"Descent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to public service, why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself, in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hung along the walls. He lifted the paper-covered package, cut the string that bound it, and placed the ancient hour-glass on his table, watching the thin stream of sand which his action had set running. The constant, unceasing, steady downfall seemed to hypnotise him. Its descent was as silent as the footsteps of time itself. Suddenly it stopped, as it had done in the shop, and its abrupt ceasing jarred on his tingling nerves like an unexpected break in the stillness. He could almost imagine an unseen hand clasping the thin cylinder ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... his whip, and from the summit of the descent seen over the rolling tops of the trees in a park by the side of the road, appeared the level sea far below us, like the floor of an immense edifice inlaid with bands of dark ripple, with still trails of glitter, ending in a belt of glassy water at the foot of the sky. The light ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... form the bench of magistrates for the City, and in their more directly corporate capacity try the validity of ward elections, and claims to freedom; who admit and swear brokers, superintend prisons, order prosecutions, and perform a variety of other analogous duties; a descent, certainly, from the high position of the ancient "ealdormen," or superior Saxon nobility, from whom they derive their name and partly their functions. They were called "barons" down to the time of Henry I., if, as is probable, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... likewise between France and England was not distinguished this year by any memorable event. Francis had equipped a fleet of above two hundred sail, besides galleys; and having embarked some land forces on board, he sent them to make a descent in England.[**] They sailed to the Isle of Wight, where they found the English fleet lying at anchor in St. Helen's. It consisted not of above a hundred sail; and the admiral thought it most advisable to remain in that road, in hopes of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the Mystery, Miracle, Morality and Passion Plays, the direct progenitors of the Opera and the Oratorio. The descent of the Opera may be traced also to another source, to the secular play which persisted in the face of ecclesiastical disfavor and the ban that excluded its players from the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... concealed and the fame of his deeds reached Norway, where they gave no small trouble of mind to Earl Haakon, who dreaded this young adventurer of royal descent, knowing well how much the people loved King Harold and his race. Haakon went so far as to try to compass his death, sending his friend Thore Klakka to Dublin, where Olaf then was, to kill him if he could, otherwise to entice him to Norway when he ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... loud exclaim'd Plutus, in accent hoarse of wild alarm: And the kind sage, whom no event surpris'd, To comfort me thus spake: "Let not thy fear Harm thee, for power in him, be sure, is none To hinder down this rock thy safe descent." Then to that sworn lip turning, " Peace!" he cried, "Curs'd wolf! thy fury inward on thyself Prey, and consume thee! Through the dark profound Not without cause he passes. So 't is will'd On high, there where the great Archangel pour'd Heav'n's vengeance on the first adulterer ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... that his father was only the adopted son of Jehoiachin? A. Both because Jeremiah sentenced Coniah to be childless, and in Luke iii. Zerubbabel's descent is derived from ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to see if any of the girls were approaching; but they had drifted away together toward the Town Hall, and she sprang into the saddle and turned toward the Creston road. There was an almost continual descent to Creston, and with her feet against the pedals she floated through the still evening air like one of the hawks she had often watched slanting downward on motionless wings. Twenty minutes from the time when she had left Miss Hatchard's ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... to be the son of an Archpriest and to be protected by a distinguished nobleman—perhaps of his own distant province. But his outward appearance accorded badly with such humble origin. Such a descent was not credible. It was, indeed, suggested that Mr. Razumov was the son of an Archpriest's pretty daughter—which, of course, would put a different complexion on the matter. This theory also rendered intelligible the protection of the distinguished nobleman. All this, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... That was a humiliating descent! A cold grey morning was breaking over the moor; the chimneys of the distant cotton-towns rose out of mists, under a sky streaked with windy cloud. The Mermaid's Pool, as they passed it, looked chill and mocking; and the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an account of his descent into St. Patrick's Purgatory is William Staunton of Durham, who went down into the cave on the Friday next after the feast of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... distinguishes her. Yet she furnishes not any of the sweet sensual excitement pertaining to her spotless rival pursued by villany. She knocks at the doors of the mind, and the mind must open to be interested in her. Mind and heart must be wide open to excuse her sheer descent from the pure ideal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... circumstances with which it is confronted are other than those on the earth. The truth is that life is possible wherever energy descends the incline indicated by Carnot's law and where a cause of inverse direction can retard the descent—that is to say, probably, in all the worlds suspended from all the stars. We go further: it is not even necessary that life should be concentrated and determined in organisms properly so called, that is, in definite bodies presenting ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... from head to foot. Resentment against what, against whom? she asked herself blankly, and in the same breath turned her back upon the answer. Chiefly against herself, no doubt, for her inglorious descent from the pinnacle of stoicism, to which she had climbed barely an hour ago. It seemed that Love, coming late to these two, had come as a refiner's fire, to "torment their hearts, till it should have unfolded the capacities of their ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... upon street up the steep bank of the Save, being under the Servian authorities. During his stay, Mr Paton paid frequent visits to the Pasha, whom he generally found in an audience room overlooking the precipitous descent to the Danube, "studying at the maps: he seemed to think that nothing would be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from the principal ports of Asia Minor, up to the depots of the interior, so as to connect Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Koniah, Kaiserieh, &c., with Samsoon, Tersoos, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... colored townsmen were likewise fairly frequent. Among the 360 colored taxpayers in Charleston in 1860, for example, 130, including nine persons described as of Indian descent, were listed as possessing 390 slaves.[35] The abundance of such holdings at New Orleans is evidenced by the multiplicity of applications from colored proprietors for authority to manumit slaves, with ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... of the fishing gull while engaged in pursuit of his prey. Even the kite is not more graceful in its flight. The sudden turning in his onward course—the momentary pause to fix more accurately the position of his prey—the arrow-like descent— the plunge—the white spray dancing upward, and then the hiatus occasioned by the total disappearance of the winged thunderbolt, until the white object starts forth again above the blue surface—all these points are incomparable to behold. No ingenuity of man, aided ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... Libby, "that's what I thought. Better take my hand again," and he secured that of Mrs. Maynard, who continued her descent. "I suppose I don't understand her exactly. Perhaps she did n't like my not calling her Doctor. I did n't call her anything. I suppose she thought I was dodging it. I was. I should have had to call her Miss Breen, if ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... creatures were vulgarly familiar. Joe carried the baskets down a steep and rocky path to the very edge of the brook, scratching his face with stinging briars and tough, elastic little switches from ubiquitous bushes. The two young men in the back seat ostentatiously assisted the ladies in the descent with much demonstration and much unnecessary pawing. Joe sat down and waited for Myrtle, who was coming with Hawkins, a look of ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... August, 1828; from les Orientales. The poem is especially noteworthy from a technical point of view. The quiet before the descent of the spirits, their approach, their fury, their receding, and the quiet that follows, are suggested by the movement of the lines. The motto is from Dante's Inferno, Canto v, 46-49; he is describing the tormented spirits of ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... a hitherto unused knob among the instruments. "By pulling that out, the mechanism of the craft is automatically adjusted to care for every phase of the descent. Nothing else remains to be done, after removing that plug, save to watch the red dot and prepare to step out upon the floor of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... from her marriage with Jack, and she recognized now that she had not made a success of that on the economic side. In short, it was like so much else in her life, practically all her life, she felt bitterly,—it was a shift, a compromise, a pis-aller, and this time it was a social descent also. What would her friends say? But Milly courageously put that cheap thought out of her mind. If this was all that she could find to do to support herself and her child,—if it was all that she was good for in this world,—she ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... had immediately begun to make his descent to rejoin his detachment. In order to reach them the more speedily, he dropped into the rigging, and ran along one of the lower yards; all eyes were following him. At a certain moment fear assailed ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sport that most boys will be interested in. To make a descent, begin at the top of a hill as one would in coasting with a sled and lean well forward with the skis parallel and with one foot slightly ahead of the other. The knees should be bent and the body rigid. The weight ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... of Anglo-Saxon descent can peruse the histories of those countries, and not feel pride in the valor and success which have distinguished his race. Twice the victorious banner of England has fluttered in the gaze of Paris. Until a recent age, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... have most to do in the making of an individual, heredity is perhaps the greatest. It is the crucible in which the gold and dross of many generations of his ancestors are melted down and remixed in the man, who is, indeed, "a part of all" from whom he claims descent. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... descent, The stain'd and ruffled plume, Would seem as if they were not meant Their ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... existence of the animal, &c. By ESSENCE is to be understood, that which constitutes a being, such as it is; the whole of the properties or qualities by which it acts as it does. Thus, when it is said, it is the essence of a stone to fall, it is the same as saying that its descent is the necessary effect of its gravity—of its density—of the cohesion of its parts—of the elements of which it is composed. In short, the essence of a being is its ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... hay and bundles of straw, which could be built up or rolled about in; the place was always in a romantic twilight; there were old, deserted spiders' webs hanging to the roof, looking like shops to let, which never did any business; and the ascent and descent of the perpendicular ladder from the ground floor was quite an adventure in itself. To picture a ship on which one had to go aloft to enter the cabin would seem rather a difficult task; but a child's imagination is the richest in the ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in his sultry path, as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging tree, offered its temptation. At length, as he thus paused, a noise was heard in a copse that clothed the descent of a steep mountain; and the horse started suddenly back, forcing the traveller from his reverie. He looked mechanically upward, and beheld the figure of a man bounding through the trees, with rapid and irregular steps. It was a form that suited ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... early on the morning of the third day, Julian marched to occupy the narrow pass of Succi, in the defiles of Mount Haemus; which, almost in the midway between Sirmium and Constantinople, separates the provinces of Thrace and Dacia, by an abrupt descent towards the former, and a gentle declivity on the side of the latter. The defence of this important post was intrusted to the brave Nevitta; who, as well as the generals of the Italian division, successfully executed the plan of the march and junction ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... this place any, Frank!" declared Bob, as he stared about him as well as he could by the flickering light of the lantern which his companion still carried, and which had served them well through all their descent. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... had frequently fought before in single combat. This Luca, by his own valour, with sword in hand, overcame and slew him, with such bravery and stoutness that he moved the folk to wonder, who were expecting quite the contrary issue; so that I glory in tracing my descent from men ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... the butterfly. The rocks, which instantly came thundering down, announced that he was seen; and for a moment, while his form was concealed in the cloud of dust and fragments which followed the furious descent, the trapper gave him up for lost; but the next instant he was seen safely seated in a cavity formed by some of the projecting stones which had yielded to the shock, holding triumphantly in his hand the captured stem, which ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Laura fell asleep. She wakened with a start to find that the coach had halted to apply the brakes, at the top of the precipitous hill that led down to the railway township. In a two-wheeled buggy this was an exciting descent; but the coach jammed on both its brakes, moved like a snail, and seemed hardly able ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... and treated as insanity. It must be owned that he had lived through troublous times and had had experiences to try the nerve of a man of iron, which he was not. The general, after settling matters to his satisfaction at the reservation, purposed a descent on Colonel Pelham and Camp Sandy, for consultation with him and a conference with the troop and company commanders returned to their soldier honors, after their strenuous scout through the mountains. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... descent, which was actually more perilous than the ascent, but we made light of it, being very much enlivened by the high mountain air and the relief from dread uncertainty, shouting out our reflections one to another as we jolted ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... knights who held estates in the palatinate on these warlike conditions, was WILLIAM DE HERTBURN, the progenitor of the Washingtons. His Norman name of William would seem to point out his national descent; and the family long continued to have Norman names of baptism. The surname of De Hertburn was taken from a village on the palatinate which he held of the bishop in knight's fee; probably the same now called Hartburn on the banks of the Tees. It ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... a remarkable fact that among many tribes, especially in Australia, America, and Africa, children are named after their mother, while rank and property, too, are often inherited in the female line of descent. Lafitau observed this custom among American Indians more than a century ago, and in 1861 a Swiss jurist, Bachofen, published a book in which he tried to prove, with reference to this "kinship through mothers only," that it indicated that there ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in her face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had not been set on the greater glory, the other thought might have vulgarised her mind, made her end and goal sordid—the descent of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of a buffalo, humped upon the grass: he made a wide circuit, and swept on like a shadow driven in the wind. For the wind had arisen, and added to his terror: it blew from behind him. He reached the brow of the valley, and shot down the steep descent like a falling star. Instantly the whole upper country behind him arose and pursued him! The wind came howling after him, filled with screams, shrieks, yells, roars, laughter, and chattering, as if all the animals of the forest were careering ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... majority of the people, in the city and in the country, were of Dutch descent. Consequently the recruiting parties which were raised, were in no mood to peril their lives in defence of the flag of England. Indeed it is said that one party of the recruits marched to the Battery and deliberately spiked several of ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... despair, and who occupied the forests in large bands. From these rovers, however, Cedric and Athelstane accounted themselves secure, as they had in attendance ten servants. They knew, besides, that the outlaws were chiefly peasants and yeomen of Saxon descent, and were generally supposed to respect the persons and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the close of the first war with Carthage, came the second Gallic invasion, when more than two hundred thousand Gauls perished in battle between Piombino and Pisa. The third of these wars broke out on the descent into Italy of the Todi and Cimbri, who, after defeating several Roman armies, were ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... did say something about its being time he were able to read, but I recollect nothing more.—You must have misunderstood me," he added, willing to ease her descent to the valley of ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... fund, or (if you are too proud for that) you must go without ancestors. So that, your ancestors being clearly mine, I have a right in law to call the whole "kit" of them monsters. Quod erat demonstrandum. Really and upon our honor, it makes one, for the moment, ashamed of one's descent; one would wish to disinherit one's-self backwards, and (as Sheridan says in the Rivals) to "cut the connection." Wordsworth has an admirable picture in Peter Bell of "A snug party in a parlor," removed into limbus patrum for their offences in ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... There's nothing the least sacred about property. The rights of property are casual. They generally depend on all sorts of things that don't matter. They happen through the changes and chances of life, and human whims and fads and the pure accident of heredity and descent. They are all on a lower level; they are all suspect, whereas the rights of labour ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... to refer to the speech delivered by the young Nero for the people of Ilium,[378] from whom the Iuli, Nero's ancestors on the mother's side, claimed to trace their descent. It may therefore safely be assumed that the poems were written early in the reign of Nero. A most ingenious attempt has been made to throw some light on the identity of their author.[379] He speaks of himself as Corydon, and he has a patron whom he styles ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... busy part of the town, right in the heart of Copenhagen. On the first floor lived a West Indian gentleman who spoke Danish with a foreign accent; sometimes there came to see him a Danish man of French descent, Mr. Lafontaine, who, it was said, was so strong that he could take two rifles and bayonets and hold them out horizontally without bending his arm. I never saw Mr. Lafontaine, much less his marvellous feat of strength, but when ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... decomposition. The Tabragar (the Erskine of Mr. Oxley) falls into the Macquarie at Dibilamble. It had long ceased to flow, being a small mountain torrent whose source, if we judge from the shingly nature of its bed, cannot be very distant. Our descent was considerable during the day; the rapids were frequent in the river, but it underwent no change in its general appearance. Its waters were hard and transparent, and its banks, in many places, extremely lofty; with a red sandy loam and gravel under the alluvial deposits. It generally ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... a moment of elation, "I will do it alone;" but he knew even then that he could not. Two hands were necessary to start the car; afterwards, he might manage it alone. Descent was even possible, but to give the contrivance its first lift required a second mechanician. Where was he to find one to please him? And what was he to do if he did not? Conquer his prejudices against such men as he had seen, or delay the attempt, as Oswald had suggested, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the invasion of England and Scotland with a great force, the enterprise which, nearly half a century later, Napoleon conceived as his master stroke against the proud maritime state. During that winter and spring France was building a great number of small boats with which to make a sudden descent and to land an ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... this accurately stated, and the descent of his family from the Earls of Northumberland clearly deduced in the Reverend Dr. Nash's excellent History of Worcestershire, vol. ii. p. 318. The Doctor has subjoined a note, in which he says, 'The Editor hath Seen and carefully examined the proofs of all ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... great law of things, "Hereditary Descent," fully proves and illustrates in any required number and variety of cases, showing that progeny inherits the constitutional natures and characters, mental and physical, of parents, including pre-dispositions to consumption, insanity, all sorts of disease, etc., ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... you never by any chance see a white Cuban, except the fat, sleek, well-groomed, superbly mounted ones in "khaki," who loaf around headquarters with high-ranking shoulder-straps. These are all imported from the United States. They comprise the few wealthy ones of Spanish descent, who are renegade to their own nativity, and are appealing to the good people of the United States to establish them in their status of master of peons without any overlord who can exact ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... out of the way, and the raft passed them very quickly. As soon as it was clear of the point, as their course to Quebec was now straight, and there was a slight breeze down the river, the people on board of the raft hoisted ten or fifteen sails upon different masts, to assist them in their descent; and this again excited the admiration ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... forgotten the strange custom by which M. Van Tricasse would become a widower and marry again, so as not to break the chain of descent. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... a large convoy of merchantmen and storeships, and many of his ships were overcrowded with the troops destined for the descent on Jamaica. It was expected that when he sailed it would be to form, in the first instance, a junction with the Spanish part of the expedition off San Domingo. Rodney kept his fleet at St. Lucia, ready to weigh anchor on the shortest notice, and a smart frigate, the "Andromache" ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the student, "as a just man, and a good man, think how innocent I am, except in name and descent, of participation in any wrong inflicted on you or in any sorrow you ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... large crystal stands of jellies composed part of his load—so there we were regularly capsized, and caught all of a heap in the dark landing-place, halfway up the stair; and down the other flight tumbled our guide, with Mr. Treenail and myself, and the two blackies on the top of her, rolling in our descent over, or rather into, another large mahogany tray which had just been carried out, with a tureen of turtle soup in it, and a dish of roast-beef, and platefuls of land-crabs, and the Lord knows what ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... described as "the so-called Darwinian" theory advisedly, for the struggle for existence as the law of evolution has been exaggerated out of all likeness to the conception of Darwin himself. In "The Descent of Man," for instance, Darwin raises the point under review, and shows how, in many animal societies, the struggle for existence is replaced by cooeperation for existence, and how that substitution ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... accidents and trifles. Indeed he'll probably tell me frankly the next time I see him that he can't but feel that to come down to small questions of action—to the small prudences and compromises and simplifications of practice—is for the superior person really a fatal descent. One may be inoffensive and even commendable after it, but one can scarcely pretend to be interesting. 'Il en faut comme ca,' but one doesn't haunt them. He'll do his best for me; he'll come back again, but he'll come back sad, and finally he'll fade away altogether. Hell go ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Moslems and a few Christians; but at that time there were thirty Jewish families living as agriculturists, cultivating grain and olives on their own landed property, most of it family inheritance; some of these people were of Algerine descent. They had their own synagogue and legally qualified butcher, and their numbers had formerly been ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Japan was governed by Hohodemi, the fourth Mikoto (or Augustness) in descent from the illustrious Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. He was not only as handsome as his ancestress was beautiful, but he was also very strong and brave, and was famous for being the greatest hunter ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... more than he imagined. I recalled to his memory a dispute at his own table, a little before we left Philadelphia, between General Schuyler on one side and Pinckney and myself on the other, wherein the former maintained the position, that hereditary descent was as likely to produce good magistrates as election. I told him, that though the people were sound, there were a numerous sect who had monarchy in contemplation; that the Secretary of the Treasury was one of these. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... daughter of the old sea-captain, himself of Norse descent on the mother's side, felt her father's spirit glowing in her ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... painter is chiefly famous for his "Descent from the Cross" in the Church of the Trinita de' Monti at Rome. He ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Gentlemen of the Abolition Society, those who see the American citizens of African descent one hundred years hence will be proud of them, and convinced that the great century struggle that won their enfranchisement was worth infinitely more than it cost. We are now leaving politics. We have gained through them the rights and opportunities ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: "a damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen." A man who gave in such copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to prepare the reader ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the eruptions of the border population that infest the streets of a metropolis, who would make midnight forays into his dominions, and carry off captive whole platoons of his noblest subjects. Vagrant swine would make a descent, too, now and then, when the gate was left open, and lay all waste before them; and mischievous urchins would decapitate the illustrious sunflowers, the glory of the garden, as they lolled their heads so fondly over the walls. Still all these ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Place of Descent, is the proper rendering of the Armenian name of this very city. It is called in Ptolemy Naxuana, and by Moses Chorenensis, the Armenian historian, Idsheuan; but at the place itself Nachidsheuan, which signifies The ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... horror, that dilettanteism set in vogue by the disciples of Monsieur Renan, and which is the very foundation of the decline. You will recover from it, I hope. You are so young!" Then becoming again jovial and mocking: "May you enjoy yourself in your descent of Courtille; I almost forgot that I had a message to give to you for one of the supernumeraries of your troop. Will you tell Gorka that I have dislodged the book for which he asked me before ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... she had forgotten, yet which came back nevertheless when they were needed: the Contessa's mysterious words about Bice's parentage, her intimation that Lucy would one day be glad to have befriended her: Sir Tom's sudden agitation when she had told him of Bice's English descent: finally, and most conclusive of all, touching Lucy with a most unreasonable conviction and bringing a rush of warm feeling to her heart, Baby's adoption of the girl and recommendation of her to his mother. Was it not the voice of nature, the voice of God? Lucy had no instinctive ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... upper-class virtues. But the ways of heredity are devious, and not every gentleman's son is to the manor born. Especially is the transmission of the habits of thought which characterize the predatory master somewhat precarious in the case of a line of descent in which but one or two of the latest steps have lain within the leisure-class discipline. The chances of occurrence of a strong congenital or acquired bent towards the exercise of the cognitive ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... an inveterate little romp, unconscious of shame, is curveting about in the most abandoned manner, utterly indifferent to the fact she has—not, indeed, "a rag to her back"—for she is all rags! One hour's play before my descent has utterly abolished all traces of my industry, so far ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... ruined by its instability, as they soon would be, a fresh clamor may be expected for the remonetization of gold, and another clipping or debasing of gold coins may follow to bring them again into circulation on the basis of silver equivalency. In this slippery descent there can be no stopping place. The consoling philosophy of the silver commission may then be repealed, that a fall in the value of either or both of the metals is a "benefaction to mankind." If that were ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... and cabbage leaves and simple cerate, and a couple of mirrors by which to examine the rise and fall of the blister; and, having had a hint of real illness, she would consent quite smilingly to the act of convalescence, and a descent to the healthy region of the ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... they hadn't descended already, and whether the descent had so far been all that they ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... goddess. The dark inner shrine must have once been a Buddhist cave, carved out of the wall of rock; and to it later generations added the outer hall, with its carved pillars of teakwood, which hangs over the very edge of a precipitous descent. Repairs to the shrine are at present in progress; and on the day of our visit two bullocks were tethered in the outer chamber, the materials of the stone-mason were lying here and there among the carved pillars, and a painfully modern stone wall is rising in face of ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... unrestrained that they reached the ears of those who saw in his despair a possibility of enriching themselves at his expense. There was in Paris at the time a Countess de la Mothe, who, as claiming descent from a natural son of Henri II., had added Valois to her name, and had her claim to royal birth so far allowed that, as she was in very destitute circumstances, she had obtained a small pension from the crown. Her pension and her pretensions had perhaps united ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Governor-General, with a copy of that of Mr. Secretary Harrison, conveying His Excellency's reply, which, I am happy, so distinctly removes every obstacle to your return to what has been in all essentials your native country; and that without the descent on your part, by even a single step, from the high ground which you have always maintained in relation ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... "Lucky dog" and "war romance," the men said. Nevertheless, six weeks ago he had returned with his chevrons well-earned, and fifty years of square living later proved his unquestioned worth. Elizabeth at twenty, on her bridal day, was slender, lithe, fair-skinned; of Scotch-Irish descent, her gray eyes bespoke her efficiency—to-day, they spoke her pride, though neither to-day nor in years to come were they often softened by love. But it was a great wedding, and the eating and dancing and merry- making continued late into the night with ample hospitality through ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... described as the son of Jupiter, and of the daughter of Phoenix, whom all succeeding authors name Europa; and he is thus carried back into the remotest period of Cretan antiquity known to the poet, apparently as a native hero, Illustrious enough for a divine parentage, and too ancient to allow his descent to be traced to any other source. But in a genealogy recorded by later writers, he is likewise the adopted son of Asterius, as descendant of Dorus, the son of Helen, and is thus connected with a colony said to have been led into Creta by Tentamus, or Tectamus, son of Dorus, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Correze, in Perigord, Albigenses, The, Ales, Angelus, The, Angling, Architecture: Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Roman, Romanesque, Argentat, Arnaud (Arnaud Daniel, troubadour), Artaud, The (River), Aspic, The, Aubeterre, Aulaye, St., Auvergnats, Descent of the, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... such as bishoprics and the like: in Portugal an illegitimate line maintained itself on the throne only by constant effort; in Italy. on the contrary, there no longer existed a princely house where even in the direct line of descent, bastards were not patiently tolerated. The Aragonese monarchs of Naples belonged to the illegitimate line, Aragon itself falling to the lot of the brother of Alfonso I. The great Federigo of Urbino was, perhaps, no Montefeltro at all. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... descent dispels the Emperor's grief. There lies one frozen-stiff, but who asks him ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... France, there lived, amongst other nobles, a knight who was rich and noble, not only by illustrious descent, but by his own virtuous and honourable deeds, who had, by the wife he had married, an only daughter, a very beautiful virgin, well-educated as her condition required, and aged fifteen ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... were drawn up in two lines with their wheels touching, the inner line being on the very edge of the descent. The women and children were placed in the inner waggons, while the eight men who had come across with them, and the three hunters, took their places in ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... permanently connected with the mission, or return to the Armenians as a missionary physician. A firman was now given him, and he reached Mosul in safety on the 29th of March. Little did any one think that his first duty would be to smooth Dr. Grant's descent to the grave, yet an all-wise Providence had so ordained. A typhoid fever, which had carried off many of the refugee Nestorians in Mosul, seized their beloved physician on the 5th of April. He was delirious from the moment it assumed a threatening character, and ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... Peter Buchanan, of Barnet, Vt., died at his residence in McIndoe's Falls Village, aged seventy-eight years. He was of Scotch descent, and inherited many of the sterling qualities of his race. He was born in Barnet, where he always resided, and held nearly every office within the gift of his fellow-townsmen. He represented the town in the Legislature ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... oft upon the Father's ages. Their long descent, how nephews sons they saw, The starry observations of those Sages, And how their precepts to their sons were law, How Adam sigh'd to see his Progeny, Cloath'd all in his black sinful Livery, Who neither guilt, nor yet the punishment ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... a practice in the hotter regions of the south and east, to permit such practice to be deemed proof of Jewish descent, unless corroborated by other customs peculiar to the Jews. Besides the physiological characteristics of the native Australians preclude us from deducing their natural descent from either the Jews or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... civilized Europe not only tolerated the robbery, the murder, and the carrying into captivity of her own people, but actually recognized this triple atrocity as a privilege inherent to certain persons of Turkish descent and Mahometan religion inhabiting the northern coast of Africa. England or France might have put them down by a word long before; but, as the corsairs chiefly ravaged the defenceless coasts of Sardinia, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... well-known to their chief. It was at the head of that ravine where he had so oft found shelter from his foes. The moon, though shining with splendid brilliance, was low in the sky, and her light did not penetrate the vast chasm. It lay buried in dark shade. The descent was a difficult one, though not to such men, and with such ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... became engaged in many exciting flights. While on a scouting operation with their friend, several German machines appeared and a battle followed in which the machine was injured, and during the descent both ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... The descent was a rapid one, but it was what he needed, and lifting up his head, he replied, just as he had done before, "Do you want to go?" "Not as much as I did when I thought you were angry, and if you would rather, I had quite ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... prayers if he could not pray. All this worked powerfully for the elevation of the Brahmans, the "men of prayer;" they steadily grew into a class, a caste; and into this no one could enter who was not of priestly descent. Schools were now found necessary for the study of the sacred books, rites, and traditions. The importance which these attach to theology—doctrine—is very small; the externals of religion are all in all. The rites, in fact, now threw the very gods into ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... repose himself. But with all his care he could not finally avoid making a false step, which brought him down the four or five last steps too hastily to preserve his equilibrium. At the bottom he stumbled over a bundle of something soft, which stirred and uttered a groan, so deranging the Captain's descent, that he floundered forward, and finally fell upon his hands and knees on the floor of a damp ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... began to think they might be getting too near the Wash for safety, and they therefore came down quickly, and reached the earth with such force that the scientific instruments were nearly all broken. In their descent they passed through a cloud 8000 feet (or over a mile ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... earth is felt—not by the slumbering city, only by that lonely watcher, brave and unshaken in his fanaticism. In the midst of silence, with no preluding sound, he is wrapped in sudden light. Through the roof, through the rent, wide-yawning, vast, white-blazing blue of heaven above, pours a wondrous descent, dread as the downrushing of stars. He has what he asked. Withdraw—forbear to look—I am blinded. I hear in that fane an unspeakable sound. Would that I could not hear it! I see an insufferable glory burning terribly ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... there really exist particular lineages possessing certain qualities which enter the blood of the embryo prince, and adapt him physically for royalty, as a horse for the racecourse? But then, in this wild supposition, it yet becomes necessary to assure the genuine family descent of the heir presumptive. To perpetuate the noble race of Andalusian chargers, the circumstances pass before witnesses, and similar precautions seem necessary, however indecent, to make sure that the trickeries of queens shall not supply thrones with bastards, and that ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... ventured to pun upon his name as badly as even a king might when he said of some representation: "Mohun (pronounce Moon) shone like a sun; Hart like the moon!" Charles Hart, the Cassio of the Vere Street Theatre, could boast descent from Shakespeare's sister Joan, and described himself as the poet's great-nephew. He, too, fought for the king in the great Civil War, serving as a lieutenant of horse under Sir Thomas Dallison in Prince Rupert's regiment. He had been apprenticed to Robinson the actor, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... The descent of Gregory Norton is not known. There is no evidence of his connexion with the Rotherfield or Southwick Nortons. His assumption of the title was not under any claim he could have had, real or imaginary, connected with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... was before they had received these graces and favours from God; a certain secret contempt for others whom they see so far behind themselves, and a certain hardness for sin and sinners; a zeal of St John before the descent of the Holy Ghost, when he wanted to call down fire from heaven upon the Samaritans to consume them; a certain confidence in their own safety and virtue; a secret pride, which causes them to grieve specially over the faults which they commit in public: they ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... advanced point. If, however, we regard less the topics on which these two illustrious men wrote, than the special service rendered by each of them to intellectual progress, we may not unfittingly compare the work of Locke—the descent from metaphysics to psychology—to the noble purpose of redeeming logic from the superstition of the Aristotelians, and exalting it to something higher than a mere verbal exercise for school-boys. The attack that Locke opened with such ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... our own wretched understanding, and are content to accept the Church as wiser than we. Once man throws off restraint there is no happiness, there is only misery. One step leads to another; if he would be logical he must go on, and before long, for the descent is very rapid indeed, he finds himself in an abyss of darkness and doubt, a terrible abyss indeed, where nothing exists, and life has lost all meaning. The Reformation was the thin end of the wedge, it was the first denial of authority, and you see ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... foundations of our faith. But such alarm is all premature. The glaring contradictions of one another of these modern apostles of a "gospel of dirt," and their self-stultification, are enough to convince any thoughtful reader, that if the race has not developed from apes, a few of them bear marks of descent from asses! The credulity of this class of men is simply marvelous. They can believe that a moneron can be developed into a man, but can not believe in a miracle! Their wonderful development of a moneron into a man terminates with the boundary line of time, and thus the ne plus ultra is reached ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... slowly, and found the air good enough to breathe freely, which emboldened me to go to the bottom. There was just light enough to perceive that on one side was an opening about six feet in height, and somewhat more than a foot in width; and I could see rough steps leading down a slight descent. I followed them cautiously, until I came to a level place, which I found to be a passage about three feet wide and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various |
