"Amuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no surprise could stir out of his cool native audacity, answered that it would be better for his cousin to go and amuse himself in his world of poetical imagination, and to leave the business of life to men who understood ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the aim of the author has been, not only to interest and amuse, but also to stimulate a taste for scientific study. He has utilized natural science as a peg whereon to hang the web of a narrative of absorbing interest, interweaving therewith sundry very striking scientific facts in such a manner as to provoke ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... of the hippopotami in these marsh districts to lie in the high grass swamps during the day, and to swim or amuse themselves in the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... was the feet that profited by the comparison. Still, he knew that the whole conversation would amuse his wife, and rushed off to tell her ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... in his contests with his room-mates, no anger ever appeared on the part of the mocking-bird; everything seemed done to amuse himself and pass away the weary hours, rather than from desire to hurt his neighbors. In fact, he never did positively touch a bird, to my knowledge, though he always acted as though he intended to annihilate them. He could ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... gentleman's steam had gone down a little I replied, 'Really, general, I hardly know how to answer you. Your daughter and I are very good friends, the place is most detestably dull, there is nothing to do, and if we amuse ourselves with a little love-making, surely there can be no great harm.' This rejoinder of mine made things worse; I thought the old boy would have had a fit. At last he said, 'The mail steamer leaves for England to-morrow; you shall ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... intervention of a superior had a healing effect. In nowise did Lieutenant Trevelyan receive so many taunts from his fellow officers as for habits of moderation. They often dubbed him "Saint Guy, the cold water man," which only served to amuse the young Lieutenant. The attention of the American was often directed to Mr. Trevelyan, listening with deep interest to the history of the young man and his distinguished father. "Lieutenant Trevelyan is a ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... jest upon his favourite propensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, etc. and yet we are not offended but delighted with him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters to shew the humourous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... true culture without acquirements, and that philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result or any trustworthy conclusion. There are indeed persons who profess a different view of the matter, and even act upon it. Every now and then you will find a person of vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon his own resources, despises ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... It is fair that I should amuse myself a little at her expense before I take leave. I must get something out of ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... pretty poor one by the by, has practically been destroyed. Only a single picture remains perfectly intact, and that is the Portrait of Philippe Egalite. Was it purposely respected by the riot or is its preservation an irony of chance? The National Guards amused, and still amuse, themselves by cutting out of the canvases that were not entirely destroyed by fire faces to which they ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the other, and, as I made out from Sadie's description, they must have been havin' an awful time, livin' in one of them eighteen-room cottages built on a point juttin' a mile or so out into the ocean, with nothin' but yachts and motor boats and saddle horses and tennis courts and so on to amuse themselves with. ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... made every one's heart ache to see his long sharp face, and his wasted hands, and his limbs, so shrunk and feeble that he could not walk. His tutor could not endure the duchess, his governess, and taught the poor fretful child to be rude to her, and even to his mother. When the duchess came near to amuse him, he told her to go away, for he could not bear the perfumes that she was so dreadfully fond of. This was put into his head, for she used no perfumes. When the queen carried to her poor boy some lozenges ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... and whose plots are virtuous. This insistence on decorum and virtue indicates a concession to Collier and to the public. Thus in the preface to Love's Contrivance (1703), she reiterates her belief that comedy should amuse but adds that she strove for a "modest stile" which might not "disoblige the nicest ear." This modest style, not practiced in early plays, is achieved admirably in The Busie Body. Yet, as she says in the epilogue, she has not followed the ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... their departure would have been an impossibility: for they were firmly convinced that their presence was necessary to the welfare of their charges. And then, too, judging from the way in which they managed to amuse themselves, they liked being in Petershof, though they never owned that to the invalids. On the contrary, it was the custom for the caretakers to depreciate the place, and to deplore the necessity which obliged them to continue there month after month. They were fond, ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... among them who has not learnt to accompany the name of Pitt with an execration. When I went to bed, there was no sleep to be had on account of the sentinels thinking fit to amuse me the whole night through with the revenge they meant to take on him when they got him to Paris. Next morning I went on board the 'Experiment.' The Commodore and all his officers messed together, and I was admitted among them. They are truly the poorest-looking people I ever saw. Even the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... bubbling of merriment that had seemed one of her chief graces in the early days. It occurred to him that he had not given her enough things to laugh about lately. But then she needed such very elementary things: it was as difficult to amuse her as a savage. He concluded that he was not ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... they think. I know what I think, and I'll bet I know her through and through. She is reckless to the point of doing anything on earth that will amuse her. She is so badly spoiled she is rotten. I know how you are fixed—oh, I know! You can't kill him; you don't love her enough for that; and besides, you know you can't prove anything serious against her. Her married women friends go about with ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... vividness of your description, the love of Jew above the love of Palestine, all these combine to render your volumes valuable additions to the small stock of good Jewish literature in English. It is not only that you teach, while talking so pleasantly; that you instruct while you interest and amuse; that you have your own personality in the stories; that you convey the charm of Eretz Israel, and the beauty of holiday spirit; but because your stories help us to feel the depth of faith and the height of ideal as the self-evident, normal ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... her Majesty's subjects are more miserable than another, it is that of gentlemen's servants. One of these oppressed persons is revealed to us in the next act. Poor fellow! he has nothing to do but to sit in the hall, and nothing to amuse him but the newspaper. But his misfortunes do not end here: as if to add insult to injury, the family governess presumes to upbraid him, and actually insists upon his taking a letter to the post. Mr. Nibble declines performing so undignified a service, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... not calling themselves Socialists have done—we should still doubt the soundness of their economic theories as applied to society in general, but we should respect their disinterestedness. But with very few exceptions Socialist Intellectuals dine and sup, feast and amuse themselves with as few scruples of conscience as ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... top. By the time that this happened and the princess was safely out, the uppermost pool was uncovered, and Eyebright clambered down the wet rocks and took another long look at it, "making believe" that it was a garden which a good fairy had planted to amuse the princess; and, indeed, no fairy could have invented a prettier one. So, little by little, and following the receding sea, she was able at last, with a jump and a long step, to reach the rocky pathway by which she had come down, and two minutes later she was on top of ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... poet took to building; he planned a new staircase and an Italian terrace: but even this did not amuse him. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... other. All your faculties, all that is in you of greatest and best, must be awake in you, or I have no reward. The painter is not to cast the entire treasure of his human nature into his labor, merely to please a part of the beholder: not merely to delight his senses, not merely to amuse his fancy, not merely to beguile him into emotion, not merely to lead him into thought, but to do all this. Senses, fancy, feeling, reason, the whole of the beholding spirit, must be stilled in attention or stirred with delight; else the laboring spirit has not ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... that these 'Yankees' always 'whittle' everything. We are afraid they will spoil the furniture to-night; so tell one of the servants to cut a hundred pine slugs, and you go down to the store and buy a box of penknives. Then they will have plenty to amuse themselves with and will ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... amuse, if not instruct; whilst I add a short detail of uncommon facts, recorded in antient history, and tending to shew clearly, that we are not without precedents of similar events having happened, in the early ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... dressing for dinner. "Caroline will manage Doltimore, and I shall manage one vote in the Lords and three in the Commons. I have already talked him into proper politics; a trifle all this, to be sure: but I had nothing else to amuse me, and one must never lose an occasion. Besides, Doltimore is rich, and rich friends are always useful. I have Caroline, too, in my power, and she may be of service with respect to this Evelyn, who, instead of loving, I half hate: she has crossed my path, robbed me of wealth; and now, if ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should reasonably satisfy the expectations excited by his lighter books, and lay for him the basis of enduring reputation. All that he had done before was the play of careless genius, the exercise of frolicsome fancy, which might amuse and perhaps win an affectionate regard for the author, but could not justify a high respect or secure a permanent place in literature. For this, some work of ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... each successive exhaustion of his exchequer he is fain to write for the taste of a corrupt mob. [26] But at last Statius began to see the folly of all this. He grew tired of hiring himself out to amuse, of practising the affectation of a modesty, an inspiration, an emotion he did not feel, of hearing the false plaudits of rivals who he knew carped at his verses in his absence and libelled his character, of running hither and thither over Parnassus ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... by the stage for Augusta. George, seated on the box with the driver, found much to amuse him; and the driver's merry chat and great admiration of George's new and gaily-bedizened suit, went a great way towards reconciling that young gentleman ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... are things that puzzle me more and more about him,—things that used to amuse me at first, because I didn't actually believe that they could be, and that I felt like defying afterwards. But now I can't bear up against them. They frighten me, and seem to deny me the right to be what I ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... them to the remarkable association we have been considering. It would not be very difficult to intimate how this might have happened, but the length of our note, the reader may think, is much greater than its importance, and he may prefer to amuse himself at another time, by following out the investigation. Let it be our apology for entering on it at all, that it is only by diligent reflection on such mysterious trains of thought, we can hope to acquire any just ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... to amuse the King. One had to captivate him by some piquant detail; without that, he would escape you, give you no time to speak. The success generally began by the first words, no matter how vague, of any conversation; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to amuse him. He studied me and looked unhurried and reflective. He stretched out a long, yellow arm in simulation of contented weariness. "I wonder why you wish to keep the prisoner with you ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... you give up your purse with a pistol at your head. This is no time for sentimentalisms about the empty chair at the national hearth; all the chairs would be empty soon enough, if one of the children is to amuse itself with setting the house on fire, whenever it can find a match. Since the election of Mr. Lincoln, not one of the arguments has lost its force, not a cipher of the statistics has been proved mistaken, on which the judgment of the people was made up. Nobody proposes, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... rest houses were interesting. Most of them have furniture made from trees "to amuse us and pass the time." Both officers and men use the same type of house, though discipline forbids that the same house be used by both officers and men. The light in these houses is bad and the ventilation not all that it should be, but they are extremely careful about sanitation, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... who, on the other hand, proposes to give us an accurate picture of life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events which might seem exceptional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things in a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... came. Yet I could hardly believe that even you would commit yourself to that finishing touch of impudence! Certainly it is an opportunity, his being out of the way. You were not long in making use of it, were you? It will amuse him when he comes down, though it may open his eyes. I shall tell him everything, so I give you warning. Every single thing, that you have had the insolence to ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... wisely fearful of the trampling hoof, to carry aside his oyster with its possible pearl before he opened it. In earnest about everything, he must work out his liberty before he could gambol. A slave will amuse himself in his dungeon; a free man must file through his chains and dig through his prison-walls before he can frolic. Sunlight and air came through his open windows enough to keep Richard alive and strong, but not enough yet to make him merry. He was too solemn, thus, for most of those he met, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... fiend hath possest thee, Nosing and snuffling so round the door? Go behind the stove there and rest thee, There's my best pillow—what wouldst thou more? As, out on the mountain-paths, frisking and leaping, Thou, to amuse us, hast done thy best, So now in return lie still in my keeping, A quiet, contented, and ...
— Faust • Goethe
... sirs, The player's art is to amuse, Instruct, or to confuse By too much good advice, But poorly given: That no one follows, because, forsooth, 'Tis thrown at him, neck and heels. The drama, pure and simple, is forgot In tugging in ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age: Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before, Till tired he sleeps, and life's ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... gentleman, it seems, only shot at his legs, merely to 'disable'—and it must be expected that every gentleman will amuse himself in shooting at his own property whenever the notion takes him, and if he should happen to hit a little higher and go through the small of the back instead of the legs, why every body says it is 'unfortunate,' and the whole of the editorial corps, instead of branding him as a barbarous ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... revels. Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... possess that liveliness of disposition which renders some children such excellent companions. She seldom laughed, and had not the faculty of making many words about small matters. But the love and earnestness of her heart taught her how to amuse poor Edward in his darkness. She put her knitting-work into ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... started with the resolution that every task shall be taken up in its turn, without doubts and without forebodings, that bridges shall not be crossed until they are reached, that the vagaries of others shall amuse and interest, not distress us, and that we will live in the present, not in the past or the future. We must avoid undertaking too much, and whatever we do undertake we must try not to worry as to whether we shall succeed. This only prevents ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... people, and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring people of whatever condition were made—by a higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it—to be in need of mental refreshment and recreation. See what we fall into, when we rest without it. Come! Amuse me harmlessly, show me ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... probable, that the souls of eminent men, such as the Tyndaridae, are divine and immortal, rather than that those bodies which had been reduced to ashes should mount on horses, and fight in an army? If you say that was possible, you ought to show how it is so, and not amuse us with fabulous old ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... with an exaggerated drawl, "we who are not of an age to look upon them in a motherly light may not appreciate all those feelings. They amuse me, to be sure, but I had scarcely thought ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... me this fine story, monsieur? Who should it be but he who watches while I sleep, who labors while I amuse myself, who conducts everything at home and abroad—in ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were in the outer circle, the latter having walked from a direction opposite to that from which Frank and Reginald came, but whose dignity did not prevent a certain desire to purchase if he saw fit, and if not, to amuse himself with those who did so. He stood watching the old man with an imperturbable air of gravity, and, hanging on his arm in a state of listless apathy, stood Trevannion, another ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... amuse myself in my own fashion. Thus sure knowledge has come to me about certain epochs in the past in which I lived in other shapes, and I study those epochs, hoping that one day I may find time to write of them and of the parts I played in them. Some of these parts are extremely ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... on the person who "infawrrrums" one, and is rarely complete. Almost everybody seems to think that an inquirer has some object to serve, and they either tell him what they think will amuse him or advance their own interest if it be repeated; but there are notable exceptions to this as ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... contemporaneous with the facts about which they write. Homer composes a romance, which he gives out as such, and which is received as such; for nobody doubted that Troy and Agamemnon no more existed than did the golden apple. Accordingly he did not think of making a history, but solely a book to amuse; he is the only writer of his time; the beauty of the work has made it last, every one learns it and talks of it, it is necessary to know it, and each one knows it by heart. Four hundred years afterwards the witnesses of these facts are no longer alive, no one knows of his own knowledge ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... am going back to his place; he said I might amuse myself with his books till he came in. I haven't had dinner yet,' and Cecil felt a momentary importance ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... conversation, Emma, to amuse herself, took a rifle and vent out with Percival. She fired several shots at a mark, and by degrees acquired some dexterity; gradually she became fond of the exercise, and not a day passed that she and Percival ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... that the Gothic king retreated towards the banks of the Danube; and reenforced his army with fresh swarms of Barbarians, before he again attempted to penetrate into the heart of Italy. Since the public and important events escape the diligence of the historian, he may amuse himself with contemplating, for a moment, the influence of the arms of Alaric on the fortunes of two obscure individuals, a presbyter of Aquileia and a husbandman of Verona. The learned Rufinus, who was summoned by his enemies to appear ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... grown up with our habits and customs, and increased in the number of packs, number of hunting days, and number of horsemen, in full proportion with wealth and population, one cannot help being amused at the simplicity with which Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who comes from a country where people seldom amuse themselves out of doors (except in making money), tells in her "Sunny Memories," how, when she dined with Lord John Russell, at Richmond, the conversation turned on hunting; and she expressed her astonishment "that, in the height of English civilisation, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... husband," she said, "is always increasingly absorbed in his legal duties, of which I understand nothing, and which so do not interest me. My children are all growing up and at school. I have servants enough to attend to my house. When he comes home in the evening, if I try to amuse him by telling him of the things I have been doing during the day, of the bazaars I am working for, the shopping I have done, the visits I have paid, he is bored. He is anxious to get away to his study, his books, and his men friends, and I am left utterly alone. If it were not ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... the North American Indians, known to-day, as it was in 1636, by the name of "lacrosse," was potent among them as a remedial exercise or superstitious rite to cure diseases and avert disaster; that it formed part of stately ceremonials which were intended to entertain and amuse distinguished guests; and that it was made use of as a stratagem of war, by means of which to lull the suspicions of the enemy and to gain ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... her character as circumstances have given me in a few brief hours. But what a miserable revelation she has made of herself—cowardice this morning—fraud this afternoon, and cold selfishness, that can amuse itself with the mortification and misfortunes of others, this evening. This is the moral side of the picture. But when I came to 'speer' around to see whether she had any mind or real culture, the exhibition was still more pitiable. Ye gods! that a girl can ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... book, and then shut it with a snap. "Now I'm ready to begin. Are you going to amuse me, or am I going ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... favour to lay themselves out for the satisfaction of others: they preserve an austere silence when it is unnecessary, and at other times talk incessantly of the things of God. A wife has scruples about pleasing her husband, entertaining him, walking with him, or seeking to amuse him, but has none about speaking uselessly for two hours with religious devotees. This is a horrible abuse. We ought to be diligent in the discharge of all duties, whatever their nature may be; and even if they do cause us inconvenience, ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the rail-road car! Nay, the most wonted objects, (make a very slight change in the point of vision,) please us most. In a camera obscura, the butcher's cart, and the figure of one of our own family amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... wouldn't touch a hair of your head," Thorn ran on, following a vein which seemed to amuse him, for he smiled, a horrible, face-drawing contortion of a smile, "for if you and me ever had a fallin' out over money I might git so hard up I couldn't travel, and one of them sheriff fellers might slip up ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... need trouble himself to understand the merits of any question before the house. He may, therefore, amuse himself at Bellamy's until five minutes before the Speaker's bell rings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... o' 'number one,' are a hard workin set as a rule, but even they have to amuse thersen a bit sometimes, an' they find it a nice change to luk after 'number two.' To a chap o' this sooart, iverybody's 'number two,' 'at's a bit better awther i' luks, position, or pocket. Nah if yo want ony fun o' this sooart aw'll tell yo ha to ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... are a very merry nation, and for their fete or festival days have many jolly games to amuse both the children and older people. In one of these a weighted string is hung up at one end of a tent, and the children, starting from the other end, try to cut it with a pair of scissors. This would be easy enough, were it not that each player is blindfolded ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... grovelling admiration had not yet Imagined of the great man-miracle; And France recounted with her comic smile Duplicities of Court and Cabinet, The silky female of his male in guile, Wherewith her two-faced Master could amuse A dupe he charmed in sunny beams to bask, Before his feint for camisado struck The lightning ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which they have been produced. Unless they are founded on fact, so far as customs, localities, and mode of life are concerned, they would possess no interest; and their principal object is to interest. Without some degree of poetic improbabilities as to events, they could scarcely amuse; and their object is also to amuse. Hence, the element of truth is easily separated from the element of fiction, and each is available in its measure for historic research. The most ancient of this ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... himself,—"Whether he would give up the Substantial Forms of the Schoolmen." Strange matter for boyish deliberation! Yes, good youth, by all means, give them up! They have had their day. They served to amuse the imprisoned intellect of Christendom in times of ecclesiastical thraldom, when learning knew no other vocation. But the age into which you are born has its own problems, of nearer interest and more commanding import. The measuring-reed of science is to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... with which they can be accurately classed. I do not forget Horace Walpole, and Swift's 'Journal to Stella.' But Lockhart's wit was more playful and more natural. The great charm of his letters is, that he thought, so far, of nothing but simply to relate what was likely to amuse his daughter, whether the matter in itself was of the least consequence or not. Such, however, were not the only topics of which he had to tell. Mr. Lockhart, who, with his somewhat haughty self-possession, might have been described, as the late Lord ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... of its transcendentalism, my novel may serve to interest and amuse your public for a couple of hours, and may obtain some favor with it; for it is a public that reads a great deal, that is indulgent, and that differs from the English public—which is eminently exclusive in its tastes—by its ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... make a dandy, and one that no nigger could steal from. I'm buying it to sell for at least twice as much as I've paid for it, and I want you to watch me. I've been tickled mighty nigh to death over your late deals, and I want to amuse you. I know you'd like to see me make some money, and I'm going to do it as sure as I'm knee-high ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Sittings, a many months' run, Witnesses Two Hundred, Ninety and One: Clergymen, guardians, factors, physicians, Middlemen, labourers, smart statisticians, Journalists, managers, Gentiles and Jews, And this is the issue! A thing to amuse A cynic, the chat of this precious Committee, But moving kind hearts to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... life. He was never common or ridiculous, but she saw that he would never acquire the small social facilities. He was fond of exercise, but it bored him to talk of it. The men's smoking-room anecdotes did not amuse him, he was unmoved by the fluctuations of the stock-market, he could not tell one card from another, and his perfunctory attempts at billiards had once caused Mr. Langhope to murmur, in his daughter's hearing: "Ah, that's ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... and we wish to express our great pleasure at the thought that thousands and thousands of children who one year ago were strangers to us are now our little friends, and, we might say, seem to us like one large family. We have done our best to amuse and instruct them, and to make them happy; and by giving them weekly a rich fund of beautiful pictures, stories, poems, and instructive reading, to awaken in them noble thoughts and impulses, a desire for information, and also to teach ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... miss. I had a very good reason for asking you, but one doesn't always tell his reasons. However, I expect to see you every night at the dinner table, and for an hour or so afterward in the drawing room. The rest of the time you must amuse yourselves. Have you any friends in New York, ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... pent in trackless tracts, and pressed together by perpetual peril, every body's manners had been growing free and easy. Every man had been compelled to tell, as truly as he could, the story of his life thus far, to amuse his fellow-creatures—every man, I mean, of course, except my own poor father. Some told their stories every evening, until we were quite tired—although they were never the same twice over; but my father could never be ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... never hope for companionship, nor—certainly not—for school advantages, nor yet marriage; how then? She must amuse herself, fill in the time, be always occupied. Maman Archambault and you will sew for her, cook for her, and watch over her, and if at any time the money comes to an end——Artemise, listen, I tell you! Collect your wits and keep looking at me." For the girl's attention ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... accomplished was a mere feeling of the other's lines by either force. Hooker vainly endeavored to ascertain Lee's strength at various places in his front. Lee, to good purpose, strove to amuse Hooker by his bustle and stir, to deceive him as to the weakness of his force, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... been described by previous authors. The giraffe being endowed with an organ so exquisitely formed for prehension, instinctively puts it to use in a variety of ways, while in a state of confinement. The female in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, for example, may frequently be observed to amuse itself by stretching upward its neck and head, and, with the slender tongue, pulling out the straws which are plaited into the partition separating it from the contiguous compartment of its inclosure. In our own menagerie, many a fair lady has been robbed of the artificial flower ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... concern the deeper things of speculative philosophy and religion, rather than the wisdom of daily life, and, besides, though aphoristic in form, they are in substance systematic. "I blame equally," he said, "those who take sides for praising man, those who are for blaming him, and those who amuse themselves with him: the only wise part is search for truth—search with many sighs." On man, as he exists in society, he said little; and what he said does not make us hopeful. He saw the darker side. "If everybody knew what one says of the other, there would not be four friends left in ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... is a good counsel; but mind your idleness also. It's a tragic thing to make a business of your mind. Save your mind to amuse yourself with. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... rolling on, threatening to overwhelm the tall ship, and bury her in the fathomless abyss of the ocean—the laugh of the gallant tars, when a sea sweeps the deck and drenches them to the skin—all these incidents, united, rather amuse the voyager, and tend to dispel the inanity with which he is afflicted. During these periods, I have been for hours watching the motions of the "stormy petrel" (procellaria pelagica), called by sailors, "mother Carey's chickens." These birds are seldom seen ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... buckling a shawl-strap around it. Then I heard the old gentleman say to Doctor Tremont, "Tom, I don't want to add to the inconveniences of your journey, but I should like to send these monkeys along to help amuse the boys. Maybe they'll be some comfort to them. Dago is for Stuart, and Matches is for Phil. It would be a good idea to keep them in their boxes to-night on the sleeping-car. They are unusually well behaved little animals, but it would be safer to keep them shut ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... another matter when one acts in self-defence; but would it not be better to kill all the kings, seeing that they make war just to amuse themselves?" ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to amuse the ladies—he could do no more harm now; and, taking the colonel aside, I seized the opportunity, as we strolled up and down the garden path, to ask his consent to Lilian's engagement to me. He gave it cordially. "There's not a man in England," he said, "that ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... diligence. Some man sat on the little walnut table and broke it; but no other damage worth mentioning has been done. The table was absurdly repaired with a piece of twine, and pushed into the recess between the organ and the front window, whence I sometimes amuse myself by the experiment of pulling it into broad daylight. It is always pushed back again before I return ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... around its neck—at such times the monkey would scamper from shoulder to shoulder of the small boy, with occasional excursions up in the woolly kinks of the heights above. It was a funny picture and one that never failed to amuse those who ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... that for 'em; and as for us blue-jackets, every man Jack of us would have jumped overboard only to please her, when once we knew how it was. But she was too weak to talk or read much, and the chief thing she had to amuse her was a little grey Java sparrow, which she had with her in a cage. Whenever she came on deck, the bird's cage was brought up too, and put close beside her; and it was Bob Wilkins, the pantry-boy, who always had ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... dingo dog. From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that of the slapping of my knee, it had been altogether absent from my mind. Now it haunts me. It reiterates itself after the manner of a glib phrase. I am glad I am not in a railway carriage; the cranks would amuse the wheels with it all night long. As it is, the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle just a few yards away from my window. I keep asking myself: why a dingo dog? If I am mad it is in a gentle, Jaquesian, melancholy manner. I do not dash at life, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... were at eleven!—but a very proper, grown-up girl, who could reach the sugar when it is upon the sideboard! Surely you remember! That was the place, the firm fortress, where it was safe from us even without being locked up. We used to amuse ourselves by slapping flies, when it stood there, because we could not endure to see them flying around happily and enjoying what we ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... making the signs of the gods and speaking with Their hands lest the silence of Pegana should blush; then said the gods to one another, speaking with Their hands; "Let Us make worlds to amuse Ourselves while MANA rests. Let Us make worlds and Life and Death, and colours in the sky; only let Us not break the silence ...
— The Gods of Pegana • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... in person, with small eyes and a ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good humour—sport to amuse their friends—a perilous speculation. Besides his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems, and of a burlesque panegyric on ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... add to the hilarity of nations, and amuse himself by hanging a few rebels," he went on, "but we will address ourselves to serious work. All men have their price, including the present company, with due apologies to ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... and that marked [III.] mine in reply to his) will (at the same time that they may convince your ladyship that I will conceal nothing from you in the course of this correspondence, which may in the least amuse and divert you, or better explain our grateful sentiments), in a great measure, answer what your ladyship expects from me, as to the happy fortnight we ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... are only half real, a vain effort to prolong the imaginative loves of the middle age beyond their natural lifetime. They write love-poems for hire. Like that party of people who tell the tales in Boccaccio's Decameron, they form a circle which in an age of great troubles, losses, anxieties, can amuse itself with art, poetry, intrigue. But they amuse themselves with wonderful elegance. And sometimes their gaiety becomes satiric, for, as they play, real passions insinuate themselves, and at least the reality of death. Their dejection at the ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... ciphers which I would read as easily as I do the apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it. But this is different. It is clearly a reference to the words in a page of some book. Until I am told which page and ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the doggerel verse of the earlier drama, and "clownage" to the crude horseplay intended to amuse the crowd. For the doggerel is substituted blank verse, "Marlowe's mighty line" as it has ever since been called, since he was the first to use it with power; and for the "clownage" he promises a play of human interest revolving around a man whose sole ambition is for world power,—such ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... large, so sometimes more than one was needed for a play. At other times the players overflowed, as it were, into the audience. "Here Herod rages on the pageant and in the street also" is one stage direction. The devils, too, often ran among the people, partly to amuse them and partly to frighten and show them what might happen if they remained wicked. At the Creation, animals of all kinds which had been kept chained up were let loose suddenly, and ran among the people, while ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... way, you will not be at work till to-morrow. I'll leave you this to amuse you. It has not been out long. Thirteen thousand copies were sold the first day. It is the Corsair—Byron's Corsair. My God, it IS poetry and no mistake! Not exactly, perhaps, in your line; but you are a man of sense, and if that doesn't make your heart leap ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford |
