"Superfluous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... superfluous to add to the evidence that Mr. Gladstone has been utterly misled in supposing that his interpretation of Genesis receives any support from natural science. But it is as well to do one's work thoroughly while one is about it; and I think it may be advisable to point out that ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in the use of words, simple, straightforward statements of the thing wanted, will be reflected, dimly perhaps, in the form of the pupils' answers. Care must, therefore, be exercised as to the form in which questions are asked. They should be stripped of all superfluous introductory words, such as, "Who can tell?" "How many of you know?" etc. Such prefaces are not only useless and a waste of time, but they also put before pupils a bad model if we are to expect concise and direct ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... succeed in being amusing, at least once, before the end of dinner. He surrendered so quickly, looked so wretched at the sight of his castle in ruins, and replied in so craven a tone to Swann, appealing to him not to persist in a refutation which was already superfluous, "All right; all right; anyhow, even if I have made a mistake that's not a crime, I hope," that Swann longed to be able to console him by insisting that the story was indubitably true and exquisitely ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... supposed to follow the prayer, or the offence, satisfied the Christians of the ample measure of favor and authority which the saints enjoyed in the presence of the Supreme God; and it seemed almost superfluous to inquire whether they were continually obliged to intercede before the throne of grace; or whether they might not be permitted to exercise, according to the dictates of their benevolence and justice, the delegated powers of their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... has been said, in the narratives of my two former voyages, about this country and its inhabitants, Mr Anderson's remarks, as serving either to confirm or to correct our former accounts, may not be superfluous. He had been three times with me to Queen Charlotte's Sound during my last voyage; and, after this fourth visit, what he thought proper to record, may be considered as the result of sufficient observation. The reader will find it in the next section; and I have nothing farther ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... no comment. Even the remark that every line is worth meditation may well appear superfluous. One little fact only with regard to the rhymes, common to this and the next poem, and usual enough in Norman verse, may be pointed out, namely, that every line in the stanza ends with the same rhyme-sound as the corresponding line ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... views we have mentioned, we must ascribe life to a gas, that is, to an aeriform body."—Liebig: "Organic Chemistry," Mayfair's translation, p.363.—It is perhaps not less superfluous to add that Liebig does not support the views "according to which life must be ascribed to a gas," than it would be to state, had Dugald Stewart been quoted as writing, "According to the views we have mentioned the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the developing social conscience places under the ban receipt of private income from land and other natural resources, and that a powerful movement aiming at the confiscation of such resources is under way. It is superfluous to point out that the vast interests threatened would offer a desperate resistance. The warfare against an incomparably lesser interest, the liquor trade, has taxed all the resources of the modern democratic state—on the whole the most absolute ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... present absurd fashion of over-feeding cattle till the fat is nearly equal to the lean, may, by good management, be in some measure prevented, by cutting off the superfluous part, and preparing it as above, or by making it into puddings; see Nos. 551 and ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the weaker sex, is very old, and yet well worth retaining. May I recommend to you the following caution, as a guide, whenever you are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet—if you are handling an editor or politician, it is superfluous advice. I take it from the back of one of those little French toys which contain pasteboard figures moved by a small running stream of fine sand; Benjamin Franklin will translate it for you: "Quoiqu'elle ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... exquisitely clad; the folds of her gown fell about her form like the drapery of a statue; he was fascinated from the first moment of their meeting. He noticed that nothing about her was ever disarranged; neither was there anything superfluous or artificial, in manner or dress. She was in his opinion an entirely artistic creation. She met him with a perfectly frank smile, as if she were an old friend suddenly discovering herself to him, and when Harry English had placed the hand of this delightful person in one of Paul's she ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the voice of the mother beside me broke, and she had to stop. Then I had to stop, too, and we looked at each other through our tears and smiled and understood, so that when she sweetly said, "I have a boy over there," her words were superfluous. And so I have added another memory of song to the hours ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... lost to everything about me, I heard Doltaire's voice behind, and presently he said over my shoulder, "To wish Captain Moray a good-morning were superfluous!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be superfluous to state here, that Love has ever been recognized as the supreme prize, lacking which all other gifts of ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... wedding-cake ornament with its silver leaves glittering in the electric light; I sit there listening vaguely to her admonitions and endless prattle of Augustus's perfections. I have now heard every incident of his childhood: what ailments he had, what medicines suited him best, when he cut all those superfluous teeth ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... Dacian, who hides his fear of the Marsian cohort, land the remotest Gelonians, shall know: me the learned Spaniard shall study, and he that drinks of the Rhone. Let there be no dirges, nor unmanly lamentations, nor bewailings at my imaginary funeral; suppress your crying, and forbear the superfluous ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... episcopal minister whom I found in a lamentable state, for he had fallen among thieves, who robbed him of his property and tore his pass for safe conduct. Our van-guard found him by the way-side, and judging by his venerable aspect, and some superfluous decorations in his attire, that he was a deposed bishop flying to the King, they seized him without paying attention to his narrative. When I heard that a person in distress was taken prisoner, I spurred on my horse to see if I could be of use. The placid benignity of the sufferer's ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... without judgment of things of which we are ignorant, than in the investigation of the unknown; and although this science contains indeed a number of correct and very excellent precepts, there are, nevertheless, so many others, and these either injurious or superfluous, mingled with the former, that it is almost quite as difficult to effect a severance of the true from the false as it is to extract a Diana or a Minerva from a rough block of marble. Then as to the analysis of the ancients and the algebra of the moderns, besides that they embrace only ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... to be hoped that the slap he gave his breast, at this point, carried off some of his superfluous emotion. "You can't account for a feeling, Mr. Gryce. The man has no heart. He's as ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... in pieces be served by its use? For we are told that when hot, they quenched it in vinegar, to make it brittle and unmalleable, and consequently unfit for any other service. In the next place, he excluded unprofitable and superfluous arts: indeed, if he had not done this, most of them would have fallen of themselves, when the new money took place, as the manufactures could not be disposed of. Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece, but was ridiculed and despised; so that the Spartans had no means of purchasing ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... history which make the most lasting impression on the imagination of the regular-bred scholar, and described the picturesque circumstances of the transactions with a minuteness of detail that would have been superfluous to a general student. ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... frame less heavy. The English boys, among themselves, sometimes spoke of him as "skinny," a word considered specially appropriate to Frenchmen; but though he lacked their roundness and fulness of limb, and had not an ounce of superfluous flesh about him, he was all sinew and wire; and while in sheer strength he was fully their equal, he was ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... intervals of one week, thus giving the student time for the extra reading and study that he is asked to do. A unit course, then, will cover a period of six weeks; and four unit courses, extending over a period of twenty-four weeks, constitute an extension year. It is superfluous to attempt to estimate how much the earnest solitary student may accomplish in a year through the assistance and the impetus thus given his efforts. Much, however, depends upon the personal effort of the student, and the syllabus is intended to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... requisite quantity of nitrogen. Thus a man restricted exclusively to a proteid diet, must take an enormous quantity of it. This would involve a large amount of unnecessary physiological labor, to comminute, dissolve, and absorb the food, and to excrete the superfluous nitrogenous matter. Unproductive labor should be avoided as much in physiological as in political economy. The universal practice of subsisting on a mixed diet, in which proteids are mixed with fats or ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... red flannel petticoats. My investigations went no further; but, encouraged in my rescue work by spasmodic gestures on the part of the patient, and forbearance on the part of the dog, I removed several superfluous layers of wool. One blanket went to the floor, where it was accepted in the light of a gift by His Majesty, and the other was ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Church were the necessary aids to faith. The reformers, on the other hand, looked to Scripture for the fundamental rules of life and conduct. Any deviation from these rules, no matter on what authority, must be superfluous and might ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... All superfluous articles of weight had long since been thrown away, and consequently he had nothing except matches with which to read his map in the dark and windy night. The difficulty was increased by the fact that the way lay across small tracks which were almost impossible to distinguish, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... and has ever since been an inspiring voice. Latterly it has been adopted by the city of Boston, and engraved on granite in letters of gold,—in honor of its greatest child and citizen. It may not be entirely superfluous to recount the history of a verse which has justly attracted so much attention, and which, in the history of civilization, has been of more value than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... her a rough caress. More frequently he swore at her for being a useless girl, when she might, as a boy, have been of some good in the world. He had no intention of providing her with any marriage portion, so that it was superfluous to attempt to seek out a husband for her. She and Annette were occasionally of use when there was sickness within the walls of the Castle, or when he or his followers came in weary and wounded from some hard fighting. On the whole he did not object to her presence at Saut, and her own little ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... element of design and attractiveness in the appearance of these schools money has been needlessly expended. Such persons insist upon it that only ugliness can be really economical, and that the simplest ornamentation or beauty of form must mean superfluous cost. The number of those who take this narrow view is happily limited, and is becoming less owing to the improved and growing taste for art that has been unmistakeably manifest of ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... too late to be useful in this instance, namely, that the recollections of old people with retentive memories, like Peter Cooper, may be invaluable, if they are intelligently aroused and guided; but if the speakers (as in his case) are left to their own initiative, they are too likely to furnish superfluous accounts of events already described more accurately ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... be not superfluous to mention, that it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to follow the course of the Macquarie River, and it is sanguinely expected that the result of the contemplated expedition will be such as to leave no longer in doubt the true character of the country ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... fake science that is being handed out to those gullible fools. They can get rid of freckles and superfluous hair, of course. But they'll even tell you that they can change your mouth and chin, your eyes, your cheeks. I should be positively afraid of some of their electrical appliances there. They sweat down your figure or build it up—just ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... is almost superfluous to state—was a new translation of Homer. The task was worthy of him; for, though it has been performed many times, it has never been performed so well before. Scores have tried their hands at it, from Chapman down; but all have failed in some important particular—Pope, perhaps, most of all. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... The former plant has begun to make new leaves, to my great surprise, so that I shall be now well supplied. We have worked so well with the Averrhoa that unless the second species arrives in a very good state it would be superfluous to send it. I am heartily glad that you and Mrs. Dyer are going to have a holiday. I will look at you as a dead man for the next month, and nothing shall tempt me to trouble you. But before you enter your grave aid me if you can. I want seeds of three or four plants ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... fashion returned his toast, and the junior partner frowned. He disapproved of Mrs. Dunbar, he strongly suspected her of ulterior designs, and he regarded the adoption of Christian names by second cousins as superfluous, and in the circumstances a little indecorous. His long upper lip grew longer as he addressed ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... had passed Miss Philura Rice had forgotten that such things as shabby gloves, ill-fitting gowns, unbecoming bonnets and superfluous birthdays existed. In ten minutes more she was leaning forward in breathless attention, the faded eyes aglow, the unbecoming bonnet pushed back from a face more wistful than ever, but flushed with ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... feelings"; of their "vocabulary," phonetic and tactile; he says that the "extraordinary also has a name and place in their language"; that they are able to "communicate to each other news of an event occurring outside the hive"; all of which renders his Spirit of the Hive superfluous. He quotes from a French apiarist who says that the explorer of the dawn,—the early bee,—like the early bird that catches the worm, returns to the hive with the news that "the lime-trees are blooming to-day on the banks of the canal"; "the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... of green banks, soft and smooth as velvet, its screen of noble woods, its Chinese fishing-temple, its frigates, its ruins, its cascade, cave, and Druidical temple, its obelisk and bridges, with numberless beauties besides, which it would be superfluous to describe here. This artificial mere covers pretty nearly the same surface of ground as that occupied by the great lake ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... It would be almost superfluous to say, that these were not neglected. The son of Count Melvil was not deficient in point of penetration; but his whole study was at that time engrossed by the care of his education, and he had sometimes recourse to play as an amusement ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... such, it is my will that this should cease and be corrected henceforth; and that for each piece of artillery that the ships carry, there shall go one artilleryman, and no more, nor shall wages be paid to superfluous men. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... appear with state and magnificence. Ordinarily they were transported from place to place by the aid of their golden sandals, with the exception of the "silver-footed Thetis," to whom they seem to have been superfluous. When at home, the gods were barefoot, according to the custom of the age, as we see from ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... It is unnecessary to enter upon a description of the appearance of this familiar type, but it is not perhaps superfluous, as we proceed to consider its anatomy, to call attention to one or two points in its external, or externally apparent structure. Most of our readers know that it belongs to that one of two primary animal divisions ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... jewellery at any price, and the good-natured lord would thank them into the bargain, as if they had done him a piece of courtesy in letting him have the refusal of such precious commodities. So that by this means his house was thronged with superfluous purchases, of no use but to swell uneasy and ostentatious pomp; and his person was still more inconveniently beset with a crowd of these idle visitors, lying poets, painters, sharking tradesmen, lords, ladies, needy ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... they accorded him as a poor student and careful teacher. They lived in the quietest way; for the heir of the house, by a former marriage, was a bad subject, and kept them drained of more than the superfluous money about ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the streets of New York, or the plan of the Escurial, the advantage of symmetry is an intellectual one; we can better imagine the relations of the parts, and draw a map of the whole in the fancy; but there is no advantage to direct perception, and therefore no added beauty. Symmetry is superfluous in those objects. Similarly animal and vegetable forms gain nothing by being symmetrically displayed, if the sense of their life and motion is to be given. When, however, these forms are used for mere decoration, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... plague, war, and an unnumber'd throng Of guilt-avenging ills, to man belong: What black, what ceaseless cares besiege our state! What strokes we feel from fancy, and from fate! If fate forbears us, fancy strikes the blow; We make misfortune; suicides in woe. Superfluous aid! unnecessary skill! Is nature backward to torment, or kill? How oft the noon, how oft the midnight, bell, (That iron tongue of death!) with solemn knell, On folly's errands as we vainly roam, Knocks at our hearts, and finds our thoughts from home! Men drop so fast, ere life's mid stage we ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... mottled redness is seen. In the course of a day the eruption spreads over the whole body. After continuing at their height for a day or two the symptoms gradually decline, and in a little over a week the child may be pronounced well. The skin then sheds all the superfluous cuticle left by the eruption, and in three or four weeks after inception the normal condition is ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... little hard-working old maids, who are ready to lavish all the heart which might have gone out to husband and to children upon an invalid stranger. Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence? By the way, in their simplicity they very quickly let out the reason why Saunderson recommended their farm. The Professor rose from the ranks himself, and I believe that ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... use Edith made of her accession of property through her wedded estate, was to give away all she thought superfluous to a poor family she had long pitied, and to invite a poor sick woman to her "spare chamber." Notwithstanding a course like this, her husband has grown rich, and proves that the pattern of the widow's cruse was not lost ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... grate them; that is to say, they rub them hard with great Copper Graters, which the French call Grages, just as they do Quinces to get out the Juice. This grated Manioc is put in the Press in Sacks made of coarse Hemp, or Rushes, to get out the superfluous Moisture, which is not only unwholesome, but poisonous. This, thus press'd, they take from the Sacks, and pass it through a coarse Sieve called Hibichet; they afterwards bake it two several ways, to make what they call ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... the divination by which the man of culture possesses himself of a half-forgotten and obscurely recorded experience and rehabilitates and interprets it, is so complete that it makes amplification superfluous. ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... maner of wayes: by fuming, pressing, or pickelling. For euery of which, they are first salted and piled vp row by row in square heapes on the ground in some celler, which they terme, Bulking, where they so remaine for fome ten daies, vntil the superfluous moysture of the bloud and salt be soked from them: which accomplished, they rip the bulk, and saue the residue of the salt for another like seruice. Then those which are to be ventred for Fraunce, they pack in staunch hogsheads, so to keepe them ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... he had gone nobody had any idea. They would hardly have believed if he had sent back word, for he had travelled most diligently. There were no longer any traces of starvation about him, except that he carried no superfluous weight of flesh. He had load enough, what with his provisions and his weapons, but he did not seem to mind it. He tramped right along, with a steady, springy step, which told a good deal of his desire to get as far away from camp as he could before ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... with her. Thus, in all her paintings, we instinctively feel that she painted from conviction, from her own observation, nothing being added for mere artistic effect. To some extent her pictures impress one as a perfect French poem in which there is no superfluous word, in which no word could be changed without destroying the effect of the whole; thus, in her paintings there is not a superfluous brush stroke; everything is necessary to the telling of the story; but she excels the perfect poem, for, in French literature, it seldom ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... to offer to each man a sable-lined coat and to every woman a velvet gown, society would probably distinguish between the superfluous and the necessary, and, provisionally at least class sable and velvet among the superfluities of life, ready to let time prove whether what is a luxury to-day may not become common to all to-morrow. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... here consider the phenomena of telepathy or ghosts. Readers of THE ARENA have been favored with Mr. Wallace's excellent articles on this point, and it would be superfluous to reconsider it. No doubt our readers are also acquainted with the examples reported in my work called Urania, and have long been aware that I believe in the possibility of communications between invisible beings and ourselves. In the point of view at which I have placed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... figures and devices: but, nothing is ever left to be inferred when an uncertain inference might possibly be adopted, or that can be understood clearly and with certainty only by means of an explicit statement. Superfluous words and particles of all kinds are altogether omitted. Descriptive epithets follow the nouns to which they refer: as, ared cross is styled a cross gules. The general rules, by which the arrangement of the words in heraldic ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... there, but not the cultivated rich and the uncultivated poor, or the uncultivated rich and the cultivated poor. Consequently, the conversation was real. A young professor would come in with the "Atlantic Monthly," begging leave to read an article to her, and the reading would begin without any superfluous remarks about the weather. Others would come in, but the reading would go on and the discussion it suggested. An artist would bring a new picture, and the conversation would turn in a new direction. A musician would sing an air, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... perhaps, be deemed superfluous in England, where so many knew her; but in America, where, from Maine to California, her character has been discussed and traduced, it is of importance to give interested thousands an opportunity of learning what kind of a woman Lady ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... landing at Icolmkill[488]; but his own style being exceedingly dry and hard, he disapproved of the richness of Johnson's language, and of his frequent use of metaphorical expressions. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, this criticism would be just, if in my style, superfluous words, or words too big for the thoughts, could be pointed out[489]; but this I do not believe can be done. For instance; in the passage which Lord Monboddo admires, 'We were now treading that illustrious region[490],' the word illustrious, contributes nothing to the mere narration; ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... mind cannot become its own occasions or determine its own march, though it be a truth not recognised by all philosophers, is in itself no less obvious. Matter, dialectically studied, makes consciousness seem a superfluous and unaccountable addendum; mind, studied in the same way, makes nature an embarrassing idea, a figment which ought to be subservient to conscious aims and perfectly transparent, but which remains opaque ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... dog, of all animals, is most attached to man, and most easily distinguishes him; sometimes, when deprived of his master, he refuses to live, and in his master's defence is bold enough to brave death; ready, therefore, to die, either with or for his master. I do not think it superfluous to insert here an example which Suetonius gives in his book on the nature of animals, and which Ambrosius also relates in his Exameron. "A man, accompanied by a dog, was killed in a remote part of the city of Antioch, by a soldier, for the sake of plunder. The murderer, concealed by the darkness ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... yes, while simple as the nursery. The same big questions of life and death, of battle, duty, love, ruled the peaceful inhabitants. Only the noisy shouting, the clatter of superfluous chattering and feverish striving had dropped away. Hearts and minds wore fewer clothes among these woods and vineyards. There was no nakedness though ... there were flowers and moss, blue sky and peace and beauty. ... Thought ran into confused, vague pictures. He could not give them coherence, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... side of Bull Run, and had no intention to leave without a serious battle. We lay in camp at Centreville all of the 19th and 20th, and during that night began the movement which resulted in the battle of Bull Run, on July 21st. Of this so much has been written that more would be superfluous; and the reports of the opposing commanders, McDowell and Johnston, are fair and correct. It is now generally admitted that it was one of the best-planned battles of the war, but one of the worst-fought. Our men had been told so often at home that all they had to do was to make a bold ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... on my behalf seemed to have waned since her plot to get Mrs. Faulkner on the chair had failed. If I had only dressed the lower part of myself properly instead of the top part it would not have mattered so much, but as it was a collar and a St. Cuthbert's XI. tie were superfluous when other more necessary garments were lacking. I was on the point of throwing myself upon the mercy of Mrs. Faulkner and of explaining to her that a lot of men I knew wore very short pyjama trousers and no socks in the mornings if they intended to read, when ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... always with the happiest results. And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand; on the other hand, nothing is more difficult than to express learned ideas so that every one must understand them. All the arts I have cited above are superfluous if the writer really possesses any intellect, for it allows a man to show himself as he is and verifies for all time what Horace said: Scribendi recte sapere est et principium ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... is very different. Obedience, fasting and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real, true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy. Which is most capable of conceiving a great idea and serving it—the rich man in his isolation or the man who has freed himself ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... necessity of a bill of rights, but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the personal rights of individuals, but of the rights reserved to the states in their political capacity. A fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of any sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the plan would be unexceptionable but for the fatal power of regulating the times and places of election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly against the unreasonable equality of ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... aged learninges chiefe ornament, that abundant and superingenious clarke Erasmus, as also with merrie sir Thomas Moore our Countrieman, who was come purposely ouer a little before vs, to visite the sayd graue father Erasmus: what talk, what conference we had then, it were heere superfluous to rehearse, but this I can assure you, Erasmus in al his speeches seemed so much to mislike the indiscretion of princes in preferring of parasites & fooles, that he decreed with himselfe to swim with the streame, and write a ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... frisky KITTON, having several tales to play with (probably some relation to the Cat-'o-nine-tails, eh?), has done his work well; and the same may be said for Others. The work can be recommended as a book of pictorial reference for Dickensian students, but otherwise it is—ahem—superfluous. If this kind of trading on the name of DICKENS continues, we shall probably become HUGHES'd to seeing such announcements as, "Shortly to appear,—The Collected Bills of the Butcher and Baker of Charles Dickens; Upper Storeys of Houses in whose Neighbourhood Charles Dickens ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... courtesy. I remember that on one occasion, when I had read to the Society an essay on "The Incoherence of Empiricism," I looked forward with some little anxiety to his criticisms; and when they came I felt that my anxiety had not been superfluous; he "went for" the weak points of my argument in half-a-dozen trenchant sentences, of which I shall not forget the impression. It was hard hitting, though ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... plausible Reason with which both the Jew and the Roman Catholick would excuse their respective Superstitions, it is certain there is something in them very pernicious to Mankind, and destructive to Religion; because the Injunction of superfluous Ceremonies makes such Actions Duties, as were before indifferent, and by that means renders Religion more burdensome and difficult than it is in its own Nature, betrays many into Sins of Omission which they could not otherwise be guilty of, and fixes the Minds of the Vulgar to the shadowy ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... near to expressing this unattainable something as any other poet. He is so purely poet that with him the meaning does not so often modulate the music of the verse as the music makes great part of the meaning and leads the thought along its pleasant paths. No poet is so splendidly superfluous as he; none knows so well that in poetry enough is not only not so good as a feast, but is a beggarly parsimony. He spends himself in a careless abundance only to be justified by incomes ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... so long—at one of the theatrical factories to be found in nearly all of the large cities where Juliets are prepared at short notice, Camilles manufactured for immediate use, and actors in every department of the calling are turned out by some superfluous veteran of the stage at so much per lesson, generally in advance, fits the aspirant for a debut on a starring tour. How many enterprises of this character have started out, with thousands of dollars to back them, ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... so well known from the many portraits and caricatures that have appeared in recent years, as well as descriptions of him, that one from me seems superfluous. His clumsy features, and small cunning eyes, set high in his face, with great puffy rings beneath them, his lank straight locks, worn longer than is usual, the fringe of beard framing his face, even his greasy frock-coat and antiquated tall hat have been ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... confides many things to me, this secret he kept, and still keeps. All I know is that he fitted up a play-room for Jack on the attic floor, and by means of an apparatus, the peculiarities of whose construction he alone knows, he managed after a while to store up the superfluous energy which Jack expended upon everything that he did. Every time Jack turned a somersault he contributed, unknown to himself, something to the growing bulk of hoarded force in the reservoir provided ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... his hair was white, and tied with a silk string; his countenance lofty, masculine, and contemplative; his eye light gray. He was dressed in the clothes of a citizen, and over these a blue surtout of the finest cloth. His weight must have been two hundred and thirty pounds, with no superfluous flesh; all was bone and sinew; and he walked like a soldier. Whoever has seen, in the patent-office at Washington, the dress he wore when resigning his commission as commander-in-chief, in December, 1783, at once perceives how large and magnificent was his frame. During ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... this region, when properly drained and cleared of its superfluous vegetation, are almost beyond computation. It has a rich soil, abundant moisture, and almost tropical climate. Reclaimed land of this character is suitable for raising not only sugar cane and subtropical fruits, but a great variety of other crops. It is estimated ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... completion of the dome. Had Michelangelo really planned this innermost sheath, we could not credit him with the soaring sweep upwards of the mighty dome, its height and lightness, luminosity and space. The roof that met the eye internally would have been considerably lower and tamer, superfluous in the construction of the church, and bearing no right relation to the external curves of the vaulting. There would, moreover, have been a long dark funnel leading to the lantern. Heath Wilson would then have been justified in certain critical conclusions which may here be stated ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... [Reads.] Sir—there is often a sudden incentive impulse in love, that has a greater induction than years of domestic combination: such was the commotion I felt at the first superfluous view of Sir Lucius O'Trigger.—Very pretty, upon my word.—Female punctuation forbids me to say more, yet let me add, that it will give me joy infallible to find Sir Lucius worthy the last criterion of my affections. Delia. Upon my conscience! ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... prepared a great supply of wood, sufficient for the whole night, and, as at times strong blasts of hot air broke out, they reinforced the zareba with pickets which the young negro whittled with Gebhr's sword and stuck in the ground. This precaution was not at all superfluous, as a powerful whirlwind could scatter the thorny boughs with which the zareba was constructed and facilitate an attack by ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... by committing an act that would cut you off from her forever. You have caused her heart-aches enough already. See, now, if you can not lighten her burden in some different, better way. But all this is superfluous, perhaps. I wonder if Sybil will come back, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence. So extreme an instance makes it almost superfluous to refer to any other: but consider the long duration of absolute monarchy. In England at present it is the almost universal conviction that military despotism is a case of the law of force, having no other ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... It was typical of Simon Varr, that outward air of shabbiness and neglect; it was said of him that he knew how to exact the last ounce of efficiency from men and material without the expenditure of a single superfluous penny. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... direction of ideas, I talked with Johansen last night—the first superfluous words with which he has favoured me since the voyage began. He left Sweden when he was eighteen, is now thirty-eight, and in all the intervening time has not been home once. He had met a townsman, a couple of years before, in some sailor ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... It would be superfluous to follow Canisius in his journey to Poland, in his fruitful sojourn at Augsburg, in his campaign against the ignorance of the clergy at Wurzburg, against the Calvinism of the Swiss Protestants. Everywhere ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... renders the commerce clause superfluous as a source of power over the Indian tribes; and some years earlier, in 1871, Congress had forbidden the further making of treaties with them.[1035] However, by a characteristic judicial device the effort ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... guilt of the Venetian girl seemed so clear that it appeared altogether superfluous to spend time and trouble in bringing her to confess it. Her hatred of the victim she had confessed; and the confession of it was in evidence. The motive for that hatred was perfectly well known and understood. It was a motive that many a time ere now had led to similar deeds. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... thick, almost as long, completely covered the face, from every part of which it sprang, growing shaggy and rank at the eyebrows, which served to ambush two sharp little eyes: so that the whole bore a precise resemblance to an ill-natured Skye terrier. It is superfluous to add that this was at once the face and the fortune of Toto, the Dog-faced Man, known in private life, to as many intimates as a jealous profession can tolerate, as Mr. Poddle: for the present disabled from public appearance ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... forgiveness. Schemes that are elaborated by human speculation, without regard to the facts of life, are apt to land the speculator in thought-morasses, whence he can only extricate himself by blundering through the mire in an opposite direction. A superfluous eternal hell was balanced by a superfluous forgiveness, and thus the uneven scales of justice were again rendered level. Leaving these aberrations of the unenlightened, let us return into the realm of ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... sense of this form was not then entirely clear to me; but now, I think, I divine its meaning. As the centuries with their changing civilizations rolled over Europe, it became apparent to the Almighty that a spacious lumber-room was needed, where all the superfluous odds and ends that no longer fitted to the changed order of things might be stowed away for safe-keeping. Now, as you will frequently in a lumber-room, amid a deal of absolute dross, stumble upon an object of rare and curious value, so also in America you may, among heaps of human ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... present. And why? Well, do my readers remember the honest milk-maid's retort to the coxcomb who said he wouldn't marry her? Good. Then, substituting "me" for "you," and "he" for "she," the Baron can adopt the maiden's reply. After this, other reasons would be superfluous. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... public, considering that many references have appeared in print attributing that purpose to the undertaking. With three other Antarctic expeditions already in the field, it appeared to many, therefore, that the venture was entirely superfluous. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... house, that she attended to everything and was responsible for everything, and that without her governance the machine would come to a disastrous standstill: the fact being that she had grown feeble and superfluous. Sarah had taught all she knew to two highly intelligent pupils, and had survived her usefulness. She had no right place on earth. But in her morose inefficiency she had developed into an unconscious tyrant—a tyrant whose power lay in the loyalty ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... boomed his assent. In his summary view, members of the Reichstag who refused to vote enough money for the military, Socialists, pacifists, all men, in brief, who lectured or wrote or spoke superfluous stuff and lived by their brains belonged in the same category as the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... throughout the world? Or was it (as has been seriously maintained) in order that the converted Indians of South America might console Saint Peter for the defection of the British and Germans? Or was America, as Hegel believed, ideally superfluous, the absolute having become self-conscious enough already in Prussia? Or shall we say that the real goal is at an infinite distance and unimaginable by us, and useless, therefore, for ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... built for the purpose, and are brought up into the house with a ceremony like that which celebrates their first installation. The Kayans do not care to have in the house more than twenty or thirty heads, and are at some pains occasionally to get rid of some superfluous heads — a fact which shows clearly that the heads are not mere trophies of valour and success in war. The moving to a new house is the occasion chosen for reducing the number of heads. Those destined to be left are hung in a hut built at some distance from ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... with the texts. But I have sometimes thought it consistent with the aim of the book to prefer the more beautiful to the better attested reading. I have often excised weak or superfluous stanzas when sure that excision would improve; and have not hesitated to extract a few stanzas from a long poem when persuaded that they could stand alone as a lyric. The apology for such experiments can only lie in their success: but the risk is ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... for the saints it is superfluous for me to write to you; [9:2]for I know your readiness, of which I boasted in your behalf to the Macedonians that Achaia was ready a year ago, and your zeal has excited many. [9:3]But I sent the brothers, that our boasting of you may not be ...
— The New Testament • Various
... whether he be an exalted divinity or any other being, let him tell me another word. I desire to hear who will be the slayer of this my son." The invisible Being then said,—"He upon whose lap this child being placed the superfluous arms of his will fall down upon the ground like a pair of five-headed snakes, and at the sight of whom his third eye on the forehead will disappear, will be his slayer?" Hearing of the child's three eyes and four arms as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... itched from the dirty shirtcloak I hadn't changed in days. Shabbiness is wise in nonhuman parts, and Dry-towners think too much of water to waste much of it in superfluous washing anyhow. I scratched unobtrusively and glanced cautiously ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... guide was warned for another square that certainly looks very similar on the map. But again, if you know guides, you will guess that he went straight to the spot where the job was to be done without bothering about anything so intricate or superfluous as a rendezvous. Anyhow you will probably end by getting some sort of casual labour somewhere, some time or other, and no questions asked so long as you don't inadvertently dig through from a main ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... until the black smoke poured in a stream from the hat. Before leaving it, he opened two smaller doors, at the knees, which allowed the superfluous cinders and ashes to fall out. The water in the boiler was then examined, and found all right. Johnny mounted in ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... hundred and four telegrams which had accumulated in forty-eight hours. It will suffice to state that ninety-seven were relegated to the "bunkum" pocket, and seven retained as conveying intelligent orders worthy of consideration. It is superfluous to mention that the whole of the messages sent by the local intelligence departments and by the De Wet expert were dismissed as "bunkum," often without perusal. As the brigadier pertinently remarked: "I suppose that the poor fellows have to justify ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... "Go back to your superior and inform him that I say you are superfluous on this assignment. No longer are commissars automatically to be guarded. Only under special circumstances. If ... well, if our people dislike individual commissars sufficiently to wish to assassinate ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... near to going the way of superfluous kittens when the little girl's big brothers saw what she had, and was saved only through her pleading. She begged to keep and tame him, and promised to thwart any desire of his to burrow indiscriminately about the house and garden. So she was finally ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... declared was the best that had ever been written—I put aside all the books that bored me, all the exercises that puzzled me, and she heartily concurred with me, in pronouncing them all highly unprofitable and superfluous. ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... the burden of superfluous fruit with almost immoderate haste, for the gentle flowers must have their day. Pomeloes have put forth new growth a yard long in less than a fortnight, and are preparing a bridal array of blooms such as will make birds and butterflies frantic with ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... money, and they count for the use of their ambassadors and explorers, so that with it they may have the means of living. They receive merchants into their States from the different countries of the world, and these buy the superfluous goods of the city. The people of the City of the Sun refuse to take money, but in importing they accept in exchange those things of which they are in need, and sometimes they buy with money; and the young people in the City ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... with a good grace, lest one should be forced at last to do them with an ill grace. Therefore I give up all manner of claim to every thing but—flattery! that of course you will allow me from poor Clarence. So now do not begin upon another flower; but, without any farther superfluous modesty, let me hear all the pretty things Clarence ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Superintendent requesting me to discontinue briefies for foodstuffs, "I have now three medical officers who are well able to attend to the sick and needy." And this man (Superintendent) himself requested and authorised me to issue such notes but four days ago. Comment on whole matter superfluous. O for a little more logic and consistency with some people! However, I suppose I can interpret these things in ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... witches, the ministers had other female tormentors to deal with. There was the perpetual anxiety of the unregenerated toilet. "Immodest apparel, laying out of hair, borders, naked necks and arms, or, as it were, pinioned with superfluous ribbons,"—these were the things which tried men's souls in those days, and the statute-books and private journals are full of such plaintive inventories of the implements of sin. Things known as "slash apparel" seem to have been an infinite source of anxiety; there must be only one slash ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from Timor, or Tamerlane, downwards. These are all of course in the Persian language and characters; but Purchas gives likewise a copy or translation of the same in English letters. It seemed quite superfluous to insert here the Persian fac simile, being merely writing without ornament, armorial bearing, or cognizance. The following is the series, expressed in English characters; the last being the central circle, which contains the name and title of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... foolish, painted things, That now in coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings, Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet? Where I to thee eternity shall give, When nothing else remaineth of these days, And queens hereafter shall be glad to live Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise; Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes, Shall be so much delighted with thy story, That they shall grieve they lived not in these times, To have seen thee, their sex's only glory: So shalt thou fly ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... medicine that patients were brought to me from all the four quarters of the globe. Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying was a perpetual grief to their friends; wealthy testators whose legatees were desirous to come by their own; superfluous children of penitent parents and dependent parents of frugal children; wives of husbands ambitious to remarry and husbands of wives without standing in the courts of divorce—these and all conceivable classes of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Whether the stomach of the critics and of the public will be able to digest such a liver cut out of the vulture as this of my "Prometheus," or whether at the very first bars all will not be lost, I cannot determine; but still less would I prepare superfluous disagreeables for you by the performance of my "Tonschmiererei;" [Tone-daubing] of such ill-odor ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... a comic spine. My trunk kept getting in the way. And my nether limbs were superfluous. To do it properly you should be ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... might have been pardoned if I had described St Peter's, the Vatican, and the innumerable treasures of art and antiquity at Rome; but now that they are so well known it would be ridiculous and superfluous. Here I gained a little more knowledge about pictures; but I preferred sculpture, partly from the noble specimens of Greek art I saw in Paris and Rome, and partly because I was such an enthusiast about the ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... would be strenuous activity. "Then perhaps it would be better for you to stay at home," she said lightly. "You might do some damage to us peaceful citizens. By the way, have you ever swum as far as Blueberry Island? It's a mile, I think. That ought to work off some of your superfluous energy. You have special permission to go in this afternoon. When you get there wait until I come for you in the launch. We can keep our eye on you from the road while you are swimming." Sahwah jumped for joy and ran to get into her ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... consider the text as having been settled 'by authority,' this question may seem superfluous; but, not to refer to plays of very early date, in connection with which we could bring forward facts that, we doubt not, would be considered sufficiently startling; we now state it as our belief that a great portion of the play of Henry VIII.—nay, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... was a couch; a heavy, wheezing, fat-armed couch decked out in white ruffled cushions. I suppose the mere statement that, in Chicago, Illinois, Martha Foote kept these cushions always crisply white, would make any further characterization superfluous. The couch made you think of a plump grandmother of bygone days, a beruffled white fichu across her ample, comfortable bosom. Then there was the writing desk; a substantial structure that bore no relation to the pindling rose-and-cream affairs ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... now laid down, as it is general, ought to be carried into practise by all Christians, each applying it to his own use according as may be necessary. This I say, in order that those who do not see themselves in apparent danger may not think it superfluous as regards them. They are not at this hour in the hands of tyrants, but how do they know what God means to do with them hereafter? We ought therefore to be so forearmed that if some persecution which we did not expect arrives, we may not ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... sight, garnished in silk—but wool is almost as warm! It maketh us have great plenty of many kinds of delicate and delicious victuals, and thereby to make more excess—but less exquisite and less superfluous fare, with fewer surfeits and fewer fevers too, would be almost as wholesome! Then, the labour in getting riches, the fear in keeping them, and the pain in parting from them, do more than counterweight ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... preceded the annunciation of this opinion, and of distress and agony which succeeded it, the family of Mr. Henley warmly sympathized in the feelings of their neighbours. The long intimacy that had existed between George and Charlotte and their parents, removed all superfluous forms, and the latter passed a great deal of her time with Mrs. Morton, or by the side of the invalid. Her presence gave him such manifest and lively pleasure, that it would have been cruel to have denied ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... to them of the necessity of secrecy was superfluous, for the selfishness of human nature never had a better illustration than they afforded. The lucky recipients of the invitations stole away without a word of farewell, circumspectly disappearing, generally at night, and often in disguise; ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... any enumeration of women workers seemed not only superfluous but undesirable. For the better order, prejudice was still strong enough against all who deviated from custom or tradition to make each new candidate for a living shrink from any publicity that could be avoided. Society frowned upon the woman who dared to strike out in new paths, and thus ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... "It is superfluous, senor, to offer us food in your own habitation when you have already put all that you ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... one of all those to whom his memory is very dear can this seem a superfluous task, for no writer was ever more misunderstood or better abused at the time, and after the lapse of almost a quarter of a century the misunderstanding would seem still to hold its ground. For through all the many notices of him which appeared after his death in last January, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life, learn thou betimes, and know Toward solid good what leads the nearest way; 10 For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And when God sends a ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... self-consciousness,—"I came out of the Moulin Rouge alone and walked back to the Maurice. It was the first time I'd ever been on the other side, and I was doing it all in the usual way of the precocious undergraduate. But the 'gay Paree' stuff that was specially manufactured to catch the superfluous francs of the pornographic tourist and isn't really in the least French, bored me, almost at once. And that night, going slowly to the hotel, sickened by painted women, chypre and raw champagne I turned a mental somersault and built up a picture of what I hoped I should ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... every quarter of a mile. Thus no person can thoroughly enjoy elk-hunting who is not well accustomed to it, as it is a sport conducted entirely on foot, and the thinness of the air in this elevated region is very trying to the lungs in hard exercise. Thoroughly sound in wind and limb, with no superfluous flesh, must be the man who would follow the hounds in this wild country—through jungles, rivers, plains and deep ravines, sometimes from sunrise to sunset without tasting food since the previous evening, with the exception of a cup of coffee ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... The house of lords could not omit this; and therefore he moved the insertion of the word Protestant before the word prince, in the first paragraph of the address. Lord Melbourne said that he considered the amendment superfluous. The act of settlement required that the prince should be a Protestant, and it was not likely that ministers would advise her majesty to break through the act of settlement. All the world knew that Prince Albert of Saxe Cobourg was a Protestant, and that he was descended from the most ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... had found out who he was. He protested that he mustn't stay a moment, but all the same he came in, and stood with his hands in his pockets looking at the view. He seemed to Nelly to fill the little sitting-room. Not that he was stout. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on him anywhere. But he stood at least six foot four in his boots; his shoulders were broad in proportion; and his head, with its strong curly hair of a light golden brown, which was repeated in his short beard, carried itself with the unconscious ease of one ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... comparatively recent times, the effect of the cholera upon large towns, and the plague was worse than the cholera many times over. The Hull preacher, despite the stigma of facetiousness, which still clings to him, stuck to his post, visiting the sick, burying the dead, and even, which seems a little superfluous, preaching and afterwards printing "by request" their funeral sermons. A brave man, indeed, and one reserved for a ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... mere skin appendage, the nature of which may only be indicated by the presence of a rudimentary nail; sometimes it contains bone representing one or more phalanges, or it may be fully formed (Fig. 175). In the majority of cases the superfluous ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Miller, was a tall, gaunt, sallow girl, who handled her machine with the touch of a master, eliminating every superfluous move and filling a form of a dozen rough cheroots quickly enough to take a visitor's breath away. No doubt it was very instructive to see how fast cheroots could be made. However, the stirring interest of the daughter of the Works ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... be excluded here, but the talking rhymes which the Mother sings to Oeyvind bring in the fairy element of the talking animals. In the form of this tale, the perfect fidelity with which the words fit the meaning is apparent—nothing seems superfluous. When Oeyvind asked Marit who she ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... should be noted also that the Emperor proceeded in person to Thielt and Courtrai to exalt by his presence the ardor of his troops. Finally, at the close of October, the entire German press incessantly proclaimed the importance of the "Battle of Calais." It is superfluous to add that events in Poland explain in a large measure the passionate resolve of the German General Staff to obtain a decision in the Western theatre of operations at all costs. This decision would be obtained if our left were pierced or driven in. To reach Calais, that is, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Superfluous to say, they are Jessie and Helen Armstrong. And needless to tell why the one is gay, the other grave. Since we last saw them in the hotel of Natchitoches, no change has taken place in their hearts or their hopes. The younger of the two, Jessie, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... common people, seeing him, thinking two swords superfluous for the use of an old man, mockingly asked him to make him a present of one of them. Starkad, holding out hopes of consent, bade him come nearer, drew the sword from his side, and ran him through. This was seen by a certain Hather, whose ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... on this proceeding is superfluous. It was evidently in the hope that the achievement of Gray—an unassuming fur trader, backed by nothing but his own dauntless courage—would be forgotten, which it certainly was for fifty years ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... they conceived themselves to stand, of doing justice to the Irish nation; and the terms of that virtual and most honourable compact they conceived to be that if, in the future disposition of the revenues of the Irish church, something superfluous for its legitimate and becoming uses should arise, they should, after the satisfaction of all existing interests, apply that superfluity to the religious and moral education of the people. He felt that he might consider the principle as established and conceded, that parliament ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it was not yet ten o'clock. To gratify her passionate curiosity she now made her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments and putting on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of the table and reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances. Then she fetched the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back, took out the likeness, and ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the hollow of his hand. He felt greatly affronted at the sight. "What!" exclaimed Diogenes, "do children know better than I do with what things a man ought to be contented?" Upon which he took his jug out of his bag, and instantly broke it, as a superfluous movable. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... ages the forest monarchs had been shedding their superfluous boughs, while here and there lay an entire tree, overthrown by some unknown power, and upon which the brothers made ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... our honor is not yet lost. But we have not yet learned to bear the indigence of our outer life, We have covered our poverty with the gloss of respectability; we have been ashamed to appear in the streets in coarse clothes; we have not yet learned to distinguish the necessary from the superfluous; we have endeavored to be poor, and yet happy, in a city. That has been our mistake. The happiness of poverty does not reside within the cold walls of a town. It is not sown among the paving-stones of ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member. How was this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant. By wealth? Neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous sixpence. By office? He held but one, and that for only a few years, of no influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were not splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... half as many lines as The Canterbury Tales contain, without reckoning the two in prose — the conception of the poem is yet so closely and harmoniously worked out, that all the parts are perfectly balanced, and from first to last scarcely a single line is superfluous or misplaced. The finish and beauty of the poem as a work of art, are not more conspicuous than the knowledge of human nature displayed in the portraits of the principal characters. The result is, that the poem is more modern, in form and in spirit, than almost any other work of its author; ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... each, would not have been worth listening to, had it not been from the extraordinary vernacular in which they were clothed, and the racy and emphatic manner of the narrators. Some of these voted three legs of their chairs superfluous, and balanced themselves on the fourth; while others hooked their feet on the top of the windows, and balanced themselves on the back legs of their chairs, in a position strongly suggestive of hanging by the heels. One ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... expect to become wives. At such a point in social evolution prostitution is clearly inevitable; it is not so much the indispensable concomitant of marriage as an essential part of the whole system. Some of the superfluous or neglected women, utilizing their money value and perhaps at the same time reviving traditions of an earlier freedom, find their social function in selling their favors to gratify the temporary desires of the men who have not yet been able to acquire wives. Thus every ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... they had been Friths instead of being Alma Tademas! But photography has made impossible any such transmutation of modern rubbish. Therefore it must be confessed that pictures in the Frith tradition are grown superfluous; they merely waste the hours of able men who might be more profitably employed in works of a wider beneficence. Still, they are not unpleasant, which is more than can be said for that kind of descriptive painting of which "The Doctor" is the most flagrant example. Of course "The Doctor" is not ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... However, as his Majesty had signified his pleasure, that those acts should be observed in the Massachusetts, they had made provision, by a law of the colony, that they should be strictly attended."3 Which provision, by a law of their own, would have been superfluous, if they had admitted the supreme authority of Parliament. In short, by the same history it appears, that those acts of Parliament, as such, were disregarded; and the following reason is given for it: "It seems to have been a general opinion, that acts of Parliament have no other ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... threatened her with sin and sorrow, disgrace and shame. Yet Elise, in the warmth and passion of her heart, sought to excuse herself, and in the pride of her wounded filial love said to herself: "My father does not regard me; he will not weep for my loss, for I am superfluous here, and he will hardly perceive that I am gone. He has his millions and his friends, and the whole multitude of those to whom he does good. He is so rich—he has much on which his heart hangs! But I am quite poor; ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... is superfluous in defending our men against malignant accusations. At the judicial proceedings in England no witness dared raise accusations. It is untrue that at any time the submarine displayed the English flag. The submarine throughout the affair showed as much consideration for the Falaba as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... words have the clear ring of honesty in them; and he spoke of what he had seen and knew. The monks, he tells the king, "be they that have made a hundred thousand idle dissolute women in your realm, who would have gotten their living honestly in the sweat of their faces had not their superfluous riches allured them to lust and idleness. These be they that when they have drawn men's wives to such incontinency, spend away their husbands' goods, make the women to run away from their husbands, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Bill (mongst many) there was red, Against the generall, and superfluous waste Of temporall Lands, (the Laity that had fed) Vpon the Houses of Religion caste, Which for defence might stand the Realme in sted, Where it most needed were it rightly plac't; Which made those Church-men ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... of the treasury! The people, whom declaiming jurisconsults so vehemently but vainly incite to speak evil of lavishness, would be grieved if they saw any interruption in the expenditure which a silly parsimony calls superfluous." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore a Crimean medal, and never asked a superfluous question in his life. If I had casually remarked to him, "Mr. Hooker, the General has ordered me on a brief personal reconnaissance to the Planet Jupiter, and I wish you to take care of my watch, lest it should be damaged by the Precession of the Equinoxes," he would have responded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... communication of any kind, superfluous? Wasn't it the folly of weak and stupid stubbornness? She had spoken her final word in their relations at the hotel door. There was no Little Rivers; there was no Mary; there was nothing but the store. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... to honor his father and mother. He could not do anything else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if you suggested that he should not steal—how could he steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to bear false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him it would be the last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him not to covet what his neighbors had. He would rather that they possest it than himself. In this ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... Collett's old schoolmate. Mr. Weyburn had started for the port of Harwich. This day, and not long subsequently, Lady Ormont had started for the port of Harwich, on her way to London, if we like to think it. Further corroboration was quite superfluous. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vein,'—with a genius who knew how to play, not 'the tyrant's part only,' but 'the lover's, which is more condoling,' and whose suggestion that the audience should look to their eyes in that case, was by no means a superfluous one; with a genius who had all passions at his command, who could drown, at his pleasure, the sharp critic's eye, or blind it with showers of pity, or 'make it water with the merriest tears, that the passion of loud laughter ever shed,' with such resources, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Hester found herself divining without effort what her clients wished her to write, and as easily translating the inarticulate message into words. It was superfluous for them to thank her as they did; her own inner voice told her she ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
