of books. Arrogant and sweeping, sparing nothing sacred—young. Ignorant, confused and groping, almost wistful—new. They are becoming no insignificant part in ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... thoughts was interrupted by a cautious knocking at her door. She rose suddenly, startled by any sound in the stillness of her room. She rose, and threw herself into a low chair near the fire. She flung her beautiful head back upon the soft cushions, and took a book from the table near her. Insignificant as this action was, it spoke very plainly. It spoke very plainly of ever-recurring fears—of fatal necessities for concealment—of a mind that in its silent agonies was ever alive to the importance of outward effect. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... suddenly my letter closed, just at the very smilax of that awful adventure. But really, Clytie, so many things have happened since, and every minute is so full of pleasures or catastrophes, that, as I look back, that one seems almost insignificant. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said Heriot, "for your father's son I would do much; and yet truly, if I know myself, I would do as much and risk as much, for the sake of justice, in the case of a much more insignificant person, as I have ventured for yours. But as we shall not meet for some time, I must commit to your own wisdom the farther ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... not been in any way wiser or better for their existence. They were born to eat as long as they could eat, and when they could eat no longer they died. Not that in this respect they were a whit less insignificant than the generality of their fellow-creatures. Most of us now present," continued the youthful orator, "are only born in order to die; and the chief consolation of our wounded pride in admitting this ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so blindly believed in her; the possibility of deception, of treason, had never presented itself to his mind. He could not understand. This young Frenchman, almost the most insignificant of all his wife's acquaintances! The fear was borne in upon him that perhaps she had never been worthy of the trust he had reposed in her. To complete it all, he had been hoping in a few months to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... us it is not so much great sorrows, disease, or death, but rather the little "daily dyings" which cloud over the sunshine of life. Many of our troubles are insignificant in themselves, and might easily ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... they know them all. There are times when their eyes take in a rival from head to foot; they can guess the slightest movement of a foot beneath a gown, the almost imperceptible motion of the waist; they know the significance of things which, to a man, seem insignificant. Two women observing each other play one of the choicest scenes of comedy that ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Military Service Bill, establishing compulsion for all men married or single, Colonel CRAIG made a vain appeal to Mr. REDMOND to get the measure extended to Ireland. Nothing would do more to show the world that the recent rebellion was only the work of an insignificant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... the aid of my faithful ally, the servant. After delays which half maddened me with impatience, insignificant though they were, she contrived to fulfil my wishes. One afternoon, while Mr. Sherwin was away at business, and while his wife had gone out, I succeeded in gaining admission to the garden at the back of the house, where Margaret was then occupied ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... property was sold at auction, the whole amounting to about $12. Among the assets was a lot of old music valued at ten florins. It is uncertain whether this included the unpublished manuscript or not. In personal appearance Schubert was somewhat insignificant. He was about five feet one inch high, his figure stout and clumsy, with a round back and shoulders, perhaps due to incessant writing, fleshy arms, thick, short fingers. His cheeks were full, his eyebrows bushy and his nose insignificant. His hair was black, and remarkably thick ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and still spinning, shook out her hair, and flung herself backwards, till it streamed and eddied with the whirlwind of her dance. In her fantastic dress (she wore her colours, the red and black) her very womanhood had vanished, she was a mere insignificant morsel of flesh and blood, inspired by the dizzy, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... a very helpless and insignificant object, whatever may have been the terror which he inspired while he was alive. As long as Henry continued to breathe, the attendants around him paid him great deference, and observed every possible form of obsequious respect, for they did not know but ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... little compositions lately. They are insignificant, but it is impossible to find a technical error in them. Such precision was remarkable for a child who had no idea of the science of harmony. About that time some one had the notion that I should hear an orchestra. So they took me to a symphony concert and my mother held me in her arms near the ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... heard: the last, as imagination pictured her lover's certain physical suffering. But of all agonies, none could approximate to that induced by Death. When that rumour reached her, she realized that hope had given her some measure of support, and how insignificant all other trouble is beside that awful blank, that mystery, whose single revelation is the houseless soul's unreturning flight from the only world we are sure of. When the contradicting rumour came, she clutched at hope and clung ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... coalition changed its base, and attacked M. Rouvier, the prime minister. He was outvoted in the Chamber on some insignificant question; and having no parliamentary majority, he was forced to resign. By no efforts could M. Grevy get anyone to take his place. Once he thought he had persuaded M. Clemenceau, a Radical leader, to form a ministry; but his party gave him ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Ninon," said Bel, "soon became sadly bewildered, for there were so many people all talking at once, and they pushed against and jostled her as if she were very small and insignificant indeed, and she began to think that her mother was right, and that she was only a child; and she grew frightened and wished herself at home again. But she kept fast hold of the hand of her brother whom the saints loved, and felt that as long as he was with her she was safe. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... reflected bitterly that Annalise might quite well have been left at home. Quite well? A thousand times better. What had she done but whine during her passive period? And now that she was active, a volcano in full activity hurling forth hot streams of treachery on two most harmless heads, she, the insignificant, the base-born, the empty-brained, was actually going to be able to ruin the plans of the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... is smoothed up, her hat on straight and her belt all right behind, the other cares and responsibilities of this life sink at once and forever into insignificant nothingness. ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... emphatically, for her, a Beatific Vision. It is vain for us to endeavor to fathom the exquisite happiness which this vision of God's love produces in the soul. For, if the mere smile of a king has the power of infusing joy into the heart of a poor and insignificant person, what shall we say of the smile of God, who is the King of kings? What shall we say of this affectionate, paternal embrace? What shall we say of the joy, the happiness that flow into the soul, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... the very technical nature of the conversation; and Sir Philip exchanged a congratulatory smile with Margaret over her friend's success. For the delight of finding a congenial spirit had brought the crimson into Janetta's olive cheeks and the brilliance to her dark eyes: she had looked insignificant when she went in to dinner; she was splendidly handsome at dessert. Mr. Adair noticed her flashing, transitory beauty, and said to himself that Margaret's taste was unimpeachable; it was just like his own; he ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... married, but to a girl who, though respectable, was poor; and in consequence he was thoroughly frightened at the thought of losing his means of support. But though menaced with arrest, he was sufficiently insignificant to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... entirely for myself and neglected my correspondence to such a point that folks ceased to write to me. As a matter of fact I was a very sick man, under the iron rule of doctors and nurses and such like oppressors; but, except to explain why I had lost touch with everybody, that is a matter of insignificant importance. The one or two letters I did receive from Lady Auriol did not stimulate my interest in The Romance. I gathered that she was in continuous relations with General Lackaday, who, it appeared, was in the best of health. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... debate was in progress the advocates of the beaver spoke of the territory as the beaver territory, but it never reached a point of universal adoption. It was well known that the gopher abounded, and his name was introduced as a competitor with the beaver; but being a rather insignificant animal, and his nature being destructive, and in no way useful, he was objected to by many, as too useless and undignified to become an emblem of the coming great state,—for we all had, at that early day, full confidence that Minnesota was destined to be a great and prominent state. Nothing ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... play. There are only two parts in it—the bride and bridegroom. The best man is only a walking gentleman. With the exception of a crying father and a snivelling mother, the rest are SUPERS who have to dress well and have to PAY for their insignificant parts in the shape of costly presents." I did not care for the theatrical slang, but ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... brittleness of the feathers, length and size of the claws, and the scales of the legs and feet assuming a ragged and corny appearance. Your cock and hens should be as near two years old as possible. Hens will lay at a year old, but the eggs are always insignificant in size, and the layers giddy and unsteady sitters. The hen-bird is in her prime for breeding at three years old, and will continue so, under favourable circumstances, for two years longer; after which she will decline. Crowing ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... inspect a snapshot that Ferdy produces from his pocketbook; and, while it looks about as insignificant as most of 'em, I pumps up some gushy remarks which seem to make a ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... induction coil. When the discharge is sent through the tube, there proceeds from the anode—that is, the wire which is connected with the positive pole of the battery—certain bands of light, varying in colour with the colour of the glass. But these are insignificant in comparison with the brilliant glow which shoots from the cathode, or negative wire. This glow excites brilliant phosphorescence in glass and many substances, and these "cathode rays," as they are called, were observed and studied by Hertz; and more ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... enchantment. Little by little that too faded, until at last, far away, through a rift in the ranks of the giants, but one remained gilded by the glory of a dream that continued with it after the others. Heretofore it had seemed to us an insignificant peak, apparently overtopped by many, but by this token we knew it to be the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... peaceful little town, cut in two in its entire length by a broad, paved street. Its modest inhabitants cannot possibly look any more stupid or insignificant than ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... the hypocotyl which was left free was rather old, and therefore not highly heliotropic. A filament had been fixed to the midrib of one of the cotyledons, and the movement of the whole seedling was traced during two days. The circumnutation of the hypocotyl is quite insignificant compared with that of the cotyledons. These rise up vertically at night and come into close contact; so that they may be said to sleep. This seedling was so old that a very small true leaf had been developed, which at night was completely hidden by the closed cotyledons. On Sept. 24th, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... insignificant individual, I was put into a waterman's boat with my chest and bed, and was sent on board. On reporting myself, I was told by the commanding officer not to bother him, but to go to my mess, where I should be taken care of. On descending a ladder to the lower deck, I looked about for ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... because a battle won or lost might entirely break off a negociation of peace, which in all probability was near being concluded. He added, that two years before, the confederates might have taken Arras and Cambray, instead of amusing themselves with the insignificant conquests of Aire, Bethune, and St. Venant. The duke of Devonshire said he was, by proximity of blood, more concerned than any other in the reputation of the duke of Ormond; and therefore could not help expressing his surprise, that any one would dare ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... ever dreamed such an insignificant fellow as the rice-pounder could surpass the venerable scholar in a religious insight, but the Fifth Patriarch saw at once an Enlightened Soul expressed in those lines; therefore he made up his mind to give the Kachaya to the writer, in whom he ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... intrinsic and comparative value. Still, in great things and small, (though each in its own weight and measure,) the truth is ever dear for its own sake, and should be for its own sake pursued. And it must never be forgotten, that one truth, in itself perhaps too minute and insignificant for its worth to be felt in the calculation, when probabilities are being estimated, may be a guiding star to other truths of great value, which, without its leading, might have remained neglected and unknown. In itself, a false statement, though generally acquiesced in, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... named curtly a sum which was in itself so insignificant that any other person than Heyst would have exclaimed at it. And even Heyst could hardly keep incredulity out of his politely modulated voice as he asked if it was a fact that Morrison had not ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... own? Three or four hours lost in a storm—what may they not mean to more than one human heart on this train? The Supreme Arbiter plays His hand, if you wish to call it that, with reason and intent. To someone, somewhere, the most insignificant occurrence may mean life or death. And ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... dots, the little company trailed a slow way across this ocean of green. Nothing on its face was more insignificant than they. The birds in the trees and the bees in the flowers had a more important place in its economy. One afternoon David riding in the rear crested a ridge and saw them a mile in advance, the road stretching before and behind them in a curving thread. The tops of the wagons ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... their consciences, in the enjoyment of robust health, which she knew Miss Pecksniff would be glad to hear. That she had received Miss Pecksniff's note with unalloyed delight, because she never had attached the least importance to the paltry and insignificant jealousies with which herself and circle had been assailed; otherwise than as she had found them, in the contemplation, a harmless source of innocent mirth. That she would joyfully attend Miss Pecksniff's bridal; and that ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... command. The complaints made by the officers and soldiers stationed at Damietta compelled General Lanusse, the commander, to remonstrate against the alteration of a bulletin, by which an engagement with a body of Arabs was represented as an insignificant affair, and the loss trifling, though the General had stated the action to be one of importance, and the loss considerable. The misstatement, in consequence of his spirited ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... matter?' she said, finally, with her grand air; 'I have only to marry my granddaughters creditably, and prevent my grandson going to the dogs, and then my mission on this insignificant planet will be accomplished. What new form that particular modification of molecules which you call Lady Maulevrier may take afterwards is hidden in the great mystery ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of such labor and sacrifices made its appearance in the world, which was on January 1, 1831, it was, in point of size, insignificant enough. It did not look as if its voice would ever reach beyond the small dark chamber where it saw the light. Picture, oh! reader, a wee sheet with four columns to the page, measuring fourteen inches one way and nine and a quarter the other, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... her, for my father and hers did not get on very well together. The Marquis de Laurebourg looked on us as too insignificant to—" ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... she had run away: there was no evading that. An insignificant boy thousands of miles away had sent out a cry for help, and she, the proud and blessed, who had always considered herself quite as spunky as another person, had bolted in a panic. And she had bolted too fast, it seemed, to consider even that, with that cry, there had come a new element ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... I, a lonely and insignificant person, may say or do. What is my protest against the common current, the race to which I belong is taking and (what grieves me more), which the missionary societies seem to follow? Even if a respectable number protested it would not be of any use. Yet ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... the war; and the treaty of peace with the United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that the end at which they aimed had been ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... Next to friendly, insignificant little Miss Murray was Miss Cottle, a large, dark, morose girl, with untidy hair, and untidy clothes, and a bad complexion. Miss Cottle was unapproachable and insolent in her manner, from a sense of superiority. She was connected, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... top of the ridge" (most insignificant "ridge," made by hand; Wilhelmina satirically says), Tourist Zollner can discern with pleasure "a considerable Brook,"—visible, not audible, smooth Stream, or chain of meres and lakelets, flowing languidly northward towards ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception of these classes of society, however, and a few weak and insignificant persons, we do not think the attempt at imitation to which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement; and we have chosen it for ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Till now she had always thought that she loved mountains. The desert suddenly made them insignificant, almost mean to her. She turned her eyes towards the flat spaces. It was in them that majesty lay, mystery, power, and all deep and significant things. In the midst of the river bed, and quite near, rose a round ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... instinctive cares of reproduction and nourishment. But let the eye draw near, and endeavour to see; and at once the least phenomenon of all becomes overpoweringly complex; we are confronted by the enigma of intellect, of destiny, will, aim, means, causes; the incomprehensible organisation of the most insignificant act of life. ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... inconsiderable in number, not amounting to more than about six species. The freshwater kinds, including those inhabiting ditches, ponds, &c., are more numerous; but, except the unio, all are small and insignificant. Some species occur abundantly in situations which are perfectly dry for at least six months of the year, and seem, like many snails, to have the power of sustaining life for a long period in a ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... their railway journey successfully, and Farquharson managed to explain their destination to a porter privately, and asked him to get a cab for them. The man was either stupid or was disappointed at receiving an insignificant tip, since Farquharson was not one to waste money unnecessarily; for he gave the direction "Asylum" to the driver in a voice that McConnachie must have been deaf not to have heard distinctly. Farquharson glanced at ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... over a small summer house and converting a cheap affair into one of some pretensions, remember that one of the most telling points is the character of your porch railing. So at once remove the cheap one with its small, upright slats and the insignificant and frail top rail, and have a solid porch railing (or porch fence) built with broad, top rail. Then place all around porch, resting on iron brackets, rail-flower boxes, the tops of these level with the top of the rail, and paint the boxes the colour of the house ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... ones we are to deal with now appeal to the moral imagination. The facts that these depend on, and which are practically new discoveries for the modern world, are the insignificance of the earth, when compared with the universe, of which it is visibly and demonstrably an integral but insignificant fragment; the enormous period of his existence for which man has had no religious history, and has been, so far as we can tell, not a religious being at all; and the vast majority of the race that are still ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... Union of our confederated States—that Union which binds us together as one people, and which for sixty years has been our shield and protection against every danger. In the eyes of the world and of posterity how trivial and insignificant will be all our internal divisions and struggles compared with the preservation of this Union of the States in all its vigor and with all its countless blessings! No patriot would foment and excite geographical and sectional divisions. No lover of his country would ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... him there to go back to my room the steward was finishing dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him in some insignificant conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character of his whiskers; but my object was to give him an opportunity for a good look at my cabin. And then I could at last shut, with a clear conscience, the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the recessed part. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... their stings. But my hopes are disappointed: the duties of maternity speak in too imperious a voice for them to risk their lives and wipe out the insult in a mortal duel. The whole thing is confined to hostile demonstrations and a few insignificant cuffs. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... themselves upon the action of the disturbing agencies,—effects of the irregular winds upon the distribution of heat and rain, and upon the action of lands and seas, mountains and plains. Though such disturbances are comparatively insignificant in the motions of the planets, yet in the weather they are often more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and Pompeius had thus at least a tacit understanding as early as the beginning of 702, the alliance might be held as formally concluded, when at the consular elections for 703 there was elected not Cato himself indeed, but—along with an insignificant man belonging to the majority of the senate—one of the most decided adherents of Cato, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Marcellus was no furious zealot and still less a genius, but a steadfast and strict aristocrat, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage, when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim. By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble counsels, so paltry a sum as Threepence in the eyes of a financier, so insignificant an article as Tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars of a commercial empire that circled the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Maryland went on—'an essay on the monotony of piety. Poor man! he did not know what he was talking about. The glorious liberty of the children of God!—that was something beyond his experience;—and the joy of their service. It is what redeems everything else from monotony. It glorifies what is insignificant, and dignifies what is mean, and lifts what is low, and turns the poor little business steps of every day into rounds of Heaven's golden ladder. I verily think I could have hanged myself long ago, for the very monotony of all things else, if it had not been for the life ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... sky, a broad flat sheet of gold, and on its height the monument, perched against the quivering air, was a purple shaft, its gesture proud, haughty, exultant. Suddenly he saw in front of him, moving with quick, excited steps, Mrs. Brandon, an absurdly insignificant figure against ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Revenue Laws have in their operation been grievous to all the Colonies & this in a particular Manner. Our own property has been extorted from us, and applied to the purpose of rendering our provincial & only Legislature an insignificant Body; and by providing for the Executive & judiciary Powers in the Province independent of the People, to place them under the absolute Power & Controul of a Minister of State. Our righteous and stedfast opposition to this System of Slavery, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... pebbles, but absolute identity. It affirms that if we put one pebble to two pebbles, those very pebbles are three. The objects, therefore, being the very same, and the mere assertion that "objects are themselves" being insignificant, it seems but natural to consider the proposition, Two and one is equal to three, as asserting mere identity of signification ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... was, "What is the use of a child? It may become a man!" When Galvani discovered that a frog's leg twitched when placed in contact with different metals, it could scarcely have been imagined that so apparently insignificant a fact could have led to important results. Yet therein lay the germ of the electric telegraph, which binds the intelligence of continents together, and, probably before many years have elapsed will "put a girdle round ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... ribbon of the Thames bound bridge to bridge running thematically through a symphony of grey and green and gold. A consciousness of power leapt high within Paul. Only the sun was above him, the sun and the suave immensity of space. How insignificant an episode was a human life, how futile and inept; a tiny note in a monstrous score. Below in the teeming streets moved a million such points, each one but a single note in this vast orchestration, a bird note, faint, inaudible 'mid the music of the spheres. Yet ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... have seen, upwards of 1400 miles along the shores of the Mediterranean, there should be no river of any magnitude or importance for commerce: the Bagrada and the Catada alone are noticed by ancient historians, and both of these were insignificant streams. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... thousand ways, as if by a malicious agency, we mortals are woefully put out and tormented; and that, too, by things in themselves so exceedingly trivial, that it would seem almost impiety to ascribe them to the august gods. No; there must exist some greatly inferior spirits; so insignificant, comparatively, as to be overlooked by the supernal powers; and through them it must be, that we are thus grievously annoyed. At any rate; such a theory would supply a hiatus in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... comparison between her and my son, than between anything in the world; however, if it is so, it is so, and I mean to say no more about it, and to be sure he's as contented to think so as if he was as mere an insignificant animal ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... these are made into brute animals, lions, tigers, cats, dogs, monkeys, etc. This is what the ancients called Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls; a doctrine which is still held by the natives of India, who scruple to destroy the life even of the most insignificant animal, not knowing but it may be one of their relations in an ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of the Socialist Revolutionary party in the Revolution of 1905, when it was a powerful peasant movement, demanding the immediate application of the maximum Socialist programme. Now an insignificant ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... destroyed by destiny, by your own understanding, and by Kesava. Vasava's dart is lost, having effected the slaughter of Ghatotkacha who was as insignificant as straw. Karna, and my sons, as all the other kings, through his highly impolitic act, have already entered the abode of Yama. Tell me now how the battle once more raged between the Kurus and the Pandavas after the fall of Hidimva's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... scene was, Colonel Lockwood's simplicity and courage were much more serviceable to his colleagues than their own inept coup de theatre would have been if he had not spoiled it. It was plain to every one that he had acted in entire good faith, without a thought as to these apparently insignificant little books being of any importance or having caused me or anybody else any trouble, and that he was wounded in his most sensitive spot by the construction my Times letter had put on his action. And in Colonel Lockwood's case one saw the case of his party ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad" means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable",—the antithesis "good" and "EVIL" is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:—it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and dust of the manoeuvring will be over, I heartily wish that our losses in the retreat may prove innocent and as insignificant as they are reported ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the rhymed tragedies of the next generation. Massinger diverges in the opposite direction. The metre is felt enough and only just enough to give a more stately step to rather florid prose. It is one of his marks that a line frequently ends by some insignificant 'of' or 'from,' so as to exclude the briefest possible pause in reading. Thus, to take an example pretty much at random, the following instance might be easily read without observing that it was blank ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... of demarcation between allied species have grown more and more distinct, and it is usually only by going back to fossil ages that we can supply the missing links of continuity. In the desperate struggle for existence no peculiarity, physical or psychical, however slight, has been too insignificant for natural selection to seize and enhance; and the myriad fantastic forms and hues of animal and vegetal life illustrate the seeming capriciousness of its workings. Psychical variations have never been unimportant since the appearance of the first faint pigment-spot ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... not the Consul return without an answer? Did not Mr. Rosenthal say that the English Government had laughed at his letter?" Altogether; there were some seven or eight questions, but the others were insignificant, and I do not remember them. A few days before a Greek priest had arrived from the coast with a letter for his Majesty: Whether these statements were contained in the missive; or were merely a pretext invented by Theodore himself, to give a reason for the ill treatment he intended to ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... "pride and prejudice establish an awful gulf between man and man!" We may rest assured that, with Marat, a veterinary surgeon in the Comte d'Artois's stables, with Robespierre, a protege of the bishop of Arras, with Danton, an insignificant lawyer in Mery-sur-Seine, and with many others beside, self-esteem, in frequent encounters, bled in the same fashion. The concentrated bitterness with which Madame Roland's memoirs are imbued has no other cause. "She could not forgive society[4338] for the inferior position she had so ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Mayhew, was. A woman is an "inspiration" or a "millstone according to what she is," this stranger, this disturber of her peace, from whom it seemed she could not escape, had not only asserted but proved by showing her a lady she would have passed as plain and insignificant, but who nevertheless possessed some sweet potency that won and cheered all hearts, and who, she was compelled to admit, was positively beautiful as she sat at the piano, radiant with her purpose to cause gladness in others. Miss Burton had created sunshine enough to enliven ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... lamented that a question so insignificant when viewed in its practical effects on the people of Kansas, whether decided one way or the other, should have kindled such a flame of excitement throughout the country. This reflection may prove to be a lesson of wisdom and of warning for our future guidance. Practically considered, the question ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... by this particular train were returning from abroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly with insignificant persons of various occupations and degrees, picked up at the different stations nearer town. All of them seemed weary, and most of them had sleepy eyes and a shivering expression, while their complexions ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... at all in such a situation. But we get accustomed, in an incredibly short time, to the most violent changes; and calamities that seem insupportable, when looked at from a distance, lose half their power if met and resisted with fortitude. The last may, indeed, be too insignificant a word to be applied to all of the party on the wreck, on the occasion of which we are writing, though no one of them all betrayed fears that were troublesome. Of Mulford it is unnecessary to speak. His deportment had been quiet, thoughtful, and ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... their parishioners, were a new world to me, whilst they, the clergy, men of piety and learning, considered themselves as out of the world altogether. The population was thin and scattered, the mode of living primitive in the extreme, and the visit of a stranger, so insignificant as myself, quite enough to make a great sensation in these secluded parts. I found the ministers ingenuous, free from all puritanism, and generally well informed.... The examination of the parish books was also a labour of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... British Minister to the Chilian Republic, by whose joint exertions the Government was induced to admit—that national honour was involved in fulfilling national obligations; though an infinitesimal view of either the one or the other was certainly taken when awarding me the insignificant sum ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald |
