"Superficial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once to subdue, not once to tarnish! All petty humiliations were forgotten in one look at "Lavvie's Drawing-Room;" all stain of insolent words vanished from Valentine's memory in the atmosphere of the Studio. Never was a more superficial judgment pronounced than when his friends said that he had thrown away his whole life, because he had chosen a vocation in which he could win no public success. The lad's earliest instincts had indeed led him truly, after all. The art to which he had devoted himself was the only earthly ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... increases with every generation; not even the ignorance and stolidity of the past are allowed the final grace of being forgotten; and omniscience is becoming at once more and more impossible and more and more fashionable. Whoever reads only the books of his own time is superficial in proportion to the thickness of the ages. But neither the genius of man, nor his length of days, has had an increase corresponding to that of the realm of knowledge, the requirements of reading, and the conditions of intelligence. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... freshly-boiled water that has been kept closely covered in airtight containers for cooling without permitting a lot of oxygen to re-dissolve in the water. First rinse the live specimens in fresh water to clean away superficial dirt and slime, then submerge them in the de-oxygenated water. Place some sort of grid or other barrier to ensure that they cannot get near the surface, and re-seal the container to keep air out. Leave them ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... hands of men who are thoroughly trained in social science as well as accurate, experienced, and sympathetic observers of rural conditions. It would be mischievous indeed if in the desire to be progressive any educational institution should offer courses in rural social science which gave superficial or erroneous ideas about the scientific principles involved, or which encouraged in any degree whatever the notion that the farmer's business and welfare are not vitally and forever bound up with the business and welfare of all ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... and their ministers, showing little or nothing of their influence on the times they lived in, and ignoring the condition of the people, who were merely introduced as a background to some telling incident in the career of a picturesque personage; and everything else was taught in the same superficial way—except religion. But the fact that the religious education was good in Beth's time was an accident due to Miss Clifford's character and capacity, and therefore no credit to the governors of the school, who did not know that she was specially qualified in that respect when they made her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of a tiny quay, a little group of houses, and the ravines beyond. It is impossible to imagine any place where buildings and tourists could more exasperate a true lover of earlier days. Still, they cannot have more than a superficial effect—except at the meeting of the streams, which is quite spoilt by the houses on ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... closed eyes for one minute, until her senses, dazed by the wild rush about her, have become sufficiently clear, and her hand steady enough, to pick out the diamonds of duty from the glass chips which pass with the superficial observer for first-water gems. It is well for our housewife to have some test-stone duty by which she may rate the importance of other tasks. Such a test-stone may be John's or baby's needs or requirements. Of course she must not expect ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... with farms and forests in Dalmatia. Well, the Count of Thurn observed that this small body of Italianized Slavs would probably not help him very much, for the Italian culture and the education which they were so proud of were—it is not unjust to say—nearly always superficial and not such as to compensate for this party's lack of numbers. But yet, for what they were worth, he supported them. No doubt the project which the Archduke Charles evolved in 1880, to transplant German-Austrians ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... of the Royal Family advances us to the most marked of all the superficial English characteristics; or, perhaps, loyalty is not superficial, but is truly of the blood and bone, and not reasoned principle, but a passion induced by the general volition. Whatever it is, it is one of the most explicitly as well as the most tacitly pervasive of the English idiosyncrasies. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... watering the beds, and removing the manure after the beds are exhausted, are built against the wall and with a rounded face, thus giving a three and one-half feet wide surface of bed in place of one three feet wide, were it built flat. This gain in superficial area is not so important as it might seem, for the part immediately next to the edge of the pathway seldom yields very much. Above these beds a string of shelf beds is arranged which runs the full ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... people of the city, such as Alexander Hitchcock, Ferdinand Dunster, the Polot families, the Blaisdells, the Anthons. There were also a few of the more distinctly "smart" people, and a number who might be counted as social possibilities. Sommers had seen something in a superficial way of many of these people. Thanks to the Hitchcocks' introduction, and also to the receptive attitude of a society that was still very largely fluid, he had gone hither and thither pretty widely during this past year. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? he answered, action; what next? action; what next again? action. He said it, that knew it best, and had, by nature, himself no advantage in that he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator, which is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a player, should be placed so high, above those other noble parts, of invention, elocution, and the rest; nay, almost alone, as if it were all in all. But the reason is plain. There is in human nature generally, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... authority to prevent their friends seeing them until the fatal termination of their illness was certain. Also, that it was that same doctor who was within call when Brooks made his assault on Sumner, took charge of the case, and made an official statement that the injury was very slight, gave it a superficial dressing, and sought to exclude every one from the room of his ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... conveniently situated close to the Regent's Canal, so as to have easy communication with inland as well as sea navigation. A series of sheds occupy an area of 135,000 superficial feet, and the platforms to receive goods from railway trucks on one side and from waggons on the other, occupy 30,000 feet. These platforms and sheds are provided with 110 cranes, for loading and unloading, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... should turn sadly homeward, for I should see that her jewels were flashing scorn upon the object they adorned, that her laces were of a more exquisite loveliness than the woman whom they merely touched with a superficial grace. It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum,—bright to see, but silent ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... in influencing his pupil, when Queen, to help Brienne to the Ministry, he did her and her kingdom more injury than their worst foes. Of the Abbe's power over Marie Antoinette there are various opinions; of his capacity there is but one—he was superficial and cunning. On his arrival at Vienna he became the tool of Maria Theresa. While there, he received a salary as the daughter's tutor, and when he returned to France, a much larger one as the mother's spy. He was more ambitious to be thought a great man, in his power ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... is going to be the end of the great display of superficial sentimentality for the stricken city? An all-around good deal: Moneyed people, contractors, real estate speculators will make large sums of money. Indeed it is not at all unlikely that within a few months good Christian capitalists will secretly thank their ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial." ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... passing through the Square at the moment; and while he played with the idea of his marriage with Margaret, he found himself glancing expectantly at the car which was waiting in front of the Governor's door. "I wonder if she is going out," he thought, while a superficial interest brightened the dull hours before him. "It would be no more than she deserved if I were to go in and ask after her ankle." In obedience to the mocking impulse, he entered the gate and reached the steps just as Patty came out on the porch. She was walking ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... of repose that his sufferings allowed him, the child attended a commercial school at Vernon. There he learned orthography and arithmetic. His science was limited to the four rules, and a very superficial knowledge of grammar. Later on, he took lessons in writing and bookkeeping. Madame Raquin began to tremble when advised to send her son to college. She knew he would die if separated from her, and she said the books would kill him. So Camille remained ignorant, and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... maturity, not of the student stage. This implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of selection,—of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad and deep knowledge. The artist is always a student, of course; but he is not a student only. He is a student who knows what and why he wants to study; not one who is in process ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... loved his kisses, the clasp of his strong arms, the stability of his chest and shoulders—but sometimes his passion startled her, and she had queer, shy withdrawals. Yet these were never more than temporary and superficial; her own passions were slowly awaking, and moreover had their roots in a sweet, sane instinct of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... of a mere animal calculation of chances;—similar to the feelings which give rise to the cautious prowling of the hungry lion, or the stealthy advances of the timorous fox. But the forebodings, as well as the gnawings of conscience, extend much farther, and strike much deeper, than these superficial and animal sensations. Conscience in man, as long as it is permitted to act freely, has always a reference to God, to a future judgment, and to eternity, and is but rarely affected by worldly considerations. The valuable lesson to be drawn from this circumstance ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... science and respectability, who has stated his objections. The observations which he has made appear to me to be founded on nothing more than common prejudice, and misconceived notions of the subject. I am therefore to point out that erroneous train of reasoning, into which a hasty superficial view of things, perhaps, has led the patron of an opposite opinion to see my theory in an unfavourable light. This, however, is not all; for, that train of inconsequential reasoning is so congenial with the crude and ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... of this woman of the world with such an unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones, seemed to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no inactive part in arranging the affair; there were considerations of expediency which she would be far more likely to appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... acquiescence was soon buttressed by a reasoned if somewhat unfair estimate of the Master's character. I very soon began to hear plenty of Oxford gossip about him and his failings—chief among them being his supposed favouritism. He was very generally called a snob, which no doubt, in a superficial sense, he was, and I soon got my nose well in the air in regard to his worship of dukes and marquesses and even of the offscourings of Debrett and his willingness to give special privileges to their errant progeny. I had, however, to give the Master credit for the way in which ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... certainly much flattered by the distinction, but am afraid his lordship's partiality and patronage will in this only instance do him no credit. My knowledge even of British antiquity has ever been desultory and most superficial; I have never studied any branch of science deeply and solidly, nor ever but for temporary amusement, and without any system, suite, or method. Of late years I have quitted every connexion with societies, not only Parliament, but those of our Antiquaries and of Arts ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... He has had, in a word, a typical religious experience at its best with three elements at the heart of it: a great need, a great salvation, a great gratitude. When such a man considers the modern social movement, however beautiful its spirit or admirable its concrete gains, it seems to him superficial if it presents itself as a panacea. It does not go deep enough to reach the soul's real problems. The continual misunderstanding between the Church and the social movement has, then, this explanation: the characteristic approach of the Christian Gospel ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... it better to omit the chain of 66 feet, because it introduces a series which is not decimal, viz. 1. 66. 80. and because it is absolutely useless. As a measure of length, it is unknown to the mass of our citizens; and if retained for the purpose of superficial measure, the foot will supply its place, and fix the acre ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... suspicion that he had the irritability as well as the dignity of genius. Moreover, the pleasure, if it should occur—for I could scarcely believe it was near at hand—would be so great that I wished to think of it in advance, to feel it there against my breast, not to mix it with satisfactions more superficial and usual. In the little game of new sensations that I was playing with my ingenuous mind I wished to keep my visit to the author of "Beltraffio" as a trump-card. It was three years after the publication of that fascinating work, which I had read over five times and which now, with ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... importance. The faces of the men, too, showed a lack of a certain feeling of responsibility for being there. It was as if they had been driven. It was the dominant animal failing to remember in the supreme moments the forceful causes of various superficial qualities. The whole affair seemed incomprehensible ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... picture of virtue, the whole-hearted attack on vice, the genial humour, the sunny portraits of humanity, the splendid cheerfulness of Tom Jones, that 'Epic of Youth,' came from a man in middle age, immersed in disheartening struggles, and fighting recurrent ill health. Superficial critics have called Fielding a realist because his figures are so full-blooded and alive that we feel we have met them but yesterday in the street; to eyes so shortsighted life itself must seem merely realistic. As none but an idealist ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... reading, and observing the passage I have just quoted, continued his remarks upon the discipline of the schools.—"In the new formed system of which we boast," said the master, "the philosophy which has enlightened the world is omitted or passed over in a superficial way, and the student is exercised in narrow and contracted rounds of education, in which his whole labour is consumed, and his whole time employed, with little improvement or useful knowledge. He has neither time nor inclination to attend the public ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the 10th of September recruits poured in in such numbers that it was hard to cope with the situation in the most superficial way. On that date the standard was raised, and, as though a sluice had been dropped across a mill dam, the stream stopped suddenly and completely. I suppose that was the object of the new regulation, ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... his position by the French ambassadors, who had felt or affected disinclination for peace, but who had subsequently, thrown the whole of their own and their master's influence on the side of Barneveld. They had done their best—and from time to time they had been successful—to effect at least a superficial reconciliation between those two influential personages. They had employed all the arguments at their disposal to bring the prince over to the peace party. Especially they had made use of the 'argumentum ad crumenam,' which that veteran broker in politics, Jeannin, had found ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... coffeehouses of London murmured at this profusion, and accused William of ostentation. But, as this fault was never, on any other occasion, imputed to him even by his detractors, we may not unreasonably attribute to policy what to superficial or malicious observers seemed to be vanity. He probably thought it important, at the commencement of a new era in the relations between the two great kingdoms of the West, to hold high the dignity of the Crown which he wore. He well knew, indeed, that the greatness ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the place. His acquaintance with Trans-Mississippi conditions was very superficial, yet even he found out that they were of a nature to admonish those concerned of their urgency, especially in the matter of lack of arms.[501] By the fourteenth of July his indecision was apparently overcome. At any rate, on that day Randolph wrote Pike that Magruder, the real commander ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Deane appealed to me for my opinion of it I made answer, getting up, that I detested Hugh Vereker and simply couldn't read him. I departed with the moral certainty that as the door closed behind me Deane would brand me for awfully superficial. His hostess ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... assuming the appearance of the small vesications produced by a burn. Most commonly they appear about the joints of the fingers and at their extremities; but whatever parts are affected, if the situation will admit the superficial suppurations put on a circular form with their edges more elevated than their centre and of a color distinctly approaching to blue. Absorption takes place, and tumors appear in each axilla. The system becomes affected, the pulse is quickened; shiverings, succeeded by heat, general lassitude, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Borderers—that famous battalion which stormed so brilliantly de Tott's battery at the first landing,—also of a detachment of Australians under Lieutenant Edwards and a squad of New Zealanders under Lieutenant Sheppard, fine men all of them, but very different (despite the superficial resemblance imparted by their slouch hats) when thus seen shoulder to shoulder on parade. The Australians have the pull in height and width of chest; the New Zealanders are thicker ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... beautiful dances of Madam Pavlowa, the Russian dancer, hoping to remove the unfavorable impression of the former series. But it was only partially successful. Bok had made a mistake in recognizing the craze at all; he should have ignored it, as he had so often in the past ignored other temporary, superficial hysterics of the public. The Journal readers knew the magazine had made a mistake and frankly ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... comparative mythology. Such parallelisms, to reach satisfactory results, should be attempted only by those who have studied the Oriental religions in their original sources, and thus are not to be deceived by superficial resemblances. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... way to the breakfast-table of the quiet Vicarage to the westward, in that valley where the air is so soft and the soil so rich that the effort of growth requires but superficial aid by comparison with the tillage at Flintcomb-Ash, and where to Tess the human world seemed so different (though it was much the same). It was purely for security that she had been requested by Angel to send her communications through his father, whom he kept pretty well informed of his changing ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... than that of a soldier in his barrack. Many boys would have grown hardy, aggressive, callous, and very possibly vicious from being thrown out on the world so early. Young Graham became reticent and to superficial observers shy. Those who cared to observe him closely, however, discovered that it was not diffidence, but indifference toward others that characterized his manner. In the most impressible period of his life he had received instruction, advice and discipline in abundance, but love and sympathy ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... how utterly absurd is our waste of time, our dissipation of the few days and hours vouchsafed us. We are just so many cicadas drumming out the hours and disappearing. We have abundance of wit, and a good deal of humor of a superficial kind, but the penetrating vision of a Socrates, a Voltaire, a Carlyle is denied the most of us, and we take ourselves and our ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... this distance of time, upon this strange interview, I am indeed shocked and grieved at the part which I then and there permitted myself to undertake. The scene has lost the colours which gave it a false and superficial lustre, and I gaze on the melancholy reality chidden, and, let me say, instructed by the sight. I can now better appreciate and understand the self-confident tone which pronounced upon my state in the eye of heaven—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... niceness and precision that make this new method of anesthesia a real work of art. I should think that the Japanese, with their very rare power at embroidery, might come to be past masters in this work. There were some insertions very superficial and some extremely deep. Over the operator's head, there were a half dozen heads peering intently at each move he made, while the patient himself was free to lift his head and look down and see just what was being done. I did not test ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... for convenience be considered as a distinct faculty, though it is really the lighter, partly superficial, aspect of Imagination. It deals with things not essentially or significantly true, amusing us with striking or pleasing suggestions, such as seeing faces in the clouds, which vanish almost as soon as they are discerned. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... greater than that of any other equal part, is vastly less than the affection or diathesis diffused over the whole body. The exciting or hurtful causes which produce these diseases, by no means exert their whole power upon a small portion of the superficial vessels of the lungs, and leave the rest untouched; on the contrary, they affect exery part of the system, and the whole body partakes of the morbid change. Indeed the general or universal affection; viz. a sense of heaviness ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... Hope-Jones, though faintly foreshadowed by Bishop in his Clarabella. It is produced from pipes of a very large scale, yielding a volume of foundation tone, accompanied by the minimum of harmonic development. Even from a purely superficial point of view, the tone of the Tibia family is most attractive; but, further, its value in welding together the constituent tones of the organ and coping with ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... with "Unconscious Memory," the main object of which was to show how Professor Hering of Prague had treated the connection between memory and heredity; to show, again, how substantial was the difference between Von Hartmann and myself in spite of some little superficial resemblance; to put forward a suggestion as regards the physics of memory, and to meet the most plausible objection which I have yet seen brought ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... even enable Cardinal Steinmann to catch an earlier volor from Paris to Berlin; but he was not sure bow they ran. It was a pity that the German had not been able to catch the thirteen o'clock from Rome to Berlin direct. So he calculated, in a kind of superficial insensibility. ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... carry out his plans, and his pulse beat quicker when the Prince requested him to be in attendance one afternoon, and to accompany him alone to Whitehall, where the Duke of York was in residence. There was a certain superficial likeness in character between the Prince and his father-in-law, for both appeared unfeeling and unsympathetic men, but what in James was obstinacy, in William was power, and what in James was superstitious, in William was religion, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... going. I believe he had a mind to discourse of some Navy businesses, but Sir Thomas Clifford coming into the coach to us, we were prevented; which I was sorry for, for I had a mind to begin an acquaintance with him. He speaks well, and hath pretty slight superficial parts, I believe. He, in our going, talked much of the plain habit of the Spaniards; how the King and Lords themselves wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies mantles in cold weather of white flannell: ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... or anyway, British, before they were Americans, that their buildings and everything else would be enough like to remind one of home. But each street we turned into showed me that this isn't at all true in New York. There are bits like Paris—at least you think so, on a superficial glance—but nothing in ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... a matter less personally assured and momentous, his son's almost oppressive sense of the spiritual significance of existence had been less radiant and constantly supporting. Life might have gained in superficial liveableness; but it would have lost in intensity, in real importance, and with that loss would have gone too Henry's chance of being a poet." The poet in a golden clime was born!"—once and again, maybe, but more often he comes from a land of iron ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Beale finally laid hold of while he masked again with his fine presence half the flounces of the fireplace was: "Do you know, my dear, I shall soon be off to America?" It struck his daughter both as a short cut and as the way he wouldn't have said it to his wife. But his wife figured with a bright superficial assurance ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... keep back the question put by the Ecclesiast, "What is the cause that the former days were better than these?" and the answer we think is not difficult to find. Our daughters are brought up now like tender plants, more for ornament than use. The practical lessons of life are neglected for the superficial. We send our sons to college, and there they fly from the fostering care of home; they crowd into our towns and cities— sometimes to rise, it is true, but more frequently to fall, and to become worthless members of society. Like the dog in the fable, we ourselves have let the substance ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... combine to make it a bewilderingly rich but rather 'difficult' work. It cannot be recommended to the lover of light drama or the seeker of momentary distraction. The Road to Damascus does not deal with the superficial strata of human life, but probes into those depths where the problems of God, and death, and ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... invincible gravitation towards the Kaiser, and also towards Julich and Berg, by means of him,—well acted on by the Tobacco-Parliament for the space of those six weeks. During which, accordingly, almost from the first day after that Hotham Dinner of April 3d, the answer of the royal mind, with superficial fluctuations, always is: "Wilhelmina at once, if you choose; likely enough we might agree about Crown-Prince Friedrich too, if once all were settled; but of the Double-Marriage, at this present time, HORE NIT, [Ranke, i. 285 n.] ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... his, raw, from his own unswerving honesty. And the first acid test of a real situation showed that West's honor was only burnished and decorated dross, while Queed's, which he had made himself, was as fine gold. In that test, all superficial trappings were burned and shriveled away; men were made to show their men's colors; and the "queer little man with the queer little name" had instantly cast off his resplendent superior because contact with his superior's dishonesty was degrading to him. Yet in the same breath, he had allowed ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... had all left the ship Dada soon betrayed how superficial her indignation had been; for, presently spying through the window of the cabin the young cavalry officer's grey-bearded father, she sprang up the narrow steps—barefoot as she was accustomed to be when at home—and threw herself on a cushion to lean over the gunwale of the upper deck, which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... self-control of their order, the self-control instilled as a virtue by their education, and standing now in the place of all virtues, enabled them to maintain a superficial calmness that conducted them safely through the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... difficulties. He did not much care to hold continuous friendship with any man, for, like all who have the habit of talking to themselves, he was conscious that his companionship lacked attraction. Moreover—a thing which superficial observers do not realise—like all who are most genuinely at odds with the world, the first head of his quarrel was with himself. He was only too well aware of his own defects and errors. He felt himself to be unamiable, often gross of understanding, always ready to fall into a blunder which ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... knives, and who were to have conducted the ship to America after all the officers and ship's company, with the soldiers, had been put to death, were landed at Madeira, in order that they might be sent to England: they were both Americans, and one of them had a superficial ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... are amongst the most remarkable that the history of Arctic navigation can show. They at once overturned all the theories which, on the ground of an often superficial study of preceding unsuccessful voyages, had been set up regarding the state of the ice east of Novaya Zemlya, and they thus form the starting-point of a new era in the history ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... period of mental discipline, of deliberate habit-forming and habit-breaking, such as I have been indicating, a man will begin to acquire at any rate a superficial knowledge, a nodding acquaintance, with that wonderful and mysterious affair, his brain, and he will also begin to perceive how important a factor in daily life is the control of his brain. He will assuredly be surprised at the miracles ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... three centuries Christianity had already overcome the world, and thus rendered such an outward revolution, as has attached itself to the name of this prince, both possible and unavoidable. It were extremely superficial to refer so thorough and momentous a change to the personal motives of an individual, be they motives of policy, of piety, or of superstition. But unquestionably every age produces and shapes its own organs, as its own purposes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the track of wealth across the British islands by deposits of mineral coal, as clearly as if it had been traced in sunbeams, have bequeathed no such sources of sub-terrene affluence to Kent. Nor has nature been more than parsimonious (to say the least) with respect to the superficial qualities of its soil. We have only, however, to cast our eyes on a topographical chart of Kent, to see how beneficently these disadvantages are balanced by considerations of a different sort. Washed along a vast line of coast by the ocean, and bordered ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... less sightly productions had correct details that put hers to shame, and, for mere honesty's sake, and to keep up her dignity, she was obliged to work hard, and recur to the good grounding that against her will she had received at Hiltonbury. 'Had her education been as superficial as that of her cousins,' she wrote to her brother, 'Sarah would have put her to shame long ago; indeed, nobody but the Fennimore could be thoroughly ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fought the battle of Lake George, September 8, 1755. The brilliant victory gained here was greater than is apparent at a superficial glance, for it checked the French advance upon the English colonies; it probably saved Albany and other towns from destruction; it was the means of driving the invaders back upon their defensive posts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, where they were ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... saying with admiring conviction that she was 'a very fine girl,' would regret that somehow she had not the faculty of 'making the best of herself,' of 'putting her best foot foremost.' And would they not heartily stand up for her with the superficial majority! ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... unusually curt with that gentleman, which editors do not like, and sometimes reward with a leading article in consequence, on the character and career of our political chief, perhaps with some passing reference to jacks-in-office, and the superficial impertinence of private secretaries. These wise and amiable speculators on public affairs should, however, sometimes charitably remember that even ministers have their chagrins, and that the trained temper and imperturbable presence ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... not think I ever saw the world at large in any other terms. I never at any stage entertained the idea which sustained my mother, and which sustains so many people in the world,—the idea that the universe, whatever superficial discords it may present, is as a matter of fact "all right," is being steered to definite ends by a serene and unquestionable God. My mother thought that Order prevailed, and that disorder was just incidental ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... conditions, do, however, make an immense superficial difference between the humour even of Mr. Bret Harte and that of English writers. His fun is derived from the vagaries of huge, rough people, with the comic cruelty of the old Danes, and with the unexpected tenderness of a sentimental time. The characters ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... hesitated, temporizing with myself. I gave a couple of days of intensive meditation to the subject, and then I reached this conclusion: I would read a few standard and orthodox works on dietetics, and, so doing, try to arrive at least at a superficial knowledge of the matter. Also, I would balance what one recognized authority said as against what another recognized authority said, and then, before going to a specialist, I would do a little personal experimenting with my diet ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... particles of the gaseous matter, condensed and agglomerated by attraction, into a series of planets, of which our earth is the third in point of size. That the earth has undergone vast changes, is evident to the most superficial geological student. We are only able to investigate the crust of the earth, with all our ingenious boring instruments: but even in this crust we may trace a gradual change, and recognise the silent operations of nature in ages never counted by man. According ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... she recovered her self-possession with a suddenness and a certainty incomprehensible to a man. From the depths of tenderness she passed to the shallows of frivolity. In her own defense she was almost as superficial as her mother, in less ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... I am but a neophyte where Madame is an expert. I know the superficial nature of cats. Now and then without vainglory I can say I know their hearts; but Madame penetrates to and holds commune with their souls. And a cat's soul, monsieur, is a wonderful thing. Once it was divine—in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... out with it," he said, finding her eyes upon him in a wide, unseeing gaze—and that, too, he now remembered. She had taken on, as young girls do, the superficial graces and innocent affectations of an older person. Such perfectly natural and pardonable imitation is induced by admiration; and Lois had been a woman of fascinations in old times! He had no reason for believing that she had changed; and it had been clear ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the case were seen into, whether I deserve it? What "business" it was that deprived me of a call from Mr. —-, or of the possibility of calling on him, I know very well,—and —-, the little dog, and others know! But the fact in that matter is very far different indeed from the superficial semblance; and I appeal to all the gentlemen that are in America for a candid interpretation of the same. "Eighteen million bores,"—good Heavens don't I know how many of that species we also have; and how with us, as with you, the difference ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... English predecessors. But in England the pro-slavery party had been soon shamed out of the attempt to drag the Bible into their service, and hence the discussion there had been short and some-what superficial. The pro-slavery side of the question has been eagerly sustained by theological reviews and doctors of divinity without number, from the half-way and timid faltering of Wayland up to the unblushing and melancholy recklessness of Stuart. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... him, watching with fascinated eyes the strong hands that charmed from the old piano such music as probably it had never before uttered, was enthralled also, but only in a superficial sense. She was keenly interested in the play of his fingers, which seemed to her quite ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... at the Fair'—the poem referred to as in progress in a letter to Miss Blagden, and which appeared in the spring of 1872. The disturbing cause had been also of long standing; for the deeper reactive processes of Mr. Browning's nature were as slow as its more superficial response was swift; and while 'Dramatis Personae', 'The Ring and the Book', and even 'Balaustion's Adventure', represented the gradually perfected substance of his poetic imagination, 'Fifine at the Fair' was as the froth thrown up by it during the prolonged simmering which was to leave it ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... may call it, induced some superficial persons, who knew not how to account for the reverence which involuntarily filled their hearts on her appearance, to impute pride to her. But these were such as knew that they should have been proud of any ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... parties would warrant us to expect. The society talk of even the most brilliant man is of greatly less account than what you will get from him in (as the French say) a little committee. And Thoreau wanted geniality; he had not enough of the superficial, even at command; he could not swoop into a parlour and, in the naval phrase, "cut out" a human being from that dreary port; nor had he inclination for the task. I suspect he loved books and nature as well and near as warmly as he loved his fellow-creatures, - a melancholy, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in addition to their native German, to sustain a conversation in either. We visited Colonel Fred. Grant, then our minister to Austria, at Vosben, about twenty miles by rail from Vienna. I did not seek to make acquaintances in Vienna, as my time would not allow it, but, from a superficial view, I believed that the people of that city were intelligent, social and friendly, with more of the habits of Frenchmen than of the Germans of Berlin, or of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... divided into two sections, the one and by far the greater composed of the ignorant and superficial, and the other of the learned and reflective, I beg to state that it is to the latter I would appeal. Their judgment, I believe, will be in favour of my veracity, and, indeed, why should I not be veracious? A man can have ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... There had been no conversation on the dreadful subject at luncheon; for at luncheon at Mrs. Tramore's (her son never came to it) there were always, even after funerals and other miseries, stray guests of both sexes whose policy it was to be cheerful and superficial. Rose had sat down as if nothing had happened—nothing worse, that is, than her father's death; but no one had spoken of anything that any ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... received, on every day they met, hints and illuminations, but never the clear revealment that he hoped for. The thing that grew surer and surer for him was her essential liking, and the thing that became sweeter and sweeter, though the old perplexity mingled with it, was the superficial amusement he caused her. One of the things that, he began to see, amused her a little was the catholicity of taste displayed in the books scattered about his rooms, the volumes of French and Italian that the great-aunt would take up while they talked. They were books that ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... thought, forming in that direction the fibre of his mind, they not only illuminate conditions apparently novel, by revealing the essential analogies between them and the past, but they supply the clue by which the intricacies of the present can best be threaded. Nothing could be more utterly superficial, for instance, than the remark of a popular writer that "the days of tacks and sheets"—of sailing ships, that is—"have no value as lessons for the days of steam and armor." Contrast with such an utterance the saying of the great master of the art,—Napoleon: ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... part. In all instances it will test the mechanical dexterity and patience for cutting in confined spaces. When this has been accomplished to satisfaction, a piece of maple without curl or knot must be cut a little thicker than what has been removed, but as to superficial area, fitting to a hair's breadth if skill ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... from beginning to end. All the vexatious annoyances of the period that then seemed to counterbalance pleasure are lost to view, and only the rosy face of an experience that was happiness itself smiles upon him. What matter the myriad frets that then beset him in the flesh? They were superficial substance,—burrs that fell; he was happy in spite of them; he does not remember them; he sees nothing but the complete content; he in fact possesses his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... thought that by this union I had descended a step. I thought not; on the contrary, the very reverse. I was of high birth, had several not undistinguished family connexions, and was brought up in a brilliant circle, in all the superficial accomplishments of the day, amid superfluity and thoughtlessness. He was a man who had shaped out his own course in life, who, by his own honest endeavours, and through many self-denials, had raised his father's house from ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... thought, and all the danger of an original invention, which is always imperfectly understood by the superficial, was poor Dr. Grey's merit. He was modest and laborious, and he had the sagacity to discover what Butler wanted, and what the public required. His project was a happy thought, to commentate on a singular work which has scarcely a parallel in modern literature, if we except ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... white men, Caucasians, even like himself. Despite all changes of superficial character, their build and cast of features bore witness that these incredible folk, dwellers upon that nameless and buried sea, were the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... but in a rapid, superficial way, for the Eletto constantly reverted to old days and his father. Every person whom they had both ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this same America that I have met flagrant examples of the being wittily described as sans pere et sans proche—utterly without the responsibility of background and entirely unacquainted with the obligation of noblesse. The superficial observer in the United States might conceivably imagine the characteristic national trait to be self-sufficiency or vanity (this mistake has, I believe, been made), and his opinion might be strengthened ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... globules, by botanists called chlorophyl or phyto-color; these undergo changes according as they are acted upon by light, oxygen, or other agents, producing green, yellow, red, and other tints. This chlorophyl only exists in the outer or superficial cells of the parenchyma or cellular tissue of the leaf, and thus differs from starch and other substances produced in the internal cells, from which the light is more or less excluded. It is a fatty ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... any lengthened criticism of Theodore Hook's merits as a novelist; they have been discussed over and over again, with little variety of opinion, by every reviewer of the kingdom. Indeed, both his faults and his excellencies lie on the surface, and are obvious and patent to the most superficial reader; his fables, for the most part ill knit and insufficient, disappoint as they are unfolded; repetitions and omissions are frequent: in short, a general want of care and finish is observable throughout, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... yet acquire wealth; but the conclusion usually formed that the one man fails because of his particular honesty, and that the other prospers because of his particular dishonesty, is the result of a superficial judgment, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost totally corrupt, and the honest man almost entirely virtuous. In the light of a deeper knowledge and wider experience such judgment is found to be erroneous. The dishonest man may have some admirable ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... nature had early taught to recognize the simple underlying truths and realities of life and their relations to one another, was not to be measured by the conventions or limited standards of a tamer race of men hedged about by superficial traditions and born and reared remote from the heart of nature beneath the roofs of houses. It was the cold, hard earth and equally cold and unrelenting stars that had nurtured Chiquita from earliest childhood, and to apply ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... hospitality!" exclaimed Lintot, who loved his supper; and then, as he was fond of summing up and laying down the law when once his wife had given him the lead, he did so to the effect that though the great were all very well in their superficial way, and might possess many external charms for each other, and for all who were so deplorably weak as to fall within the sphere of their attraction, there was a gulf between the likes of them and the likes of us, which it would be better not to try and bridge if one ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of the lover. The scene is laid in Gibeah, where Saul kept his court, and to which all the persons of the story seem to have come back from Samuel's house at Kamah. Saul's strange subjugation to the hallowing influences of the prophet's presence had been but momentary and superficial; and it had been followed by a renewed outburst of the old hate, obvious to David's sharpened sight, though not to Jonathan. In the interview between them, David is pardonably but obviously absorbed in self, while Jonathan bends all his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... resembling sheets of water, either of small or large extent, have ever been detected on the surface, the superficial resemblance, in small telescopes, of the large grey tracts to the appearance which we may suppose our terrestrial lakes and oceans would present to an observer on the moon, naturally induced the early selenographers ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger |
