"Disadvantage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every one labors under the disadvantage of being known,—for the most part too well known. How painful it must be to spend summer after summer in a world of reality, where the truth is so much more thrilling than any possible fiction that people are deprived of the pleasure of invention and the imagination falls into ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... was friendly with Alec. This disapproval rose into dislike after their sons had told them that it was because Juno had bitten her that the boys of the school, with Alec for a leader, had served her as they had. But it was productive of no disadvantage to her; for it could not take any active form because of the money-bond between them, while its negative operation gave rise chiefly to neglect, and so left her more at liberty, to enjoy herself as she could after ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... before. They were usually straight enough for the general purposes of hunting, but they missed by a long way the "theoretical centre of impact" of which artillery officers speak. Her lame paw always seemed to disturb her balance. By remembering it, she could usually partly overcome the disadvantage; but to-day, in the madness of her hunger, she had been unable to remember anything except the terrible rapture of killing. This circumstance alone, however, would not have saved the native's life. Even though her fangs missed his throat, the power of the blow and her rending talons would have ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... But the above passage and many others show that there will be differences. The degrees of punishment must be as remote as the east is from the west. All inherited proclivities, 'taints of blood,' all differences of environment, every privilege and every disadvantage, will be taken into account. It is the Divine Judge that will apportion punishment, with perfect knowledge and perfect justice and perfect goodness. This great fact, that there will be degrees in future punishment—as well as future rewards—ought to be more prominent ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... Professor Foster writes:—"We cannot authoritatively say that such a reduction is necessarily an evil; for our knowledge will not at present permit us to make an authoritative exact statement as to the extent to which the proteid may be reduced without disadvantage to the body, when accompanied by adequate provision of the other elements of food; and this statement holds good whether the body be undertaking a small or large amount ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... a careful analysis of Hooker's character can explain the abnormal condition into which his mental and physical energy sank during the second act of this drama. He began with really masterly moves, speedily placing his wary adversary at the saddest disadvantage. But, having attained this height, his power seemed to pass away as from an over-tasked mind. With twice the weight of arm, and as keen a blade, he appeared quite unable to parry a single lunge of Lee's, quite unable to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... bow that shamed my old dressing-gown and strident pyjamas. 'You find me at a disadvantage. I came home soaking from my ride, and was in the act of changing. My servant has just upset a tray of crockery, and I fear this room's no fit place for a lady. Allow me three minutes ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... the flattery might reach no other ear. She may not have known that Rosa's Creole skin was at a wretched disadvantage, as seen against the green silk background; but others noticed it, and thought how few complexions were comparable to the wearer's. She had the faculty of converting into a foil nearly ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the letter which had been passed up to him in court, and surveyed him with an astonishment she made no effort to conceal. Never had she felt at a greater disadvantage with him. Never had she understood him less. Was this attempt at unconcern, so pitiably transparent to her, made in an endeavour to probe her mind or to deceive his own? In her anxiety to ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... one; and he had a supreme contempt for all women of the lower class—a contempt which causes a man to look on them only as toys—instruments for his pleasure—to be used and cast aside. He believed that they systematically preyed on men, and made profit out of their weakness. That Milly was at a disadvantage with him, because she was weak and young and unprotected, scarcely entered his head. He would have said that she had the best of it. She was pretty and young, and could make him pay for it if he did her ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and said, "she didn't know what her mother knew about Fanny's scholarship." Meantime Fanny was blushing deeply and thinking that she had appeared to great disadvantage in Mr. Wilmot's eyes; but he very kindly changed the conversation by asking who Mr. Miller was, and was told that he was a young man from Albany, New York, who taught in their neighborhood the ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... would have tried the same experiment with the other lug, but the mast was scarce worth the risk, and he thought the holes might act as reefs, and thus diminish the strain. In these four hours, owing to the disadvantage under which le Feu-Follet labored, there was not a difference of half a knot in the distance run by the two vessels, though each passed over more than thirty miles of water. During this time they had been drawing rapidly nearer to the coast of Corsica, the mountains of which, ragged and crowned ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the insane are more adequately restricted than any other dysgenic class in the community; not because the community recognizes the disadvantage of letting them reproduce their kind, but because there is a general fear of them, which leads to their strict segregation; and because an insane person is not considered legally competent to enter into a ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Roland saw the disadvantage of the position. He looked around and, amid the smoke, distinguished Cadoudal, erect and motionless as an equestrian statue. He understood that the royalist leader ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... as yet unaware of it. In time, Englishmen will awake to a realisation of the fact; but what the relative standing of the two countries will be by that time it is impossible to say. Englishmen would, perhaps, not find it to their disadvantage, and it would certainly (if not done in too condescending a spirit) not be displeasing to the people of the United States, if they began, even now, to take a livelier interest in the work that the other ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Osmia-blocked vestibule. Once these facts are duly recognized, the conclusion is irresistible: it is obvious that, as the insect does not hand down the casual modification tending towards the avoidance of what is to its disadvantage, neither does it hand down the modification leading to the adoption of what is to its advantage. However lively the impression made upon the mother, the accidental leaves no trace in the offspring. Chance plays no part in ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... had been such a comfort. But not a line came. He reviewed in memory his last letter to Charles, wondering whether it could have offended him; but it did not seem possible; he thought over all that Philip could have learnt in his visit, to see if it could by any means have been turned to his disadvantage. But he knew he had done nothing to which blame could be attached; he had never infringed the rules of college discipline; and though still backward, and unlikely to distinguish himself, he believed that ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... armed for the encounter. The men who found themselves confronted by this anger could and did brace themselves against it, but it was with some hopelessness of feeling, as of hostility upon a plane where they were at a disadvantage. The man now sitting his horse before him on the endless winter road was one not easily daunted by outward aspects. Nevertheless he had at this moment, in the back of his head, a weary consciousness that war was roseate only to young boys and girls, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... seen as separate, might, all disgracefully, betray the seam, show for mechanical and superficial. A story was a story, a picture a picture, and I had a mortal horror of two stories, two pictures, in one. The reason of this was the clearest—my subject was immediately, under that disadvantage, so cheated of its indispensable centre as to become of no more use for expressing a main intention than a wheel without a hub is of use for moving a cart. It was a fact, apparently, that one had on occasion seen two pictures in one; were there not for instance certain sublime Tintorettos ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... establishment of a Greek monarchy in the ancient dominions of the Persian kings, and by the closer union which now prevailed between all parts of the civilised world."[14448] But the balance of advantage and disadvantage does not even now always reconcile traders to a definite and tangible loss; and in the ruder times of which we are writing it was not to be expected that arguments of so refined and recondite a character should be very sensibly ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Archbishop Albert of Mainz, the protector of the seller of indulgences. Full of the popular belief in the wisdom and the goodwill of the highest rulers, Luther thought (he often said so later) that it was only necessary to present honestly to the princes of the Church the disadvantage and immorality of such abuses. But how childish this zeal of the monk appeared to the polished and worldly prince of the Church! What so deeply offended the honest man was, from the point of view of the Archbishop, a matter long settled. The sale of indulgences was ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... is pitiable to see how the best of the early scholars struggled bravely, but vainly, to solve problems which would not even have existed for them if their collections had not been so incomplete. This lack of material was a disadvantage for which the most ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... indirectly—through some one they love—" such had been his greatest wish. To put them at a disadvantage and overcome his own—to lead them into his own ambushes. And was it for the Wolf to care what guiltless creatures fell before his fangs in the gaining of his dreadful ends? Was the gratification of his hate to be turned aside through pity ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... generally rebuked with severity by the moral sense of the community, is yet so very licentious and, in a Government depending wholly on opinion, so very alarming that the impression made by it to our disadvantage as a people is anything but surprising. Under such circumstances it is imperatively due from us to the people whom we represent that when we go into the money market to contract a loan we should tender ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the two frigates at this moment that the jib-boom of the Phoebe hung over the bulwarks of the Essex, and Porter called out sharply that if so much as a rope was touched he would reply with a broadside. The urbane Captain Hillyar, perceiving his disadvantage, exclaimed, "I had no intention of coming so near you. I am very sorry indeed." With that he moved his ship to a respectful distance. Later he had a chat with Captain Porter ashore and, when asked if he intended to maintain the neutrality ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... of the revolutionary spirit was the rebellion of the knights. This class, now in a state of moral and economic decay, had long survived any usefulness it had ever had. The rise of the cities, the aggrandizement of the princes, and the change to a commercial from a feudal society all worked to the disadvantage of the smaller nobility and gentry. About the only means of livelihood left them was freebooting, and that was adopted without scruple and without shame. Envious of the wealthy cities, jealous of the greater princes and proud of their tenure ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Our English children must go for part of their education to France; and French children must be systematically wooed over here. Above all the difficulty of language must be tackled as it has never been yet, so that it may be a real disadvantage and disgrace for the boy or girl of either country who has had a secondary education not to be able to speak, in some fashion, the language of the other. As for the working classes, and the country populations of both countries, what they have seen of each other, as brothers ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rendered impossible the renewal of the Neronian and Diocletian persecutions. Julian's weapons were sophistry and ridicule, in the use of which he was a master. To degrade the Christians, and place them at a disadvantage in controversy, he excluded them from the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... that the entire subject was an undiscovered country to him. Had he done so, his perplexity would not have been nearly so great, and very probably he might have recognised the fact of his own remarkable psychic powers. Still, in spite of this disadvantage, the conviction was slowly but surely forcing itself upon his mind that the lady he had seen was no one but his own mother. From this to a belief that it was she who had intervened to save both himself and his Aunt Charlotte from serious disasters was but a single step; and like Mary of ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... translation was made by forty-seven translators, divided into six companies, and laboring on their work three years. The Douay Bible was first translated and published complete in 1609, almost simultaneously with the Bible of King James. It has the disadvantage of having been made from the Latin Vulgate, and not directly from the original Greek and Hebrew, but is a valuable version, and like the Bible of King James, is one of the great monuments of the times which produced it, ...
— The New Testament • Various
... have further and close opportunities of intercourse, but should like whatever you may write of me to come from the old source of intellectual affinity only. That you should think the subject worthy of further labour is a pleasure to me, but I only trust it may not be a disadvantage to your book in unfriendly eyes, particularly if that view happened to be the proposed publisher's, in which case I should much prefer that this section of your work were withdrawn for a more propitious occasion.... I am very glad Brown ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Then you shall draw your comparison and consider on which part he stands—not in his language, remember, but in his life. Now all, I think, will allow that these attributes should belong to a friend of the constitution: First, that he should be of free descent by both parents so that the disadvantage of birth may not embitter him against those laws which preserve the democracy. Second, that he should be able to show that some benefit has been done to the people by his ancestors; or, at the worst, that there had been no enmity between them which would ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... That is to say, before a judge can decide a case, he must be able to back up his opinion by precedent. Judges are not elected to deal out justice between man and man; they are elected to decide on points of law. Law is often a great disadvantage to a judge—it may hamper justice—and in America there must surely soon come a day when we will make a bonfire of every law-book in the land, and electing our judges for life, we will make the judiciary free. We will then require our lawyers ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... his supposed rashness was the highest military wisdom. Before Henry came up he had seized a position at an angle of the Meuse, where he could defend Namur, and could not be himself attacked, except at a disadvantage. The French approached only to retire, and, feeling themselves unable to force the imperial lines, fell back towards the Boullonnois. Charles followed cautiously. An attack on Renty brought on an action in which the French ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph. Spare us Hamilton. We shall need him badly enough. The Clinton faction is very strong. That the Hamilton embraces the best spirits of the community means that it is in the minority, and needs the unremitting exercise of his genius to counteract the disadvantage in numbers." ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and endeavour to establish a diagnosis. But a man with the vocabulary of a Stratford wool-comber (whatever a woolcomber may be) of the 16th century—a vocabulary of about two hundred and fifty words, mostly obscene—is placed at a grave disadvantage when confronted by scientific terminology; and my patient, casting symptomatic precision to the winds, and roughly averaging his malady, would succinctly describe himself as sanguinary bad. That was all that was wrong with him. Nevertheless, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... held that the relation between the employer and employee concerning wages, hours, conditions of labor, and settlement of difficulties should be on the basis of a written contract; that the engineer as an individual was at a manifest disadvantage in making such a contract with a railway company; that he therefore had a right to join with his fellow engineers in pressing his demands and therefore had the right to a collective contract. Though for over a decade ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... was a thousand times a greater little bigot than Bryan. The one, wid a juvenile rabble at his back, three to one, was a tyrant over the young schismatics; whilst Bryan, like a brave youth as he was, ever and always protected them against the disadvantage of numbers, and insisted on showing them fair play. I am warm, Mrs. Cavanagh," he continued, "and heat, you know, generates thirst. I know that a drop o' the right sort used to be somewhere undher this same roof; but I'm afraid if the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a man has but a little stock to improve, and has opportunities of turning it all to a good account, what shall we think of him if he suffers nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even the twentieth to his ruin or disadvantage? But because the mind cannot be always in its fervour nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary to find out proper employments ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... and Cope began. "The Wood-nymphs," he said slowly, "were a nice enough lot of girls, but they labored under one great disadvantage: they had ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... "new doctrines." It was, however, only in October, 1561, after the Colloquy of Poissy, that it was visited by a Protestant minister, who, during a brief sojourn, organized a church with elders and deacons. Notwithstanding the disadvantage of having no pastor, and of having notoriously incurred the special hatred of the Guises, the reformed community grew with marvellous rapidity. For the Gospel was preached not merely in the printed sermons read from the pulpit, but by the lips ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, one's bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than the faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as oneself. I hate posterity—it's so fond of having the last word. Of course, as regards ...
— Reginald • Saki
... proposition of labor shared by all." He would go deeper than political economics, strain out the self-factor from both theories, and make the measure of each pretty much the same, so that the natural (the majority) would win, but not to the disadvantage of the minority (the artificial) because this has disappeared—it is of the majority. John Stuart Mill's political economy is losing value because it was written by a mind more "a banker's" than a "poet's." The poet knows that there is no such thing as the perpetual ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... information to Rezanov was a good-looking and susceptible youth, already the victim of an Indian maiden from the handsome tribe in the Santa Clara Valley, and sister of Dona Ignacia's Malia. Rezanov furnished him with beads and other trinkets and was at no disadvantage thereafter. ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the point of offering an explanation but could find nothing to say. The sudden intervention had taken him at a disadvantage, like an unforseen attack which he did ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... a disadvantage, Penrod made offer of his hand for the morrow with a little embarrassment. Following the form prescribed by Professor Bartet, he advanced several paces toward the stricken lady and ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... you. To tell the truth, this decrescendo of applause, at the third movement of your Symphony, surprises me greatly, and I would have wagered without hesitation that it would be the other way. A great disadvantage for this kind of composition is that, in our stupid musical customs, often very anti-musical, it is almost impossible to appeal to a badly informed public by a second performance immediately after the first; and at Leipzig, as elsewhere, one only meets ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... 27th, the Venus had engaged the French frigate Semillante, one of a squadron then cruizing in the Channel under the orders of Captain Mullon, of the Cleopatra. The action had continued two hours, much to the disadvantage of the enemy, when the Cleopatra was seen coming up, and the Venus was obliged to fly. On the Nymphe rejoining her, the two frigates went in pursuit of the enemy as far as Cherbourg. Thence Captain Pellew proceeded to the North Channel, ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... the cultivation of corn and the work is fairly continuous for a few employes throughout the year. Additional unemployment for negro tenant farmers was an expected result of this diversification. The greatest immediate disadvantage to negro planters and small farmers resulting from the failure of the cotton crops was the lack of money and credit to sustain them while the corn and velvet beans were being grown. It was for like ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... and the attorney found means to put off the decision from term to term, until there was no quibble left for further delay. While this suit was depending, our hero continued to move in his usual sphere; nor did the report of his situation at all operate to his disadvantage in the polite world; on the contrary, it added a fresh plume to his character, in the eyes of all those who were not before acquainted with the triumphs of his gallantry. Notwithstanding this countenance ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... we set sail and stood off for them. At first, they made a shew of giving us battle, but soon afterwards made off upon a tack; and till the 28th, they were either to windward, or so favourably placed at anchor, that we could not attempt to attack them without manifest disadvantage. During this time, they were joined by two or three frigates, or barks, from Ormus, bringing them a supply of men and ammunition. We made one attempt on Christmas day, but were forced back by a sudden ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... contrast of others with himself to their disadvantage, mentally or morally, as writers, or leaders, or statesmen. So full a life as Mr. Wilson led in the last dozen or more years ought to have made him less self-conscious. A robuster person would have hated with a certain zest, continued with a certain gaiety, laughed as ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... time, the temporary withdrawal of our battleships owing to enemy submarines has altered the position to our disadvantage; while not of the highest importance materially this ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... his disadvantage, and knowing that any attempt to forestall the action of his enemy would be fatal, cheerily called out to an acquaintance who stood in a stupor of fear, farther up the bar: "Howdy, Sam! Come and have a drink." His jovial tone and apparent ignorance of danger prolonged Mink's ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... also given by Browning to the alterations of text made in the edition of his wife's Poems of the following year; and for a time his own Christmas Eve and Easter Day was an absorbing occupation. As to the "reading," the chief disadvantage of Florence towards the middle of the last century was the difficulty of seeing new books of interest, whether French or English. Yet Vanity Fair and The Princess, Jane Eyre and Modern Painters somehow found their way to ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... who does that is to be as pure as snow; he is to have no faults at all. He is to be a perfect Saint; nay, he is to be a great deal more, for he is to have no human being, not even his wife, to whisper a word to his disadvantage. "You talk of mending the constitution," said an Anti-jacobin to Dr. Jebb, when the latter was very ill, "mend your own:" and I have heard it seriously objected to a gentleman that he signed a petition for a Reform of Parliament while there needed a reformation amongst his servants, one of whom ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... were, it must be confessed, in a state of considerable relaxation; they often were on the brink of deplorable sins, and sometimes fell over the brink. And many would join the Church on inferior motives as soon as no great temporal disadvantage attached to the act; or the families of Christian parents might grow up with so little of moral or religious education as to make it difficult to say why they called themselves members of a divine religion. Mixed marriages would increase both the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... happy than that of her friend Adeline. Tallman Taylor's habits of extravagance had led them into difficulties in more ways than one. He had spent far more than his income, and his carelessness in business had proved a great disadvantage to the house with which he was connected. During the last year, matters had grown worse and worse; he had neglected his wife, and lost large sums at the gambling-table. Poor Jane had passed some unhappy months, and traces of sorrow were to be seen on her pale ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... a disadvantage. They were expecting club or fist, but not the neuro-beam. Nevertheless Sime had no more easy opportunities. The Martians flung themselves down behind the bulge of the curved stairway, and the air became acrid ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... leases of lighthouses were granted to private individuals, and were no longer the exclusive right of the Trinity House. This state of things continued from that period nearly to the present time. But the inconvenience and disadvantage resulting from the measure had long been felt, and it was found that the lighthouse system was, in too many instances, conducted with a view to private interest rather than public good. An act was therefore passed, in ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... bull when crossed with a common cow. When the pasture is tolerably long, these cattle feed as well as common cattle with their tongue and palate; but during the great droughts, when so many animals perish on the Pampas, the niata breed lies under a great disadvantage, and would, if not attended to, become extinct; for the common cattle, like horses, are able to keep alive by browsing with their lips on the twigs of trees and on reeds: this the niatas cannot so well do, as their ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... no fort can be so strong, Ne fleshly brest can armed be so sound, But will at last be wonne with battrie long, Or unawares at disadvantage found: Nothing is sure, that growes on earthly ground: 95 And who most trustes in arme of fleshly might, And boasts in beauties chaine not to be bound, Doth soonest fall in disaventrous fight, And yeeldes his caytive neck to victours ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... between Allied and German nationals may be canceled or revived at the option of the former, so that all such contracts which are in Germany's favor will be canceled, while, on the other hand, she will be compelled to fulfil those which are to her disadvantage. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Anthony, surprised, encouraged. But, in a second, despondency had closed round him again. "You see," he signified, "the situation is uncommonly delicate—one 's at a double and twisted disadvantage." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... beauty in women lays on them no practical disadvantage in the primary business of their sex, for its effects are more than overborne by the emotional suggestibility, the herculean capacity for illusion, the almost total absence of critical sense of men. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Phalaris with little caps which were impermeable to light; the whole lower part being left fully exposed before a south-west window or a bright paraffin lamp. Some of the caps were made of extremely thin tin-foil blackened within; these had the disadvantage of occasionally, though rarely, being too heavy, especially when twice folded. The basal edges could be pressed into close contact with the cotyledons; though this again required care to prevent injuring them. Nevertheless, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... even more brilliant, for his troops began at a serious disadvantage. The enemy, with ample supplies and ammunition, were encamped on the top of a hill; 'the Royalist troops, less than half their number, short of ammunition, and so destitute of provisions that the best officers had but a biscuit a day, lay at Launceston.' Undaunted by these discouraging ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Mr. Foedor is in my lady Vaninka's room after midnight, I shall come to find your excellency, and then you can judge for yourself if I lie; but up to the present, your excellency, all the conditions of the service I wish to render you are to my disadvantage." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would dominate her and she would be at least as much of a chattel as in the hands of a male Clinton. It was what he stood for that interested her, and she could not help comparing his life with that of her father and her brothers, or of Jim Graham, much to the disadvantage of her ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... camp, but it had the disadvantage of lying outside the magic district. The madness would, of course, not last, but meanwhile the time went by, and the people poured in day and night. Six great steamers full came up from the Lower River, and still the small craft kept on flocking like coveys of sea-fowl through the Upper ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... state, watched his occasion, and suddenly shook off the knee of the Moor. With another effort he was on his feet and the two champions stood confronting each other, neither very eager to renew the combat. But on foot, Muza, daring and rash as he was, could not but recognise his disadvantage against the enormous strength and impenetrable armour of the Christian. He drew back, whistled to his barb, that, piercing the ranks of the horsemen, was by his side on the instant, remounted, and was in the midst of the foe, almost ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... eavesdropping about the presence of Vance. For she knew that Terence unbosomed himself to her as he would do in the hearing of no other human being. However, she mastered her anger and smiled at her brother. He had taken all these recent changes which were so much to his disadvantage with a good spirit ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... and teachers in small towns and in rural districts will do well to take an inventory of the influences surrounding their children. It will always be impossible to give country children city diversions. One great disadvantage of country children frequently counter-acts the beneficial influence of out-of-door living; namely, isolation. The city child is practically always in or about to be in the sight of, if not in the presence of, other people. Numbers and close contact ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... behind Luetzen, was Wallenstein's right wing, and to the south of that town was posted the left wing of the Swedes; both armies fronted the high road, which ran between them and divided their order of battle; but the evening before the battle, Wallenstein, to the great disadvantage of his opponent, had possessed himself of this highway, deepened the trenches which ran along its sides, and planted them with musketeers, so as to make the crossing of it both difficult and dangerous. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... to do with her?" she thought. "I want to befriend Candace's child, but I did not quite realize, till I saw her just now, what a disadvantage she would be at among all these girls here, with their French clothes and their worse than French ideas. She's not plain. There's a good deal of beauty about that shy little face of hers, and refinement too, if only she were not so awkward. If I ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... and healthy energy, the detachment, the relentless scorn, the warmth of feeling, that characterised Henry Fielding under all circumstances and at all times of his life. This book, as we have seen, was written under every outward disadvantage, and yet its pages ring with vigour and laughter. Here is the same militant energy that had nerved Fielding to fight the domination of a corrupt (and generally corrupting) Minister for eight lean years; and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... these painful contests of temper with his candid and high-minded daughter, was by no means so cool and able as when engaged in similar exercitations with strangers. The disadvantage against him in his broils with Lucy, arose from the fact that he had nothing in this respect to conceal from her. He felt that his natural temper and disposition were known, and that the assumption of any and every false aspect of character, must necessarily be seen through by her, and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... despised, were yet a part of myself, or, at best, part of evil disease cleaving fast unto me. I found myself envious and revengeful and conceited. I discovered that I looked down on people whom I thought less clever than myself. Once I caught myself scorning a young fellow to whose disadvantage I knew nothing, except that God had made him handsome enough for a woman. All at once one day, with a sickening conviction it came upon me—with one of those sudden slackenings of the cord of self-consciousness, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... use in cold windy weather. Their shaggy external hair entangles the drift-snow, which thaws, soaks the skin and refreezes until the mitt is stiff as buckram. This is their main disadvantage. These mitts or rather gauntlets were made longer in the arms than usual so as to overlap the burberry sleeves and keep the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... you! But it seems to me, my dear Pecksniff,' added Anthony, laying his hand upon his sleeve, 'that if you and I kept up the joke of pretending not to see this, one of us might possibly be placed in a position of disadvantage; and as I am very unwilling to be that party myself, you will excuse my taking the liberty of putting the matter beyond a doubt thus early; and having it distinctly understood, as it is now, that we do see ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... The former differences are established by nature, the latter are authorised, if they were not established, by the consent of men.[180] In the state of nature no inequalities flow from the differences among men in point of physical advantage and disadvantage, and which remain without derivative differences so long as the state of nature endures undisturbed. Nature deals with men as the law of Sparta dealt with the children of its citizens; she makes those who are well constituted strong ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... very horrible sort of pleasantry," he answered, and moved away from the dead face he had been staring at. "I beg you will not indulge in it, especially when you move in a society more refined than these mining camps can afford. It will be a disadvantage to you if you carry with you customs and memories of this unfinished section. And after all, you do not belong here, your family was of the East. When you go back there, it would be policy for you to forget that you ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... could not go up that way. Mark and Jim Finch were within reach of the top of the stair; he would be at a disadvantage, coming up to them from below. He must reach the deck before ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... disadvantage—when the conductor turns his back to the orchestra, as in theatres—of permitting only a small number of musicians to perceive the very important indication of the second beat; the body of the conductor then hiding ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... disadvantage, to be sure," said Fairfax. "So, he has no pistol. He is quite in my power," he said to himself. "It's a ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... promised to deliver them from inexorable taxation, had been by this time so unmercifully plundered and harassed by that banditti, that they were now as willing to betray Catiline to the Romans, as they had been desirous before of giving the Romans into his hands at disadvantage. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... had the effect to start me under great disadvantage to make a good night's journey, as it threw me at once off the road, and compelled me to encounter at once the tedious and laborious task of beating my way across marshy fields, and to drag through woods and thickets where ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... twining plant could graduate into a simple root-climber; for the young internodes of Bignonia Tweedyana and of Hoya carnosa revolve and twine, but likewise emit rootlets which adhere to any fitting surface, so that the loss of twining would be no great disadvantage and in some respects an advantage to these species, as they would then ascend their supports in a more ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... son's father-in-law! So with other old men—the Fabricii, the Guru and Coruncanii—when they were supporting the State by their advice and influence, they were doing nothing! To old age Appius Claudius had the additional disadvantage of being blind; yet it was he who, when the Senate was inclining towards a peace with Pyrrhus and was for making a treaty, did not hesitate to say what Ennius has embalmed in ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... see how it is with my honored friend," once more ventured Captain Douglas, "he already is maturing plans to place me at disadvantage before I have fairly secured entrance to Trevelyan Hall; but," added the speaker, with an air of playful menace, "old chap the tables may turn, as they did many ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... a creature than she whose husband is just gone, and whose crape is therefore new. There were the trailing weepers, and the widow's kerchief pinned close round her neck and somewhat tightly over her bosom. But there was that of genius about Mrs Greenow, that she had turned every seeming disadvantage to some special profit, and had so dressed herself that though she had obeyed the law to the letter, she had thrown the spirit of it to the winds. Her cap sat jauntily on her head, and showed just so much of her rich brown hair as to give her the appearance ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... water-hole was reached, the kangaroo leapt into it, and having gained the centre, turned round and watched for the approach of the dogs. Bruce—knowing old fellow—was well aware that the kangaroo would have him at a great disadvantage, and contented himself by standing at the edge and barking, as he knew the animal must in time abandon his present position and again take to flight. All the older dogs imitated Brace's example; ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... who are given to expressive silences. It takes one at a disadvantage. Silence is the only argument to which there is no answer. At the time I could not think of anything to say to him, though, since I got home, I've thought of ever so many. It is easier to think, I find, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... a fierce neigh, and the great stallion, wild with rage, launched himself upon the cougar. Agile and powerful though the great cat was, the sharp hoofs trampled him down. Taken at a disadvantage, just at the moment when his first spring had spent itself, he was no match for the protector of the herd. No bone could resist the impact of those heavy terrible hoofs. No skull was thick enough to save. The cougar squealed, ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... flanks, and more than once exchanged shots with them. General Rundle, who was in supreme command, thus knew that he could not hope to surprise the wily foe, for it was evident to the merest tyro that the Boer leader was keeping a sharp eye upon our movements, and would not be taken at a disadvantage. We expected to measure the enemy's fighting force at any hour, but it was not until about half-past ten on the morning of Friday, the 20th of April, that we were certain that he meant to measure his arms ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... It's a long time, but an Indian never forgets an injury or an insult, and I knew that he was only bidin' his time. So I always went armed, and kept a good lookout. It was only this mornin' that he caught me at a disadvantage. I'd been taking a walk, and left my gun at home. He was prowlin' round, and soon saw how things stood. He'd have killed me sure, if you hadn't come in the nick ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... war, they were at a disadvantage, for they met older nations of men with whom they fought. No longer they feared the gods and monsters, but only their own kind. So therefore the gods called ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... inconsistent with the principles of international law, yet in order to discharge her obligations of neutrality in the spirit as well as the letter, she restricted the clear legal right of her people to supply arms and ammunition to the combatants, thus construing the treaty to her own disadvantage. ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... saw—in the way women do see without seeming to use their eyes—two men conducted to a table directly in front of her. As she sat on her host's right, at the end of the table, not opposite to him, this gave her the advantage—or disadvantage—of facing the newcomers fully, while Mr. Smith, who had faced them as they entered, would have his profile ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... difficulty was the early age at which marriages took place among the aristocracy. The boys were almost always married at from eighteen to twenty; the girls, at from thirteen to fifteen. This disadvantage is to be found in all society in which marriage is arranged by the parents, because it would be next to impossible to induce young people to yield to the will of their elders in an affair in which the passions are readily aroused if they were allowed to reach the age when the ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... from one arm. He was thinking with lightning-like rapidity. Harboro had courage enough—that he could tell—but he didn't behave like a man who knew very many tricks with a gun. Nevertheless he, Fectnor, would be under a disadvantage in this test of skill which was being forced upon him. When he turned he would need just a second to get a perfect balance, to be quite sure of his footing, to get his bearings. And that one second might make all the difference ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... forced to submit to a certain amount of ill-treatment from the female portion of the band before the warriors decided upon our fate, and nerved myself to bear it as best I might, realizing that any show of weakness at such a time would work to our disadvantage later. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... ran it would look cowardly, and he knew for certain that the dog would come after him, and take him at a disadvantage; so, making a virtue of necessity, he whipped out his dirk and ran hard at the dog, who checked his pace, hesitated, stopped, barked more furiously than ever, and then turned round, and was chased by the midshipman, who drew up on finding himself face ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... a full high school course for its educational value and for maturity. Girls going into other clerical positions can qualify with a year or two less of education; but immaturity in any case puts them at a disadvantage. ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... a slight advantage in favor of the color which was exposed the longer time, namely, 29.15 seconds, as against 27.75 seconds. It is not easy to believe that the advantage of sole occupancy of the visual field for five seconds, without any offsetting disadvantage in the next five seconds, should have so slight an effect on the course of ideation. And it is not improbable that there was an offsetting disadvantage. In the presence of color the subject can scarcely remain ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... able to understand her sorrows; and the grave Puritan displeasure with which Milton regards the mother seems to have been transferred to the children. His austerity as a Puritan and a pedagogue, and the worse than old Hebrew meanness of his estimate of women, appear to the greatest disadvantage in connection with his daughters. Had they been sons, he would have thrown all his ardor into the enterprise of their education. The training of boys was one of his enthusiasms; but his daughters were taught nothing ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... that they had arrived too late to help Will o' th' Green by way of warning. The outlaw's foes were upon him, and seemingly had the robber and his band at a disadvantage. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Miko had made still another move. The brigand rays, fired from the depth of the valley, could strike our front building, but could not reach all our ledge. And from the ship's newer and nearer position this disadvantage to us was intensified. Then abruptly we realized that under cover of darkness bombs, an electronic projector and searchray had been carried to the top of the crater rim, diagonally across and only half a mile from us. Their beams shot down, raking all our ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... my old friend, sadly, "I see, sir, that you have us all at a disadvantage on that question. My daughters have been neglected in that branch of education, and with my sixty years of experience, I must also admit that I am incompetent to aid either you or my daughters in the selection ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... age. I don't know whether I ought not to apprehend a great deal of danger from avowing a design like that: It may be a task indeed worthy of the greatest genius, which this or any other time has produc'd; but therefore I ought not to stand the shock of a parallel lest it should be seen, to my disadvantage, how far the Hero has transcended the poet's thoughts"—and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... for you when I raised that storm of public opinion and public indignation. I would not have you take satisfaction in the thought that I regret your escape. I do not. I rejoice in it. To deal justice by death has this disadvantage that the victim has no knowledge that justice has overtaken him. Had you died, had you been torn limb from limb that night, I should now repine in the thought of your eternal and untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... with the past labours under the disadvantage of not being able to appeal to experiment. The facts it terminates upon cannot be recovered, so that they may verify in sense the hypothesis that had inferred them. The hypothesis can be tested only by current events; it is then turned back upon ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... and some timber; but Melig, my father's manager, told me that all the large timber had been cut. So far as available value is concerned, the property is about as much of an asset as the mining stock, with the disadvantage that I have to pay ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... sense and Vasari's spirit—the one as important to the student of Italian art as is the other to the general reader. Such an attempt, however, places an English translator of the first volume at a conspicuous disadvantage. Throughout the earlier Lives Vasari seems to be feeling his way. He is not sure of himself, and his style is often awkward. The more faithful the attempted rendering, the more plainly must that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Even at Maitland camp, where I drew my first mount, no such attempt was made, the consequence being that I, scaling about 13-st. or more with my kit on, and heaven only knows what with my loaded saddle, drew when my turn came a weak little mare, which I had to stick to, to our mutual disadvantage, while lighter men drew bigger and stronger horses. Only a few days ago I received amongst my mails a letter from my sister, who inquired, "How is your horse?" Which one? "Stumbles" is not, "Ponto" is not, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... uncomfortable to be true!" Edward Boyne had continued to exult as the avowal of each disadvantage was successively wrung from her; but he had cut short his rhapsody to ask, with a sudden relapse to distrust: "And the ghost? You've been concealing from us the fact ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... approval is not easily obtained, because the officials are crowded with business and a certain amount of red tape must be encountered. Experience has proved that the inventor is not the proper person to secure government endorsement; he labors under a natural disadvantage. Neither is Mr. Colton, as the prospective manufacturer, free from suspicion of selfish interest. Therefore it seemed best to have the matter taken up with the proper authorities and experts by someone not financially ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... and repacked the space with Christians drawn from America, England, and the Colonies, dressed in the hats and habits of now, and of twenty and forty and fifty years ago. It would have been a hideous exhibition, a thoroughly devilish spectacle. Then there would have been the added disadvantage of the white complexion. It is not an unbearably unpleasant complexion when it keeps to itself, but when it comes into competition with masses of brown and black the fact is betrayed that it is endurable only because we are used ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... eloquence. It is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you take him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against the law, clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt. Thank God that, in England, things are not ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mind to depart, he went and cast himself upon his knees before Dorothea and said: "I cannot but think, high and worthy lady, that our abode in this castle is nothing profitable, and may turn out to our disadvantage. For who knows but that your enemy the giant hath learned by spies or other secret means how I intend to come and destroy him, and he may by now have fortified himself in some impregnable castle or fortress, against the strength of which even ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... who does not see that, if the Pagans really were enabled by their religion to master their movements of personal anger and hatred, the inevitable inference will be to the disadvantage of Christianity. It would be a clear case. Christianity and Paganism have been separately tried as means of self-control; Christianity has flagrantly failed; Paganism succeeded universally; not having been found unequal to the task in ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Beatty tells how, before this time, the disadvantage of the Union Jack marking on the planes was becoming evident. The officer in command of an aviation camp at Paris had pointed out to him that, at a height, only the red cross of the Union Jack was clearly ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... theologians intended to teach through the Adapa legend was, that it was not good for man to 'live forever.' Ea himself prevents it. That is the point of the story. Anu and the other gods are satisfied, but Ea does not desire it, and Ea's decision cannot be to the disadvantage of mankind, so dearly beloved by him. With this conclusion humanity must be content—and be resigned to ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... the chase some leagues beyond Pastos; when, finding himself carried farther than he desired into the territories of Benalcazar, and not caring to encounter this formidable captain at disadvantage, he came to a halt, and, notwithstanding his magnificent vaunt about the North Sea, ordered a retreat, and made a rapid countermarch on Quito. Here he found occupation in repairing the wasted spirits of his troops, and in strengthening himself with fresh reinforcements, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Boussingault, after much research comes to the conclusion that a proper quantity is twenty centimetres [eight inches] applied twenty-five or thirty times, which corresponds with the estimate just stated. Puvis adds—and, as our author thinks, with reason—that this amount might be doubled without disadvantage.—Ibidem, ii., p. 248, 249. In some parts of France this quantity is immensely exceeded, and it is very important to observe, with reference to the employment of irrigation in our Northern States, that water is most freely supplied ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... source of inequality as between trade and trade. Its fundamental effect is to transfer capital and labour from the objects on which they can be most profitably employed in a given locality, to objects on which they are less profitably employed, by endowing certain industries to the disadvantage of the general consumer. Here, again, the Liberal movement is at once an attack on an obstruction and on an inequality. In most countries the attack has succeeded in breaking down local tariffs and establishing relatively large Free ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... Clapham. It is not very clear how far this education extended:[1] I should infer that it was just about enough, and not more than enough, to enable Hood to shift for himself in the career of authorship, without serious disadvantage from inadequate early training, and also without much aid thence derived—without, at any rate, any such rousing and refining of the literary sense as would warrant us in attributing to educational influences either the inclination to become an author, or the manipulative ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... at an immense disadvantage. His clumsy movements availed but little against the fierce agility of the red vole. Time after time he snapped at her and missed; for, even as he aimed, she could swing her lithe body round and leap upon him from behind. Nor, when they grappled, could he retain his hold ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... clouded his spirits. Long before Jerry had come to accept with cheerful philosophy the disapproval of his neighbors. They understood crops and dairying. He understood birds and trees, and, in his own opinion, he was at no disadvantage in the comparison, but rather the opposite. He regarded their knowledge as humdrum, and it did not disturb him that they looked on ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... express stipulation that no subsidy should ever be granted by the province without the consent of Ghent. This charter would have been conclusive in the present emergency, had it not labored under the disadvantage of never having existed. It was supposed by many that the magistrates, some of whom were favorable to government, had hidden the document. Lieven Pyl, an ex-senator, was supposed to be privy to its concealment. He was also, with more justice, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I've been very thoughtless." She caught up her riding-skirt and started down the path with Amber trudging contently beside her. "However," she considered demurely, "I'm not at all sorry, really; it's quite an experience to have a notability at a disadvantage, even if only for ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... seems to have confused truth of art with truth of fact. He preferred a Biblical subject because it was his belief that every statement in the Bible was literally true. This belief, except from the emotional fervour it inspired in him, was a positive disadvantage to him as a poet. It circumscribed his freedom of invention, it compelled him to argue that the action of his drama as he found it was already reasonable and probable instead of letting his imagination work upon it and make it so; it made him aim too often at producing belief instead ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... but that he himself should ever continue to enjoy the favorable opinion of his sovereign. As an earnest of the royal favor, which was some day to exhibit itself more openly, he was appointed to an office of no great consequence, and which had also the disadvantage attached to it of a residence in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... doctrine which upon comparison should be found supported by the most solid arguments [b]. If this story be true, it is probable that he meant only to amuse himself by turning both into ridicule: but we must be cautious of admitting every thing related by the monkish historians to the disadvantage of this prince: he had the misfortune to be engaged in quarrels with the ecclesiastics, particularly with Anselm, commonly called St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury; and it is no wonder his memory should be blackened by the historians of that order. [FN [y] G. Newbr. p. 358. W. Gemet. p. 292. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... drawn up with the usual polemic ability of Milton; but by its very plan and purpose it threw upon him difficulties which no ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics being all determined by the "Eikon," Milton, for the first time, wore an air of constraint and servility, following ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... I will not go into the details of the battle, but merely say that the British were finally repulsed, Greene being so advantageously posted by that time that he was anxious for an engagement, but Knyphausen, perceiving his own disadvantage, retreated, setting fire to the village of Connecticut Farms (now called Union) ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... this charming prospect in any other part of the country; its beauties struck me even at this season of the year, when nature having partly assumed her hybernal dress, everything appeared to so much greater disadvantage. ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... ears of India than the wrath of Achilles, or the voyages of Ulysses. We are told that Asvaghosha took a choir of musicians with him, and many were converted to Buddhism through the combined persuasiveness of poetry and preaching. The present life of Buddha, although it labors under the disadvantage of transfusion from Sanscrit into Chinese, and from Chinese into English, is by no means destitute of poetic color and aroma. When, for instance, we read of the grief-stricken Yasodhara that "her breath failed her, and sinking thus she fell upon the dusty ground," we come upon a stately ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... unexpectedly by this fellow, with whom I have a regular engagement to fight. There is to be a time fixed for the combat, for which I feel myself nearly ready, but I have no doubt that my enemy will be very glad to take me at a disadvantage if I ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... kindness of engine-driving friends now far away, there was a difficulty in looking out ahead: the current of air was so tremendous, and particles of dust were driven so viciously into one's eyes. But advancing civilization has removed that disadvantage. A snug shelter is now provided for the driver: an iron partition arises before him, with two panes of glass through which to look out. The result is that he can maintain a far more effectual look-out; and that he is in great measure protected ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... you saw her, my wife, my wife that I love'—his voice, and eye, and hand, grew steadier and firmer as he repeated these words: evidently in pursuance of a steadfast purpose—'as you saw her at this disadvantage, it is right and just that you should also see with my eyes, and look into my breast, and know what my mind is, upon the subject. For it's settled,' said the Carrier, regarding him attentively. 'And nothing ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... of degeneration. While they may be specialized to an extreme degree in one direction they are usually found to have some of the parts or organs, which in closely related forms are well developed, atrophied or entirely wanting. As a rule this is a distinct advantage rather than a disadvantage to the parasite, for those parts or organs that are lost would be useless or even in the way in its ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... but subsequently obtained the information that the girl had fallen in love with him and broken off with her betrothed, the defendant Morris. Now, I ask the Court if it is surprising that a girl should do that? One has only to compare the two men—even though you now see my client at a disadvantage—to perceive how natural, how much a matter of common sense and how inevitable it was that she should do so. Now, this commonplace matter was the cause of ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... to lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house dry. A dancing-party was the alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery. Shepherdess Fennel fell back upon the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with short periods of talk ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... plantation should have always shade and irrigation; the branches of the plant should be cleared of the lichens that form on them; the worms destroyed; and no large herbs or shrubs and mosses permitted to grow near, since the least disadvantage resulting therefrom would be the loss of all the fruit that should fall into these thickets. But it is most essential to deepen the trenches which carry off the water, in proportion as the plant increases in size, and ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... your contemporaries have gained an advance upon you, while you have not time left to overtake them? Does it ever happen that, from neglecting some particular element of learning in its proper season, and other things claiming your attention afterwards, you go on with a disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot? Does it, in short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is become impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open to him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who have turned the particular ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... to do this in the hope of pulling down ruin on the heads of all? This seems probable to me, and to me is far more monstrous than if they had, in sudden anger, cut his ears, or even cut his throat; and if these young bloods could so treat a stranger there, standing at such a manifest disadvantage, what would they not be capable of when they are, for the first time, clothed with a little brief authority, away out on the savage edge ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... far as acting is concerned, often—very often—fall into an error and censure acting which does not move them yet impresses the audience, forgetting that it is the advantage and disadvantage of the actor that he need only affect, and must affect, those before him, and that to move only a minority of a normal audience is to act badly. One may write but cannot act for posterity, and therefore ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... which she lived; and looked as malevolent as Canidia, Erichtho, or any other classical witch; and as to the inhabitants of Orange, though the revolutionary anecdotes which we have heard of them at Grignan might create some prejudice to their disadvantage, I think, in truth, that I never beheld a more squalid, uncivilized, ferocious-looking people. A grin of savage curiosity, or a cannibal scowl, seems almost universally to disfigure features which are none of the best or cleanest; ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... came to an immediate end. Miss Leonora sat rather grimly looking on at all this byplay. When her elegant nephew threw himself back once more upon his sofa, she glanced from him to his brother with a comparison which perhaps was not so much to the disadvantage of the Perpetual Curate. But even Miss Leonora, though so sensible, had her weaknesses; and she was very evangelical, and could put up with a great deal from the sinner who had placed himself for conversion in ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... but there would be one disadvantage; the shoes would lose their shape as soon as they were wet; and the sole and upper leather must be nearly ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... prize, and there being a nice little easterly breeze blowing, the order was given for all three craft to weigh and proceed down the creek; the captain being rather anxious lest the slavers should return and take us at a disadvantage now that our force was divided. Nothing untoward occurred, however, and in a short time we were all proceeding down the creek, with the second lieutenant in his ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood |
