"Avoidance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happier and lighter-hearted: that little glimpse of Leon had quieted the sore longing at her heart, and at first the joy of having seen him made her dwell less on his stern looks and his avoidance of herself. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... figures of speech, we notice in the style of Prayer Book English a careful avoidance of whatever looks like a metaphysical abstraction. The aim is ever to present God and divine things as realities rather than as mere concepts or notions of the mind. So far as the writer remembers, not a single prayer in the whole book begins with that formula so dear ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... understanding, and can thus be foreshadowed in Rule, the loftier merit, which breathes and flames in invention or creation, can be apprehended solely in its results. Rule applies but to the excellences of avoidance—to the virtues which deny or refrain. Beyond these the critical art can but suggest. We may be instructed to build an Odyssey, but it is in vain that we are told how to conceive a 'Tempest,' an 'Inferno,' a 'Prometheus Bound,' a 'Nightingale,' such ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... largely engaged with fundamentals and found no pleasure in metrical forms, she had not as yet cut its pages. So that as she saw him she remarked to herself very faintly but definitely, "Oh, golly!" and set up a campaign of avoidance that Mr. Manning at last broke down by coming directly at her as she talked with the vicar's aunt about some of the details of the alleged smell of the new church lamps. He did not so much cut into this conversation ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... questioned whether his destiny might not even yet have been modified. It may be questioned, and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope to be parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to the avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty, an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of Adam Weir and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This raises problems enough of itself. The whole doctrine of "Karma", vital to Buddhism and Hinduism, is, if I understand it aright, a strong and clear warning to us that the remission of punishment is no easy matter. Not only Eastern thinkers, but Western also, insist that there is no avoidance of the consequences of action. Luther himself, using a phrase half borrowed from a Latin poet, says that forgiveness is "a knot worthy of a God's aid"—"nodus Deo vindice dignus".[31] But in any case escape from the consequences of sin, when once we look on sin with the eyes of Jesus, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... that thousands "take their lives" by choosing the least possible painful method demonstrates, with a firm conviction, my thought that it is the avoidance of pain, rather than the retaining of life, that prompts our ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... English names is an obvious attempt to bring truth closer to the souls of his readers by use of "domestica facta" and the avoidance of school-boy learning. ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... attachment to the young girl; it seemed to lighten her heavy burden of care, and she evidently favoured my visits to the farm-house where they lodged. It was not so with Lucy. A more attractive person I never saw, in spite of her depression of manner, and shrinking avoidance of me. I felt sure at once, that whatever was the source of her grief, it rose from no fault of her own. It was difficult to draw her into conversation; but when at times, for a moment or two, I beguiled her into talk, I could see a rare intelligence ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... singled out for show seemed neither resentful nor distressed, ready enough most times to exhibit his merits, anxious only for the chance of a good master and the momentary avoidance of the lictor's flail. At the praefect's bidding he cracked his knuckles or showed his teeth, strained the muscles of his arm to make them stand up like cords, turned a somersault, jumped, danced or stood on his head if ordered so ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and embued with useful knowledge—and the manners, so far as is practicable, trained with a view to what is decorous and proper in social life. Punish by your frowns, by public scorn and private avoidance, the wretch who would cast dishonour on you by the dishonesty of his dealings. The poorest youth of character may justly aspire in this country to the honours of every station, and he will be the more ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... with Wordsworth, we feel it is the bare truth told us for our help and guidance, as being the necessary and preliminary step. It is a high standard which is held up before us, even in this first stage, for it includes, not merely the avoidance of all obvious sins against man and society, but a tuning-up, a transmuting of the whole nature to high and noble endeavour. Wordsworth found his reward, in a settled state of calm serenity, "consummate happiness," "wide-spreading, steady, calm, contemplative," ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... pursuit of pleasure, but its correlative, the avoidance of work and duty, can be abundantly illustrated in this age; and this too may have had a subtle connexion with Epicurean teaching, which had always discouraged the individual from distraction in the service of the State, as disturbing ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... that he liked not these talkings. By diligent avoidance of such, he had kept his own hair and neck uncut ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... for her misfortune in crossing my path. I carefully considered my position, and certainty that there could be no evidence against me dispelled any fears for myself—but my cold-blooded sanity realized that the odds were tremendously against a recurrence of the same good fortune, and that the avoidance of the opposite sex must become the chief care of my life. Then I went to bed, and slept soundly. The discovery of Colette d'Orsel's body early the next morning provided the sensation of the year at Nice. The police were confounded. There ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... lusts. And so she let ordain by her subtle crafts that they had not their intents neither with other, as in their delights, until they were married. And so it passed on. At-after supper was made clean avoidance, that every lord and lady should go unto his rest. But Sir Gareth said plainly he would go no farther than the hall, for in such places, he said, was convenient for an errant-knight to take his rest in; and so there were ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... canine gods that they wouldn't do a thing to a hyena, if only they could get hold of one. They never got hold of one, for the hyena is a coward. His skull and teeth, however, are as big and powerful as those of a lioness; so I do not know which was luckier in his avoidance of trouble—he or ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... objection to the soliloquy, however; and I am inclined to think that the present avoidance of it is overstrained. Stage soliloquies are of two kinds, which we may call for convenience the constructive and the reflective. By a constructive soliloquy we mean one introduced arbitrarily to explain the progress of the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... River Bridge on the Illinois Central R. R. The section is taken near the crown of the arch. The lagging only is shown; this was, of course, backed with studding. The point to be noted in this form is the avoidance of any approach to under cut work; there are, in fact, very few straight cut details. This brings up a point that must be carefully watched if trouble is to be avoided, namely, the construction of the form work in sections which can be removed without fracturing ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... removed, Dick saw the doctor's face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words. Dick caught allusions to "scar," "frontal bone," "optic nerve," "extreme caution," and the "avoidance ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... apply themselves to consider how they can better this condition of things. In their daily life they can do so by setting up a high standard of sanity and right behaviour, by the encouragement of fine aims and high ends, by the firm avoidance of hypocrisy and hysterical altruism, and by intelligent explanation to those under their care of the reason why individual responsibility is necessary for the welfare ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... it is immodest to use I is a superstition. Undue repetition of I is of course awkward; but entire avoidance ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... exaggerated the danger in which Penelope stood. Perhaps, in my own vanity and jealousy, I magnified Talcott's sins, knowing well enough that, after all, he was no worse than most of his brothers. Yet there was a danger, and its avoidance was simple could I only induce the man before me to abandon his foolish pride. At least, said I, his brother should know of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... in political history, while to him fell the task, suited to his temperament, of reasoned discussion. Those who denounced Chamberlain's vehemence could hardly fail to point a comparison with Dilke's unfailing courtesy, his steady adherence to argument, his avoidance of the appeal to passion. Some strong natures have the quality of making enemies, some the gift for making friends, outside their own immediate circle, and Sir Charles Dilke possessed the more ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... ascended the stairs to the first floor he caught a glimpse of Charlie Blair, just entering the Latimers' apartments. His vexation at Winifred's avoidance was a small matter to the anger that now flamed within. Small wonder that Miss Blair wished to meet no one while this folly was unchecked! Yet he felt that he must share her trouble, and resolved to make one more attempt ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... of affection swirled in the breast of the lad. Plain Anglo-Saxon as he was, with all that implies as to the avoidance of displays of emotion, nevertheless he had been for a long time in lands far from home, where the habits of impulsive and affectionate peoples were radically unlike our own austerer forms. So now, under the spur of an impulse suggested by the dalliance with the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... adds that in this tribe the husband often has an intrigue with his sister-in-law (wife's sister or brother's wife), although they are in the relation of Kodi-molli and practise a modified avoidance. This he attempts to equate with Dieri group marriage. It is not however clear that it is more than what we have called a liaison. Our authority does not state that it is recognised as lawful by public opinion, ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... the use of the veto power would tempt its avoidance if such a course did not involve an abandonment of constitutional duty and an assent to legislation for which the Executive is not willing ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... preceding the war—since in two notable ways it aimed at a solution of the fierce political struggle which the war interrupted—the political history connected with the passage of the Home Rule Bill through Parliament must be outlined in detail, with avoidance, so far as may ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... of new members is, perhaps, the most difficult and delicate function of such an organization. It is one which cannot be performed to public satisfaction, nor without making many mistakes; and the avoidance of the latter is vastly more difficult when the members are so widely separated and have little opportunity to discuss in advance the merits of the men from whom a selection is to be made. An ideal selection cannot be made until after a man is dead, so that his ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... not name, saying to herself that her aunt had advised her not to do so. In this she deceived herself. Miss Mildmay would never have counselled her direct avoidance of mention of the two girls whom Frances—and she herself in her heart—thought the most ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... line, "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate" — "All hope abandon, ye who enter here" — is evidently paraphrased in Chaucer's words "Th'eschewing is the only remedy;" that is, the sole hope consists in the avoidance ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... burned, and hewn asunder, all for the glory and gain of Science. And we shall shout with enthusiasm as the blood flows over her altars, and the smoke ascends in her praise." "But all this is horrible," said the grave man, with a gesture of avoidance; "it sounds to me like a description of the orgies of savages, or of the pastimes of madmen; it is unworthy of intelligent and sane men." "On the contrary," returned his informant, "it is just because we are intelligent and sane that we take delight in it. For it is by means of these ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... borne in the byegone happier days of their good comradeship. He never rebuked him, never offered him advice, never attempted in any fashion to test the influence that yet remained to him. And his very forbearance hurt Tommy more poignantly than any open rupture or even tacit avoidance could have hurt him. There were times when he would have sacrificed all he had, even down to his own honour, to have forced an understanding with Monck, to have compelled him to yield up his secret. But whenever he braced himself ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... In avoidance of the loafers' looks, she had walked unheeding straight into the Senator's office. Her first instinct was to withdraw. Then, she saw Brydges; and that curious sensation of repulsion obsessed her. She literally shot the handy man in full retreat with one glance. Then, the joy of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... had been an exceedingly naughty child; and she realised that it was not coldness and severity which had wrought the most good, but the tender patience and affection of the kindest of parents. What if they had been trying the wrong course with Pixie O'Shaughnessy? What if suspicion and avoidance were but hardening the child's heart and hastening her path downwards? Mademoiselle cleared her throat and said in the softest tone which ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in view of the idea of epicureanism which has become proverbial, Epicurus regards the avoidance of excess a logical and necessary step toward the tranquil life, and among other admonitions ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... greatest danger in athletics is in giving them up. The Chapter heads are illuminating. Errors in Exercise—Exercise and the Heart—Muscle Maketh Man—The Danger of Stopping Athletics—Exercise that Rests. It is written in a direct matter-of-fact manner with an avoidance of medical terms, and a strong emphasis on the rational, all-round manner of living that is best calculated to bring a man to a ripe old age with little illness or ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... touch with idealism? On the contrary, in spite of modern materialism, or even because of it, many leaders of spiritual thought have arisen in our times, and have won the ear of vast audiences. Their message is a call to a simpler life, to a recognition of the responsibilities of wealth, to the avoidance of war by arbitration, and sinking of class hatred in a deep sense ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... stranger or visitor—no one came to the house and he had never been into the town with his father. With this realisation came a knowledge of other things—of things half heard at the office, of half looks in the street, of a deliberate avoidance of his father's name—the Westcotts of Scaw House! There were ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... say she was not a weak woman? It is not betrayal of feeling, but avoidance of duty, that constitutes weakness. After an illness he has borne like a hero, a strong man may be ready to weep like a child. What the common people of society think about strength and weakness, is poor stuff, like the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... could be blamed. He had diligently attended to his office-work, which was mere routine, and, conscious of his own inexperience, and trusting to the senior partners, he had only become anxious at the end of the year, when he perceived Goodenough's avoidance of a settlement of accounts, and detected shuffling. He had not understood enough of the previous business to be aware of the deterioration of the manner of dealing with it, though he did think it scarcely what he expected. If he had erred, it was in acting too much as a wheel ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Armaments; and from that date till the date when the Council of the League of Nations declares that the Plan has or has not been carried out, it may be said {7} that the Protocol is only provisionally in force; it is subject to avoidance. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... preventive if possible, and would embrace the avoidance of all causes mentioned, and particularly of such as may seem to be particularly operative in the particular case. If abortions have already occurred in a stud, the especial cause in the matter of feed, water, exposure to injuries, overwork, lack of exercise, etc., may often be identified and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... his writing—the first answer to hisletters—should have come, after three long years, in the shape of this impersonal line, too curt to be called humble, yet confessing to a consciousness of the past by the studied avoidance of its language! As she read, her mind flashed back over what she had dreamed his letters would be, over the exquisite answers she had composed above his name. There was nothing exquisite in the conventional lines before her; but dormant nerves began to throb again ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... came to Browning, which redeemed him from the growing tendency to become a recluse, and made him a familiar figure in the great world. He seemed to become aware that there was something morbid and unworthy in the avoidance of the world of men and women. Browning's divinely commissioned work had to do with life, in its most absolute actualities as well as its great spiritual realities, because the life eternal in ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... back to an incident which had occurred during their early days together. She had been very much alarmed by the appearance of a huge mastiff who was permitted the run of the house, and her uncle, noticing her shrinking avoidance of the rather formidable looking beast, had composedly bidden her take him to the stables and chain him up. For an instant the child had hesitated. Then, something in the man's quiet confidence that she would ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... permitting the hiring of substitutes by men drafted into the army. Eventually, the clamor against this law caused its repeal, but before that time it had worked untold harm as apparent evidence of "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight." Extravagant stories of the avoidance of military duty by the ruling class, though in the main they were mere fairy tales, changed the whole atmosphere of Southern life. The old glad confidence uniting the planter class with the bulk of the people had been impaired. Misapprehension appeared on both sides. Too much has been said ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... all, that in cases where the Society could not avoid compliance with the demand for a confessor at court, great care should be taken in the choice of the individual member to fill the office, so that he might conduce to the welfare of the prince, the edification of the people, and the avoidance of all injury to the Order. The last clause bore reference to the fact that not infrequently the Society was called upon to suffer in one place for wounds inflicted on it in another. Rules for the said confessor were then laid down, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... seem to me, even in this respect, a success. There are single phrases that seem almost an inspiration; there are bits of description, particularly of flowers and moods of nature, which are masterly; but the studious avoidance of the commonplace imparts to the reader something of the strain under which the author has labored. He begins to feel the sympathetic weariness which often overcomes one ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... clandestinely upon the story that she had bathed her face in warm milk, night and morning, for forty years. The more sagacious averred, however, that the secret of her continued youth lay in her kindly, unwithered heart, in her loving thoughtfulness for others' weal, and her avoidance, upon philosophical and religions grounds, of whatever approximated the discontented retrospection winch goes with the multitude ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Civility, Command of temper, Inquiries by public, Complaints by public, Constable to readily give his number on request, Tact, Discretion, Forbearance, Avoidance of slang terms, Necessity of cultivating power of observation, Liberty of the subject (unnecessary interference, etc.), Offences against discipline (drunkenness, ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... out a little later, perhaps, when after traversing many high and resounding marble halls, with a great many rooms opening into one another in a way that suggested rather the avoidance of privacy than its security, they found themselves in one of those gardens of shut delight of which the exteriors of Venetian houses ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... of the Theosophical Society if it follows the track of many of the religions and lets go its hold of knowledge of the other worlds, and comes to depend on hearsay, tradition, belief in the experience of others, and the avoidance of the reverification of experience. For it must be remembered that in giving a vast mass of knowledge to the world, H.P.B. distinctly stated that these are facts which can be reverified by every generation of observers; she did not give a body of teaching ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... of wealth in season, freedom from the vices called Vyasanas, the attributes of kings, the qualifications of military officers, the sources of the aggregate of three and its merits and faults, the diverse kinds of evil intents, the behaviour of dependents, suspicion against every one, the avoidance of heedlessness, the acquisition of objects unattained, the improving of objects already acquired, gifts to deserving persons of what has thus been improved, expenditure of wealth for pious purposes, for acquiring objects ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... excited and alarmed her; and the proximity of the factory rendered Georges's avoidance of her even more apparent. To think that by raising her voice a little she could make him turn toward the place where she stood! To think that they were separated only by a wall! And yet, at that moment they were ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... For the avoidance of discord Paul lays down the principle: "Let every person do his duty in the station of life into which God has called him. No person is to vaunt himself above others or find fault with the efforts of others while lauding his own. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... of those events which might have escaped my memory. But I have not suffered them to bias opinions conceived long since, and conceived in the spirit of sincerity. Such is my design. It is given to the public with a perfect freedom from all party influence; with a total avoidance of all personality; with that calmness of retrospect which best becomes one who has no desire to share in the passions of the world; and with that wish of the French almanack-maker, which lies at the bottom of many a bulkier ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... interruption. Repetition there must necessarily be in these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption which is, to the Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. The place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, and the avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese design of this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, you have a curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though a separate intention had been formed by the designer ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... necessary for the avoidance of future trouble, I went on to read aloud the whole of the Storm chapters, to the children's unspeakable delight. Hugh John even begged for the book to take to bed with him, which privilege he was allowed, ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... their style to the sterility of hybrids. Moreover, in selecting, they omitted just those features which had given grace and character to their models. The substitution of generic types for portraiture, the avoidance of individuality, the contempt for what is simple and natural in details, deprived their work of attractiveness and suggestion. It is noticeable that they never painted flowers. While studying Titian's landscapes, they omitted the iris and the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the rope and file first," said he, and to Bursley they went for those implements to defeat the law, Ripton procuring the file at one shop and Richard the rope at another, with such masterly cunning did they lay their measures for the avoidance of every possible chance of detection. And better to assure this, in a wood outside Bursley Richard stripped to his shirt and wound the rope round his body, tasting the tortures of anchorites and penitential friars, that nothing should be risked to make Tom's escape a certainty. Sir Austin saw ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which leads us to avoid friction with another's nervous system. It must, however, be an avoidance inside as well as outside. The subterfuge of holding one's tongue never works in the end. There is a subtle communication from one nervous system to another which is more insinuating than any verbal ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... of good breeding refers to the conventional rules of propriety and good taste. Of these, the first class relates to the avoidance of all disgusting or offensive personal habits: such as fingering the hair; obtrusively using a toothpick, or carrying one in the mouth after the needful use of it; cleaning the nails in presence of others; picking the nose; spitting on carpets; snuffing instead of using a handkerchief, or using ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not foolish enough to fall into the other trap, and imagine, therefore, that He did not know what was going on. Jimbo felt quite sure that He was only waiting his chance; and the governess's avoidance of the subject tended to ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... don't take to my new dramas. To be sure, they are as opposite to the English drama as one thing can be to another; but I have a notion that, if understood, they will in time find favour (though not on the stage) with the reader. The simplicity of plot is intentional, and the avoidance of rant also, as also the compression of the speeches in the more severe situations. What I seek to show in 'The Foscaris' is the suppressed passions, rather than the rant of the present ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... by a consumptive patient must not in any way be allowed to infect other people. The consumptive must have his own dishes reserved exclusively for him, and they must be, after each meal, carefully disinfected. With these precautions and with avoidance of such practices as kissing or otherwise directly infecting others, there is no reason why a consumptive patient should be in any way an object of dread or why he should not live with his family in as much comfort as he ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... things, without anxiety for minor details, and it is by nature largely intellectual in quality, though not by any means to the exclusion of emotion. In outward form, therefore, it insists on correct structure, restraint, careful finish and avoidance of all excess. 'Paradise Lost,' Arnold's 'Sohrab and Rustum,' and Addison's essays are modern examples. Romanticism, which in general prevails in modern literature, lays most emphasis on independence and fulness ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... seemed very hard for me to speak to her in cold conventional terms—when, my heart was overflowing with love towards her; and, this made me appear constrained; while, she showed a shy avoidance of me, which, only natural as it was, pained me—although I was certain, all the time, that she had not changed towards ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Basil had taken up Rosy into his arms, and was interchanging a whole harvest of caresses with her. Diana turned her looks towards the garden, and felt ready to burst into tears. Could it be that he was proud, and intended to revenge upon her the long avoidance to which in days past she had treated him? Not like what she knew of Mr. Masters, and Diana was aware she was unreasonable; but it was sore and impatient at her heart, and she wanted to be in Rosy's place. And Basil the while was thinking ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... One reason for this avoidance of an unpleasant subject is the superstitious feeling that mentioning a thing will bring it to pass. Or, again, if a misfortune has happened, many people feel that it only makes it worse to talk about it. While everybody avoids speaking on the ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... high-spirited, the very antithesis to the character which has been assigned them. That some do deserve the character is undoubted—but there is no species of calumny to be received with such peculiar caution. It may be right to be on your guard, but it never should be the ground for a positive avoidance of the party accused. Indeed, in some degree, it argues in his favour, for it is clear that the whole charge they can bring against his character is an infirmity to which we are all more or less subjected; and he who looks for perfection in his acquaintance or his friends, will inevitably ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... is too well known to need particular description; but some notice of their habitudes may not be useless for avoidance. The whole class male subsists by fetching and carrying bays, grasping at notes and scraps, if any great name be to them; run wild after verses in MS.; fond of autographs. The females carry albums; some learn bon mots by rote, and repeat them like parrots; ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... may be in theory the operation of the two systems, in actual practice it has been found that the hereditary principle has very little advantage over any other in respect to the avoidance of uncertainty and dispute. Among the innumerable forms and phases which the principle of hereditary descent assumes in actual life, the cases in which one acknowledged and unquestioned sovereign of a country dies, and leaves one acknowledged and unquestioned ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... last conversation with Harry, had a new sense of her position. She had noticed before the signs of a change in manner towards her, a little less respect perhaps from men, and an avoidance by women. She had attributed this latter partly to jealousy of her, for no one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances. But now, if society had turned ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the letters that were written you, in the next to the last and the last despatch before this one, that discussed this reform and the avoidance of expenses which were made and caused in Nueva Espana for those reenforcements, you were directed to try to give special and minute information as to what you have there, and of its cost; and advised that, if prices are so ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... circumstances, and the scene were such as to draw confidences from the most reserved. 'Elfride,' whispered Knight in reply, 'it is strange you should have asked that question. But I'll answer it, though I have never told such a thing before. I have been rather absurd in my avoidance of women. I have never given a woman a kiss in my life, except yourself and my mother.' The man of two and thirty with the experienced mind warmed all over with a boy's ingenuous shame as he made ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... plunging into the narrow, heavily shaded track that ran through ravine and over ridge, now beside the water and now in close woods of birch and hemlock. The road was bad, but Selim and his master bent to it grimly, with no nice avoidance of rut or stone or sunken place. To the horse there was before him food and rest, to the man his home. They took at the same pace the much of rough and the little of smooth, and the miles fell behind them. The sun was high, but there were threatening masses of clouds, with now and then ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... primitive that the relations between master and servant were yet on a basis that made the distinctions between them ones of convenience rather than convention, and thus Janice was forced to mark out a new line of conduct. At first she adopted that of avoidance and proud disregard of him, but his manner toward her continued to convey such deference that the girl found her attitude hard to maintain, and presently began to doubt if he could be guilty of the imputation. Nor could she be wholly blind to the fact that the groom ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... it at first. Indeed, obtaining them within the purview of the senses, O chief of Bharata's race, desire or aversion springs up.[1295] One, then, for the sake of that object (i.e., for acquisition of what is liked and avoidance of what is disliked) strives and begins acts that involve much labour. One endeavours one's best for repeatedly enjoying those forms and scents (and the three other objects of the remaining three senses) that appear very agreeable. Gradually, attachment, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a good deal of exhortation lately, now getting rather wearisome, about avoiding pretence in architecture, and that we should let things show for what they are. The avoidance of pretence should begin farther back. If the house is all pretence, we shall not help it by "frankness of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was a wild, half-crazy herd of Liverpool Irishmen kept under control as that crowd was by a bad example. While aft I had treated them well, and they liked me for my scrap with Macklin; so, they listened while I counseled submission and avoidance of legal consequences—which last was the only point I made. They feared neither man, God, nor devil; but they did fear the law, and grew quiet when I talked of jail and the gallows. And this fear possibly accounted for my finding my pistol—a newly invented ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... Delancy. On a brief consultation it was thought best for Dr. Edmundson not to see her again. A knowledge of the fact that he had been called in might give occasion for more disturbing thoughts than were already pressing upon her mind. And so, after giving some general directions as to the avoidance of all things likely to excite her mind unpleasantly, ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... way of pain seemed to them so much easier than to secure pleasure. Deeply impressed as they were by the negative nature of pleasure and the positive nature of pain, they consistently devoted all their efforts to the avoidance of pain. The first step to that end was, in their opinion, a complete and deliberate repudiation of pleasure, as something which served only to entrap the victim in order that he might be delivered ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... adrift, which have been your portion lately. Only, remember—where living men and women are concerned, the safely abstract is apt suddenly to become the perilously personal; and your future happiness may be seriously involved, before you realise the danger. I confess, I fail to understand the man's avoidance of you. He sounds the sort of fellow who would be friendly and pleasant toward all women, and passionately loyal to one. Perhaps you, with your sweet loveliness—a fact, my dear, notwithstanding the observations in the Park, of Miss Amelia's crony!—may remind him of some long-closed ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... courage is manifest in endurance of profitless discomfort it is cowardice to warm oneself when cold, to cure oneself when ill, to drive away mosquitoes, to go in when it rains. The "pursuit of happiness," then, is not an "inalienable right," for that implies avoidance of pain. No principle is involved in this matter; suicide is justifiable or not, according to circumstances; each case is to be considered on its merits and he having the act under advisement is sole ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... may be said that freedom is absolute, liberty relative; freedom is the absence of restraint, liberty is primarily the removal or avoidance of restraint; in its broadest sense, it is the state of being exempt from the domination of others or from restricting circumstances. Freedom and liberty are constantly interchanged; the slave is set at liberty, or gains his freedom; but freedom is the nobler word. Independence ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... indeed Ancoats had troubled himself very little about his guardian, or his guardian's anxieties. He seemed to have been devoting a large share of his mind to the avoidance of his mother's old friends; and the Maxwells, for months, in spite of many efforts on their part, had seen little or nothing of him. Maxwell for various reasons had begun to suspect a number of uncomfortable things with ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there has been careful avoidance in this little book of any suggestion that the mother should be anxious about the speech development of the child before five years of age. If she has the patience and the time to follow the directions given, she will have done her child a very great ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... like the bold bald eagle of his native land," seeking whom he might devour. The accounts he gives of British line-of-battle ships fleeing from American 44's quite match James' anecdotes of the latter's avoidance of British 38's and 36's for fear they might mount twenty-four-pounders. The two works taken together give a very good idea of the war; separately, either is utterly unreliable, especially in matters ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... its quarter of a million inhabitants, was also surrendered peaceably to the Germans, and again the energy and initiative of an American, United States Vice-Consul J. A. Van Hee, had much to do with the avoidance ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... to pay more attention to the advice of the theorists of the game than before; and thereby they learned to realize the fact that strategic skill, and that equally important attribute, thorough control of temper, together with the avoidance of the senseless kicking habit in vogue, had more to do with success in their position than they had previously been aware. Those of the pitching fraternity who read up on the subject of skill ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... merits distinguished both books: clarity of statement, directness, simplicity, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery speech. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... be thwarted! I hate it! I hate it!" she often said angrily to herself, but she was helpless in the face of Van Lennop's cool avoidance. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... various ways in which self-consciousness disagreeably evinces its existence; and there is not one, perhaps, more disagreeable than the affected avoidance of what is generally regarded as egotism. Depend upon it, my reader, that the straightforward and natural writer who frankly uses the first person singular, and says, "I think thus and thus," "I have seen so and so," is thinking of himself and his own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... it leapt upon every unprejudiced deduction and turned it to the strengthening of its own mistaken self. What might have seemed merely boredom on the professor's part was twisted by the Thought to appear an anguished effort after self-control. Any avoidance of Mary's society was attributed to fear rather than to indifference. And ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... be controlled by avoidance of those parts of the monthly cycle in which conception most commonly takes place. That in the great majority of women there is a time in the monthly cycle when no conception occurs has been noted for a long time. ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... seem to clutch as it were at glory and enjoy it, and so gratify their ambition; but in adversity, being far from ambition owing to circumstances, such self-commendation seems to be a bearing up and fortifying the spirit against fortune, and an avoidance altogether of that desire for pity and condolence, and that humility, which we often find in adversity. As then we esteem those persons vain and without sense who in walking hold themselves very erect and with a stiff neck, yet in boxing or fighting we commend such as hold themselves ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... true that these dramas do deal only with peasants, but they are handled in the universal way that Ibsen used when he made the bourgeois of slow Norwegian towns representative of the human race everywhere.... it is not only in the avoidance of joyless and pallid words that Mr. Synge has chosen the better part. He has experienced the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality; and so it was just because 'The Playboy' ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... must be suppressed, ought to be regarded rather as powers to be transformed and employed as vehicles of the moral life. At the same time there are not wanting passages in Aristotle as well as in Plato which, instead of emphasising the avoidance of excess, regard virtue as consisting in complementary elements—the addition of one virtuous characteristic to another—'that balance of contrasted qualities which meets us at every turn in the distinguished personalities of the Hellenic ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... ecstasy or transport, which they define to be an elation of the mind without reason. And as we naturally desire good things, so in like manner we naturally seek to avoid what is evil; and this avoidance of which, if conducted in accordance with reason, is called caution; and this the wise man alone is supposed to have: but that caution which is not under the guidance of reason, but is attended with a base and low dejection, is called fear. Fear is, therefore, caution ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... singular good-will and respect. Their kindness to the unfortunate and their humanity to travellers knew no bounds. One could readily distinguish them from others by their abstinence from unnecessary oaths, and their avoidance even of the very name of the devil. They never indulged in lascivious discourse themselves, and if others introduced it in their presence, they instantly withdrew from the company. It was true that they rarely ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... and disfavor on further railway consolidation. And because this is so, it is greatly to be desired that the beneficial effects of consolidation should be better understood. The most important benefits are included under one head, the saving in expense and the avoidance of waste, and this is effected in very many different ways. Suppose a great system like the Pennsylvania or the Chicago & Northwestern were cut up into fifty or sixty independent roads, each with its own complete staff of officers. Each road would have to pay its president, directors, ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... cheered her all he could; but he had no desire to cheer Mama Joy as well—he would not even give her credit for needing cheer. So he stayed away from them both and gave his time wholly to the horse-breaking and to affairs in general, and ate and slept in camp to make his avoidance ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... minds from whom he hoped for all that was to make England wise and free. The account of Coningsby's last night at Eton is one of the most deeply felt pages which Disraeli ever composed, and here it may be said that the careful avoidance of all humour—an act of self-denial which a smaller writer would not have been capable of—is justified by the dignified success of a very ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the dons had long since elected him steward of Common-room; and he valued the responsibility, abstaining from tobacco—which he loved—to keep pure his taste for vintages, and preserve a discriminating palate among sweets. An utterance of his would hint that even his avoidance of physical exercise ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... disposition left the good cleric, like many another, much puzzled. Was there anything of foolish pride or misanthropy in Gordon's avoidance of society that would have welcomed him? Both his recorded speech and his poems are without evidence of either. Those who remember his taciturnity and little eccentricities also speak of his kindness of heart, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... in silence. She wondered if Miss Hatchard had sent him round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and the suspicion increased her resentment. "I saw you going into her house just now, didn't I?" she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper name. She was determined to find out why he was poking ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the Ainos of Japan and the Akamba and Nandi of Eastern Africa; the Tinguianes of the Philippines and the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands, of Borneo, of Madagascar, and of Tasmania. In all cases, even where it is not expressly stated, the fundamental reason for this avoidance is probably the fear of the ghost. That this is the real motive with the Tuaregs we are positively informed. They dread the return of the dead man's spirit, and do all they can to avoid it by shifting their camp after a death, ceasing for ever to pronounce the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... is the syringe when needed, nothing could be much worse than becoming dependent upon it. The bowels must be made to act for themselves without such artificial assistance, by the use of proper food, especially graham flour and oatmeal, and the avoidance of hot drinks, milk, sugar, and other clogging and constipating articles; by wearing the abdominal bandage; by thorough kneading and percussion of the abdomen several times daily for five minutes at a time; by taking one or two glasses of cold water half an hour before breakfast every ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... different emotions. Yet love is more of a virtue than fear is, because love regards good, to which virtue is principally directed by reason of its own nature, as was shown above (I-II, Q. 55, AA. 3, 4); for which reason hope is also reckoned as a virtue; whereas fear principally regards evil, the avoidance of which it denotes, wherefore it is something less than ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... come from the lawyers, whose rejoinders and remonstrances, petitions, resolves, and appeals were familiar professional devices. Yet Gage might have found hope in these men. For the purpose of all their delays had been compromise, and their hope was the avoidance of bloodshed. The lawyers had showed, too, a love of fair play; for while they pressed the Tories hard, they had also taken the lead in protesting against mob violence. Again, leading Whig lawyers had defended—and acquitted—the perpetrators of the Massacre. Possibly ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... that delusion of the teapot which inspired her with the belief that they wanted her to go somewhere immediately, a shrewd avoidance of any further reference to the topics into which she had lately strayed, Mrs Gamp rose; and putting away the teapot in its accustomed place, and locking the cupboard with much gravity proceeded to attire herself for ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... dread that he might guess her secret. But upon this point she was very soon reassured. The consistent and unwavering friendliness of his attitude quieted her misgivings, and nerved her to treat him, if with less intimacy, at least without visible awkwardness. Whether he noticed her avoidance or not she did not know, but he certainly seemed to be withdrawing himself more and more out of her life. His work with her husband apparently occupied all his thoughts, and then there was Aunt Philippa also to keep him at a distance. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell |
