"By nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entertained beneficed clergymen, and bought the books he heard spoken of, arranging them carefully on the shelves of what he called his library, and occasionally sitting alone in the same room with them. But some minds seem well glazed by nature against the admission of knowledge, and Spike's was one of them. It was not, however, entirely so with regard to politics. He had had a strong opinion about the Reform Bill, and saw clearly that the large trading ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... of Spottsylvania, the Army of the Potomac had for twelve days and nights engaged in a fierce wrestle in which it had done all that valour may do to carry a position by nature and art impregnable. In this contest, unparalleled in its continuous fury, and swelling to the proportions of a campaign, language is inadequate to convey an impression of the labours, fatigues, and sufferings of the troops, who fought by day, only to march by night, from point ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... was hated by many. Betsey admitted to being a witch, but claimed only to be a white witch. Now as all Cornish folks know, there is a difference between a white witch and a black witch. A white witch is one who is endowed by nature to cure by means of charms, and passes and strange signs. She can also read the future, and find out secrets about those who do evil. Thus a white witch is looked up to, and her calling is regarded as lawful, even by the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... the great question of the liberty of the pupil to the good sense or to the preparation of the master are very far from solving the problem of liberty. The greatest scientist, or the person most fitted by nature to teach, could never of himself discover such, because, to preparation and natural gifts, the further factor of time must be added—the long period of preparatory experiment. Therefore a science which has already ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... in silent gratitude, shedding tears of thankfulness; for I now saw clearly what was to be my future condition. Shut out by early sins from all human society, I was offered amends for the privation by Nature herself, which I had ever loved. The earth was granted me as a rich garden; and the knowledge of her operations was to be the study and object of my life. This was not a mere resolution. I have since endeavoured, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... the morning, before the tardy daylight could creep into the darkened room, old Oliver was up and busy. He had been in the habit of doing for himself, as he called it, ever since his daughter had forsaken him, and he was by nature fastidiously clean and neat. But now there would be additional duties for him during the next three days; for there would be Dolly to wash, and dress, and provide breakfast for. Every few minutes he stole a look at her lying still asleep; and as soon as he discovered ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... answer this pertinent question from the jilted Stanley's viewpoint. Personally she had a disagreeably clear idea of what he was quite likely to think. Yet she was too sturdily honest by nature to regret the advice she had given Arline in good faith. "I am sorry this has happened," she returned slowly, "but I am not sorry for what I said to you. I meant it. I would have said as much to Mr. Forde had an occasion ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... have retired from the territory in which nature produces them, and ceded it to the Dutch creditors? No; they have the same rights over the soil on which they were produced, as the preceding generations had. They derive these rights not from them, but from nature. They, then, and their soil are, by nature, clear of the debts of their predecessors. To present this in another point of view, suppose Louis XV. and his cotemporary generation had said to the money-lenders of Holland, Give us money, that we may eat, drink, and be merry in our day; and on condition ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is by nature noisy and threatening, there is little real danger in it until its diffusive violence is directed into one channel by a leader. Then, indeed, it becomes a terrible thing, and to the watchers at the dock it became evident, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... more ill-matched could not have been found; the man by nature coarse, brutal, and cowardly; the woman, insolent, fearless, and of ungoverned temper. From the first things went badly, and when, within a week of the wedding, Helen's father was drowned in attempting to ford the Tweed on horseback, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... with unlimited sensuousness was reborn in his mind. He saw her in all the majesty of her marvelous body, just as when she was dancing or leaping from side to side of the old salon. And now this form, molded by nature in a moment of enthusiasm, was no longer in existence.... It was nothing but a mass of liquid ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... been nabbed! Goody! Goody! I'm glad I got away," shouted Miss Vane, who was by nature exuberant and of a high spirit. "I wonder who it is now?" She threw back her head, endeavouring to peep out along her tilted nose. "I hope it's a man this time. It's more exciting—being ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... astonishing in one coming from the depths of the Idaho mountains. She touched, too, upon the things that interested him most, and drew him on until he was talking with a zest and interest that permitted no self-consciousness. Resolved that he would not tell what he had seen, and by nature reserved, he was, within five minutes, under her deft questions, in the middle of a long narrative of events on the other side of the world. He saw her listening, her eyes bright, her lips slightly parted, and he knew that he held ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... prophet, in almost every word, has before his eyes the former leadings of Israel, compels us, almost involuntarily, to have respect to that event. And, in addition, there is a still more decisive argument. It cannot be denied that there is a contrast between what the valley of Achor is by nature, and what it is made by the Lord; there is too plain a contrast between the hope and the affliction. But if thus the meaning of the name is brought into view, then certainly there must also be a reference to the event to which it owed its name. But in order to have a right understanding of this ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... jumpy by nature," he observed. "I've seen dead men before. Still, next time you want to leave one in my office after dark, I wish you'd put a light with him, or tack up a sign, or even leave somebody to tell me about it. I'm sorry it's Starr and not that thoughtful old horned toad ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... to work, but most of them would be so willing to shirk the obligation that the best they ask is to be allowed to forget their own labours while they can, and not to be bothered with a report of other people's. By nature I am inclined to Charles Lamb's belief that a man—or a woman—cannot have too little to do and too much time to do it in. But necessity having forced me to give over my days to work, it happens that I, personally, would from sheer force of habit ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... I spoke of St. Paul as a Man, showing how remarkable were his endowments and acquirements, and how these told in his apostolic career. But it was not through these that he was what he was. Great as were the gifts bestowed on him by nature and cultivated by education, they were utterly inadequate to produce a character and a career like his. It was what Christianity added to these that ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... is the sole highway to Szechuan; all the trade of China's largest province, the one best endowed by nature, must pass up and down here. Any people less prodigal of their strength, less determined and less resourceful than the Chinese, would have given up the struggle before it was begun, and Szechuan would have slumbered undeveloped and forgotten, instead ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... ancient pond was a miracle of rustic beauty. Everything like inequality or imperfection had disappeared, the whole presenting a broad and picturesquely shaped basin, with outlines fashioned principally by nature, an artist that rarely fails in effect. The flat was divided into fields by low post-and-rail fences, the captain making it a law to banish all unruly animals from his estate. The barns and out-buildings were neatly made and judiciously placed, and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... amiable; but the fact appeared to me to be, that when parents give up their children to the care of another, they surrender at the same time all those feelings which should exist between parent and child to the party who undertakes the charge of them. The respect and love which by nature belonged to them were now transferred to her aunt, to whom Caroline was always obedient and attached. The insult to me was resented by Caroline as if it had been offered by perfect strangers to her; Caroline not feeling ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... woman's true sphere is in her family in her home duties, which furnish the best and most appropriate training for her faculties pointed out by nature itself." ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished authors by remembering their own writings better than ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... they do not entirely disappear as far as regards the first cause, but they almost wholly disappear in act, because custom is not equal to nature, which is the source of such a passion. And therefore the man is more praiseworthy who guides himself and rules himself when he is of an evil disposition by nature, in opposition to natural impulse, than he who, being gifted with a good disposition by nature, carries himself naturally well; as it is more praiseworthy to control a bad horse than one that is not troublesome. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... condition, could become a priest, and no woman, however learned or pious or high in station, could, the whole tendency of ecclesiastical law was to separate man and woman into a holy or divine sex, and an unholy or impious sex, creating an antagonism between those whose interests are by nature the same. Thus canon law, bearing upon the business of ordinary life between man and man, fell with its greatest weight upon woman; it not only corrupted the common law in England, but perverted the civil law of other countries. The denial ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I'm by nature form'd for misery Beyond the rest of humankind, or else 'Tis a false saying, though a common one, "That time assuages grief." For ev'ry day My sorrow for the absence of my son Grows on my mind: the longer ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... of literary intuition. His tendency, and we say it with the proper amount of regret, would not constitute classic taste. He is not very academic by nature. Thus, to give an example, the popularity of Mademoiselle Mars among that little audience of stormy children was seasoned with a touch of irony. The gamin called ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... friends was a certain Blaise Monet, French by nature, Parisian by birth, artist or writer according to circumstances. Circumstances—that is to say, two thousand francs left him by a deceased relation—created him a temporary artist ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... years. He leaned towards the grace of an hereditary dignity, as other retired millionaires cultivate art and letters, vainly imagining that they can wheedle civilisation and the humanities into giving them what they do not possess by nature, and fool the world at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... certainly often entirely correct, but as far as it is correct, the results of the suggestion vary greatly with the different individuals. On the whole, we might say that such suggestions given to the subject in his normal state are effective only when the subject is by nature a suggestible being. In considering the psychology of suggestion, we recognized at once that the degree of natural suggestibility varies excessively. The non-suggestible mind is only to a slight degree ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... uncontested before their eyes. Their mind, after it had expanded itself in several directions, was barred from further progress in this one; and the advent of Jesus Christ upon earth was required to teach that all the members of the human race are by nature ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... are dazzled with surprise, And on his goodly person feed their eyes. His joy conceal'd he sets himself to show; On each side bowing popularly low: His looks, his gestures, and his words he frames, 690 And with familiar ease repeats their names. Thus form'd by nature, furnish'd out with arts, He glides unfelt into their secret hearts. Then, with a kind compassionating look, And sighs, bespeaking pity ere he spoke, Few words he said; but easy those and fit, More slow than Hybla-drops, and far ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... suggested the unthinking vitality of a steam-engine or of a dynamo in a powerhouse. A mechanic by nature, as a school-boy Ben had often induced Scotty to take him to the electric light station, where he had watched the great machines with a fascination bordering on awe, until fairly dragged away by the prosaic ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... less beloved were they of him Who gave them birth, Kasyapu proud, But made by nature stern and grim, His love was covered by a cloud From which it rarely e'er emerged, To gladden these sweet human flowers. They grew apace, and now Time urged ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... slopes—all were smothered under a layer of monotonous pallor. They knew what it meant. It meant ruin to their crops and vineyards. None the less, they raised a shout, a half-hearted shout, of praise. For Nepentheans are born politicians and courteous by nature. It is their heritage from the Good Duke Alfred to "keep smiling." A shout was expected of them under the circumstances; it costs nothing and may even do good, inasmuch as Saint Dodekanus could remove the ashes as easily as he had sent ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... turning the thing over in my mind, being by nature slow to take on any scheme of high emprise without some scrupulous balancing of chances. Half-way up the closes, in the dusk, and in their rooms, well back from the windows, or far up the street, all ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... an enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so great a one] have I to you, you that are galled at your back with Spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter. Though, purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... she said with perceptible emotion, "I take back what I once said to you on Owl Marsh. No man is a real crook by nature who did what you have done. That is 'faithfulness unto death' — the supreme ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... strong arms at their fullest reach, held back against the horse with all her might, her body swaying and jerking with his plunges. But the overhead check once broken Lloyd might as well have pulled against a locomotive. Bennett was a powerful man by nature, but his great strength had been not a little sapped by his recent experiences. Between the instant his hand caught at the bit and that in which Rox had made his first ineffectual attempt to spring forward he recognised the inequality of the contest. He could hold ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... could not go back. She would not go down. There was wrenched from her tried and sore heart an unalterable and unquenchable decision—to make her own soul prove the evolution of woman. Vessel of blood and flesh she might be, doomed by nature to the reproduction of her kind, but she had in her the supreme spirit and power to carry on the progress of the ages—the climb of woman out of ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... back of one's birth a long and noble descent. Besides, John was one of those rare men "who appear to be formed of finer clay than their neighbors, and cast in a gentler mould." Evidently he was by nature a man of sympathetic spirit, one born ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... of philosophers and statesmen. 'And therefore to you I turn, Timaeus, citizen of Locris, who are at once a philosopher and a statesman, and to you, Critias, whom all Athenians know to be similarly accomplished, and to Hermocrates, who is also fitted by nature and education to share in ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... hunchback shoemaker, opened his eyes to the truth. He was by nature suspicious. He had faith in no man. When the summons came to O'Day, Raffelo quit his bench and made his way to the saloon. His dark, swarthy face, with stubby beard, was twisted and contorted. He gesticulated continuously, sawing the air with his hands. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... the seventeenth century, in his Geneanthropeia, argued that, though women are cold at first, and aroused with more difficulty and greater slowness than men, the flame of passion spreads in them the more afterward, just as iron is by nature cold, but when heated gives a great degree of heat. Similarly Mandeville said of women that "their passions are not so easily raised nor so suddenly fixed upon any particular object; but when this passion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... turn, by nature, and from his reading and surroundings, Elias had more than once markedly devotional inward intimations. These feelings increas'd in frequency and strength, until ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... THOU, by Nature taught To breathe her genuine thought In numbers warmly pure and sweetly strong: Who first on mountains wild, In Fancy, loveliest child, Thy babe and Pleasure's, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... or, at any rate, the novelty of the luxury in the Fane-Smith's household wore off after Erica had spent a few days at Greyshot. She became accustomed to the great rooms, and being artistic by nature and the reverse by education, she began very much to enjoy the pictures, the charming variety of foreign treasures, and particularly all the lovely things of Indian workmanship with which the drawing room was crowded. The long, formal ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... much humor. It only proved that every man, no matter how warlike he pretends to be in public, is in private a weak, sorry soul, dependent on some one; and this youth, so far from being a desperado, was by nature an affectionate ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... the hare and the monkey began to wrestle again. Now, as every one knows, the monkey is a cunning animal by nature, and he made up his mind to get the best of the hare this time if it were possible. To do this, he thought that the best and surest way would be to get hold of the hare's long ear. This he soon managed to do. The hare was quite thrown off his guard by the pain ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... examination for his degree. His disappointed affections had so weighed upon him, that he had a nervous apprehension of being plucked,—which, however, turned out to be quite unnecessary. He was now twenty-two years of age, a man singularly favored both by Nature and by fortune,—possessed of almost everything which might seem to insure the fullest measure of health, happiness, success, and fame. Rarely, indeed, do the gods give so freely of their good gifts to a single mortal. His circumstances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... Morphology, on its part, had to accept form as something given, and to study the abstract relations of forms to one another. "On this point," he writes, "stress is to be laid, that morphology has to do with animal form as something given by Nature, that though it follows out the changes taking place during the development of an animal and tries to explain them, it does not enquire after the conditions whose necessary and physical consequence this form actually is" (p. 24). He expressed indeed a pious hope (p. 25) that physiology might ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... might listen to their converse while he pursued his avocation. Their words distil into his soul; they speak the language of Canaan; they talk of holy enjoyments, the result of being born again, acknowledging their miserable state by nature, and how freely and undeservedly God had visited their hearts with pardoning mercy, and supported them while suffering the assaults and suggestions of Satan; how they had been borne up in every dark, cloudy, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... death, and at the same time he thought it wrong to suffer them to disperse, because they were not only numerous, but warlike and necessitous, and therefore would probably knit again and give future trouble. He reflected, that man by nature is neither a savage nor an unsocial creature; and when he becomes so, it is by vices contrary to nature; yet even then he may be humanized by changing his place of abode, and accustoming him to a new manner of life; as beasts that are naturally wild put off their fierceness when they ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... country, between the post-road on the left and the deep-set Hudson on the right. The spire of St. John's Church, among the yew-trees, with the few edifices grouped near it, broke gratefully the deserted aspect of things, at the left. The spacious scene, so richly filled by nature, had in its loneliness and repose a singular sweetness. Rarely was any one abroad. Only when the Hessians or Loyalist dragoons patrolled the post-road, or when some British sloop-of-war showed its white sails far down the river, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... regard them with the eye of an actress in search of an engagement. Though you said I was to think no more of the stage, I believe you would not care if you found me there. But I am not an actress by nature, and art will never make me one. I am too timid and retiring; I was intended for a cottager's wife. I certainly shall not try to go on the boards again whilst I am in this strange place. The idea of being brought on as far as London and then left here alone! Why didn't you leave ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... attractive field to one who made his living by literature; so Dryden turned to the stage and agreed to furnish three plays yearly for the actors of the King's Theater. For nearly twenty years, the best of his life, Dryden gave himself up to this unfortunate work. Both by nature and habit he seems to have been clean in his personal life; but the stage demanded unclean plays, and Dryden followed his audience. That he deplored this is evident from some of his later work, and we have his statement that he wrote only one play, his best, to please himself. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... that, in their various ways. He had the distinction set by nature upon a muscular body and a rather small head, well poised. His hair, now turning gray, grew delightfully about the temples, and though it was brushed back in the style of a man who never looks at himself twice when once will do, it had a ...
— Different Girls • Various
... with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... baby's fingers could not properly handle and shoot the marbles. But Sissy ought to have known better than to make such a point, as the Madigans had a peculiar way of playing fats, for which Frank—being a Madigan—was as fitted by nature as ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... make the same use of the air we breathe as is made by animals, that cooked they resemble no form of vegetable food, and that in decay their odor in some cases cannot be distinguished from that of putrid meat. To this feast, abundantly provided by Nature for the poorest as well as the most epicurean, we invite ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... death had cast her, and when her father asked her again, something less sternly than before, but still peremptorily, if she would have Messer Simone for mate, she did no more than incline her head in what Messer Folco took to be a signal of submission to his will. At this yielding he, being by nature an authoritarian, seemed not a little pleased. For the death of Dante, and the effect that death might have upon his daughter's welfare, he did not care and did not profess to care in the least. Dante as a human being was nothing ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... which such minds are smitten by formality and harsh contrast. But I would beg of those who are eager to create the means of such gratification, first carefully to study what already exists; and they will find, in a country so lavishly gifted by Nature, an abundant variety of forms marked out with a precision that will satisfy their desires. Moreover, a new habit of pleasure will be formed opposite to this, arising out of the perception of the fine gradations by which in Nature one thing passes away into another, and the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... you are not a sanguine man by nature. If Mrs. Norman treats our poor Sydney just as a commonplace ill-tempered woman would treat her, I shall be surprised indeed. Say, if you like, that she will be insulted—of this I am sure, she will not return it; there is no expiation ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... growing in unity and concentration and superfluous forces, would encroach upon those that were demoralised and weakened. By strict reason of State, this was not the policy of France; for the French frontiers were assigned by nature everywhere but in the north-east. There the country was open, the enemy's territory approached the capital; and the true line of expansion was towards Antwerp, or Liege, or Strasburg. But the French were invited into Italy with promise of welcome, because ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... for many others. Talk not of making us of one flesh twain. It cannot be. It is not a question of mere interest that shall bind us as a people inseparably in one. God will not solder a chain. It is a higher bond, a holier bond. We are essentially and intrinsically one; one by nature; one by mutual sympathies, by blood relations, by dearest ties; one in all that constitutes the unity of a family relation; one in heart, one in aim, one in mind, purpose, education, and will. None can make ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... less nitrogen, is not so stimulating as beef or mutton. Old fowls are often tough and indigestible, and have often, also, a rank flavor like a close hen-house, produced by the absorption into the flesh of the oil intended by nature to lubricate the feathers. ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... them, he could not tell whether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler. It was considered as unfair to use these ice-balls in open fight, as it is to use poisoned ammunition in real war. But as the whites were protected by the fort, and the Indians were treacherous by nature, it was decided that the latter might use ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... broken, mixed, inconsequential impression out of which it has been wrought. Which seems to explain why some of the writers who understand human nature so well in their books, do not always understand people similarly well in life. And always it is to be remembered that Lincoln was made an artist by nature, and made over into a man of action by circumstance. If Herndon's theory has any value it is in asserting his occasional danger—by no means a constant danger—of forming in his mind images of men that were more significant than it was possible for the men themselves to be. John ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... of Senator John F. Miller I spent a day on his ranch in Napa valley. It was a beautiful country, neither a prairie nor a woodland, but more like a fine cultivated park, with here and there groups of trees planted by nature. I made several excursions around the bay, accompanied by General Pope and members of his staff. I was delighted with my visit in and around San Francisco, not only for the natural beauty of the country, but also on account of the kindness of its inhabitants. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... black hair, of pale instead of black skin. His features might have been hewn and hammered out with coarse, dull, broken chisels. And upon his face, in the lines and cords, in the huge caverns where his eyes hid, and in the huge gash that held strong, white fangs, had been stamped by nature and by life a terrible ferocity. Here was a man or a monster in whose presence Joan felt that she would rather be dead. He did not smoke; he did not indulge in the coarse, good-natured raillery, he sat there like a huge engine of destruction that ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... left hand were wanting, and a broad scar, the trophy of a severe skirmish among the Alemanni, crossed his right cheek and one side of his nose, giving him an expression more curious than pleasing. His general appearance was after the common type of an old, war-worn soldier, rough and unscrupulous by nature, hardened by camp life and dissipation, grown cruel by excess of petty authority, overbearing with his inferiors, jovial and complaisant with his equals, cringing to his superiors, and with an air of discontent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... life as well as that which is to come? What is the portion of the worldling? even in this life 'shadowy joy or solid woe,' without a balance to the first, or consolation in the last; no sure footing in the one, nor support in the other; distanced from the fountain of happiness by nature, prosperity incrusts their hearts and increases their carnality; nestling in their worldly comforts, they forget they are the creatures of a day, that an endless eternity lies before them, and only the feeble uncertain thread of life between ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... commandment is the instinctive self-regard which is natural to us all. There are muscles in the body which are so constructed that they close tightly; and the heart is something like one of these sphincter muscles—it shuts by nature, especially if there has been anything put inside it over which it can shut and keep it all to itself. But there is one thing that dethrones Self, and enthrones the angel Love in a heart, and that is, that into that heart there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... to make amends," continued Barbicane, "that the inhabitants of the visible face are singularly favored by nature, to the detriment of their brethren on the invisible face. The latter, as you see, have dark nights of 354 hours, without one single ray to break the darkness. The other, on the contrary, when the sun which has given its light ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... Solinus. Adr. Iun.] signifieng power and mightinesse: and in old time they were called Valentians, A valendo, of preuailing: so that it was no maruell though they were victorious subduers of forren people, sithens they were by nature created and appointed to be conquerors, and thereof ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... their kind, and all plants are interesting; when a person makes a choice as to what plants he shall grow in any given place, he becomes a gardener or a farmer; and if the conditions are such that he cannot make a choice, he may adopt the plants that grow there by nature, and by making the most of them may still be a gardener or a farmer ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... of human interests before they turned to the representation of nature, and even then the latter filled always a limited and subordinate place. And yet, from the time of Homer downward, the powerful impression made by nature upon man is shown by countless verses and chance expressions. The Germanic races which founded their states on the ruins of the Roman Empire were thoroughly and specially fitted to understand the spirit of natural scenery; and though Christianity compelled them for a while to see in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... avatar, not of Vishnu, but of Praj[a]pati; also the attempt of the evil spirits to climb to heaven, and the trick with which Indra outwitted them.[36] For it is noticeable that the evil spirits are as strong by nature as are the gods, and it is only by craft that the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... lieutenants—he could afford now to carry out the plan that he had long since cherished of assembling at the town of Panama, on Colombian soil, an "august congress" representative of the independent countries of America. Here, on the isthmus created by nature to join the continents, the nations created by men should foregather and proclaim fraternal accord. Presenting to the autocratic governments of Europe a solid front of resistance to their pretensions as well as a visible symbol of unity in sentiment, such a ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... she desired to follow in all things, did her hair. The long, clearly drawn eyebrows, dark in comparison with the amber hair, the turquoise blue eyes, the mouth of the pictured lady were curiously reproduced in Milly Flaxman. Possibly her figure may have been designed by nature to be as slight and supple, yet rounded, as that of the white-robed, gray-scarfed lady above there. But something or some one had intervened, and Milly looked stiff and shapeless in a green velveteen frock, scooped out vaguely around her white ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... reached a desolate spot whence the poor captain saved his body from destruction, but with prostrate nerves, rendering him quite unfit for further service. And the carnage in the Samar jungles, which has caused many a sorrow in the homeland, continues to the present day with unabated ferocity. By nature a lovely island, picturesque in the extreme, there is a gloom in its loveliness. The friendly native has fled for his life; the patches of lowland once planted with sweet potatoes or rows of hemp-trees, are merging into jungle for want ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... with the principal. I am not going to cut my own throat for the sake of mending any man's little finger. I have a family of sixteen children, Mr. Mason, and I have to look about very sharp,—very sharp indeed." Then there was another pause, and Mr. Dockwrath began to perceive that Mr. Mason was not by nature an open, demonstrative, or communicative man. If anything further was to be done, he himself must open out a little. "The fact is, Mr. Mason, that I have come across documents which you should have had at that trial. Round and Crook ought ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... a child like you make other words than grow in Burgundy by nature? Take heed what ye do! why, we are overrun with them already, especially bad ones. Lord, these be times. I look to hear of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... know well that children by nature are cruel, and that humanity has to be acquired by education. A child will gloat over the sufferings of a wounded animal till his mother bids him "put it out of its misery." An unsophisticated child would not dream of terminating the poor creature's agonies abruptly, any more than ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... sustain. Do you not recognize in him the hero, who, ever equable and consistent, never having to stand on tiptoe to seem taller than he is, nor to stoop to be courteous and obliging, found himself by nature all that a man ought to be toward his fellow, like a majestic and bountiful stream, which peacefully bears into the cities the abundance it has spread in the fields that it has watered, which gives to all and never rises above its normal height, nor becomes swollen except when ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... to be a great poet, at a time when the artificial school of poetry was enthroned with all the authority of long succession and undisputed legitimacy, it was almost inevitable that Wordsworth, who, both by nature and judgement was a rebel against the existing order, should become a partisan. Unfortunately, he became not only the partisan of a system, but of William Wordsworth as its representative. Right in general principle, he thus necessarily became ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... at Nanomaga was a Samoan. He was intended by nature to be a warrior, a leader of men; or—and no higher praise can I give to his dauntless courage—a boat-header on a sperm whaler. Strong of arm and quick of eye, he was the very man to either throw the harpoon or deal the ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... and misery of our present state, part arises from our sensations, and part from our opinions; part is distributed by nature, and part is in a great measure apportioned by ourselves. Positive pleasure we cannot always obtain, and positive pain we often cannot remove. No man can give to his own plantations the fragrance of the Indian groves; nor will ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... were surrounded with emblematic traceries. It was strange to me at first to see how often she introduced those homelier wild-flowers which we call weeds,—for it seemed there was none of them too humble for her to love, and none too little cared for by Nature to be without its beauty for her artist eye and pencil. By the side of the garden-flowers,—of Spring's curled darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketching maidens, of flower-de-luces and morning-glories,—nay, oftener than these, and more tenderly caressed by the colored brush ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... theory of selection let us consider character of the races produced, as now explained, by nature. Conditions have varied slowly and the organisms best adapted in their whole course of life to the changed conditions have always been selected,—man selects small dog and afterwards gives it profusion of food,—selects a long-backed and short-legged breed and gives it no ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... human form, yet one I thought, With human feelings fill'd, And from his tongue, by nature taught, Strange ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... you that the Manxman is not built by nature for a gallant. He has one bad fairy, and she is the embodied spirit of a beautiful woman. Manx folk-lore, like Manx carvals, Manx ballads, and Manx proverbs, takes it for a bad sign of a woman's character that she has personal beauty. If she is beautiful, ten to one she is a witch. That is how ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... progress. I am convinced that a frank and unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would create no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the development of a country singularly blessed by nature, and open a wide field for Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem strange, with all our vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped out and known, roads and railways, canals and embankments, intersecting it in all directions, that this interesting corner ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... for, if not for such ears? One cannot even find fault with the tiny round hole which they leave when they are taken out; perhaps water-nixies, and such lovely things without souls, have these little round holes in their ears by nature, ready to hang jewels in. And Hetty must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman, with a woman's destiny before her—a woman spinning in young ignorance a light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... him, and gained the door, how she scarcely remembered. She could only recall a great and burning sense of rage and shame. She remembered seeing, as in some distant vision, a man with scared eyes and sagging jaw—a man who, an utter coward by nature, had given way at her approach, whose passion had melted into fear—fear followed later by senseless rage against ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... contrived to break something every day, but he did these things only because they were expected of him, and because he was by nature obliging. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... might be regarded but as forming members of one and the same family. But are we to conclude that within this vast family which the Creator has called into existence out of nothing, there are other and smaller families, projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural course of events and after a long time, of which some contain but two members, as the ass and the horse, others many members, as the weasel, martin, stoat, ferret, &c., ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... eulogist, has contented himself with allowing his hero to speak for himself, or rather to plead his own case. Viewing the case as a whole, with its back-ground of antecedent history, no fair-minded person can longer regard John Brown as either an adventurer or as a madman. He was by nature, however, enthusiastic; he believed that he had a mission in this world to fulfil, and that, the freedom of the slaves. This mission he cherished uppermost in his mind, for its accomplishment he labored and suffered incessantly, and for it he died. He lacked ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... should no doubt have read things in books which would have given rise in my mind to doubts and wonders; but I was only a little child who had lived a life quite apart from the rest of the world. I was too silent by nature to talk and ask questions, even if I had had others to talk to. I had only Jean and Angus, and, as I found out years later, they knew what I did not, and would have put me off with adroit explanations if I had been curious. But I was not curious. ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I mean those which draw a man in different directions, though they are of the same kind, such as luxury and avarice, which are both species of love, and are contraries, not by nature, but by accident. ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... one that involved no sacrifices. The animal appetite of the young lawyer was, in truth, comparatively speaking, indifferent to the commodity which he discarded; and even had it been otherwise, still he was one of those selfish, cool and calculating persons, who seem by nature to be perfectly able to subdue the claims of the blood, with great ease, whenever any human or social policy would appear to render it advisable. The greatest concession which he made in the transaction, was ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... never to let a human being cross his threshold; he was a Roman Catholic priest in disguise, an Agnostic, a Nihilist." There was no end to Olivia's quaint surmises, but she could only be certain of two facts—that the mysterious Mr. Gaythorne was methodical by nature, and whatever might be the weather always took his exercise at the same hour, and also that only tradespeople entered the ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... without many things that people during camp life necessarily find themselves obliged to do without was not only strange to her but exceedingly disagreeable. The two leaders being less used to the extremes of luxury, and more indifferent to them by nature, could not understand and had little sympathy with ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... caution in this came, and seems to have carefully avoided the inconveniences of two extremes. Did impressions alone influence the will, we should every moment of our lives be subject to the greatest calamities; because, though we foresaw their approach, we should not be provided by nature with any principle of action, which might impel us to avoid them. On the other hand, did every idea influence our actions, our condition would not be much mended. For such is the unsteadiness and activity of thought, that the images of every thing, especially of goods and evils, are always wandering ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... superficial examination is enough to show that these defences existed only on the side to which access would otherwise have been easy, while the height overlooking the river on the other side, which is impregnable by nature, has been left untouched. Here too we find the name Caesar's Camp given to the relics, a fact of common occurrence all over France, where the great captain was long held in honor. Quatrefages is, however, of opinion that the works are neither ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... seemed realized in Mrs. Carlton. She was by nature impetuous, and even irritable; but the careful training of her deeply pious mother early eradicated these seeds of discord and future misery. She reared her "in the way she should go," and taught her to "remember her Creator ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... conscience the witness in us that we are indeed "sons of God". If that teaching of the "Over-soul" be the truth, then since the Divine is incarnate in every man, by what other voice can we be guided than by the Divine utterance commanding us to live by a moral law? We are Divine by nature, by what other law of life should ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... to be gruff with women. By nature courteous, considerate of the weaker sex, he nevertheless realized that soft phrases will not prop a witness who, through sheer desperation of will, has been staving off physical collapse. On the contrary, harshness in the inquisitor, by arousing antagonism ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... sentiment very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors who were already married, she was not going to content herself with one of them. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment—being by nature contradictious—and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all—from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... ill for the Old when, instead of welcoming, it frowns upon the New, and instead of playing the part of Simeon, and embracing and blessing the Infant, plays the part of a Herod, and seeks to destroy the Child that seems to threaten its sovereignty. We old people who are conservative, if not by nature, by years, and you young people who are revolutionary and innovating by reason of your youth, may both find a lesson in that picture in the Temple, of Simeon with the Infant ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... desire to have the like. Long time before his mother dyed, and when his father married a new wife, and had another child of the age of xii. yeares. The stepdame was more excellent in beauty then honesty: for she loved this young man her sonne in law, either because she was unchast by nature, or because she was enforced by fate of stepmother, to commit so great a mischiefe. Gentle reader, thou shalt not read of a fable, but rather a tragedy: This woman when her love began first to kindle ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... labour and food, and a variety of other circumstances favourable to colonization and agriculture; and reflect, withal, on the means which presented themselves of a vast inland navigation, without lamenting that a country, so abundantly gifted and favoured by nature, should remain in its present savage and neglected state. Much more did I lament, that a people of manners and disposition so gentle and benevolent, should either be left, as they now are, immersed in the gross and uncomfortable blindness of pagan superstition, or permitted ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... for it, perhaps," said Ensal. "It may be that some one of this place was marked by nature to shed unfading lustre upon your state, and could have made these rivers and hills and plains revered in all the earth, but the light of his genius was extinguished by that smoke, perhaps, perhaps," ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... as a painter of Winter, although it is doubtful whether he was by nature the better poet. Here is one of ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... made an excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their disagreements. Newts are by nature ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Augustin wrote as an author it was to define and to praise Beauty. He did not yet know, at least not directly from the text, the dialogues of Plato, and he is already inclined to Platonism. He was this by nature. His Christianity will be a religion all of light and beauty. For him, the supreme Beauty is identical with the supreme Love. "Do we love anything," he used to say to his friends, "except what is beautiful?" Num amamus aliquid, nisi pulchrum? Again, at the end of his life, when he strives in The ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... may observe in families one member who appears particularly favored by nature in the possession of rich and varied musical talents, the same being improved by careful cultivation. Such a one readily attracts attention: his native endowments and his extensive acquirements often form the theme of conversation, of warmest praise; while everywhere he is a most welcome guest. But, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... it is supposed they are by nature, and cruelly ill-used as donkeys too often are in England, they are fully as intelligent as horses. They are not only capable of playing all manner of tricks, but sometimes indulge in a ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... that she has a great soul, a great mission, a great duty, and a great power, before she will break away from the bonds of the toilet and be herself. Woman by nature is no more a toilet puppet than man. Her mental and moral duties are equal to his. Her powers of mind and heart are equal to his. Her field of labor it is wide as his. Her time is as precious as his. It is ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... prove that we need to be born again before we are meet for heaven. I venture to say that there is no candid man but would say he is not fit for the kingdom of God, until he is born of another Spirit. The Bible teaches us that man by nature is lost and guilty, and our experience confirms this. We know also that the best and holiest man, if he turn away from God, will ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... brave of you, monsieur," Barbara said, and the little man swelled with pride. Perhaps it was the thought of the glorious part he was about to play before the whole street that upheld him, as he certainly was rather timid by nature. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... again; and from him to Europe; where Bacon presently gave it another twist to out-Aristotle Aristotle (as someone said) to stagger the Stagirite—and passed it on as the scientific method of today. According to Coleridge, every man is by nature either a Platonist or an Aristotelian; and there is some truth ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... "I shall not forget John Lattery." But his question was still unanswered, and by nature he was tenacious. His eyes were still upon Kenyon's face and he ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... his reading made for escape and compensation. He read to get away from his own surroundings, and he revelled in characters of fiction and legend and history that possessed qualities lacking in himself. By nature he was a queer mixture of rashness and timidity, but through his mother's anxiety on his behalf the latter quality was constantly being nursed at the expense of all tendency to action. And so, in order to keep the balance, he revelled in the imaginary or real deeds of men whose very life-breath ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... the room was romantic; but there was a prosaic corner to shock those who fancy that fiction is the spontaneous overflow of a poetic fountain fed by nature only; between the fireplace and the window, and within a foot or two of the wall, stood a gigantic writing-table, with the signs of hard labor on it, and of severe system. Three plated buckets, each containing three pints, full of letters to be answered, other letters to be pasted into a classified ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Realistic or Romantic.—The distinction between realism and romance is fundamental and deep-seated; for every man, whether consciously or not, is either a romantic or a realist in the dominant habit of his thought. The reader who is a realist by nature will prefer George Eliot to Scott; the reader who is romantic will rather read Victor Hugo than Flaubert; and neither taste is better than the other. Each reader's preference is born with his brain, and has its origin in his customary processes of thinking. In view of this ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... weather traveller who is carried from Delhi to Rawalpindi over the great railway bridges at points chosen because there the waters of the rivers are confined by nature, or can be confined by art, within moderate limits, has little idea of what one of these rivers is like in flood time. He sees that, even at such favoured spots, between the low banks there is a stretch of sand far exceeding in width the main channel, where a considerable volume of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... said this he kept continuous hold on the "bailiff's" wrist, and led him inward into the inner room: and as he was far stronger by nature than the latter, it practically amounted to the leader of the attacking ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... capers. In the height of his foolery, the patriarchal colt, which, unbroken to the saddle, was suffered to follow on at large, happened to come within his reach. In a moment, he was on his back, snapping his fingers, and yelping with delight. The colt, unused to such a burden, and half wild by nature, fell to prancing and rearing and snorting and plunging and kicking; and, at length, set off full speed over the most dangerous ground. As the route led generally along the steep and craggy sides of the hills, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... phenomena as to which we have to rely upon his written word. He never succumbs to the common sin of travellers—writing to excite astonishment in the reader, rather than to tell the exact truth as he found it. He was by nature and training ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... had put upon his wife to induce her to write that note. "You may leave Lize Wetherford out of the count, my dear," he had said. "There is nothing of her discernible in the girl. Virginia is a lady. I don't know where she got it, but she's a gentlewoman by nature." ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... of his long, professional experience, in connection with drugs, drug medication and allopathy, under the title of "Why we should not be poisoned because we are sick:" "Firstly,—that in a large proportion of cases treated by allopathic physicians, the disease is cured by nature and not by them. Secondly,—that in not a small proportion, the disease is cured by nature in spite of them. Thirdly,—that consequently, in a considerable proportion of diseases it would fare as well or better with patients if all remedies, especially drugs, were abandoned;" and he emphatically ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... minded man, calm by nature, after sixty years of the life of the mountains and forests, he thought to decide each action upon its own merit or demerit and to see that quality clearly, keeping his vision free of emotional mists. With such a man right and wrong are two distinct entities, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... came soon afterwards to the island of S. Benedicto, south of which on the left bank was the hill of the Veado, 120 ft. high. Directly in front of the island, also on the left bank, was the Mount of S. Benedicto, where legends say an image of that saint exists carved out by nature in the high ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... he struck with quiet certainty the vein that was his by nature in poetry; and this has broadened almost continually, yielding richer results, which have been worked out with an increasing refinement of skill. His predilection is for the picturesque; for romance combined with simplicity, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nothing so much. But not content with this successe and good proceeding, to gather more strength and win a greater name, shee entermingled with medicinable receipts and religious ceremonies, the skill of Astrologie and arts Mathematicall; presuming upon this, That all men by nature are very curious and desirous to know their future fortunes, and what shall betide them hereafter, persuading themselves, that all such foreknowledge dependeth upon the course and influence of the starres, which give the truest and most certain light of things to come. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... maybe I grow too eloquent! Such memories loose and craze the tongue. A man pulls himself up suddenly, to find that he has been vulgar. If so here, so be it! I refuse to plead to the indictment; sentence me and be hanged to you! I am by nature a vulgar fellow. I prefer "Tom Jones" to "The Rosary," Rabelais to the Elsie books, the Old Testament to the New, the expurgated parts of "Gulliver's Travels" to those that are left. I delight in beef stews, limericks, burlesque shows, New York City and the music of Haydn, that beery and delightful ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... men, their fellows, who have vigour enough of intellect to think and act for themselves; and such always is the character of the born leader: these true leaders are almost always forced into the opposition; and thus separating between themselves and the men fitted by nature to render them formidable, they fall under the direction of mere chatterers and stump orators, which is in reality no direction at all. The author of the "Working Man's Way in the World"—evidently a very superior man—had, he tells us, to quit at one ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... out into the River on which are the Remains of one of their Fortified towns. The Situation is such that the best Engineer in Europe could not have Chose a better for a Small Number of men to defend themselves against a greater; it is strong by Nature and made more so by Art. It is only Accessible on the land Side, and there have been cut a Ditch and a Bank raised on the inside. From the Top of the Bank to the Bottom of the Ditch was about 22 feet, and depth of the Ditch on the land side 14 feet; ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... she are living as happily as birds, in an absurd villa, and the former has taken to smoking. Otherwise he is unchanged—except, perhaps, there are moments when, alert and full of feminine unselfishness as the Major is by nature, he falls into a trance of abstraction. Then his wife recognizes with a concealed smile, by the blind look in his blue eyes, that he is wondering what were the title-deeds, and why he was not allowed to mention jackals. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... visible, John?" was his address to the 429 footman who answered the door, and who, apparently not being favoured by Nature with any superfluous acuteness of intellect or sweetness of disposition, merely stared ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... matter, as in that of emancipation, the President's deliberation was not the unpardonable misdoing which they had conceived it to be. In spite of McClellan's insolent arrogance and fault-finding, his unreasonable demands, and his tedious squandering of invaluable time, Mr. Lincoln, being by nature a man who contemplated the consequence of an action, did not desire to make a vacancy till he could fill it with a better man. "I certainly have been dissatisfied," he said, "with Buell and McClellan; but before I relieved ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... Carthaginians; nor was it that which drew upon it the resentment of the Romans so much as the fact, that its inhabitants harboured an extraordinary animosity against them, which was not called for by the necessities of the war. Their city was not so secured by nature or art as to make their dispositions so fierce, but the natural disposition of the inhabitants, which took delight in plunder, had induced them to make excursions into the neighbouring lands belonging to the allies of the Romans, and to intercept such Roman soldiers, suttlers, and merchants as ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... years old I was taken to hear a course of lectures, given by an itinerant lecturer in a country town, to get as much as I could of the second half of a good, sound, philosophical omniscience. The first half (and sometimes more) comes by nature. To this end I smelt chemicals, learned that they were different kinds of gin, saw young wags try to kiss the girls under the excuse of what was called laughing gas—which I was sure {269} was not to blame for more than five ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... boundless woods there are berries of red, And fruits of a beautiful blue, Where, by nature's own hand, the sweet singers are fed, And to nature they ever ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... what becomes of life when not taken care of; when there is an unguarded moment in the incessant duel that, forced by nature, we wage with her from the cradle to ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... I am sure we shall not disagree as to the fact that man, however he came into the world, sooner or later, by ordinary or extraordinary methods, by some lawful wedlock of nature, or by some miracle which is not 'lawful,' is endowed by nature with ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... to witness the failure or ruin of those with whom I have been in daily intercourse. Then, too, there is a certain challenge in the present position which appeals to the fighting instinct in me. If not altogether by nature, still by habit I am a business man. Affairs interest me, and consequently the more embarrassed and apparently hopeless the existing state of things is, the greater would be my satisfaction in mastering ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... to the kingdom! And, Oh, how can happiness be there where these are not! Duryodhana beareth malice towards all superiors, hath taken leave of good conduct, and quarreleth with those that are near to him in blood. Covetous and vain and mean, he is cruel by nature. The whole earth is doomed when Duryodhana becometh its ruler. Thither, therefore, let us proceed whither the merciful and high-minded sons of Pandu with passions under control and victorious over foes, and possessed of modesty and renown, and devoted ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the curse of Germany. The Germans are by nature and training easily influenced, and as a mass they can be led as readily in the right path as in the wrong. Common-sense administration and co-operation have made their cities places of beauty, health, comfort and pleasure. But when you stop for a moment in your admiration of the streets, buildings, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... harangue his weeping brotherhood! Pah! it is nauseous! Must I further bear The sidelong shuddering glances of a wife? The degradation of a showy love, That over-acts, and proves the mummer's craft Untouched by nature? And a fair wife, too!— Francesca, whom the minstrels sing about! Though, by my side, what woman were not fair? Circe looked well among her swine, no doubt; Next me, she'd pass for Venus. Ho! ho! ho! [Laughing.] Would there were something merry ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... of mediation. He considered it his special mission in the world to mediate. He imagined himself as looked up to by the nations as the great arbitrator of Christendom, and was wont to issue his decrees as if binding in force and infallible by nature. He had protested vigorously against the Spanish-French marriages, and declared that the princes were justified in formalizing an opposition to them, at least until affairs in France were restored to something ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that goes back to the first pair. Every unit tells,—and some of them are plus, and some minus. If the columns don't add up right, it is commonly because we can't make out all the figures. I don't mean to say that something may not be added by Nature to make up for losses and keep the race to its average, but we are mainly nothing but the answer to a long sum in addition and subtraction. No doubt there are people born with impulses at every possible angle to the parallels of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an' lady by nature," he said softly. Then he put on his hat and turned to Mason. "'Ave a cigar, boy. I ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... also involves an over-mastering spiritual desire. Tell me what a man wants, and I will tell what he is, and what he can best do. If a man desires above all things to conduit a great business, he is by nature qualified for trade; if he desires knowledge, he is designed for a scholar; if he is always observing form, rhyme, aesthetic beauty, and striving to produce verse, he is a born poet. But if the one thing ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... and rank, constitute man's only right to education—to the glories of art and science. Those beaming eyes and roseate lips beneath me proclaim a bevy of undeveloped Aspasias, of embryo Cleopatras, destined by Nature, and only restrained by man's injustice, from ruling the world by their beauty's eloquence. Those massive and beetling brows, gleaming with the lambent flames of patriotic ardour—what is needed to unfold them ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... few words as might be, when, looking up, I saw standing behind Merapi the figure of a man, who was watching her replace the ornament in her robe. While I hesitated a moment the man spoke and I knew the voice for that of Seti. Then again I thought of flight, but being somewhat timid by nature, feared to show myself until it was too late, thinking that afterward the Prince would make me the target of his wit. So I sat close and still, hearing ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... slouch, that for the matter of beauty he might almost as well have been knock-kneed. His eyes would have been handsome if the lids had been less red; and if he had ever looked you in the face, you would have seen that they were blue. His complexion was fair by nature, and discolored by drink. His manner was something between a sneak and a swagger, and he generally wore his cap a-one-side, carried his hands in his pockets, and a short stick under his arm, and whistled when any ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... had almost said, the inspiration, of those profound ideas concerning Life, which dawn upon us, indeed, through his written works, but which he has here presented to us in a more perfect language than that of words—the language of God himself, as uttered by Nature. ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... be an Island, insomuch as the Sea [Marginal note: The Sea hath three motions. 1 Motum ab oriente in occidentem. 2 Motum fluxus et refluxus. 3 Motum circularem. Ad caeli motum elementa omnia (excepta terra) mouentur.] runneth by nature circularly from the East to the West, following the diurnal motion of Primum Mobile, which carieth with it all inferiour bodies moueable, aswel celestiall as elemental; which motion of the waters is most euidently seene in the Sea, which lieth on the Southside of Afrike where ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... could tell himself that it would be well that his sister should escape even though her way of escape must lie through the fire and water of outraged love. That Harry Clavering was a gentleman, that he was clever, that he was by nature affectionate, soft in manner, tender of heart, anxious to please, good-tempered, and of high ambition, Burton knew well; and he partly recognized the fact that Harry had probably fallen into his present fault more by accident than by design. Clavering ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... the Valley of the Shadow of Death. What hardship, terror, and amazement hast thou already gone through! And art thou now nothing but fear? Thou seest that I am in the dungeon with thee, a far weaker man by nature than thou art; also, this Giant has wounded me as well as thee, and hath also cut off the bread and water from my mouth; and with thee I mourn without the light. But let us exercise a little more patience: remember how thou playedst the man ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester |
