"Speciality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness and the dulness of his light. Glorious or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best painters to ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... too acutely exact. But it does not follow, etymologically, that a man is right because he is particular. He may be very good or very bad, and yet be only such because he is particularly so. Singularity, eccentricity, speciality, isolation, oddity, and hundreds of other things which might be mentioned, all involve particularity. But we do not intend, to "grammar-out" the question, nor to disengage and waste our gas in definitions. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... they are not markedly disagreeable). He could not, they observed, want all his various knowledge and Laputan ideas for his periodical writing which brought him most of his bread, and he would do well to use his talents in getting a speciality that would fit him for a post. Perhaps these well-disposed persons were a little rash in presuming that fitness for a post would be the surest ground for getting it; and on the whole, in now looking back on their wishes for Merman, their chief satisfaction ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... shame which prevents him from going to the family physician, who would give him honest advice. If he goes to any physician he usually goes to some advertising physician who claims to be a "men specialist." The main speciality of these men is obtaining money from their ignorant dupes. Their advertisements would make nearly every man in the world think he were suffering from some grave disease. The young boy, at an impressionable age, is a ready ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... the "Grill-room," as is his equally well-known successor, Sir Leslie Ward, the "Spy" of that now defunct paper, who has drawn almost every notability in the kingdom. Sir Leslie is, I am glad to say, still with us. Leslie Ward has the speciality of extraordinary accidents, accidents which could befall no human being but himself. For instance, in pre-taxi days Ward was driving in a hansom, and the cabman taking a wrong turn, Ward pushed up the little door in the roof to stop him. The man bent his head down to catch his ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... porpoise, nor monkey, nor man, can be distinguished by any essential feature one from the other; there is a time when they each and all of them resemble this one of the Dog. But as development advances, all the parts acquire their speciality, till at length you have the embryo converted into the form of the parent from which it started. So that you see, this living animal, this horse, begins its existence as a minute particle of nitrogenous matter, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... most poetical of human feelings, is avoided by the gentle artist. He hardly ever describes it, only alluding to it cursorily. But there is no novelist who gives so much room to the pure, crystalline, eternally youthful feeling of love. We may say that the description of love is Turgenev's speciality. What Francesco Petrarca did for one kind of love—the romantic, artificial, hot-house love of the times of chivalry—Turgenev did for the natural, spontaneous, modern love in all its variety of forms, kinds, and manifestations: the slow and gradual as well as the sudden and instantaneous; ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... are arranged on the plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,—so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice versa. The more particular speciality of one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,—that of the other to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counterful of books with taking titles. I wonder if the picture ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... principle, nature, constitution, character, type, quality, crasis^, diathesis^. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. endowment, capacity; capability &c (power) 157. moods, declensions, features, aspects; peculiarities &c (speciality) 79; idiosyncrasy, oddity; idiocrasy &c (tendency) 176; diagnostics. V. be in the blood, run in the blood; be born so; be intrinsic &c adj.. Adj. derived from within, subjective; intrinsic, intrinsical^; fundamental, normal; implanted, inherent, essential, natural; innate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Church is the only thing that ever attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its speciality—or, if you like, its oddity—was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... even Minna declared that she was more anxious to see these improved than to get me to marry her. But she was also driven to think of herself, and that promptly, for trouble arose with regard to her own position in the Magdeburg theatre. There she had met with a rival in her own speciality, and as this woman's husband became chief stage manager, and consequently had supreme power, she grew to be a source of great danger. Seeing, therefore, that at this very moment Minna received advantageous offers from the managers ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... life in America commends itself to the time-saving habits of a busy race; but the love of speciality in France modifies this advantage: in our inns a stated price covers all demands except for wine; here each separate necessity is a specific charge—the sheet of writing paper, the cake of soap, and the candle figure among the innumerable items of the bill. Thus ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... changing moments, and a poise of head and carriage of body which only perfect health and the most scientific physical training can produce. In a word, she was one of those miraculous developments of femininity which Nature seems to have made a speciality for the particular benefit of the younger branch of the Anglo-Saxon race. As for her dress—well, the shortest and best way to describe that is to say that ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Hoop-rolling was a speciality of St. Ursula's. The gymnasium instructor believed in teaching girls to run. Eleven times around the oval constituted a mile, and a mile of hoop-rolling freed one for the day from dumb-bells and Indian clubs. The three dived into the cellar, and returned with hoops as tall as themselves. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... the consideration of the best modes of studying whatever books are suitable for the end. One man has to read in Chemistry, another in Law, another in Divinity, and so on. For each and all of these, there is a profitable and an unprofitable mode of working, and the speciality of ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... another part popular pictures are spread out, oleographs showing the Garden of Eden, or the terror of the Flood, or the Last Judgment, and such like; in another is a wilderness of home-made bamboo furniture, a speciality of Batum. And for all no ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... or offering to buy, in which case the activity and the noise would become deafening. Given groups might be trading in different things; but the large majority of them would abandon what they were doing in order to take advantage of a speciality. The eagerness of certain young brokers or clerks to discover all that was going on, and to take advantage of any given rise or fall, made for quick physical action, darting to and fro, the excited elevation of explanatory fingers. Distorted ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... owner of the broomstick was washing her hair at Number 100 Beautiful Way, Mitten Island. She was washing it behind the counter of her shop. She was the manageress of the only shop on Mitten Island. It was a general shop, but made a speciality of such goods as Happiness and Magic. Unfortunately Happiness is rather difficult to get in war-time. Sometimes there was quite a queue outside the shop when it opened, and sometimes there was a card outside, saying politely: "Sorry, it's no use waiting. I ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... beauty, or that she goes in for any speciality by way of features or eyelashes, or hair, or a figure, or anything really sensational of that sort, as I do in one or two directions. But there's a rose and pearl and gold-brown adorableness about her; you like her all the better for some little puritanical ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... for the boys, the Moro people do not make a speciality of education. The young men are taught from the Koran by priests, who also teach the art of making characters in Arabic. Their music is for the most part religious, inharmonious, and unmelodious. The coluctang, their most important instrument, resembles ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... suffocating Gulf coast is excepted—intensely cold in winter and spring, moist and rainy during the rest of the year. This produces good pasturages and gives excellent vegetables, wine of sorts, and a flourishing poppy culture—a speciality of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... cruelty of the scourger who persevered "till her forearm failed," or the expression of despair "The light before his face became night," or the grand account of the desert storm "when behold a dust cloud up-flew and grew until it walled the horizon from view." Another speciality of Captain Burton's edition is the Notes. He is celebrated for sowing the bottom of his pages with curiously illuminating remarks, and he has here carried out his custom in a way to astonish. He tells us that those who peruse his notes in addition to those of Lane would be complete ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... snatched a few hours in the West, and was just returning home. It being then well past twelve, we sauntered a little way with him, and called at a coffee-stall for a cup of the leathery tea which is the speciality of the London coffee-stall. Most stalls have their "regulars," especially those that are so fortunate as to pitch near a Works of any kind. The stall we visited was on the outskirts of Soho, and near a large colour-printing house which was then ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... that "Coelenterata" is Lankester's speciality. However, he is sure to do it well ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... characters quite attractive; in fact, though I fear she would not wish me to say so, I really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman smacks her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... "She is the daughter of the drunken organist who desecrated my father's tomb, though that concerns you not:—her own speciality, as you see, is that she is the flower of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... for individuals, they also wanted to do for nations. Humanity was to be divided into national workshops, having each its speciality. Russia, we were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn; England to spin cotton; Belgium to weave cloth; while Switzerland was to train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate city was to establish a specialty. Lyons was to weave ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... pity the ordinary schools are taking it up. I know of at least one so-called secondary school which makes a speciality of 'Commercial Training.' The girls who take up the subject are quite the wrong kind, with absolutely no real education,... and are ready to accept anything in the way of salary. The really good schools where the girls remain till ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... proposed any appointment to see you on the subject, but he has been dreadfully ill with tic. Whenever I read in London, I will gladly put a night aside for your purpose, and we will plot to connect your name with it, and give it some speciality. But this could not be before Christmas time, as I should not be able to read sooner, for in the hot weather it would be useless. Let me hear from you about this when you have considered it. It would greatly ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... months ago, my brave colleagues," continued Barbicane, "I asked myself if, whilst still remaining in our speciality, we could not undertake some grand experiment worthy of the nineteenth century, and if the progress of ballistics would not allow us to execute it with success. I have therefore sought, worked, calculated, and the conviction has resulted from ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Villon, and Nos. 45 to 49 consist of the plays of Ford, Dekker, Tourneur, Marston, and Middleton; names very dear to the lover of our old Drama, but I venture to think names somewhat inappropriate in a list of books for a reader who does not make the drama a speciality. Lamb's Selections would ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... later on, a round Roman pillar near the entrance of the church worn smooth by the bodies of females who press themselves between it and the wall, in order to become mothers. The notion caused him some amusement—he evidently thought this practice a speciality of Venosa. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Kennedy. "It seems that this Hungarian's speciality is playing the waltzes and folk-songs of his own country, which is certainly not anything great; but his successes are not obtained with the violin, but among the women. The ladies in London fight for him. His game is to pass himself off as a fallen man, depraved, worn-out. ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... therefore had not expelled the boy. Still, he would be obliged if his mother would refrain from sending him back, as he did not consider him a suitable member of a public school. He suggested, in the lad's own interest, that it might be wise to place him in some establishment where a speciality was made of the training of unruly youths. He added that he wrote this with the more regret since Anthony's father and grandfather had been scholars at —— in their day, and her son possessed no mean intellectual abilities. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... o' these strays was what they call an astronomer. His speciality was the stars, nothing less; an' he knew 'em by name an' could tell you how far off they are an' what they weigh an' how many moons they had an'—oh, he knew 'em the same as I know the home herd, an' he didn't ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... Morrison, greatly incensed at having the Scriptures, her own speciality, quoted at her. "I'd like to know what bitterness yours has known, unless it's the bitterness of a bad conscience. Now I've come here to-day"—she raised her voice to a note of warning—"to give you a chance. To make you think, by pointing ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the 'Athenaeum,' since Mr. Dilke left it, has grown duller and duller, colder and colder, flatter and flatter. Mr. Dilke was not brilliant, but he was a Brutus in criticism; and though it was his speciality to condemn his most particular friends to the hangman, the survivors thought there was something grand about it on the whole, and nobody could hold him in contempt. Now it is all different. We have not even 'public ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... are the speciality at a Northern munition works' canteen. We have long been used to twopenny meals, but of course much more was charged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... sufficient, and every one ought to add social work to his ordinary occupation. In fact, the monotony of any special occupation, and even the exclusive work of a scientific speciality, ends by giving the cerebral energy itself an exclusive character. The moral sentiments become atrophied. Exclusiveness in a speciality, practiced without any complement, easily leads to exclusiveness in love (not in the sexual appetite!). We ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... our guide when it affords us evidence of the truth. But when our reason offers arguments on both sides of the question, so that we can arrive at no certain conclusion, then we act prudently by invoking the authority of wiser minds who make moral questions a speciality, and we are perfectly safe if we follow the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... highest rent is four-and-six a week. In such surroundings was an extraordinary man born. He was the only anxiety of a widowed mother, who gained her livelihood and his by making up "ladies' own materials" in ladies' own houses. Mrs Machin, however, had a speciality apart from her vocation: she could wash flannel with less shrinking than any other woman in the district, and she could wash fine lace without ruining it; thus often she came to sew and remained to wash. A somewhat gloomy woman; thin, with a tongue! But I liked her. She saved a certain amount ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... State, and disappointed sadly his friends. His administration of this branch of the judiciary was weak and wild; a vast number of his decisions, or awards in chancery, were overruled, and, in disgust, or from a consciousness that a chancery judgeship was not his speciality, resigned. His mind was greatly overrated: it was neither strong, logical, nor brilliant. His classical attainments were of the first order, and I doubt if the Union furnished two better or more finished linguists than John A. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... soul of business. Mr MacGinnis and I have been rivals in the past, but we both saw that the moment had come for the genial smile, the hearty handshake, in fact, for an alliance. We form a strong team, sonny. My partner's speciality is action. I supply the strategy. Say, can't you see you're up against ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... entirely from his master's wardrobe. The dandy absently drew forth the Telegraph, and the first thing that caught his eye was this: "A beautiful private hotel of the highest class. Luxuriously furnished. Visitor's comfort studied. Finest position in London. Cuisine a speciality. Quiet. Suitable for persons of superior rank. Bathroom. Electric light. Separate tables. No irritating extras. Single rooms from 2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. 250 Queen's Gate." And below this he saw another ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... into a harmonious murmur when compared to the one great speciality of the village,—stone-cutting in the open streets. Whenever one of the picturesque old houses is crumbling into utter decay, a pile of stone is dumped before it, and the easy-going masons of Amboise prepare to patch up its walls. No particular method ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Nick. He shot her a sidelong glance. "Dear Lady Bassett always says and does the right thing at the right moment. It's her speciality. That's why we are ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... mode of thinking and philosophizing, is much more nearly allied to the German than to the English schools; only that, instead of a philosophical system, carried through with a rigorous and unsparing logic, he indulges in philosophical reveries. As a statesman Lamartine lacks speciality, and for this reason we think that his administration ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... to him, to translate more or less verbally, so as to run the risk of being unintelligible to a reader unacquainted with the original, to generalize what is special, and to borrow something of the imitator's licence, introducing a modern speciality in place of an ancient. Here, as I have found on other occasions of the kind, to be allowed a choice of evils is itself a matter for self- congratulation. To be shut up entirely to one or other of these resources would be a serious misfortune: to be able to employ them ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... I have before this admired the mixture of cheerful cynicism and dry humour that is the speciality of Mr. MAX RITTENBERG. He has shown it again in Every Man His Price (METHUEN), but hardly, I think, to quite the same effect as formerly. My feeling about the book was that it started with a first-class idea for a plot of comedy ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... one to me. His speciality is birds, and he must be a frightful nuisance to them. I shouldn't care to be a bird if Brown knew where my nest was. It isn't that he takes their eggs. If he would merely rob them and go away it wouldn't matter so much. They could always begin again ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... the reverse of my speciality,' said Wych Hazel—'so perhaps that makes me sharpsighted. I am ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... we have been asking for bombs—any kind of bombs—and we have not even got answers. Now they offer us some speciality bombs for which France, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... an acid little laugh, "you have the Chatterer up here in your unholy of unholies." Her eyes fell on a small magazine which made a speciality of besmirching the good names of the entire country. "Everybody reads it, and ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... looked on as a transition from the last-mentioned method to the next of colour laid by colour. Thus used there is something incomplete about it. One finds oneself longing for more colours than one's shuttles or blocks allow one. There is a need felt for the speciality of the next method, where the dividing line is used, and it gradually gets drawn into that method. Which, indeed, is the last I have to speak to you of, and in which colour is laid ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... The work, my informant thought, could be condensed by judicious co-operation, and the "four to four" rule might be adopted in some establishments, but by no means in all—as, for instance, where there was a speciality for rolls and fancy bread. It seems, as usual, that the difficulties thicken, not about the necessaries, but about the luxuries and kickshaws of life. The master relieved my immediate fears by saying that he scarcely imagined matters would come to ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... However, if too many intermediate links have not been lost, criticism succeeds in disentangling the relationships by persistent and ingenious applications of the method of repeated comparisons. Modern scholars (Krusch, for example, who has made a speciality of Merovingian hagiography) have recently constructed, by the use of this method, precise genealogies of the utmost solidity.[87] The results of the critical investigation of authorship, as applied to the filiation of documents, are of two kinds. Firstly, lost ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... liberty German Highland and the German Netherland Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism Maritime heretics Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft Worn nor caused to be worn ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... act upon it, that is to say, the slower and more laborious is its conscious thought. So long as instinct does not come into play, this holds good both in the case of men of different powers of comprehension and with animals; but with instinct all is changed, for it is the speciality of instinct never to hesitate or loiter, but to take action instantly upon perceiving that the stimulating motive has made its appearance. This rapidity in arriving at a resolution is common to the instinctive actions both ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... unbaptised. Last of all, their confirmation is a notable derogation unto the holy sacrament of baptism, not alone in that it presumeth the sealing of that which was sealed sufficiently by it; but also in that, both by asseveration of words, and by speciality of the minister that giveth it, it ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... can still fill that little body with so strong a soul, and make him sing as Milton's new-created birds sang to Milton's Eve in Milton's Paradise. Sweet he is, and various, rich, and strong, beyond all English warblers, save the nightingale: but his speciality is his force, his rush, his overflow, not so much of love as of happiness. The spirit carries him away. He riots up and down the gamut till he cannot stop himself; his notes tumble over each other; he chuckles, laughs, shrieks with delight, throws back his head, droops his ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... however, had been completed, and on the return of the Court Mr. Chaffanbrass said that he should only speak a very few words. For a few words he must ask indulgence, though he knew them to be irregular. But it was the speciality of this trial that everything in it was irregular, and he did not think that his learned friend the Attorney-General would dispute the privilege. The Attorney-General said nothing, and Mr. Chaffanbrass went on with ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... received, it was twelve months at least since he had died in one of the Grecian islands. The full weeds of a mourning widow would ill have befitted her condition of mind, or her immediate purpose. But yet there was a speciality of blackness in her garments which told him that she had dressed herself with a purpose as of mourning. "Mother," he said to her in the train, "you are in mourning,—as for a friend?" Then when she paused he asked again, "May I not be told ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... long hair when our own regimental tonsorial artist is waiting to bob it for you free of charge? Luxurious saloon; deft workmanship; no tips. His speciality—memento locks. Twelve such souvenirs guaranteed from one crop. Bald soldiers supplied to taste from surplus clippings. A delicate, lasting and inexpensive compliment to lady friends on leaving a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... poet—though I know of none such—may have accepted and adopted his theory that "vengeance" must count in verse as a word of three syllables: I can hardly believe that the fancy would sound sweet in any second man's ear: but this speciality is not more characteristic than other and more important qualities of style—the peculiar abruptness, the peculiar inflation, the peculiar crudity—which denote this comedy as apparently if not evidently Marstonian. On the other hand, if it were indeed his, it is impossible to conjecture ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the 'Rake's Progress,' where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from some ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... you saw her with, always work together. They indeed suggested this present little affair, for they knew that Italian women bring lots of jewellery here, in order to show it off. Besides, hotels are their speciality. So there seemed to Bindo no reason why we should not have a little of the best of it. The diamond necklace of the Signora Jacobi is well known to be one of the finest in all Italy; therefore, on several occasions, I lent her Rosalie for hair-dressing, and ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... the people. The case of Richard is interesting because it's national. Though to us it's absurd to cut off a man's head, because he has become our brother and has found grace, yet we have our own speciality, which is all but worse. Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,' every one must have seen it. It's peculiarly Russian. He describes ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... think Nature intended him for a Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I just came away and left them to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... to reason was just what the young Pole believed to be his speciality; so, with a smile, he took a pistol in one hand, and said aside to Anton, "Do as I, and have the goodness to follow me." Next he seized the wagoner by the throat, and dragged him down the stair. "Where is the landlord?" ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... blood in my veins; and, as if my position had not been perilous enough in reality, my overwrought imagination must needs add to it a thousand extravagant fantasies. Patience had the reputation of being a wolf-rearer. This, as you know, is a cabalistic speciality accredited in all countries. I kept on fancying, therefore, that I saw this devilish little gray-beard, escorted by his ravening pack, and himself in the form of a demi-wolf, pursing me through the woods. Several times when rabbits got ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Forest when I first knew I cared. But I'm sorely afraid it must be the thing to go. There are several important-looking antique shops here, and I noticed, when casting my eye about, one where they make a speciality of curious and rare jewellery. I shall look at it again more carefully when I run out to the post-office, in a few minutes, and perhaps I may have courage to try and strike a bargain, so as to send the money off in the morning before Knutsford—if ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the ploughman and the fisherman are as necessary to society as the scientist or the artist, I will not say more necessary: neither is the difficulty of producing the more special and excellent work at all proportionate to its speciality or excellence: the higher workman produces his work as easily perhaps as the lower does his work; if he does not do so, you must give him extra leisure, extra means for supplying the waste of power in him, but you can give him nothing more. The only reward that you CAN give the excellent ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... as well as "Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament" and "Fair Margaret and Sweet William,"[34] was quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," (1611). Scraps of them are sung by one of the dramatis personae, old Merrythought, whose speciality is a damnable iteration of ballad fragments. References to old ballads are numerous in the Elizabethan plays. Percy devoted the second book of his first series to "Ballads that Illustrate Shakspere." In the seventeenth century a few ballads were printed ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... literary criticism more life than in France. It engages the attention of the best minds. No writer, whatever be his speciality, thinks it derogatory to give long and elaborate notices in the daily press of new books or new editions of old books. Thus, Sainte-Beuve in the "Moniteur," De Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, Philarete Chasles, Prevost-Paradol in the "Journal des Debats," not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... paper, and became known to the general public first as a "Punch man," and then as "the Punch man," and for some time recognised by that, rather than by his work in other directions. He became more and more highly appreciated as one of those who contributed to that speciality of humour for which Punch had already established a reputation while creating a demand. All the while, during the first ten years, he regarded the paper as a sort of stepping-stone to an independent literary position; and he was not very long in using his opportunity ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... stands to reason that a man who's responsible for all the largest new eyesores in London would impress any corporation. Clever chap, Corver! Instead of wasting his time in travel and study, he made a speciality of learning how to talk to committees. And he was always full of ideas like the piebald pony, ever ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the shape of the loaves has in most cases continued unchanged to the present day. And one curious coincidence is certainly worth mentioning, in that a peculiar method of preparing figs with caraway seeds, which was long supposed to be a local speciality of a remote town in Central Italy, has now been recognized as a common method of dressing this fruit for the table at Pompeii, for large quantities of figs so treated have been unearthed in shops and kitchens. Such grains of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... that mother's misery had apparently come from the fact of her having a husband. Those first years of the child's life had been very sad; very monotonous, very depressing. Perhaps the effect of them did but confirm the speciality of an idiosyncrasy, which would have been much the same without them. But, at all events, when the child was brought to the house of her great-aunt, it seemed as if her mind and character had been too long and too uniformly toned to accord with sadness, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... chateau in the old family carriage, which the baron had given up to him, until the arms of the De Lamares had been quartered on it with those of the Leperthius des Vauds. Now there was only one man in the whole province who made a speciality of coats-of-arms, a painter from Bolbec, named Bataille, who was naturally in great request among all the Normandy aristocracy; so Julien had to wait for some time before he could ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... hotel office. The maid fortunately had a good memory, and could tell the date of the girl's stay. The register of that day contained several names, but the clerk recalled the incident of the girl applying for a room. This hotel made a speciality of catering ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... little person, apparently well educated and refined, but she was as sly as her notorious employer, whom she served so faithfully. She was, she had already told Hugh, the daughter of a man who had made jewel thefts his speciality and after many convictions was now serving ten years at the convict prison at Toulon. She had been bred in the Montmartre, and trained and educated to a criminal life. Il Passero had found her, and, after several times successfully ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes the handicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... fabulous or doubtful, mythic or legendary? Now, I cannot but feel, on the other hand, that these narratives are as strikingly marked by all the usual indications of historic truthfulness as any historic writings in the world. The artlessness, simplicity, and speciality of the narrative,—a certain inimitable tone and air of reality, earnestness, and candor,—the general harmony of these so-called sacred writers with themselves and with profane authors (quite as general, to say the least, as usually distinguishes ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... quite a special invitation, because it came in the form of a card,—which was unusual between the two families. But the dinner was too, in some degree, a special dinner,—as Emily was enabled to explain to her father, the whole speciality having been fully detailed to herself by her aunt. Mr. Roby, whose belongings were not generally aristocratic, had one great connexion with whom, after many years of quarrelling, he had lately come into amity. This ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... would have been abominably dull. There was no mention even of balls and assemblies until he came back again. Some men have a peculiar talent, a special faculty, for arranging such things, and it was "our friend" Kecskerey's speciality. The whole world of fashion called Kecskerey "our friend," so it is only proper that we should ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... relinquishing it, by the pursuit of evil courses—among them three of a special kind: wine, women, and play—which promise to make him bankrupt in purse, as they already have in character. For around San Francisco, as in it, he is known as roue and reveller, a debauchee in every speciality of debauch, and a silly fellow to boot. Naturally of weak intellect, and dissipation has ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... your final judgement, because it is pretty certain that you won't be long in this trade until you find out I have not exaggerated one single incident, and that there are gentlemen cruising in these waters who claim a law unto themselves, and who make a speciality of brigandage and murder. I understand from Curly that many of them are educated and well-bred, and that it is the love of adventure that causes that section of them to take to the life. They are ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... on taxidermy profess to give descriptions of the attitudes of animals, I cannot do so for the simple reason that I consider the acquirement a speciality and purely a matter of experience. Nature must be closely studied; failing this, reference must be made to illustrated works on natural history. All of Gould's works are grand guides to attitudes of specimens and accessories, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... principle is true in the main, but there is some speciality in this case that makes it highly inconvenient for ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... preference, eh?' said Uncle Solomon, rather as if he was treating a schoolboy. 'What's their speciality 'ere, now? Well, you can give me,' he added to the waiter, with the manner of a man conferring a particular favour, 'you can give me a chump chop, underdone, and a sausage. And bring this young gentleman the same. I don't care about anything ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... explaining "Wuzu" (lesser ablution), "Ghusl" (greater ablution), and "Zakat" (legal alms which constitute a poor-rate), proving that the writer never read vol. iii. He confidently suggests replacing "Cafilah," "by the better known word Caravan," as if it were my speciality (as it is his) to hunt-out commonplaces: he grumbles about "interrogation-points a l'Espagnole upside down"(?) which still satisfies me as an excellent substitute to distinguish the common Q(uestion) from A(nswer) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... freedom of opinion, like the case for self-government, has suffered from the fact that we take the theory so completely for granted that we do not notice how far we are removed from the practice of it. Freedom is supposed to be an Englishman's speciality. "Britons never shall be slaves," we say, and suppose that settles the matter. Very likely Thomson, when he wrote his feeble verses (they have been redeemed by an excellent tune), never paused to reflect that the ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... restaurants and select clubs,—a theatre to which small parties used to adjourn after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was especially ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... fourth century. Whether the binding was thought to restrain the convulsions of the mediums, or whether it was, originally, a 'test condition,' to prevent the medium from cheating (as in modern experiments), we cannot discover. It does not appear to be in use among the Maoris, whose speciality is 'trance utterance'. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... individuals alone have a real existence, and that the "essence" of things is not to be sought in the elements of unity and generality, or in the idea, as Plato taught, but in the elements of diversity and speciality. And furthermore, in opposition to Plato, he had taught his disciples to attach themselves to sensation, as the source of all knowledge. As the direct consequence of this teaching, we find his immediate ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... floodgates of their wrath on the authors of the latest menu. The authors' apologists, for—tell it not in Gath!—they had apologists still, argued that there were restaurants in Paris where cooked horse was a speciality. But special pleading so palpable only aggravated the prevailing resentment to the dish. There were a great many customs in Paris equally foreign to our, shall I say, Imperial ways; together with a plethora of scientific chefs ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... educational, and in war it becomes the channel of executive power. Bourcet described the head of such a department as "the soul of an army." The British navy is without such a department. The army has borrowed the name, but has not maintained the speciality of function which is essential. In armies other than the British, the Chief of the General Staff is occupied solely with tactics and strategy, with the work of intellectual research by which Nelson and Napoleon prepared their great achievements. His business is to be designing campaigns, to make ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... Spencer's two chief points are these:—(1) He denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds that any grouping of the sciences in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their genesis and their interdependence; no true filiation exists; no science develops itself in isolation; no one is independent, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... bandaged and my coat loose over my shoulders, favored my object. Although I had sent Mr. Jaggers a brief account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in town, yet I had to give him all the details now; and the speciality of the occasion caused our talk to be less dry and hard, and less strictly regulated by the rules of evidence, than it had been before. While I described the disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his wont, before the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... with, so that he might confine his watch to the garden-front, he walled up all the windows on the ground-floor and the first floor overlooking the Rue Dufresnoy. Next, he enlisted the services of a firm which made a speciality of protecting private houses against robberies. Every window of the gallery in which the tapestries were hung was fitted with invisible burglar alarms, the position of which was known, to none but himself. These, at the least touch, switched ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... library which was rich in books of romance, and what was then termed 'the black art'; but Webster was the author of a rare volume on witchcraft, so that his books were his literary tools—just as, a century later, John Rennie, the distinguished civil engineer, made a speciality of mathematical books, of which he had a collection nearly complete in all languages. Dr. Benjamin Moseley's library, which was sold by Stewart in March, 1814, was composed for the most part of books on astrology, magic, and facetiae. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... dog's speciality as a subtle sense of smell. That is certainly what I mean, if you will understand by that that the nasal passages of the animal are the seat of the perceptive organ; but is the thing perceived always a simple smell in the vulgar acceptation ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... in a trot, moved a lock of his hair and replaced it, and said, 'Yes, Maister Derriman.' He was old Mr. Derriman's odd hand in the yard and garden, and like his employer had no great pretensions to manly beauty, owing to a limpness of backbone and speciality of mouth, which opened on one side only, giving him a ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Joe Keats always laughed at him as if he were a farce; Joe would not be ceremonious, and could not be corrected because he was a relative and of equal age with the alderman. But he was obliged to go to Joe Keats, as Joe made a speciality of cartridges. In Hanbridge, people who wanted cartridges went as a matter of course to Joe's. So Alderman Keats strolled with grand casualness ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... some of the conditions by which the appearance of Jesus was prepared and rendered possible; but they explain only the possibility, not the reality of the appearance. But this with its historically not deducible power is the decisive thing. If some one has recently said that "the historical speciality of the person of Jesus" is not the main thing in Christianity, he has thereby betrayed that he does not know how a religion that is worthy of the name is founded, propagated, and maintained. For the latest ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... from New York the same day would reach Queenstown before us. In fact, a good smart sailing vessel, with a fair wind, might have made it lively for us in an ocean race. The Tub was a broad slow boat, whose great speciality was freight, and her very broadness, which kept her from being a racer, even if her engines had had the power, made her particularly comfortable in a storm. She rolled but little; and as the state-rooms were large and airy, every ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr |
