"At best" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... At best his chances in the all-too-probable emergency were far from brilliant. Yet one might better perish trying, however hopelessly, than passively submit to ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Russian Empress in the quarrel too. He affirms that both intended to demolish him—but I think I would not accuse both till at least I had humbled one. We are much pleased with this expedition, but at best it ensures the duration of the war—and I wish we don't attend more to that on the Continent than to that on our element, especially as we are discouraged a little on the latter. You reproach me for not telling you more of Byng- ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... of the sort. I do not say that collapse is impossible. I do say that it would be extremely undesirable from the point of view of almost everybody in Russia. Collapse of the present Government would mean at best a reproduction of the circumstances of 1917, with the difference that no intervention from without would be necessary to stimulate indiscriminate slaughter within. I say "at best" because I think it more likely that collapse would be followed by a period of actual ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... Now, my men, keep in shelter of yonder bluff; for under cover of it only can we approach the den unperceived. We are now within three miles of the place." The men received the intelligence with enthusiasm, and put their horses at best speed. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... ranges, each piece breaking or filling up the interstice of the two beneath it, the whole forming a connic figure about 10 feet high with a small apperture in one side which answers as a door. leaves bark and straw are sometimes thrown over the work to make it more complete, but at best it affords a very imperfect shelter particularly without straw which is the state in which we ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... ever, as soggy as his own oatmeal. At best he was one of those breakfast bruins. Now he was a bear that has been hit on the nose. He, too, must seek a job. School had seemed confining before, but now that he must go to work, school seemed like ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... knowledge on the subject, and the author anticipates the charge of plagiarism by disclaiming any intention of producing an original work. Recondite sources have not always been referred to, in order not to overload a text which at best is apt to tax the reader's powers of attention. Such references and special remarks as were deemed necessary have been incorporated either in Notes placed at the end of the book, or in an Appendix containing a bibliography. There the works ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... person of Demeter, mystical and profoundly aweful, yet profoundly pathetic, also, in her appeal to human sympathies. Out of the same original elements, the civilisation of Argos, on the other hand, developes the religion of Queen Here, a mere Demeter, at best, of gaudy flower-beds, whose toilet Homer describes with all its delicate fineries; though, characteristically, he may still allow us to detect, perhaps, some traces of the mystical person of the earth, in the all-pervading scent of the ambrosial unguent with which she anoints herself, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the Sung philosophers. After their time the tender plant was always in danger of being stunted or killed by the withering blast of philosophical criticism. Anything in the nature of myth ascribable to post-Sung times can at best be regarded only as a late blossom born when ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... enlightenment which gave them insight into things as they are, not as they are to be. "The proper study of mankind," they held was "man;" man, however, not in his boundless promise, but in the mean performance with which they proclaimed themselves satisfied. The poetry of the time was, at best, merely common-sense with ornamentation. It was neither lyrical nor tragic, though it may have tried to be both. It represented man neither as withdrawn into himself, nor as transported into an ideal world of ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... by the coaches. Mills, having finally concluded that he was too risky a person for the line-up on Saturday, figuratively labeled him "declined" and passed him over to Tassel, head coach of the second eleven. Tassel displayed no enthusiasm, for a good player gone "fine" is at best a poor acquisition, and of far less practical value than a poor player in good condition. It made little difference to Neil what team he belonged to, for he was prohibited from playing on Wednesday, ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded "captains of industry," financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Turkish, was helpless without his interpreter, at best a civilian among soldiers—men have got Iron Crosses for easier jobs than that! He talked of the news—great news for his side—of the Triumph, and, opening his navy list, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... most desirable. What can be accomplished through the country school is well shown in the work of Mrs. Marie Turner Harvey in the Porter School at Kirksville, Missouri.[66] But the district school will, at best, be only the social center of a neighborhood, and in many cases its district is too small for successful play or social life. Furthermore, the average one-room school is ill-adapted in architecture or equipment for social purposes. The consolidated school or village high school may well be ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... and a wig. His voice and manner were scarcely less prepossessing; the one was as abrupt and clamorous, as the other was rustic and ungraceful. He had the general look of a farmer of the better order; and seemed, at best, made to figure on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... great material advantage, they had lost no less in honor. The news of the surrender was received with indignation in England and in the colonies. Yet the behaviour of the garrison was not so discreditable as it seemed. The position was indefensible, and they could have held out at best but a few days more. They yielded too soon; but unless Webb had come to their aid, which was not to be expected, they ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... easier for the boy ranchers, though the task of urging the cattle away from the line they were traveling was hard enough at best. ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... of deprivation as a nullity, would insist that Sancroft and his fellow petitioners should be summoned to Parliament, and would refuse to acknowledge a new Archbishop of Canterbury or a new Bishop of Bath and Wells. Thus the session, which at best was likely to be sufficiently stormy, would commence with a deadly quarrel between the crown and the peers. If therefore it were thought necessary to punish the Bishops, the punishment ought to be ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... real advance in the things of the spirit until we have seen what lies on the other side of fear; fear cannot help us to grow, at best it can only teach us to be prudent; it does not of itself destroy the desire to offend—only shame can do that; if our wish to be different comes merely from our being afraid to transgress, then, if the fear of punishment were to be removed, we should go back with a light ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sounded like mockery. Sleep to me, always chary of her presence, was at best but a fair-weather friend, instantly deserting me when pain or exhaustion made me crave the more for rest and forgetfulness; but I had something to do in the interim—a little auto-da-fe to perform, by which, with that faith in ceremonial, so deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... make this choice? Can we hold that the First Amendment deprives Congress of what it deemed necessary for the Government's protection? To make validity of legislation depend on judicial reading of events still in the womb of time—a forecast, that is, of the outcome of forces at best appreciated only with knowledge of the topmost secrets of nations—is to charge the judiciary with duties beyond its equipment. We do not expect courts to pronounce historic verdicts on bygone events. Even historians have conflicting views ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... The intricate navigation of these waters, dotted by hundreds of small reefs and islands, and which can be traversed by only three safe channels, has furnished in former years a large amount of shipwrecked merchandise to Nassau. The wrecking business at best is extremely demoralizing, unfitting any community of men for legitimate industry, as we know very well by the experience gained on our own Florida shore. Men who have cruised fruitlessly for months in search of a profitable wreck will sometimes be tempted to decoy a ship from her proper ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the Trojan inscriptions on the above-mentioned vase. He, not without much research, interpreted it as a dedication "To the divine Sigo," a deity whose name was found in Sigeum. The transmutation, however, seemed forced; and, while Haug was right in his method, his results were pronounced at best, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... leading man and commander, two or three years together in the army of Lancaster, before this time; and, therefore, would be less likely to think that the Earl of Rutland might be entitled to mercy from his youth.—But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and savage one, the Family of Clifford had done enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred of the House of York: so that after the battle of Towton there was no hope for them but in flight and concealment. Henry, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... do rarely venture to produce any Hypothesis of their own to be fairly examin'd and compar'd with that which they reject: But that their opposition to a Deity, consists only in Objections which may as well be retorted upon themselves, and which at best prove nothing but the shortness of Humane Understanding) to me, I say, it appears from hence probable that the greatest part of Atheistick Reasoners, do rather desire, and seek to be Atheists, than that in reality they are so. Men, who are accustom'd to Believe without any Evidence of ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... of the day on which the two rivals were to meet, Miss Folliard began to entertain a dreadful apprehension that the fright into which the Red Rapparee had thrown her father was likely to terminate, ere long, in insanity. The man at best was eccentric, and full of the most unaccountable changes of temper and purpose, hot, passionate, vindictive, generous, implacable, and benevolent. What he had seldom been accustomed to do, he commenced soliloquizing ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... progress in some of the great matters of human concern has been long proceeding in accordance with the law of a rapidly increasing geometric progression, progress in the other matters of no less importance has advanced only at the rate of an arithmetical progression or at best at the rate of some geometric progression of relatively slow growth. To see it and to understand it we have to pay the small price of a little observation and a ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... shelter, and shivers, while the other squats over a tantalizing fire of green wood, blistering his face and parboiling his limbs inside his sweaty clothing. Dishes must be passed, food divided, and it is poor food, poorly prepared at best. Sometimes men criticize and voice longings for better grub and better cooking. Remarks of this kind have been known to result in tragedies, bitter words and flaming curses—then, perhaps, wild actions, memories of which the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... not, good sir; the world to me A riddle is at best—my heart has had No tutor. From my childhood until now My thoughts have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fell directly on the spot where the hedgehog rested among the littered leaves. She felt the strange and subtle influence of spring, and crawled feebly from her retreat. The light above her nest was far too brilliant for her eyes, which had been closed for three long months, and were at best only accustomed to the gloom of night, so she sought the shadow of a tree-trunk near, and there, for a while, remained quite motionless. With the leaves of last autumn still clinging thickly to her spines, she seemed an oddly fashioned creature belonging ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... a respite to Janice, she herself knew that it was at best the most temporary of expedients, and that the immediate press of affairs once over, her marriage with Philemon was sure to be pushed to a conclusion. Already her mother's discussions of clothes, of linen, and of furniture were constant reminders ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... take such chances. The less opulent cannot think of such methods, and hence are compelled to bear their sufferings as best they can. In the majority of instances the "change of climate" is only an illusion, or only temporarily beneficial at best. We can tell them a better way, and if they are ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Rome, the steady and all-pervading revival of its influence can be traced from capital to capital, wherever these Mahomedan podestas established their seat of government during that Indian Cinque Cento, which corresponds in time with, and recalls in many ways, though at best distantly, the Italian Cinque Cento, with its strange blend of refined luxury and cruelty, of high ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... At best she was a shrinking, timid little woman, for whom life probably held but narrow interests. Such as they were, their placid content was forever shattered. The death of her niece had closed the one chief avenue leading to the outer world. She would retire to the ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... an instant in dumb amaze—balancing himself upon his rocking raft with the pole he had been using. To attempt to swim ashore would have been useless. He was a clumsy swimmer at best; and the cold, rushing waters and floating ice cakes made ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Mr. Linwood," said Jerome, "is taken from them, and they have no security for their comfort, but the humanity and generosity of men, who have been trained to regard them not as brethren, but as mere property. Humanity and generosity are, at best, but poor guaranties for the protection of those who cannot assert their rights, and over whom ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... few and very far apart, and to get from one to another often entailed a journey impossible to a man without a horse. To steal his horse, therefore, was to deprive him of his sole means of getting to water—practically to deprive him of his life. If he didn't die of thirst, which frequently he did, at best it was a very grave offense. It isn't considered so now—not so much so, at any rate—unless in the desert wastes to the west of us. Yet the feeling still lurks within us, and a stolen horse is a matter ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... heads of families hereafter to be naturalised for the first generation, should have votes in any of our elections. But as the case stands, it seems against the nature of right government that strangers (who may be spies, and who may have an interest opposite to that of England, and who at best ever join in one link of obsequiousness to the Ministers) should be suffered to intermeddle in that important business of sending members to Parliament. From their sons indeed there is less to fear, who by birth and nature may come to have the same interest ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... it," agreed Henri. "I hope you won't mind the smell of the factory. It is horribly stifling, and makes some of the men sick at first. It is the oil and water in the silk. Silk must be damp for winding and spinning, otherwise it breaks. It is never, even at best, thoroughly dry, for it has the faculty of absorbing and holding moisture. Some time you'll learn more about how they have to allow for the moisture in silk when they weigh and ship it. Raw silk will often take up as much as thirty per cent. of its weight in moisture without any one suspecting ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... detriment of a fine dress coat, but he himself marvellously escaping untouched. Two field pieces were at work close upon our left, firing directly over the heads of our men in front; only a random firing at best, and I was glad when an aide-de-camp galloped down and put a stop to the infernal din. Amid this scene of indescribable excitement and confusion, the regiment rapidly formed. Our knapsacks—were we going into action with their encumbrance? The order was shouted to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of this moan from so many of the writers who have the public ear, especially in Europe, it is the more important to keep before us the fact that we are children of a race but partially developed at best. Compared with what will one day be within human scope our actual reach is only a little beyond impotence. I say this not merely at a venture, but on the strength of what has happened in the past. We are ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... braggart Philosophy fairly takes to his heels, and leaves us abandoned to the will of old mother Nature. Now, indeed, arrives the tug; and I, for my part, pity the man who, however savagely resolute, does not feel and own her power. The adieus of those one loves are, at best,—that is, for the shortest absence,—sufficiently unpleasant; but when there lie years, and, to the eye of affection, dangers, in the way of the next meeting, as the old Scotch ballad has it, "O but it is sair to part!" I should, I confess, were I free ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... trees on the bank, at the tail of the broken water. The two old canoes, although one of them was our biggest cargo-carrier, were water-logged and heavy, and one of them was leaking. In the night the river rose. The leaky canoe, which at best was too low in the water, must have gradually filled from the wash of the waves. It sank, dragging down the other; they began to roll, bursting their moorings; and in the morning they had disappeared. A canoe was launched ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... hope at best, this attempt of his to escape Kellogg: Duncan acknowledged it when, his packing rudely finished, he started for the door, Robbins reluctantly surrendering the suit-case after exhausting his repertoire of devices to delay the young man. But at that instant the elevator ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... places me in a very unenviable position. It was done," he continued, with a brazen front, "it was done without my knowledge. My advice was not asked: the company acted on their own responsibility and of their own motion. It is, at best, a poor compliment to me as an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of the National Executive in any reasonable temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must, at best, attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout whole States. It is hoped that the already deeply afflicted people of those States may be somewhat more ready to give up the cause of their affliction, if, to this extent, this vital matter be left to themselves; while no power ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... Way," Mr. Eugene Walter said, "Incidentally, I do not think much of it. To my mind a good play must have a tremendous uplift in thought and purpose. 'The Easiest Way' has none of this. There is not a character in the play really worth while, with the exception of the old agent. The rest, at best, are not a particular adornment to society, and the strength of the play lies in its true portrayal of the sordid type of life which it expressed. As it is more or less purely photographic, I do not think it should be given the credit of an inspiration—it is rather ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... to the friend Whose evil stars have urged him forth to claim On such a day the hospitable rites! Looks, blank at best, and stinted courtesy Shall he receive. Vainly he feeds his hopes With dinner of roast chicken, savory pie, Or tart, or pudding; pudding he nor tart That day shall eat; nor, though the husband try Mending ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... why the Athenians rejoice in the country. The dusty streets are at best a poor playground for the children, the inner court of the house is only a respectable prison for the wife. In the country the lads can enjoy themselves; the wife and the daughters can roam about freely with delightful absence ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Wittenberg or of Geneva, saw in the death of Henry and the succession of a helpless young king an exceptional opportunity for carrying out designs against which Henry had erected such formidable barriers. To both parties it was evident that at best Edward VI. could be but a tool in the hands of his advisers, and that whichever section could capture the king and the machinery of government might hope to mould the religious beliefs of the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... At best exercise in this narrow short passage was a farce, though it was often more agreeable to be out here than sitting in the cramped space of one of the tiny sleeping cabins. The four prisoners rested, or moved listlessly about, until ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... came to its full. Isabel, too, was in white, but with a difference, for as surely as the older woman's white was mourning, her silver spangles were donned for joy. At the table, Madame had done most of the talking, for Isabel's conversational gifts were limited, at best, and Rose ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... hundred years the communion of saints; and yet in four short years he was destined to be cut off from the faith of his fathers, torn from the soil in which he had been so firmly rooted. And during all this time he was destined to stand alone in the struggle, or at best with a few faithful companions—after 1518 together with Melanchthon. He was to be exposed to all the perils of the fiercest war, not only against innumerable enemies, but also in defiance of the anxious warnings of sincere friends and patrons. Three times ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... could have so promptly relegated Louise to the outside of their interest, or so frankly devoted themselves to Maxwell. The impartial spectator might easily have imagined that it was his ankle which had been strained, and that Louise was at best an intrusive sympathizer. Sometimes Mrs. Harley did not hear what she said; at other times, if she began a response to her, she ended it in a question to him; even when she talked to Louise, her eyes were smouldering upon Maxwell. If this had all ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... appear to many people to be not one function of poetry merely but its very essence. To them it is poetry, and the only thing worthy of the name; while the correlative function of lending the force of reality to the imaginary will appear at best but a superior kind of metrical romancing, or clever telling of fairy tales. Nor of course can there, from the point of view of the highest conception of the poet's office, be any comparison between the two. In so far as we regard poetry as contributing not merely to the pleasure of the mind ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the breast, That more than hope, that Heaven itself express'd. What I behold are feverish fits of strife, 'Twixt fears of dying and desire of life: Those earthly hopes, that to the last endure; Those fears, that hopes superior fail to cure; At best a sad submission to the doom, Which, turning from the danger, lets it come. Sick lies the man, bewilder'd, lost, afraid, His spirits vanquish'd, and his strength decay'd; No hope the friend, the nurse, the doctor lend - "Call then a priest, and fit him for ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... our feverish, artificial civilization, believing that the real, satisfying things are complex and difficult to obtain. Our lives become unnaturally stressed and tormented by the pitiless and incessant struggle for social conditions which are, at best, second-rate and ultimately disappointing. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... not expect to find his mother living,—far less that his unowned wife could have survived the perils in which he had involved her; and he believed that his ancestral home would, if not a ruin, be held by his foes, or at best by the rival branch of the family, whose welcome of the outlawed heir would probably be to a dungeon, if not a halter. Yet the only magnet on earth for the lonely wanderer was his native mountain, where from some old peasant he might learn how his fair young bride had ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... simple, commonplace note at best, and seemed hardly worthy of calling forth such feeling. It ran as follows, and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... should not be crowded into one day. The attempted quotation—as generally happens when I attempt quotation from the Bible—is a double failure: not a success simply in accuracy of repetition; and, at best, not appropriate. For I have more, and a great deal more. But"—rising from his chair—"I must depart. So adieu until the ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... if I was asleep; and if it was quite dark, they would light a wisp of grass. About two o'clock in the morning a Moor entered the hut, probably with a view to steal something, or perhaps to murder me; and groping about he laid his hand upon my shoulder. As night visitors were at best but suspicious characters, I sprang up the moment he laid his hand upon me; and the Moor, in his haste to get off, stumbled over my boy, and fell with his face upon the wild hog, which returned the attack ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... accept Jesus as a prophet because they know his family—a delightfully natural and absurd reason, with history written plain on the face of it—that Jesus had no brothers, only cousins or half-brothers at best. When History gives us brothers, and Dogma says they must be cousins—in any other case the decision of the historian would be clear, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... and before sundown the seed was all in except one, and as the sun was setting over the western skies a lame ant hobbled along with that grain also. Some of us have youth and vigor and suppleness of limb; some of us are crippled with years or infirmities, and we are at best but little ants. But we can all limp along with some share of our country's burden, and thus help her in this terrible hour to win the desire of her ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... be asked, should not the palm be given to Mr. Darwin if he wanted it, and was at so much pains to get it? Why, if science is a kingdom not of this world, make so much fuss about settling who is entitled to what? At best such questions are of a sorry personal nature, that can have little bearing upon facts, and it is these that alone should concern us. The answer is, that if the question is so merely personal and unimportant, Mr. Darwin may as well yield as Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... because she thought that the Queen might remember her only as one that had wronged her childish innocence. For she remembered that the maids' dormitory at the old Duchess's had been no cloister of pure nuns. So that, at best, she was afraid, and she sent her yard-worker and a shepherd a great way round to fetch the larger boat of two to ferry over the Queen's men. Then she went indoors to redd up the ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... and also into the bills of some species of birds by subcutaneous injections of various dyes when the specimen was fresh, but as all taxidermists are not skilled anatomists, and have not too much time to spare in doing what is—at best—but an unsatisfactory and unpractical method, I may relieve their anxiety by saying at once that the difficulty attendant on shrinkage of the integument may be avoided by using wax, with which to thinly paint the large bills of some birds, and the legs of all, restoring also ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... now obscure. But I am unfortunate in having to discuss Central Asian Buddhism before scholars have had time to publish or even catalogue completely the store of material collected and the reader must remember that the statements in this chapter are at best tentative and incomplete. They will certainly be supplemented and probably corrected as year by year new documents and works ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... some unimaginative reader may say; "but there is no color and no motion in these pictures you think so life-like; and at best they are but petty miniatures of the objects we see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... received in early Abyssinia and Arabia was crude and primitive at best. Throughout the intervening centuries, there has been little improvement in Yemen; but modern cultural methods obtain in the Harar district ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... observations on any work which has before passed the ordeal of frequent examination. And this I shall do for two reasons; partly, because were I to choose a field, how fertile soever, of which many others had before me been reaping the fruits, mine would be at best but the gleanings of criticism; and partly, from a more interested view, from a selfish desire of accumulated praise; since, by making a work, as yet almost wholly unknown, the subject of my consideration, I shall acquire ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... sentiment of God's goodness. Optimisms resting on these bases are always weak; for the former leaves man naked and sensitive to the evils that crowd round him when the powers of body and mind decay, and the latter is, at best, useful only for the individual who possesses it, and it breaks down under the stress of criticism and doubt. Browning's optimism is a great element in English literature, because it opposes with such strength the shocks that come from both these quarters. His joyousness ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... "Now I'd like to have your opinion on just how Vacuum Tube Transport can extract itself from what would seem a poor position at best." ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... launch returned on board with a turn of water but had not been able to find a channel for vessel of any draught of water though she stood well out from the shore to at best 3 miles. This bank has only from 4 to 8 feet water on it and in many places is not above a hundred ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... question which at once suggests itself is, What place or right has this ancient Semitic tradition, if such it is, among the Biblical narratives? At best the historical data which it preserves are exceedingly small and of doubtful value. Is it possible that the prophetic and priestly historians found these stories on the lips of the people and sought in this heroic way to divest them of their polytheistic form and, ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... systematize (again to systematize) knowledge from the human or subjective point of view, the only one, he contends, from which a real synthesis is possible. For (he says) the knowledge attainable by us of the laws of the universe is at best fragmentary, and incapable of reduction to a real unity. An objective synthesis, the dream of Descartes and the best thinkers of old, is impossible. The laws of the real world are too numerous, and the manner of their working into one another too intricate, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... territorial rights or jurisdiction. The government that could so originate would be, if any thing, a barbaric, not a republican government. It has only the rights conferred on it, surrendered or delegated to it by individuals, and therefore, at best, only individual rights. Individuals can confer only such rights as they have in the supposed state of nature. In that state there is neither private nor public domain. The earth in that state is not property, and is open to the first occupant, and the occupant can lay no claim ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the place of prayer in the Christian life. So familiar is the fact of prayer that they forget that the majority of pupils in the average Sunday-school of today are not familiar with the words of prayer at family worship, are at best irregular in church attendance and that many are associated with no society in the church where there ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... of the bacteriologist, who, after killing innumerable patients with a particular serum, were to advertise it as an unqualified success? Should we not brand such a man as an unscrupulous charlatan or at best as a dangerous visionary? If, moreover, we were to find that large bands of agents backed by unlimited funds, were engaged in pressing his remedy upon the public and carefully avoiding all reference to the fatalities it had caused, should we not further conclude ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... many months at my needle. After tea I told Nat. He lay very still for some moments; the tears rolled down his cheeks; then he reached up both hands and drew my face down to his, and said, 'Dear sister, it would be selfish to make it any harder for you than it must be at best. But oh, Dot, Dot! do you think you can dream what it is for me to have to lie here and be such a burden ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Greenland became almost completely dependent on fishing and fish processing, the sector accounting for 95% of exports. Prospects for fisheries are not bright, as the important shrimp catches will at best stabilize and cod catches have dropped. Resumption of mining and hydrocarbon activities is not around the corner, thus leaving only tourism with some potential for the near future. The public sector in Greenland, i.e., the central government and its commercial entities ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... transmuted into renewed force for the future. The love of those we have lost may enable us to love better those who remain, and those who are to come. So used, it is an infinitely precious possession, and to be cherished with all our hearts. As it leads to vain regrets, it is at best an enervating enjoyment, and a needless pain. The figments of theology are a consecration of our delusive dreams; the teaching of the new faith should be the utilization of every emotion to the bettering of the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... certain that to the highest consummation of taste, as well as of every other excellence, nature must lend much assistance, yet great is the power of art, almost of itself, or at best with only slender aids from nature; and, to say the truth, there are very few who have not in their minds some small seeds of taste. "All men," says Cicero, "have a sort of tacit sense of what is right or wrong in arts and sciences, even without the help of arts." This surely it ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... calculus he "mugged" in the organized science school. Parload is a famous man now, a great figure in a great time, his work upon intersecting radiations has broadened the intellectual horizon of mankind for ever, and I, who am at best a hewer of intellectual wood, a drawer of living water, can smile, and he can smile, to think how I patronized and posed and jabbered over him in the darkness ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... only formally, or, at best, merely as fellow club members; men whom he met when a dance or dinner took him out of the less pretentious sets he personally affected; men whom the newspapers and the public knew too well to ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... twilight still lingered. Mary Alice could not tell who many of the men were, but she could see the King and she watched him interestedly as he paced up and down. She had been told how no one must speak to a king until the king has first spoken to him; and she felt that at best it must be a dreary business—being ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... are in the right, my dear uncle. The ideas which are inspired by the contemplation of such a spectacle as this are far—oh, how far!—superior to those excited by the mere works of art. There I can, at best, think but of the inferior agents of Providence; here the soul rises from nature up to ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Hugh. You see, I can't be married until the twenty-third of May. Well, aunt is determined to announce the engagement to-morrow night. Don't you see we couldn't elope until the twenty-second at best, so we're doomed for two months of it in spite of ourselves. If we get through the two months why should we elope at all? The ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... to keep so fat after having mounted to such a great distance for so long a time. Somehow they had done it, not only maintained their already acquired fat but added greatly thereto. There would be no refreshing cup to quaff upon arriving, only water, or at best milk. This I knew and the knowledge added pounds to my already ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... two-tenths is, then, the general death-rate for the state for that year. This method of determining the health of a community is crude and should not be too strictly relied upon for proving the healthfulness implied. The rate is at best only an average, and takes no account of anything but death, one death being a greater calamity, apparently, than a dozen persons incapacitated from disease. Then, too, this death-rate is greatly affected by peculiarities ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... little now and then, dost thou think it makes thee fit to be the husband of that beautiful vision, and a Count of the highest class to boot?—thee—thee, I say, low born, and lower bred, whose wisdom is at best a sort of dinning, and whose courage is more ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... contributed to the idea of the inferiority of woman, until she finally became the slave and the plaything of man. The "virgin of the spheres," from her exalted mission as the Eternal Mother of the race, became at best but a secondary personality, and finally was refused any part in the symbol ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... said, "if it amuses you, I'm glad you thought of doing it," and she folded up her work and put it into her bag. "Life's a rather dreary affair at best," she concluded, "and anything that interests one is a ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... John, "I believe that for a very long time a very strong prejudice existed against it; and even physicians opposed its use, considering it at best a dangerous medicine. It is now, however, acknowledged to be a sovereign remedy for ague of all descriptions. I believe the French astronomer De la Condamine, who went to Quito in the year 1735 to measure an arc of a degree, and thus to determine the ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... picturesque at a distance than when closely inspected. The Chinese actually prefer all their places to smack of age, and repair them reluctantly, so that all have a dilapidated air, which gives a very unfavorable impression to a stranger. At best, China has nothing whatever to boast of in the way of architecture. We did not see a structure of any kind which would attract a moment's notice, a few pagodas and temples, perhaps, excepted; but even these are ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... very Mouth of the Cove, which is on the East side of the first Bluff point from Cape St. Vincent, where there is Anchorage in 4 fathoms, a Sandy Bottom. In going in keep clear of the Sea Weed, and send a Boat Ahead to sound, and at best this is but a bad place for Shipping, and only recommended to such as are in want of Wood and Water, and have no Opportunity to put into the Strait, which in Prudence ought not to be attempted but with a fair wind ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... and be not labelled and pigeon-holed and held to account on any special line of thought or action lest the individual soul be barred out from a conception and knowledge of some far grander truth. At best our view is narrow and contracted, else were we gods, and as we grow we discover our little, vaunted beliefs to be but as tiny shreds of color in God's great mosaic, our song of triumph and discovery but as the buzzing of the insect to the chorals ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... could not be glad for the simple object lesson of a man and woman happy in each other, made her miserable for hours. Late years she had not cared if she looked tacky. "What does it matter," she would ask, with a hateful glance into the glass, "when at best, I look like a water-nymph with hay-fever?"... A long and hard fight, but she had almost broken the habit of thinking what she might do with certain prerogatives of women, which were not granted to her. A bitter fight, and only she knew the hollowness of the honors her good work had brought. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... out of sight in the loose snow, or at best, only the uppermost branches could be obtained. Without fire, without food, without proper shelter from the dampness occasioned by the melting snows, in the bitter, biting wintry weather, the men, women, and children were ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... and to insure his dealing honestly with them. And from what I know of Williams I am not altogether without hopes that so long as Ned faithfully obeys their orders the young lady will be perfectly safe. But, at best, her situation is a very terrible one, and I would give my right hand this moment to see her safe once more among us. And now, tell me, what have you been doing all the time, and what is the meaning of ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... retain in their bosom, in their ecclesiastic organizations, worship, doctrines, and observances, various relics of popery. They are at best a reformation of popery, and only reformations in part. The doctrines and traditions of men yet impair the power and progress of the gospel ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... amounts to this, which also I believe—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the Board of Agriculture in England. In reality the difference between the two institutions is as wide as the difference between the two islands. The chief interest of the new Department consists in the free play which it gives to the pent-up forces of a re-awakening life. A new institution is at best but a new opportunity, but the Department starts with the unique advantage that, unlike most Irish institutions, it is one which we Irishmen planned ourselves and for which we have worked. For this reason the opportunity is one to which we may hope ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... boys running about with the shell still on their heads and more affections to place than they can find a market for, but men. Well then, with most all of them, when one comes to discuss matters, one finds one's had such an awful lot of predecessors. At best one comes in a bad third—more often a bad three-and-twentieth—I mean nothing risky. Don't be nervous. But they have romantic memories of half-a-dozen women. And so, though they are no end nice and kind to one, play up and give one a good time and have a jolly good one themselves—trust ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... son-in-law, asking him to dinner, and discussing with him matters of general interest,—but never, in truth, opening his heart to him. Indeed, how can any man open his heart to one whom he dislikes? At best he can only pretend to open his heart, and even this Mr. Wharton would not do. And very soon after the engagement Lopez left London and went to the Duke's place in the country. His objects in doing this and his aspirations in regard to a seat in ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... his professions, or the reliance to be placed on his general character: but it will, perhaps, be argued that, whatever may be his character, or whatever has been his past conduct, he has now an interest in making and observing peace. That he has an interest in making peace is at best but a doubtful proposition, and that he has an interest in preserving it is still more uncertain. That it is his interest to negotiate, I do not indeed deny; it is his interest above all to engage this country in separate negotiation, in order to loosen ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... teachers their one weapon is sarcasm. All too frequently these measures grow out of unsettled nerves or stirred up passions, on the part of the parent or teacher, and have really but little connection—remote at best—with the offense in question. There may be an abuse in the matter of rewards, too, of course, but as a rule few classes suffer from too much appreciation. The real art of discipline lies in making the reward or the punishment ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... symbolizes the perfect type. What we know of marriage as it is to-day, proves to us beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the man-made institution of marriage does not make man and woman one, nor insure that two halves of the same whole are united. The highest type of men and women to-day are at best but half-gods, but these are prophecies of the future race, "the man-god whom we await" as Emerson puts it. But that which we await is the man-woman-god, the Perfected Being, of whom Balzac ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... an easy thing to do, Miss Keltridge, the sliding out of a concrete and detailed theology into a something that at best is—" ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... her skull. I am sure there ought to be a thaw after all his apologies. After breakfast Mrs. O'Shaughnessy went out to see her friend Cormac O'Toole. He was the only person in town we could hope to get a team from with which to continue our journey. This is a hard country on horses at best, and at this time of the year particularly so; few will let their teams go out at any price, but Mrs. O'Shaughnessy had hopes, and she is so persuasive that I felt no one could resist her. There was a drummer at breakfast who kept "cussing" the country. He had ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... emphasis: "Now, Allen, it's all right for you to talk to me about Marian, and your wish to marry her; but don't mix scandal up in it. I'm not for that. I don't want to hear any stories of that kind about Bassett. Politics is rotten enough at best without tipping over the garbage can to find arguments. I don't believe your father is going to stoop to that. To be real frank with you, I don't think ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson |
