"At the best" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the best, human life on this minute and perishing planet is a mere episode, and as brief as ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... right way. The patience and good disposition aboard of us, was wonderful. I was not surprised by it in the women; for all men born of women know what great qualities they will show when men will fail; but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some of the men. Among one-and-thirty people assembled at the best of times, there will usually, I should say, be two or three uncertain tempers. I knew that I had more than one rough temper with me among my own people, for I had chosen those for the Long-boat that ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... deal relieved. He was clearly a being of extraordinary powers, and might, for anything I knew, have made me run away with Lady Perilous. And then, when the pangs of remorse began to tell on her ladyship, never a very lively woman at the best of times—However, the spectre seemed to have ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... have known, clocks apart, that a day was drawing to a close; a short winter's day, and a dark and cold one at the best. But the someone was not in the Thames Valley, and the somewhere surely was not Sapps Court. There Day and Night alike had been robbed of their birthright by sheer Opacity, and humankind had to choose between submission to Egyptian darkness and an irksome leisure, or a crippled activity ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Death, "that at the best, I seldom am a welcome guest; But do n't be captious, friend; at least, I little thought that you'd be able To stump about your farm and stable; Your years have run to a great length, Yet still you seem to have ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... that a young girl who allowed a young man to make her acquaintance outside of the—the—social sanctions—would be apt to be a silly or romantic person, at the best. Of course, there are exceptions. But I should be very sorry if any young man I knew—no; why shouldn't I say you, at once?—should involve himself in any such way. One thing leads to another, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... to those reins, I'm sure, till he died (what he began he always stuck to); and my lady sitting there in the carriage half scared to death. The fingers on his left hand were cut to the bones. They were long healing, and a sight to be seen then at the best. The right wasn't much better, dragged along the road as it had been. My lady always liked Lars after that. He had always been for reading; and when he took it into his head he wanted to be a priest, she ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... thus with little of joy or rest Are the long, long journeys done; And thus — 'tis a cruel war at the best — Is distance fought in the mighty West, And the ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... quarters, of ecstatically exaggerating the practical value of false beliefs in past and present times, we may admit that the cause of morality in the humblest sense of that term may sometimes have been served by the religious condemnation of all these matters as unclean, and of parenthood as, at the best, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... a lot of stock made up on hand. The market is dead at present prices. There is no hope of sales. The market will fall lower still. I propose that we take our loss and unload at the best rate we can get." ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... from the use of the "Exercises". The text, at the best, but provides raw material. Each student's finished product must be of his own making. The exercises afford opportunity for the student to work over the material and make it ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... are much the same thing. The financier makes the dollars do the work at the best place, and the general does the same thing with his soldiers. The financier with plenty of money in the bank and the general with plenty of soldiers at his command are alike. They give the order and the thing is done, for they have the material to do the thing with. The difference between ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... agreement is demanded from you, and by voting whether you agree or do not. And what is to be your reward? Some few precarious hundreds a year, lasting just so long as a party may remain in power and you can retain a seat in Parliament! It is at the best slavery and degradation,—even if you are lucky enough to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... say a word to vex ye," answered Cosmo; "but I hae notit an h'ard 'at the best 'o wuman whiles tak oonaccootable fancies to men no fit to haud a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... leave it in any case, you ungrateful girl," bellowed Braddock, who was purple with rage, never having a very good temper at the best of times. "Look what ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... them. The pride of having inspired an immortal masterpiece must have stirred their hearts to gratitude toward the gifted beings able to see them disencumbered from their faults, and fix them for the contemplation of their own eyes and their neighbors' as they had been at the best moment of their ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Silesia are ominously doubtful, bad at the best. Duke Bevern, once Winterfeld was gone, had, as we observed, felt himself free to act; unchecked, but also unsupported, by counsel of the due heroism; and had acted unwisely. Made direct for Silesia, namely, where are meal-magazines and strong places. Prince Karl, they say, was also unwise; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... white fish twice a week which they procured from the river for which in return we gave sugar, tea, prints, &c., from the store. Christmas and New Year's were celebrated in about the same manner that they are amongst us civilized people. Both Indians and squaws put on their good clothes, which at the best of times is very scant, and do their calling. They salute the inmates of each house they enter with a congratulatory shake, expecting to be kissed in return. Just think of having to kiss a whole tribe of Indians in one day, that part we would rather do by proxy. We would ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... held the country were in the position of a conquered and vassal people; for the times and the manners of those times well used by their conquerors, especially in the country of the Dorsaetas, where at the worst they were treated as useful slaves, and at the best the masters were but rustic imitators of their forerunners, the Romans. To the most careless observer a good proportion of the country people of Dorset are unusually swarthy and "Welsh" in appearance, though ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... assistance. It is my belief that we are now off the north-eastern end of New Guinea, either on the mainland or on an island; though I suspect the latter, or we should probably have fallen in with natives. This point we must ascertain as soon as possible, for we should do well to avoid them, as at the best they are a savage race, who are more likely to prove foes than friends. Now, the first thing we have to do is to provide food for ourselves. See, I was ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... to be the most advantageous market for furs, I was desired by Captain Gore to carry with me about twenty sea-otters' skins, chiefly the property of our deceased commanders, and to dispose of them at the best price I could procure; a commission which gave me an opportunity of becoming a little acquainted with the genius of the Chinese for trade. Having acquainted some of the English supercargoes with these circumstances, I desired them to recommend ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... fruitless experiments, he hit upon the scheme of lashing the logs together with withes of willow. It promised to be an all-day job, and a clumsy one at the best. Still, if the wind held fair and light, it might serve. Raising a mast presented another problem. He deferred consideration of that until ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... boy, that's what you would like best, I've no doubt; but look at Edward's face there, and think what that would come to at the best!' ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Miles take a great deal of getting over with a small boat in the open sea at the best of times. So rowed as ours was by three weary hungry boys, as may be supposed, we did not make the best ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... and perhaps, pictorially speaking, considerably emptier, Neapolitan face of things, things in general, of our later time, I recognised in my final impression a grateful, a beguiling serenity. The place is at the best wild and weird and sinister, and yet seemed on this occasion to be seated more at her ease in her immense natural dignity. My disposition to feel that, I hasten to add, was doubtless my own secret; my three beautiful days, at any rate, filled themselves with the splendid ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... shop-painters paste Their gold in sheets, then rub to waste Full half, and, lo, you read the name? Well, Time, my Dear, does much the same With this unmeaning glare of love. But, though you yet may much improve, In marriage, be it still confess'd, There's little merit at the best. Some half-a-dozen lives, indeed, Which else would not have had the need, Get food and nurture as the price Of antedated Paradise; But what's that to the varied want Succour'd by Mary, your dear Aunt, Who put the bridal ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... measure of Columbus' misfortune was yet to come. Queen Isabella died, and Ferdinand, who, at the best, had been no more than lukewarm toward the achievements of the great sailor, refused to take any further interest in Columbus or what might become of him. The pension that Columbus had earned was never given to him, nor did he get the share in the profits ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... have shown that the best compound condensing engines only utilize 8.94, and a fair average single cylinder condensing engine only utilizes 5.42 per cent. of the energy of the fuel consumed, and as at the best not over 70 per cent. of the foot pounds obtained from the engine can be utilized as electricity, from which we must deduct loss by friction, etc., it will be readily seen that not more than 5 per cent. of the energy of the fuel can be developed by the dynamo-generator ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... its own worth and beauty, not because of any external advantage. We must not corrupt the love of the good for its own sake by mixing with it the hope of future reward, which at the best is admissible only as a counter-weight against evil passions. When Shaftesbury speaks of future bliss, his highest conception of the heavenly life is uninterrupted friendship, magnanimity, and nobility, as a continual rewarding of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... throughout all the regions of the universe. A particular function or occupation formed, so to speak, the principality of each one, in which he worked with an indefatigable zeal, under the orders of his respective prince or king; but, whereas in Egypt they were on the whole friendly to man, or at the best indifferent in regard to him, in Chaldaea they for the most part pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in order to destroy him. These monsters of alarming aspect, armed with knives and lances, whom the theologians of Heliopolis and Thebes ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... answered, "I daresay that a brave knight like you thinks nothing of fighting several men at once, but when that wretch with the big hands and the flat face caught hold of me I nearly died of fright. At the best of times I am a dreadful coward, and—no, I thank you, Senor, I can stand now and alone. See, here comes the Heer van Broekhoven under whose escort I am travelling, and look, he is bleeding. Oh! worthy ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... bound to listen to it. [Footnote: Caulaincourt's words,—"Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol. xii., p. 292] Now, the truth is, that the allies are firmly determined to carry on the war to the last extremity, and that, at the best, they will leave to your majesty the frontiers of France as they were under the Bourbons. I venture, therefore, once more to implore your majesty to make peace; sire, peace at any cost! Perhaps it may be time yet. Send me once ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Martha! Martha! where iss that wuman? It iss always out of the way she iss when she's wantit. Ay, Peegwish, you will do equally well. Go to the staple, man, an' tell the poy to put the mare in the cariole. Make him pe quick; it's slow he iss at the best, whatever." ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... ever received from Europe. If Hoffmeyer discovered the serum, it was too late, or otherwise, long ere this, explorers from Europe would have come looking for us. We can only conclude that what happened in America happened in Europe, and that, at the best, some several score may have survived the Scarlet Death on ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... has been the lot of many a fine man with a head on his shoulders, who has run it into a quarrel not his own," he observed. "I know what war is—a horrible, detestable affair at the best. Take my advice: Have nothing to do with it. Both parties now striving for the mastery are savages. You will find that out before long—though do not tell the commandant what I say, or he may chance to order me out to be shot, as a traitor to the cause of liberty. Bah!—there is ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... difficulty here, is to know which is one's country. It is a family quarrel, at the best, and it will hardly do to talk about foreigners, at all. It is the same as if I should treat Maud unkindly, or harshly, because she is the child of only a friend, and not my own natural daughter. As God is my judge, Woods, I am unconscious of not loving ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... tremendous efficiency which our party has to-day. On this depends the great results which it promises us.... The whole effect of the Great Alliance policy [the proposed alliance of Socialists with the Radicals and National Liberals], if ever it became possible in the nation, at the best would be this: that we would serve to the Liberals as the step on which they would climb up into the government crib, in order to continue the same reactionary policies which are now being carried on, with a few ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... received him with open arms. "You have come at the best of all the year, we will have herb pudding and sit ...
— The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse • Beatrix Potter
... me?" he said. "It is a village school: your scholars will be only poor girls—cottagers' children—at the best, farmers' daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will be all you will have to teach. What will you do with your accomplishments? What, with the largest portion ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... young-man-about-town, an indolent pleasure-lover, always dressed to perfection and flush with money—such was Victor Nevill in the opinion of the world. For aught men knew to the contrary, he thrived like the proverbial lily of the field, without the need of toiling or spinning. He lived in expensive rooms, dined at the best restaurants, and belonged to a couple of good clubs. To his friends this was no matter of surprise or conjecture. They were aware that he was well-connected, and that years before he had come into a fortune; they naturally supposed that ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... farther conference vouchsafed to stay; Heedless he whistled, and pursued his way. But thou whom years have taught to understand, Humanely hear, and answer my demand: A friend I seek, a wise one and a brave: Say, lives he yet, or moulders in the grave? Time was (my fortunes then were at the best) When at my house I lodged this foreign guest; He said, from Ithaca's fair isle he came, And old Laertes was his father's name. To him, whatever to a guest is owed I paid, and hospitable gifts bestow'd: To him seven talents of pure ore I told, Twelve cloaks, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... long entertained as to the accuracy of the popular estimates of the amount of the town population of China. The cities which I have visited are, no doubt, suffering at present from the effects of the rebellion; but I cannot bring myself to believe that, at the best of times, they can have contained the number of inhabitants usually imputed to them. M. Hue puts the population of the three cities of Woo-chang-foo, Han-yang-foo, and Hankow, at 8,000,000. I doubt much whether it now amounts, in the aggregate, to 1,000,000; and even ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... delineation for which he had been admired at court, none, although they all laughed, had appeared to enjoy the bad recital thoroughly, except the bold faced countess. Lady Florimel regarded the affair as undignified at the best, was sorry for the old man, who must be mad, she thought, and was pleased only with the praises of her squire of low degree. The wound in his hand the marquis either thought too trifling to mention, or serious enough to have clouded the clear ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... days following his arrival Victor Durnovo indulged, according to his lights, in the doubtful pleasure mentioned. He purchased at the best factory the best clothes obtainable; he lived like a fighting cock in the one so-called hotel—a house chiefly affected and supported by ship-captains. He spent freely of money that was not his, and imagined himself to be leading the life of a gentleman. He rode round on a hired horse ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... unable to see his way out of the innumerable troubles that were before him. Perhaps, he said to himself, he might even die, but this, far from being an end of his troubles, would prove the beginning of new ones; for at the best he would only go to Grandpapa Pontifex and Grandmamma Allaby, and though they would perhaps be more easy to get on with than Papa and Mamma, yet they were undoubtedly not so really good, and were more worldly; moreover they were grown-up people—especially Grandpapa Pontifex, who so far ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... to arrive at the best method of presenting his side of the sheep-killing to Loring. He hoped that Eleanor Loring would not be present during the interview with her father. He was disappointed, for she came from the wide veranda as he rode up ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the wonder was how he managed to keep himself in college even though he was taking but a partial course. To be sure, Cowan's fate didn't bother Neil a bit, but he was greatly afraid that his example would be followed by his roommate, who, at the best, was none too fond of study. Neil sat long that evening over an unopened book, striving to think of some method of weakening Cowan's hold on Paul—a hold that was daily growing stronger and which threatened to work ill to the latter. In the end Neil sighed, tossed down the volume, and made ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... large a scale, and so little relief; so little mystery about those broad gravel-walks; not a winding alley anywhere. Oh, for a vulgar summer-house; for some alcove, all honeysuckle and ivy! But the dahlias are splendid! Very true; only, dahlias, at the best, are such uninteresting prosy things. What poet ever wrote upon a dahlia! Surely Lady Montfort might have introduced a little more taste here, shown a little more fancy! Lady Montfort! I should like to see my lord's face if Lady Montfort took any such liberty. But there is Lady Montfort walking ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smoke helmet, as it is called, at the best is a vile-smelling thing, and it is not long before one gets a violent ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... horseback, who were merchants of my husband's acquaintance, and had come out on purpose, to go half a day's journey with us; and as they kept talking to us at the coach side, we went a good pace, and were very merry together; we stopped at the best house of ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... Iyaji are travelling from Yedo to Osaka. When within a short distance of Akasaka, Kidahachi hastens on in advance to secure good accommodations at the best inn. Iyaji, travelling along leisurely, stops a little while at a small wayside refreshment-house kept by an ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... called St. Clair's, where there was formerly another residence of Major ——'s; nothing remains now of it but a ruined chimney of some of the offices, which is standing yet in the middle of what has become a perfect wilderness. At the best of times, with a large house, numerous household, and paths, and drives of approach, and the usual external conditions of civilisation about it, a residence here would have been the loneliest that can well be imagined; now ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... expressing my sentiments. They can have little weight, as coming from me; and I have not power enough of mind or body to bring them out with their natural force. But I do not wish to have it concealed that I am of the same opinion, to my last breath, which I entertained when my faculties were at the best; and I have not held back from men in power in this kingdom, to whom I have very good wishes, any part of my sentiments on this melancholy subject, so long as I had means of access to persons ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... my own; or at least don't at all mind her having been dipped in it. It has tempered and plated us for the rest of life, and to an effect different enough from the awful metallic wash of our Company's admired ice-pitchers. We artists are at the best children of despair—a certain divine despair, as Lorraine naturally says; and what jollier place for laying it in abundantly than the Art League? As for Peg, however, I won't hear of her having anything to do with ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... thousand! But now, angel, farewell for a little space. I hate to bid you leave me, but I dare not ask you to stay; even now I tremble lest you should be missed and they should send to seek you. For were they but to suspect that I am here and have seen you, it would, at the best, double all our difficulties. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the background, and a perfect retinue of preaching ancestors, whole dozens of them and all Baptists, and they have conspired to poison the boy's mind with the notion that it's up to him to preach, too. It would be all right, if he had anything to say; but he hasn't. He's tongue-tied and unmagnetic at the best; what's more, he has learned too many things to let him flaunt abroad the old beliefs as battle standards. He's gone too far, and not far enough. His life is bound to be a miserable sort of compromise, a species of battledore and shuttlecock arrangement between the limits ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... came to the banks of the Salado, concerning the crossing of which river we had heard so much. We had been told it was impossible and impassable; that the rains had swollen the river too much for a safe passage; that at the best of times the banks were too steep and slippery for carts to negotiate, and that all idea of crossing had better be given up. The Instigator and The Jehu merely smiled when they heard of these difficulties, but some members of the ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... colder heart than hers I never met, even among the most disorderly of Loni's band; for, blindly as the infatuated lovers obeyed every one of her crazy whims, she laughed at the best and truest. 'I hate them all,' she would say. 'I wouldn't let one of them even touch me with the tip of his finger if I could not use their zecchins. 'With these,' she said, 'she would help the rich to restore to the poor what they had stolen from them.' ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... At the best it was guesswork; but having made his conjecture, Deerfoot now raised the glass to his eyes and centered his attention upon the spot. As he did so he was thrilled by a discovery which set his nerves at once ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... literature that the great contemplatives, in their effort to convey to us the nature of their communion with the supersensuous, are inevitably driven to employ some form of sensuous imagery: coarse and inaccurate as they know such imagery to be, even at the best. Our normal human consciousness is so completely committed to dependence on the senses, that the fruits of intuition itself are instinctively referred to them. In that intuition it seems to the mystics that all the dim cravings and partial apprehensions of sense find perfect fulfilment. ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... The rest of the vacation was gone at once; for Mr. Linden could not go to Europe and come back, even on the wings of steam, and have a day left before study would begin again. No more of him—except, at the best, snatches—till next year; and next year was very far off, and who could tell what might be next year? But at the best, she must see little more of him until then; and in the mean time he must put half the world between them. Nobody saw ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... necessity, as they apprehended this to be, according to Josephus, it was any such crime, I am not satisfied. In the mean time, their making their father drunk, and their solicitous concealment of what they did from him, shows that they despaired of persuading him to an action which, at the best, could not but be very suspicious and shocking to so ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... breathless trio. "You might not be so fortunate. Far, far from it. How can any one more than guess before one is fairly married and done for? Look at papa. Does he not pass in society as quite a charming person? The women like him, and if poor mama died he could get another quick as a wink. But at the best, my dear girls, matrimony—in Germany, at least—is an unmitigated bore. And in a garrison town! Literally, there is no liberty, even with one's husband under the thumb. We live by rote. Every afternoon I have to take coffee at some house or other, when all those tiresome ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... in Mrs. Glenarm's face became intensified into an expression of distrust. Her hearty manner vanished under a veil of conventional civility, drawn over it suddenly. She looked at Anne. "Never at the best of times a beauty," she thought. "Wretchedly out of health now. Dressed like a servant, and looking like a lady. What does ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Norman peasantry in De Maupassant's short stories. In by far the greater majority the people have usually seemed to me at the worst a little suspicious, a little callous, a little undemonstrative, and at the best generous and happy-go-lucky to a fault. Nevertheless, tales as repulsive as any that the French writer has told of his country-people could have been collected here by anyone with a taste for that sort of thing. Circumstantial narratives have reached me of savage, or, say, brutish, doings: ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... and admiration have operated continually, but with as little waste as they could. The drawback is only that in this case, to be handsomely consequent, one would perhaps rather not have appeared to celebrate any rites. The moral of all of which is that those here embodied must pass, at the best, but for what they ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... prospect with pleasure, for Dinan is not a whirl of gaiety at the best of times: and that spring the drought, rumours of war, and fears of small-pox, cast a shadow upon the sunny little town. So they surveyed Mademoiselle Pelagie with interest, and longed to behold the happy man who was to be blessed with the hand of this little, yellow-faced girl, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... said Cornish, who was ever optimistic and cheerful. He was too wise to weigh carefully his reasons for looking at the best side of events. "That is nothing. You ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... doubt half our words, if not all of them, were once slang. Even within our own memory we can see the whole process carried through; "cinch" once sounded funny; it is now standard American-English. But other slang is made up of descriptive phrases. At the best, these slang phrases are—at least we think they are—extremely funny. But they are funniest when newly coined, and it takes a master hand to coin them well. For a supreme example of wild vagaries of language used for humour, one might take O. Henry's "Gentle Grafter." But here the imitation is ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... of which the hawser we had fast to the shore broke; this obliged us to let go another Anchor. Towards midnight the Gale moderated, and in the morning it fell Calm, and we took up the Sheet Anchor, looked at the best bower, and moored the ship again to the Shore. The heavy rain, which both fell and Continues to fall, hath caused the Brook we water'd at to overflow its banks, and carry away 10 small Casks we had Standing there full of Water, and notwithstanding ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... endless sheepfolds you go to Falterona where the girls are singing their endless chants all day long guarded by great sheep-dogs, not the most peacable of companions. All the summer long these pastures nourish the sheep, poor enough beasts at the best. One recalls that in the great days the Guild of Wool got its material from Flanders and from England, because the Tuscan fleece was too hard and poor. Through these lonely pastures you climb with your guide, through forests of oak and ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... face with the most awful responsibilities that ever rested upon human shoulders. A disrupted Union, the downfall of the great American Republic, so long predicted by envious critics of our institutions, seemed about to be accomplished. At the best, the Union could be saved only by the shedding of seas of priceless blood and the expenditure of untold treasures. And he must act, control, choose, and direct the measures of the Government and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... The future lowered dark and threatening before him, and day had not brought comfort to his anxious mind. Great drops of sweat stood upon his brow, and his face, never at the best of tunes handsome, to-day was less attractive than ever. "I am so young!" thought he, despondently. "I know of no man at this court, in whose honesty I can confide. Every man of them has curried favor with that shameless woman whose ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... was desired, the captain having resolved to run the pirates down one at a time, as he had done before. He would not board them, because their superior numbers and desperate ferocity would have insured a hand-to-hand conflict, which, even at the best, might have cost the lives of many of his men. The instant, therefore, that the prows were cut adrift, he gave the order to back astern. At the same moment Pungarin was heard to give an order to his men, which resulted in the oars being got out and manned by the surviving pirates and slaves, who ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... soundness of our views that I would risk a smash willingly to have them properly brought forward. If only your party would agree as a whole to support a resolution moved from my side, the Government would only at the best have a majority of 80, after 190, and that would be a check. I shall see Butt before arriving in London, and endeavour to make him take up a position upon this question. The Government are apparently doing their 'level best' to keep the peace, and ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... easy path into England been opened for William. The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment for his purposes, and the result had been what he must have wished. With one Harold he must fight, and to fight with Harold of England was clearly best for his ends. His work would not have been done, if another had stepped in to chastise the perjurer. ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... do, and perhaps it is natural that we should, but it's a poor, cheap thing at the best, and does very little credit to our intelligence. The English ideal of life is as good an ideal as there is in the world. I think it is far the finest ideal there is, chiefly because it does not make impossible demands on human beings. When everything that can be alleged against ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... struck any one. Punin looked ghastly white and flabby. His talkativeness had completely vanished. He spoke listlessly, feebly, still in the same husky voice, and looked somehow lost and bewildered. Baburin, on the contrary, seemed shrunk into himself, and blacker than ever; taciturn at the best of times, he uttered nothing now but a few abrupt sounds; an expression of stony severity seemed to have ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... she blushed and sighed) are very poor at the best, and at that time I scarcely knew how to pray at all as I ought. But I did sometimes ask the Lord for a ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... Cards had done, the things that he had seen, the places to which he had been. And Cards' attitude to Peter's work was, if not actually contemptuous, at least something very like it. He did not, he professed, read novels. The novelists' trade at the best, he seemed to imply, was only a poor one, and that Peter's work was not altogether of the best he almost openly asserted. "What can old Peter know about life?" one could hear him saying—"Where's he been? Who's he known? Whatever in ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the Emperor, suspecting an ambuscade. Liting then took ten resolute men, and on approaching the General's camp, caused a Fire-Pao to be discharged; the report caused a great panic among Nayan's troops, who were very ill disciplined at the best. Meanwhile the Chinese and Tartar troops had all come up, and Nayan was attacked on all sides: by Liting at the head of the Chinese, by Yusitemur at the head of the Mongols, by Tutuha and the Emperor in person at the head of his guards and the troops of Kincha (Kipchak). ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... I have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place (it can be found at the 2,000 level for practically twelve months out of the year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational needs of Transylvania, that "sky-larking" in the centre of a main-travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure-layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush—solely ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... up free of expense at the widow's, who asked me to join him and her at a bit warm dinner, as may be, being a stranger, he would not like to use the freedom of drinking by himself—a custom which is at the best an unsocial one—especially with none ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... immediately of his fleet, which was incapable of making the least resistance. In case he had left as many hands as were necessary to defend it, he would have weakened his army, (which was inconsiderable at the best,) and put it out of his power to gain any advantage from this unexpected diversion, the success of which depended entirely on the swiftness and vigour of the execution. Lastly, he was desirous of putting his soldiers ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... you left the House? Order was kept all right when you were here; you are strong. But when you have left, who is going to take your place? Foster could have, but he's leaving. Davenport's leaving too, so's Collins. The new prefects will be weak. At the best they would have had a hard time. But probably the prefectorial dignity would have been sufficient, if you hadn't smashed it up. You say 'personality' must rule, but there is not so much personality flying about. We weak men have got to shelter ourselves behind the strength of a system, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... is not by any means one of the most beautiful of the bugle sounds of the British Army. It is rather jerky at the best of times, and as performed by Ger it was wheezy as well. But for Mary just then it was ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... genuine art is the best sort of love of life, and the really great artists have always been tremendously vital creatures. So-called artistic people who are sickly or merely under-vitalised generally go astray after strange gods; or, at the best, they admire works of art for the sake of certain pleasing, or sad, or even unhealthy associations which ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... journey's end. Here, however, the resemblance ceased, for whereas then she looked forward, with a child's anticipations, to nothing more definite than new sights and new and excitingly delightful adventures, now she saw ahead—what? Great care and anxiety and trouble certainly, these at the best; and at the worst, failure and disappointment and heartbreak. And behind her she was leaving opportunity and the pleasant school life and ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... her duty, and her religion. If she had been a woman of a strong mind, she would have torn her creed into shreds, she would have dared the anathema of the priest—the ostracism of its dupes—and would have clung to the man she loved so truly, in defiance of that which was, at the best, but a ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... disease so much accelerated by distress and agitation, that he did not live a month after Dora's adventure; but at least he had the comfort of seeing Harold's restoration, and being able to commit the other two to his charge, being no doubt aware that his son was at the best a poor weak being, and that Harold's nature would rise under responsibility which would ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brought me into a mystery not yet solved, the ending of which I fear to guess. In a modern era, when it is commonly supposed that skeletons no longer hang in closets, that day after day brings commonplace occurrences or, at the best, trivial abnormalities to be explained to-morrow, that romance is dead, it is strange that Fate should have picked me, when, by custom and my own desire, I am aloof from all things turbulent, morbid, and uncanny, to play an unwilling part in so extraordinary ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... before you decide, Aemilia," Beric said. "You know how I am situated, and that at any moment I may be involved in peril or death; that life with me can scarcely be one of ease or luxury, and that even at the best you may be an exile for ever ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... and election, to gratify our appetites, and indulge concupiscence, and the casual and unavoidable crushing of those who, perhaps, otherwise would die within the day, or at most the year, and who obtain but an inferior kind of existence and life, at the best. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... It is no exaggeration to say that the Society of Jesus had been among the strongest forces which stood between New France and destruction. Other supports failed. The fur trade had been the corner-stone upon which Champlain built up Quebec, but the profits proved disappointing. At the best it was a very uncertain business. Sometimes the prices in Paris dwindled to nothing because the market was glutted. At other times the Indians brought no furs at all to the trading-posts. With its export trade ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... see more of you, my dear," she said. "I'm at the best hotel, I can't remember the name, they're all so horrible—but I'll be here until to-morrow afternoon. I want to find out everything. Come and call on me. You're quite the most interesting person I've met for a long ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the sea, which passes between the main land and Nassau or Long Island, there is a narrow strait, where the current is violently compressed between shouldering promontories, and horribly irritated and perplexed by rocks and shoals. Being at the best of times a very violent, hasty current, its takes these impediments in mighty dudgeon; boiling in whirlpools; brawling and fretting in ripples and breakers; and, in short, indulging in all kinds of wrong-headed paroxysms. At such times, woe to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... for—we really hardly know what to call it—literature of the present, made up, as it too generally is, of shreds and patches—bits of gold and bits of tinsel—things written in a hurry to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward—suggestive rather than reflective, at the best; and we must plead guilty to a too great proneness to underrate what our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... orders, and would prove a useful tool, while it was more prudent to secure your son at once, as he, it was supposed, would inherit your property. I wish that I could offer you consolation; but I fear that you would consider me a Job's comforter at the best." ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... a long way from here at the best, Wabi. I explored the chasm for ten miles. Say that we find the first fall within fifteen miles. Then, according to the map, the second fall would be about twenty miles from the first, and the third forty miles from the second. If the first fall is within fifteen ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... far from that ripe age, Whose ripeness is but bitter at the best: 'Twas rather her Experience made her sage, For she had seen the World and stood its test, As I have said in—I forget what page; My Muse despises reference, as you have guessed By this time;—but strike six from seven-and-twenty, And you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... did not touch their souls or their bodies. They did not see its agony, or imagine it, or worry about it. They were always cheerful, breezy, bright with optimism. They made a little work go a long way. They were haughty and arrogant with subordinate officers, or at the best affable and condescending, and to superior officers they said, "Yes, sir," "No, sir," "Quite so, sir," to any statement, however absurd in its ignorance and dogmatism. If a major-general said, "Wagner was a mountebank in music," G.S.O. III, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... kind to make such a demand on a young creature when we know marriage is difficult at the best?" ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... talking about Nolan, and some one told the system which was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. As he was almost never permitted to go on shore, even though the vessel lay in port for months, his time, at the best, hung heavy; and everybody was permitted to lend him books, if they were not published in America and made no allusion to it. These were common enough in the old days, when people in the other hemisphere talked of the United States as little as we do of Paraguay. He had almost all the foreign ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... of the present, made up, as it too generally is, of shreds and patches—bits of gold and bits of tinsel—things written in a hurry, to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward—suggestive rather than reflective, at the best: and we must plead guilty to a too great proneness to underrate ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... more so in my life. He had been tortured all night and half a day, yet he could sit and talk like this the moment we cut him down; he had been within a minute of his death, yet he was as full of life as ever; ill-treated and defeated at the best, he could still smile through his blood as though the boot were on the other leg. I had imagined that I knew my Raffles at last. I was not likely so ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... you die? fond youth, and at the best, But wish, and hope, and may be, all the rest! Take my advice—whatever may betide, For that which must be, first of all provide; Then think of that which may be; and indeed, When well prepared, who knows what may succeed, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... really was a trial to Vaughan and Dallas. Only those whose fate it is or has been to share a study with an uncongenial companion can appreciate their feelings to the full. Three in a study is always something of a tight fit, and when the three are in a state of perpetual warfare, or, at the best, of armed truce, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... "you have given out at least one portion of your abominable concoction which is meant to end my days. Whether I shall escape it or not remains to be seen. I am forced at the best to discharge my servant, and to live the life of a hunted man. Now you have done enough mischief in the world. To-morrow morning a messenger will place in your hands two hundred pounds. A larger sum will await you at Baring's Bank in New York. You ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... major," said the captain quietly; "but we have been trying to arrive at the best course ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... that this implied to the Eskimo. If it did not absolutely mean death by exposure and starvation, it at all events meant life under extremely uncomfortable conditions of helplessness and pain; it meant being completely at the mercy of two women whom he had grievously wronged; and it meant that, at the best, he could not avoid ultimately falling into the hands of his angry and outraged kinsmen. All this the wizard perceived ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... estimated that, outside the sweeping claim on the South Island, 26,000,000 acres, or more than a third of the area of New Zealand, was supposed to have been gobbled up piecemeal by the land-sharks. The claims arising out of these transactions were certain at the best to cause confusion, ill-feeling, and trouble, and indeed did so. Some legally-constituted authority was clearly wanted to deal with them. Otherwise armed strife between the warlike Maoris and adventurers claiming ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... for one short moment, and then, as it was getting late, I concluded I had better be off for St. Louis. So I went away from there at the best gait ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... fool! There was nothing to blush at, if she HAD taken a sugar-bool. Mrs. MacTaggart, the elder's wife in St. Enoch's, took them often. And if he had looked at her, what was more natural than that a young gentleman should look at the best-dressed girl in church? And at the same time, she knew far otherwise, she knew there was nothing casual or ordinary in the look, and valued herself on its memory like a decoration. Well, it was a blessing he had found something else to look at! And presently she began to have other thoughts. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... completed, but he did his best to control his impatience, knowing well the value of Mackintosh's advice; and at last came the moment of joy when he was ready for the second poles to project from the ends of the first ones, and a fresh supply of branches. But it was a tedious undertaking at the best, made doubly so by anxiety to reach the end; for each time the supply of building material was exhausted he had to creep back for more, as the men dared not trust their weight far from the edge of ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... applause, and thanks were voted to him by one of the Houses of Congress. It was said that a sword was to be given to him, but I do not think that the gift was consummated. Should it not have been a policeman's truncheon? Had he at the best done any thing beyond a policeman's work? Of Captain Wilkes no one would complain for doing policeman's duty. If his country were satisfied with the manner in which he did it, England, if she quarreled at all, would not quarrel ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... let him have them full in the face, for she felt she should die of him unless she once in a while stupefied him; and sometimes she thought it would be disgusting and perhaps even fatal. She liked him, however, to think her silly, for that gave her the margin which at the best she would always require; and the only difficulty about this was that he hadn't enough imagination to oblige her. It produced none the less something of the desired effect—to leave him simply wondering why, over the matter of their reunion, she didn't ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... has at least three months in winter to fit himself for shore work if he desires to leave the water, and during the season he is reasonably sure of seeing his family every fortnight. A strong trades-union among the lake seamen keeps wages up and regulates conditions of employment. At the best, however, seafaring on either lake or ocean is but an ill-paid calling, and the earnings of the men who command and man the great ore-carriers are sorely out of proportion to the profits of the employing corporations. Mr. Fawcett asserts that $11,250 ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... remark which it seems desirable I should make. It is that I think it proper to confine myself to the work done, without saying anything about the doers of it. Meddling with questions of merit and priority is a thorny business at the best of times, and unless in case of necessity, altogether undesirable when one is dealing with contemporaries. No such necessity lies upon me, and I shall, therefore, mention no names of living men, lest, perchance, I should incur the ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... multiplied treasures played at any rate, through the years, the part of a friendly private-box at the constant operatic show, a box at the best point of the best tier, with the cushioned ledge of its front raking the whole scene and with its withdrawing rooms behind for more detached conversation; for easy—when not indeed slightly difficult— polyglot talk, artful bibite, artful cigarettes too, straight ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... continued gloomily, "what is the life beyond the grave which sacred tradition and ancient song holds out to us? Not thy silver island, vain singer, unless it be only for an early race more immediately akin to the Gods. Shadows in the shade are the dead; at the best reviving only their habits when on earth, in phantom-like delusions; aiming spectral darts like Orion at spectral lions; things bloodless and pulseless; existences followed to no purpose through eternity, as dreams ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... certainly improbable, that the writer might have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the proverb says, 'breaks no bones;' but it may break a bookseller, or it may be the cause of bones being broken. The jest is but a bad one at the best for the author, and might have been a still worse one for you, if your copious contradiction did not certify to all whom it may concern your own indignant innocence, and the immaculate purity of the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a difficult thing to tell the story of a life, and yet more difficult when that life is one's own. At the best, the telling has a savour of vanity, and the only excuse for the proceeding is that the life, being an average one, reflects many others, and in troublous times like ours may give the experience of many rather than of one. And so the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... examination. He would be a stranger amongst strangers. He could not expect that his uncle should feel any particular interest in a lad he had never before seen, and he drew pictures to himself of the long, friendless interval before, even at the best, he could ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... the shut-up press-bedstead, which, by day, looked like a high chest of drawers with brass handles, his eyes fixed on the keys, hanging on the opposite nail. His state of mind may be best expressed by the strong epithet, "savage." Mr. Ketch had not a pleasant face at the best of times: it was yellow and withered; and his small bright eyes were always dropping water; and the two or three locks of hair, which he still possessed, were faded, and stood out, solitary and stiff, after the manner of those pictures you have seen of ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to say to me. The rascals want their wages raised, I suppose; there is always a favor to be asked when they come smiling. Well, poor rogues, service is but a hard bargain at the best. I think I must not be close ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... will. These apertures, of dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the human scene that we might have expected of them a greater sameness of report than we find. They are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. But they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a figure with a pair ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... enfeebled with work, labouring for those who, however good they may be, are at the best unable to pay you for you unceasing toil, unable to realize your great sacrifices, do you look upon your neighbour who has more means and a few petted children, and wish that your lot was like hers? You pause often over your task, and think it greater ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... different mettle; though a small man, he was a cheerful one, always looking at the best side of things, so he said, "Accidents will happen, lovey! But there are as good pickle-bottles in the shop as ever came out of it. All we need is money to buy another. So let us go out into the world and ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... whole manner oracular. No cold hesitations as to points of fact ever tease him. Little time does he require to make up his mind on any speculative subject. He is all yes or all no at once and without appeal. Opposite opinions he treats with, at the best, a sublime pity, meant to be graceful, but, in reality, galling. He is often a goose; but, be he what he may, it is ten to one that he carries off the majority of the company in the mere sweep of his gown. They are led by him for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... warriors and soldiers. And at the best we cannot raise more than three hundreds including old men and boys, and our ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... name of WAR if they wish to be honest, and you would then be free to consider whether or no war stimulates progress, otherwise than as a mad bull chasing you over your own garden may do. War or competition, whichever you please to call it, means at the best pursuing your own advantage at the cost of some one else's loss, and in the process of it you must not be sparing of destruction even of your own possessions, or you will certainly come by the worse in the struggle. You understand that perfectly as to the kind ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... soldier, and we passed most of our time playing; but it was poor work, for we had nothing to play for. At last, I said to myself, 'Patrick O'Neil, there must be an end of this or your brain will go altogether. It is not worth much at the best of times, or it would have thought of some plan for getting out of ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... continually carefully locking the stable-door after the horse is stolen; we are continually allowing things to go wrong, and then making superhuman efforts to right them, not remembering that it is far easier to keep out of trouble than to get out of it. If a girl must be trusted to incompetent, or, at the best, doubtful, teachers during half her school life, let that half be the last, and not the first, and incompetency will be shorn of half its power to injure. Not only directly in the interest of the girls, but in the interest of my own profession—though the two ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Rutter said, you can gamble that trouble has camped in our dooryard for a lengthy stay. And it might be a good idea for you to give your men a gentle hint to keep their mouths closed about this affair—all of it. There's a slim chance at the best of finding that gold, even if it's there, and it won't help us nor the rest of the Force to run down the men who held us up, if everybody on both sides of the line ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... one tremendous mystery,' replied the priest; 'who shall decide wherein her power consists? At the best we can but conjecture at her connexion with the world of man—her weaving and working. No one can deny that a solemn curse, spoken with a determined and haughty purpose, has often, on the very instant, accomplished its fulfilment. If this be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... some satisfaction in feeling that you're looking at the best things the world's got to show," said Dick, almost in my ear, "and there are lots of them in your country, especially in Cordoba, though I suppose the Moors would weep to see it now. But you don't ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... which is quite modern after all, and is practically discredited by all thoughtful minds. The mental dialect changes from one generation to another, but truth does not. As a matter of fact, statements of truth are but conventional symbols at the best, and possess only the ethical and emotional value associated with them in our minds. This is why venerable propositions which seem obscurantist to us originally possessed vital significance to their framers; the ethical and emotional ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... door banged, and I heard his spurs and his scabbard jingling and clanking through the passage. At the best he was a savage old man, but when he was crossed I had almost as soon face the Emperor himself. I heard him that night cursing and stamping above my head, but he did not send for me, and I knew him too ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I called for the Minute Boys to follow me, as I ran at the best pace possible in that direction, for there was ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... co-operation among its members. There is no other way for them to enjoy the technical advantages of large-scale farming in the buying of seeds, stock, fertilizers, tools, machinery, and other necessities at wholesale prices, in the selling of farm products at the best prices; in the establishment of creameries, etc. The buying of necessary costly machines, such as stumping machines, tractors, threshers, headers, is beyond the financial power of an individual settler. Even should he be able to ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... look back at the best work of earlier writers of American fiction, we shall find that it is nearly all romantic. In the eighteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown wrote in conformity to the principles of early romanticism, and combined the elements of strangeness ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... brave man—fighting for his country—you have made a slave of!' exclaimed AEnone, impetuously. 'He has been stripped of his family one by one, and now you would place him in the arena, to be the victim of wild beasts, or at the best, of other slaves!' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Moasa, every one hastened to offer me their services— for I travelled with the king's people, and in this part of the country a European woman is a rarity. They brought me wood, milk, and eggs. My table was always rather frugally furnished: at the best I had rice boiled in milk or some eggs, but generally only rice, with water and salt. A leathern vessel for water, a little saucepan for boiling in, a handful of salt, and some rice and bread, were all that ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to grow restlessly aware that, so far from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger would soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not reasonably hope to see her again before to-morrow; and even then—? What ghost of a reason had he to hope that even then he could renew their conversation? He had owed that to-day to ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... currency. Public respect was steadily undermined by these displays of impecuniosity, and the feudatories in the west of the empire—that is to say, the tozama daimyo, whose loyalty to the Bakufu was weak at the best—found an opportunity to assert themselves against the Yedo administration, while the appreciation of commodities rendered the burden of living constantly more severe and thus helped ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the first and fourth year no foreign language is put down. In each term of the second year French and Latin are written as elective, the same for Latin or German in the third. This is a wretched course at the best. I have no faith in a course set down so loosely as "Latin" instead of being defined as to what course of Latin, and what authors are read. In that case we know exactly how much is required and expected, and what the standard of scholarship. In the college of letters we know that they ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... alien. In course of years the prejudice towards the intruder submitted itself to the force of custom, and less suspicious became the looks, and less harsh the tongues. Even then, however, the old Rehobothite remained a Hebrew of Hebrews; while the others, at the best, were but proselytes of the gate. It was the first brunt of this storm of suspicion from which the minister's wife was suffering, and she was powerless to stay it, or even allay its stress; nor could her husband come to ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... farther he got from Madrid the less Charles felt that he wanted her. His love, which had grown as he came, diminished as he went. It had then spread over his fancy like leaves on a tree in spring; now it fell from him like leaves from an October tree. It had been largely made up, at the best, of fancy and vanity, and blown to a white heat by the obstacles which had been thrown in his way. It cooled with every mile ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... dedicated. He is not the ordinary man. He is not the miner, who is sharp enough to ask for the necessities of existence. He is not the mine-owner, who is sharp enough to get a great deal more, by selling his coal at the best possible moment. He is not the aristocratic politician, who has a cynical but a fair sympathy with both economic opportunities. But he is the man who appears in scores of public places open to the upper middle class or (that less ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... back to the east in the morning the fiery orb which had sunk at evening in the crimson west. But it was far otherwise with the annual cycle of the seasons. To any man a year is a considerable period, seeing that the number of our years is but few at the best. To the primitive savage, with his short memory and imperfect means of marking the flight of time, a year may well have been so long that he failed to recognise it as a cycle at all, and watched the changing aspects of earth and heaven with a perpetual ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... says she, right pointed, "who'd look at the best of them I'd discharge him as soon as I knew it. I've got my eye on Emmy, my second-floor maid, too. All I can say is, you'd all better be more careful, or, the first thing some ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... he works at the best pace of a first-class man, should be paid from 30 per cent to 100 per cent according to the nature of the work which he does, beyond the average of ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... case with the Sultan of Maskat's Arabo-English navy: the Arabs and Sds (negroes) were excellent at working their Mtepe-craft; on frigates they were monkeys, poor copies of men. Our European vessels are beyond and above the West Asiatic and the African. He becomes at the best a kind of imitation Jack Tar. He will not, or rather he cannot, take the necessary trouble, concentrate his attention, fix his mind upon his "duties." He says "Inshallah;" he relies upon Allah; and he prays five times a day, when he should be giving or receiving orders. The younger ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... was small at the best of times, and just now the rain was beating into it on two sides, leaving only one dry corner. Into this the Girl moved. She was flushed and triumphant. The Young Man thought that in all his life he had never ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... rich Falernian lees Send from the nobly tinctured shell A rare and most delicious smell! There when a season she had clung With greedy nostrils to the bung, "O spirit exquisitely sweet!" She cried, "how perfectly complete Were you of old, and at the best, When ev'n your dregs have such a zest!" They'll see the drift of this my rhyme, Who knew ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... national existence. One hears, too, of the sacred principle of Free Trade, of Empires and Zollvereins, and the Rights of the Parent to blockade the education of his children, but one hears nothing of the greater end. At the best all the objects of our political activity can be but means to that end, their only claim to our recognition can be their adequacy to that end, and none of these vociferated "cries," these party labels, these programme items, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... all out of the strangers that he could, and it was but little at the best, the governor quietly, but steadily refused to accede to any one of the demands, and put the issue on the appeal to force. The strangers were obviously disappointed at this answer, for the thoughtful, simple manner of Mark Woolston had misled them, and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the "villain" was bad at the best; and numerous petty acts of oppression in most instances increased the bitterness of his lot. Himself the property of another, he could not legally hold possessions of any kind. Not only the land he tilled, and the rude implements ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Parker felicitously phrases it, in all religions of all ages and nations, so strikingly avouched by the entire history of world—should render itself suspicions by little discrepancies in its own utterances among those who believe in it. Yet so it is. Compared with the rest of the world, few at the best can be got to believe in the sufficiency of the internal light and the superfluity all external revelation; and yet hardly two of the flock agree. It is the rarest little oracle! Apollo himself might envy its adroitness in the utterance ambiguities. One man says that the doctrine ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers |
