"Modicum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Truc. 858 ff. is egregiously tiresome in the reading, but in action could have been made to produce a modicum of amusement if presented in the broad burlesque spirit that we believe was almost invariably employed. This gives us a clue to the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... it can not as much as purge its own channels. For what is the ballot box, I ask again, but a modern vehicle of corruption and debasement? The ballot box, believe me, can not add a cubit to your frame, nor can it shed a modicum of light on the deeper problems of life. Of course, it is the exponent of the will of the majority, that is to say, the will of the Party that has more money at its disposal. The majority, and Iblis, and Juhannam—ah, come out with ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... in character only, for we often disapprove of a character whose attraction we are powerless to resist; not in intellect alone, for men more rational fail of stirring us as these unconsciously do. In what, then? In life itself; not that modicum of it, indeed, which suffices simply to keep the machine moving, but in the life principle, the power which causes psychical change; which makes the individual something distinct from all other individuals, a being capable of ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... and one more or one less, what did it matter? Of the lot she preferred the string of hoops. It was quaint, there was nothing philistine about it and probably it had not cost so very much. The emerald was different. It was a stone that would please any woman with plenty of money and a modicum of taste. Probably it had cost a thousand on Fifth Avenue, in which case it would fetch a hundred on Broadway. Or if not, then the sapphire would. Either or both she would hock very willingly. But not the hoop-ring and not the opal, unless she ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... man, amid howls, ended his almost indistinguishable peroration, the unmoved chairman stepped forward again to try to win back for the next speaker that modicum of quiet attention which he, at all events, had the art of gaining and of keeping. As she came forward this time one of her auditors looked at the Woman Leader in the Crusade with new eyes—not with sympathy, rather with a vague ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... reached home, and I left the komatik at the hospital door, I made out 'Senath dancing in an agitatedly aimless fashion on our platform. She was also waving her arms about. For a moment it crossed my mind that she had lost her modicum of wits, but as she was immediately joined by Tryphena, I gave up the theory as untenable, and continued to hasten up the hill to the Home. Our boiler had sprung, not one but many leaks, and the precious hot water destined for the cleansing of forty ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... dissolvi posset. Haec 75 nequaquam loquor ad gratiam. Amavi vivum nec minus amo mortuum; quod enim in illo amabam non periit. Si supputem quicquid ille dare mihi paratus erat, immensa fuit eius in me liberalitas; si ad calculum vocemus quod accepi, sane modicum est. 80 Unicum modo sacerdotium in me contulit, immo non dedit sed obtrusit constanter recusanti, quod esset eius generis ut grex pastorem requireret, quem ego linguae ignarus praestare non poteram. Id cum vertisset ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... the satisfaction I saw no profit in wasting that modicum of spleen, when I might double it by deliberately reading her effusion and knowingly casting it into the dust. One always can make excuses to oneself, for curiosity. Consequently I halted, around a corner in this ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... a hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... however, that despite the transfer of the business devolving formerly upon the Council into the hands of the specially constituted departments of government, the Council does still, through the agency of its committees, perform a modicum of actual service. Of principal importance among the committees is the Judicial Committee, which hears appeals in ecclesiastical cases and renders final verdict in all appeals coming from tribunals outside the United Kingdom. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... per aquam satis tenuem, haud profundam. Ibi, sicut et in alijs multis Insulis, rex non nascitur sed eligitur per partes terrae: et est haec vna de quindecim nominatis Regionibus conquisitionis Ogeri. Ista, cum modicum declinet a circulo terrae sub AEquatore, patitur in anno duas aestates, et duas hyemes, si tamen hyems aliqua dici debeat, et non magis aestas, quia nullus hic dies anni caret ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... daresay you two young men would rather sail together than cruise in different ships, and as I have a modicum of interest in high quarters, though I do not boast of much, if you wish, Captain Headland, to apply for Harry, it is possible that I may induce the Lords Commissioners to grant your request, unless Harry would ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... generally cooked in it was leg of beef, with sliced potato, bits of onion chopped down, and a modicum of white pepper and salt, With just enough of water to cover "the elements." When stewed slowly the meat became very tender; and the whole yielded a capital dish, such as a very Soyer might envy. It was partaken of with a zest that, no doubt, was a very ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... something; Mr. Steer also feels for what he sees; and this emotion is the point of departure for his pictures. That he seems almost completely to have lost such power as he ever had of giving to his vision a coherent and self-supporting form is unfortunate; still, he does convey to us some modicum of the thrill provoked in him by his vision ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... present in all parts of the body. And, further, in distinguishing as he does between existence "as it is in itself" and existence "as it is revealed to us," and in shutting us up to the latter, he seems to rob us even of the modicum of externality that he ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... glimpse of the life of that singular Court; the attempts at aping the inimitable manners of the ancien regime; the pompous nullity of the second and third Consuls; the tawdry magnificence of the costumes; the studied avoidance of any word that implied even a modicum of learning or a distant acquaintance with politics; the nervous preoccupation about Napoleon's moods and whims; the graceful manners of Josephine that rarely failed to charm away his humours, except when she herself had been outrageously slighted ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... truth had rise, —Thy prior truth, at last discovered none, Whence now the second suffers detriment. What good of giving knowledge if, because {520} O' the manner of the gift, its profit fail? And why refuse what modicum of help Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible I' the face of truth—truth absolute, uniform? Why must I hit of this and miss of that, {525} Distinguish just as I be weak or strong, And not ask of thee and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... can do my day's work yet. Ah! an' it 'ud be well if that gomerl, Renny Potter, 'ud do his'n. See here, now, Mester Adrian, nowt but a pint of wine left; and it the last," pointing her withered finger, erratically as the palsy shook it, at a cut-glass decanter where a modicum of port wine sparkled richly under the facets. "And he not back yet, whatever mischief's agate wi' him, though he kens yo like your meat at one." And then circumstances obliged her to add: "He is landing now, but it's ower late i' ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... can forgive your huge hotel expenses; Your beef was rightly of a super-cut; A modicum of wine does whet the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... in the round hole of modern journalism he was something of a square and stubborn peg. He had become a reporter because he had no taste for business; and a newspaper office is the natural refuge for clever young men with a modicum of education, and the need of providing an income. He was not considered a "star" on the force; and his city editor had been known to tear his hair at the missed opportunities in Pevensey's copy, and hand it to one of the more glowing stylists ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... last six stories comprising the seven in this little collection of Stories of the Old Missions, all but one have, as a basis, some modicum, larger or smaller, of historical fact, the tale of Juana alone being wholly fanciful, although with an historical background. The first story of the series may be considered as introductory to ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... wave after wave of dunes, treeless, and apparently almost devoid of vegetation, for the little there was, was confined to the deep hollows between. A short distance away a fair-sized bush offered a modicum of shade, and here we rested for the day for we had planned to travel only in the cool of the night as long as the moon served. And here Inyati showed me how to make water from the young green t'samma, taking those the size of an orange only, and roasting them in the ashes, ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... the head cashier the next morning when I opened my little modicum of an account. He had received orders to pay my drafts without reference to my balance. My checks, when I had overdrawn, were to be privately shown to Mr. Fauntleroy. Do many young men who start in business find their prosperous superiors ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... whitish; and ends in a more or less perfect white. When the action is continued long enough, the tube is filled with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the application of proper means may be rendered individually visible. [Footnote: M. Morren was mistaken in supposing that a modicum of sulphurous acid, in the drying tubes, had any share in the production of the 'actinic clouds' described by me. A beautiful case of molecular instability in the presence of light is furnished by peroxide of chlorine as proved by Professor ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... two or three facts that ought to be remembered in this connection. One is, that God is often pleased to own even a small modicum of truth, encumbered though it be with a great deal of error. Such may have been Finney's case in particular. He preached the Gospel; that was the secret of his genuine success. Men were simply frightened by his lurid descriptions ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... now by what arguments Dr. Voss, at first merely my benefactor, sparing me a portion of his small modicum, at length persuaded me to become his wife. His wife he called it, I called it; for we went through the religious ceremony too much slighted at the time, and as we were both Lutherans, and M. de la Tourelle had pretended to be of the reformed religion, a divorce from the latter would have been ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was egregiously mistaken when he pronounced "a little learning" to be "a dangerous thing." Had it not been for the modicum of letters, small as it was, acquired by Mr. Wheelwright, at the school of which I had occasion to speak early in the present history, to say nothing, as seems most meet, of the university, his family would now have been rather short of bread and butter. They had great possessions, of the which ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... till it stopped at Professor Ponsonby's gate and a lady got out and ran up the courtyard path. Deena had been trying in vain to make quince jelly stiffen—jell was the word used in the receipt book of the late Mrs. Ponsonby—with the modicum of sugar prescribed, till in despair she had resorted to a pinch of gelatine, and felt that the shade of her mother-in-law was ticking the word incompetent from the clock in the hall—when suddenly the watchword ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... careless reminder of the fascinating Father, and perhaps there was a modicum of truth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... She had not the strength to come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile. She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless flower that the end of the winter puts forth mercilessly. And she wanted to harbour her modicum ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... you have goods to sell you soon find your place at the counter, unless owing to some fault of character your fellow barterers and their patrons will have none of you. Of course there is always the meanest of all passions, jealousy, waiting to thwart you at every turn, but no woman with a modicum of any one of those wares the world wants and must have need fear any enemy but ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... mihi obvenit, emi proxime Corinthium signum, modicum quidem, sed festivum et expressum, quantum ego sapio, qui fortasse in omni re, in hac certe perquam exiguum sapio: hoc tamen signum ego quoque intellego. Est enim nudum, nec aut vitia, si qua sunt, celat, aut laudes ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... man of middle height, sturdy, with broad shoulders and a slow step. His clean-shaven face was a long oval, with pessimistic, brooding eyes—eyes that saw everything except the small modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they were persistently blind. Taking into consideration the small, set mouth, it was eminently a pugnacious face—a face that might easily degenerate ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Pater, qui intimios [sic R1, intuitos R2] suos quantum mater filium diligit, desiderium dilecti sui adimplere non distulit. Nam uacca una lactifera, una cum uitulo, consecuta est eum, acsi a suo pastore minaretur post eum. Qui cum ad sacrum collegium sancti Fynniani uenisset, gaudium non modicum de eius aduentu omnes habuerunt. Vacca uero, que secuta est eum, simul cum uitulo pascebatur, nec ubera materna sine licencia tangere attemptabat. Keranus eius pascua sic discriminauit atque distinxit, ut tantum uitulum mater lambe[re]t, nec tamen ei ubera praeberet. Istius uero uacce ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... modicum on "Chimney-Sweepers," which your last paper contained, with pleasure. It appears to be the production of that sort of mind which you justly denominate "gifted;" but which is greatly undervalued by the majority of men, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... as well and as happy as I can be anywhere away from you. That to be sure is but a modicum of happiness and good condition — very far from the full perfection which I have known is possible; but you will all be contented, will you not, to hear that I have so much, and that I have no more? I don't know — I think of your dear circle at home — and though I cannot wish ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the other,—a demeanor which at once disgusts and alarms you. I felt confident that some underhand work was going on. I went upstairs. There was Cheri again, this time with his right wing gone, and a modicum of his tail. The cage had retained its position, but the Evil One had made her grip at him; and the same routine of weariness, silence, loss of appetite and spirits was to be gone through with again, followed ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Duncombe, Count D'Orsay, Chesterfield, and several other eminent Italian-operatic natural historians, have spent immense fortunes in an ardent pursuit of knowledge in this branch of science, they have as yet afforded the world but a small modicum of information. Perhaps what they have learned is not of a nature to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... motto of Etienne Dolet, "Scabra et impolita ad amussim dolo, atque perfolio." Among the mottoes of early English printers, the most notable, partly for its dual source, and as one of our earliest examples, is that of William Faques; one sentence, "Melius est modicum justo super divitias peccatorum multas," is taken from Psalm xxxvii. verse 16; and the second, "Melior est patiens viro forti, et qui dominat," comes from Proverbs xvi., verse 32. The motto of Richard Grafton has already been quoted; ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... few years since in New-York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and even now in New-Jersey servants are "bought" as really as in Virginia. And the different senses in which the same word is used in the two states, puts no man in a quandary, whose common sense amounts to a modicum. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... I must admit that there was a modicum of truth in what she said. I had been feeling pretty austere about the man all day, and I'll ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... lee of the pyramid. By careful economy I knew I had drink sufficient until the next rain, no matter how delayed, should fall. My hut was quite washed out by the seas, and of my great store of seal meat only a wretched, pulpy modicum remained. Nevertheless I was agreeably surprised to find the rocks plentifully distributed with a sort of fish more nearly like the mullet than any I had ever observed. Of these I picked up no less than twelve hundred and nineteen, which I split and cured in the sun after the manner ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Munster, gintlemen—glorious Kerry!—yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it. I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system: like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude" (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—"from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person. Gintlemen, I have the honor of being able to write 'Philomath' ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the brawny forearm just above the wrist with a crashing sound, and seemed to sink in. Captain Bacon almost fell, but recovered his balance, and, holding the broken bones together, staggered toward the booby-hatch for support. He groaned in pain, but did not curse; for it requires a modicum of self-respect for this, and Captain Bacon's self-respect was completely ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... will not allow you to stand a moment longer on this cold floor; and I do not intend that you shall pay me undeserved compliments. It is derogatory to your dignity, and dangerous to my modicum of humility. As soon as you are ready for breakfast, come to the dining-room, where Santa Klaus left his remembrances last night. O, Leighton! I had half a mind to hang up two stockings at uncle's bed, for the sake of dear old lang syne. If we could only ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... said he, "I have always insisted that I possessed but a modicum of brains; but I am a gambler. My god is chance. With ordinary judgment and horse-sense, I take risks that no so-called sane man would consider. The curse of the world is fear—the chief instrument that you employ to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... anywhere from its extreme peculiarity. It never either rose or fell much from a certain pitch; and at that level the words gurgled forth, seemingly from an ever-brimming fountain; he never wanted one; and the stream had neither let nor stay till his modicum of sense had fairly run out. People thought he had not a greater stock of that than some of his neighbours; but he issued an amount of word-currency sufficient for the use of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... these missionaries by the greatness of Confucius that they urged upon the Vatican the expediency of placing his name upon the calendar of Saints. They began by combating his teachings, but this they soon ceased to do, and the modicum of success which they obtained was through beginning each Christian service by the hymn which may properly be called the National Anthem of China. Its opening stanza ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... those days it was practically unknown. McCormick was the first to see its possibilities. He established an agent, usually the general storekeeper, in every agricultural center. Any farmer who had a modicum of cash and who bore a reputation for thrift and honesty could purchase a reaper. In payment he gave a series of notes, so timed that they fell due at the end of harvesting seasons. Thus, as the money came in from successive harvests, the pioneer paid off the notes, taking two, three, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... flushed to her sleek hair and some flicker of a girlhood that had its modicum of grace, flared up in the swift curtsy with ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... "All or most" of the men who landed, "were armed with a French fuzee" (or musket), a pistol and hanger, with two pounds of powder and "proportionable bullet." Each of them carried a scrip or satchel containing "three or four cakes of bread," or doughboys, weighing half-a-pound apiece, with some modicum of turtle flesh. "For drink ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... into helpful contact with their masters, among whom the institution never lost its patriarchal aspect. Although it was both unlawful and in some parts of West Virginia unpopular to instruct Negroes, these masters, a law unto themselves, undertook to impart to these bondmen some modicum of knowledge. Upon the actual emancipation in 1865, when all restraint in this respect was abrogated, benevolent white persons, moved with compassion because of the benighted condition of Negroes, volunteered to offer them instruction. The ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... gives the Disagreeable Girl her opportunity. In the paper-box factory she would have to make good; Cluett, Coon and Company ask for results; the stage demands a modicum at least of intellect, in addition to shape; but society asks for nothing but pretense, and the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... doubtless reflects the tendencies of the Syrian branch of the school from which he sprang; for the Syrian group had had to cast off some of its traditional fanaticism and acquire a few social graces and a modicum of worldly wisdom in its long contact with ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... of a lunatic fringe in the Consolidated Illiterates' Organization who want just that, Chester Pelton knows that we cannot abolish Literacy entirely. Even with modern audio-visual recording, need exists for some modicum of written recording, which can be rapidly scanned and selected from—indexing, cataloguing, tabulating data, et cetera—and for at least a few men and women who can form and interpret the written word. Mr. Pelton, himself, is the owner of a huge department store, employing over ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... my modicum of parts to use What power may yet avail to re-infuse (In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death With momentary liveliness, lend breath To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe, An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf Of thy laboratory, dares unstop Bottle, ope ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... modicum of reason penetrated into the numbed blankness of his brain. The dark arch of the entrance-way was somehow familiar. Still legible under the verdigris of the bronze plate on the lintel he read, "Transportation Substation—District L2ZX." Now he understood why he had not seen the black flier till ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... grandchildren—the unmistakable Hawaiian colour, tinted beyond shadow of mistake by exposure to the Hawaiian sun. One-eighth and one-sixteenth Hawaiian were they, which meant that seven-eighths or fifteen-sixteenths white blood informed that skin yet failed to obliterate the modicum of golden tawny brown of Polynesia. But in this, again, only a trained observer would have known that the frolicking children were aught but pure-blooded white. Roscoe Scandwell, grandfather, was pure white; Martha three-quarters white; the many sons and daughters of them seven-eighths ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... where the cross walls came, it stood stoutly; but elsewhere it began gradually to weaken. Here and there a doorway broke into what might have been a solid section; in one or two cases arches crumbled; in many others inside walls or beams or stairways, falling, carried down with them another modicum of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... sternly, but with just that modicum of tenderness which made his words at once a command ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... however, because of its modicum of red earth swamped by a huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at cultivation: I am told that vines once grew here. And, in fact, when we dig the ground before planting a few trees, we turn up, here and there, remains of the precious stock, half carbonized by time. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... passage across; and what did that stay imply? It meant being in a hostile country, confronted by countless cavalry, legions of light infantry. And what had we? A heavy infantry force certainly, with which we could have dashed at villages in a body possibly, and seized a modicum of food at most; but as to pursuing the enemy with such a force as ours, or capturing men or cattle, the thing was out of the question; for when I rejoined you your original cavalry and light infantry divisions had disappeared. In ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... to a black cook who answered to the name of "Snowball," and who had good-naturedly constituted himself the cook of the party. The rations, which included a portion for us newcomers, consisted of a small modicum of meat, a few vegetables, a tolerably liberal allowance of coarse black bread, and water ad libitum. The little incident of the serving out of rations having come to an end, and the sergeant having retired with his satellites, our friend of the Sparkling Foam—whose name, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... testify that their lot, like their abilities, their stature, is a sort of middling thing. There is about it an equable sobriety, a sort of average endurableness. Some things go well: some things go ill. There is a modicum of disappointment: there is a modicum of success. But so much of disappointment comes to the lot of almost all, that there is no object in nature at which we all look with so much interest as the invariably lucky man—the man whom all this system of things ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... himself in possession of more than one minute to each scholar. In so brief a time, very little can be ascertained as to what the scholar knows of the lesson, and still less can anything be done to increase that knowledge. Moreover, while the teacher is bestowing his small modicum of time upon one scholar, all the other members of the ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... objected, Cui bono The English language is quite enough for us. We have it now and we speak it, sometimes, even better than the English people themselves. We are proud of using the same language as Sheridan, Burke, and Grattan used. Such an opinion has its modicum of truth, though less now than a hundred years ago. Formerly there was in Ireland, and especially around Dublin, a little colony of Anglo-Irish. The members of this colony spoke a very pure and classic English, and this fact is largely responsible for the place which Ireland at one time ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the debonair club man returned to Shirley's face, as he twitted back: "Purely an altruistic inquiry, Dick. I feared that you might be risking your own heart and the modicum of freedom which you still possess. But I'll wager a supper-party for four that I'll find out who she is, without either you or ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... flushed as he recognized its ludicrous aspect. Still, he could not withdraw then, and he made the best of a difficult position with a certain gracefulness which might, under different circumstances, have secured him a modicum of consideration. As it was, however, Hetty's anger left her almost white, and there was a light he did not care to see in her eyes when she ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the stores, fancied that a fortnight was the very longest that could be counted on, though they ate no more than would keep a modicum of strength in them. From their kind and quality he surmised that they had been intended for the officials in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... bread-bag sweats No larger ration than his fellows gets. What matters it to reasonable men Whether they plough a hundred fields or ten? "But there's a pleasure, spite of all you say, In a large heap from which to take away." If both contain the modicum we lack, Why should your barn be better than my sack? You want a draught of water: a mere urn, Perchance a goblet, well would serve your turn: You say, "The stream looks scanty at its head; I'll take my quantum where 'tis broad instead." But what befalls the wight who yearns ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... There is always so much mischief being done by globe-trotting tourists and ill-informed and irresponsible novelists who scurry through the Southern Seas on a liner, and then publish their hasty impressions. According to them, any one with a modicum of common sense can shake the South Sea Pagoda Tree and become bloatedly wealthy in ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... welfare in, a strong paternal government. The ordinary Hindu seeks for himself nothing higher than a government which, while not asking for his opinion concerning its policy and acts, will at least dispense a fair modicum of justice ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... accuses me of neglecting the fathers! Nothing in this world could be farther from my thoughts. Not only do I agree with him that "all ordinary children have fathers, and it might be well to put in a paragraph;" but I am cheerfully willing to write a whole book on the subject, provided that a mere modicum of readers can be assured me. I fairly ache to talk to fathers, having a really great ideal of them, and whenever a class of them can be induced to take up a correspondence course I shall be glad to ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... tumblers—that is, two tumblers, one with a stand, the other with a flat bottom, and a tea-cup with a spoon in it. The tea-cup was put opposite Father John's chair, and the reverend father himself proceeded to pour a tolerable modicum of spirits out of the stone jar into a good-sized milk jug, and placed it ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... terribilior & statura eminentior, januas Ecclesiae; impetu violento concussas in fragmenta dejecit. Divexerunt clerici cum laicis, metu stelerunt omnium capilli, et psalmorum concentus defecit. Daemon ergo gestu ut videbatur arroganti ad sepulchrum accedens, & nomen mulieris modicum ingeminans, surgere imperavit. Qua respondente, quod nequiret pro vinculis, jam malo tuo, inquit, solveris; et protinus cathenam quae caeterorum ferociam daemonum deluserat, velut stuppeum vinculum rumpebat. Operculum etiam sepulchri pede depellens, ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... his class, went off to Pratt's, where, we will hope, he was amused, though he did not look it. A cigar on a close evening leads to soda-water, with a slice of lemon, and, I had almost forgotten to add, a small modicum of gin. This entails another cigar, and it is wonderful how soon one o'clock in the morning comes round again. When Lord Bearwarden turned out of St. James's Street it was too late to think of anything but immediate bed. Her ladyship's confessions, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... phrases, of sweet gestures and veiled sonorities should not have worn the guise of one who ate three meals a day and slept soundly after his mellow incantations. Yet she was not—inheriting, as she did, a modicum of sense ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was not, when one considered it, the life which one would have chosen, but who, since the world began, had ever lived exactly the life of his choice? Many women, she reflected stoically, were far worse off than she, since she started not only with a modicum of business experience (for surely the three months with Brandywine & Plummer might weigh as that) but with a knowledge of the world and a social position which she had found to be fairly marketable. That Madame ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... however, the late "Fellow of University College," Oxford, declares he had to look the word out in a Lexicon. I commend the fact to the notice of the combatants over the desirability of retaining the present compulsory modicum of Greek ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... in his arm-chair, thinking of all this, with that small untasted modicum of brandy and water beside him, when he heard some distant Lambeth clock strike three from over the river. Then he rose from his seat, and taking the candles in his hand, sat himself down at a writing-desk on the other side of the room. "I needn't ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... of moisture, to drink to the full value of their watches and wearing apparel, exclusively of their inferior habiliments, which he was uniformly inexorable in obliging them to retain, for the credit of the house. As to mine own part, I may well say, that he never refused me that modicum of refreshment with which I am wont to recruit nature after the fatigues of my school. It is true, I taught his five sons English and Latin, writing, book-keeping, with a tincture of mathematics, and that I instructed his daughter in psalmody. Nor do I remember me of any fee or ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... turned and looked at her angry husband with an expression which seemed to say that at that moment he had taken leave of his senses; "hang the young Knight of Harden, when I have three ill-favoured daughters to marry off my hands! I wonder at ye, Juden! I aye thought ye had a modicum of common sense, and could look a long way in front of ye, but at this moment I am sorely inclined to doubt it. Mark my words, ye'll never again have such a chance as this. For, besides Harden, he is heir to some of the finest lands in Ettrick Forest.[9] There is Kirkhope, and Oakwood, and ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... the remark into the mouth of one of his characters, that, "if you wish to make an Englishman respect you, you must treat him with insolence." The language is somewhat too strong, and it would not be altogether safe to act upon the suggestion; but the witticism embodies a modicum of truth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore quo intus est, hiemis tempestati non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidve praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit merito esse sequenda videtur." "Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum," book ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... have lost everything in the world save some small modicum of pride, which, being all I have, I do cherish, maybe, unduly. And so, when these unmannerly hinds took me by the throat, calling on me to tell my name and business, this spirit within me flaring up, I could not answer with the humility ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... read no more. Whatever modicum of charity the writer ventured to put forth was lost upon her. The opening sentence danced before her eyes in letters of fire. That morning she met Brian in the passage and drew him into the sitting room. He saw at once how it was ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... need only take a few extras from the home. The debts were to be paid as far as possible now, and the small income was to be divided; part was to go as pin money to Mrs. Polkington, the main part of the remainder to go to the debts, and a very small modicum to come with the Captain ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... of the franchise. The cardinal recommendation of that refusal is that it would avert definitively the political domination of the Blacks, which must inevitably be the outcome of any concession of the modicum of right so earnestly desired. The exclusion of the Negro vote being inexpedient, if not impossible, the exercise of electoral powers by the Blacks must lead to their returning candidates of their own race to the local legislatures, and that, too, in numbers preponderating ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... whether perchance it had occurred to me that it might be politic on my part to confirm the excellent impression which I had already made by bestowing upon him and his fellow indunas a small—a very small—modicum of the inestimable treasures which they all knew my wagon must still contain. To this I replied that the idea was at that moment the one uppermost in my mind, and that I gladly availed myself of the opportunity afforded by the king's temporary absence to invite them ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... would despise. She was aware that it was her duty to be snubbed by her mother, and to encounter her father's ill-temper, and to submit to her brother's indifference, and to have, so to say, the slightest possible modicum of personal individuality. She knew that she had never attracted a man's love, and might hardly hope to make friends for the comfort of her coming age. But still she was contented, and felt that she had consolation for it all in the fact that she ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... oblique innuendoes of all they met in the ship, had determined the honest magistrates to retire to their proper pursuits on terra firma, at the earliest occasion. In the mean time, to escape persecution, and to obtain a modicum of the glory that was now to be earned, they had hired a boat, and accompanied the expedition, in the character of amateurs. It formed no part of their plan, however, to share in the combat; a view of its incidents being quite as much, as Vito Viti strongly maintained when ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... accomplished the charming effect that she did in some intuitive way presently accomplish; and at any rate I decline the task of description. I confess, however, that the little packet contained a modest modicum of the necessary materials, whatever they were; and I have no hesitation in praising the generous interest, the discretion and exuberant experience of the gay widow of the late Cap'n Saul Nash o' the Royal Bloodhound, whose letter, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... aside your preconceived notions and employ a modicum of practical logic," suggested Scholar Phelps. "Observe your position from a slightly different reign of vantage. Be convinced that no matter what you do or say, we intend to make use of you to the best of our ability. You are not entertaining ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... had talked this matter over with that small modicum of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties thus suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare of her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... over which he ruled from the political slough whereinto it had fallen. To him solely—by means of his daughter, that is to say (but in politics women do not count)—is due the fact that the Church of Jingalo still stands on its old established footing, and that her Bishops have a decisive modicum of ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... and more scornful of the girls who could be content with the narrow, humdrum routine at Harding. But she concealed her scorn perfectly. And she no longer neglected her work; she attended her classes regularly and managed with a modicum of preparation to recite far better than the average student. Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness. She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... time when I too was foolishly intent to divert the leisure hours of posterity. But reflection assured me that posterity had, thus far, done very little to place me under that or any other obligation. Ah, no! Youth, health and—though I say it—a modicum of intelligence are loaned to most of us for a while, and for a terribly brief while. They are but loans, and Time is waiting greedily to snatch them from us. For the perturbed usurer knows that he is lending us, perforce, three priceless possessions, and that till our lease runs ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... for the mud in his tub. Out in the Bear Swamp, the streams that wandered about under the great high-spreading gums, and lost their way in the shadows, were crystal-clear and pure; and out there it was intended that he should dwell, and in those sweet streams that he should wash. But what a modicum of wit, of originality the little beast had, that, because he was born a washer, wash he must, though he washed in mud, nay, though he washed upon the upturned bottom of his empty tub!—for this ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... knight, only reading it to his visitors till some of them learned it by heart. The "charming bagatelle" was afterwards printed, that posterity might be enabled to wonder what a small expenditure of wit in metre sufficed to purchase a large modicum of fame among the blues of ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... perversity characteristic of gout and middle age, combined, no doubt, with a not unnatural modicum of jealousy, maintained that one such fete should be sufficient amusement for one night. She might take her choice of one; he would on no account permit her to attend all three. Much to his surprise and delight Madame Mildau made ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... against the insensate folly which was hurrying me to infallible destruction, without success. For me there was only obedience. With a revolver in either hand I marched towards the bureau as unconcernedly as if I would not have given my life to have escaped the denouement which I needed but a slight modicum of common sense to be aware was close at hand. I placed the muzzle of one of the revolvers against the keyhole of the drawer to which my unseen guide had previously directed me, and pulled the trigger. The lock was shattered, the contents of the drawer ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... this gas—Dr. Black of Edinburgh, as much as fifteen years before the date we have now arrived at, had suggested that it should be made capable of raising a thin bladder in the air. With a shade more of good fortune, or maybe with a modicum more of leisure, the learned Doctor would have won the invention of the balloon for his own country. Cavallo came almost nearer, and actually putting the same idea into practice, had succeeded in the spring of 1782 in making soap bubbles blown ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... she does without a labour to which new settlers would be unaccustomed. By means of the hydro-electric commission homes are warmed in winter, lighted all the year round, as indeed are the cities, towns and villages, and cooking for the family accomplished with a modicum of trouble. Electric railways connect communities and settlements. The telephone is in almost everyone's home. So that with the pianola, the gramophone, and other means of diversion, the winter nights are not what they were to the people in the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... discrimination. Our attitude to these criticisms must be determined by our whole moral and emotional reaction to the future of international relations and the Peace of the World. If we take the view that for at least a generation to come Germany cannot be trusted with even a modicum of prosperity, that while all our recent Allies are angels of light, all our recent enemies, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and the rest, are children of the devil, that year by year Germany must be kept ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... sure, be pardoned if I quote here some words from the report of Sir James Allport's Commission on Irish Public Works. It is dated 4th January, 1888. I had then been less than three years with the County Down, and so could claim but a modicum of the praise it contains, and my modesty, therefore, need not be alarmed. The words are: "The history of the Belfast and County Down Company is sufficient to show how greatly both shareholders and the public may benefit from the infusion into the management of business qualities. In that case ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... jest, began to flirt with the girl, whom he saw for the first time. She, who neither meant nor suspected any ill, was quite at her ease, and we should have enjoyed the joke, and everything would have gone on pleasantly, if her husband had possessed some modicum of manners and common sense, but he began to get into a perfect fury of jealousy. He ate nothing, changed colour ten times in a minute, and looked daggers at his wife, as much as to say he did not see ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of wandering, had greatly declined with both husband and wife since the earlier days in Italy. Yet when they returned to Casa Guidi it was only for six weeks. Even at the close of the visit to Siena Mrs Browning had recovered but a slender modicum of strength; she did not dare to enter the cathedral, for there were steps to climb. At Florence she felt her old vitality return and her spirits rose. But the climate of Rome was considered by Dr Gresonowsky more suitable for winter, and towards the close of November ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... good friend the doctor, that the socialist argument boiled down amounts to about this—that one should do without boiled eggs for breakfast now, in order that the proletariat may have baked hen for dinner in the millennium; which is lunacy; anybody with a modicum of brains— ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... papers, even rose above his own high-water mark of vicious cunning, because it played upon a chord that appealed instantly to the police; and it rang true, not only because what the police could find out about him made it likely, but also because it contained a modicum of truth in itself; and, furthermore, Danglar had scored on still another count in that his story must stimulate the police into renewed activities as his unsuspecting allies in the one thing, the one aim and object that, at that moment, must obsess him above ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... begin to assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power, intelligence, and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of Kansas should never forget that to the influence of Mrs. Nichols in the Constitutional convention at Wyandotte, they owe the modicum of justice secured by that document. With her knitting in hand, she sat there alone through all the sessions, the only woman present, watching every step of the proceedings, and laboring with members to so frame the constitution ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various |
