"Disproportionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been selected for his trust on account of his pre-eminent goodness, which, as seems to be invariably the case, was associated with an absence of personal beauty trenching upon the scarecrow. Possibly an excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may help account for the otherwise rather curious coincidence of frightful ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... exist only by inciting men who may or may not have been wronged to undertake suits for negligence. As a matter of fact a suit for negligence is generally an inadequate remedy for the person injured, while it often causes altogether disproportionate annoyance to the employer. The law should be made such that the payment for accidents by the employer would be automatic instead of being a matter for lawsuits. Workmen should receive certain and definite ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... been harped on by the slaveholders, and by their advocates in the free states. The impression of constitutional favor to the slaveholders would, of itself, naturally create for them an undue and disproportionate influence in the control of the government; but when to this is added the arrogance that the possession of irresponsible power almost invariably engenders in its possessors—their overreaching ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... interested in the success of experiments of this kind, in which the grand desideratum has always been to produce POSITIVE PROOF OF HAVING REACHED BOTTOM by bringing up a portion of its substance, hitherto unattempted on account of the great length of time required for the experiment, and the disproportionate strength of the line to the enormous weight employed, should any sudden jerk ensue from the heave of the sea. Captain Stanley had at length succeeded in contriving a very ingenious apparatus by which, upon striking soundings, the eight ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... induction, and then, differently, instinct, none of which were right: it had to be led up and introduced to each aspect of the monster, enabled to walk all round it, whether for the consequent exaggerated ecstasy or for the still more as appeared to this critic disproportionate shock. It might, the monster, Kate conceded, loom large for those born amid forms less developed and therefore no doubt less amusing; it might on some sides be a strange and dreadful monster, calculated to devour the unwary, to abase the proud, to scandalize the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... public service was suffering. France was in fact governed by what in modern times is called "a ring." The members of such an organization pretend to serve the sovereign, or the public, and in some measure actually do so; but their rewards are determined by intrigue and favor, and are entirely disproportionate to their services. They generally prefer jobbery to direct stealing, and will spend a million of the state's money in a needless undertaking, in order to divert a few thousands into their ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... are striking faults in Mr. Marsh's work, they seem to be these: want of continuity in treatment, and disproportionate development of some subjects in contrast with others. The book is, in fact, too large for a popular treatise, and not large enough for a scientific exposition of all it essays to discuss. It claims to be a popular work; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 17th August, the two fleets, so vastly disproportionate in number, size, equipment, and military force—eighteen galleons and galleys, with four or five thousand fighting men, against eleven small vessels and twelve or fourteen hundred sailors—met in that narrow sea. The action lasted all day. It was neither ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... study of the natural sciences? Should the study of Greek and Latin be considered of greater importance in respect to culture and utility than the study of French and German? Does the study of Greek occupy a disproportionate place in the ordinary college course? Should Greek be considered as essential to a liberal education? or, Should Greek be elective in a college course? Matson, p. ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... the name of law, thus far recited, were still further aggravated in a majority of the rebellious States by the exaction of taxes from the colored man to an amount altogether disproportionate to their property. Indeed, of property they had none. Just emerging from a condition of slavery in which their labor had been constantly exacted without fee or reward of any kind, it was impossible that they could be the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... part of the war that some companies or regiments made much slower progress in training than others; and a whole Division was delayed for months because of the backwardness of a single regiment. When the psychological tests were introduced, these slow-learning units were found to contain a disproportionate number of men of low intelligence. From that time on, it was possible by aid of the tests to equalize the intelligence of different units when first formed, and thus insure equal {4} progress in training. This was a good ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... I explained at the beginning of this chapter, an unreasonable value is set upon other people's opinion, and one quite disproportionate to its real worth. Hobbes has some strong remarks on this subject; and no doubt he is quite right. Mental pleasure, he writes, and ecstacy of any kind, arise when, on comparing ourselves with others, we come to the conclusion that we may think well of ourselves. So we ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... expression, is an eternity in eternity. However holy, the life of a soul had its beginning and its end, and, consequently, no sins and no good actions can be punished or rewarded in the eternity of Parabrahm. This would be contrary to justice, disproportionate, to use an expression of Vedanta philosophy. Spirit alone lives in eternity, and has neither beginning nor end, neither limits nor central point. The Deva lives in Parabrahm, as a drop lives in the ocean, till the next regeneration of the universe from Pralaya; ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... lumbermen and manufacturers of explosives. Though we may have confidence in the rectitude of our fellows, we have no right to ignore the limitations and weaknesses of mankind. It would not outrage the principles of justice if one who placed needless and disproportionate strain upon the morals of another were himself regarded as an accessory to ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... was in these words a flavor of that sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... old saw to the effect that youth must be served, and young Matt desired a helping totally disproportionate to his years, if not to his experience; hence he elected to ignore the fact that shipmasters are wary of chief mates until they have first tried them out as second mates and learned their strength and their weaknesses. Being very human, Matt thought he should prove the ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... capital. Now, if the supply of these things was always unlimited, as is the air we need to breathe, it would not be necessary to see that each one had his share, but the supply of wealth being, in fact, at any one time limited, it follows that if some have a disproportionate share, the rest will not have enough and may be left with nothing, as was indeed the case of millions all over the world until the great Revolution established economic equality. If, then, the first right of the citizen is protection to life and the first duty of society ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the tyranny of the Lexicon and the Dictionary, had got the schoolboys of England in their grasp, and the boy "was suffocated with the nonsense of grammarians, overwhelmed with every species of difficulty disproportionate to his age, and driven by despair to pegtop or marbles"; while the British Parent stood and spoke thus ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... now old enough to understand how disproportionate a stay she had already made with her father; and also old enough to enter a little into the ambiguity attending this excess, which oppressed her particularly whenever the question had been touched upon in talk with her governess. "Oh you needn't ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Monkhouse's. Our party consisted of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Moore, and Rogers. Five poets of very unequal worth and most disproportionate popularity, whom the public probably would arrange in the very inverse order, except that it would place Moore above Rogers. During this afternoon, Coleridge alone displayed any of his peculiar talent. He talked much and well. I have not for years seen him in such excellent ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... who of course can have their pick, rarely marry good-looking men, but generally give preference to those who are homely; because that exquisiteness in which beauty originates naturally blends with that power which accompanies huge noses and disproportionate features. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... clearing the sea from pirates. With this view he fitted out eighteen ships at Cochin, with which he encountered 130 armed paraos at Cananor; and as the wind did not allow his large ships to get into action, he went against that numerous fleet with only thirteen paraos. Even with this disproportionate force he did considerable damage to the Malabar fleet. On seeing two paraos coming from Cananor to the aid of Sampayo, and that the large Portuguese ships were enabled to make sail by means of a breeze springing up, the Malabars ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... to spend the intervening time? Should I act on Davies's 'querry' and go to Bremen after Bhme? I soon dismissed that idea. It was one to act upon if others failed; for the present it meant another scramble. Bremen is six hours from Norden by rail. I should spend a disproportionate amount of my limited time in trains, and I should want a different disguise. Besides, I had already learnt something fresh about Bhme; for the seed dropped at Emden Station yesterday had come to life. A submarine engineer I knew ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of the air and the water are all baptized into joy. Even the solitary creatures that carry their narrow houses with them have their joys, which are well known to their intimate acquaintances. So in the world of adult man we find the joy of life disproportionate to condition and faculty. In the faces of the men we meet on the streets we see many scars and dark lines of storm and care; only seldom do the faces we meet there wear the rainbow. Men are without joy because they have violated ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... tone of disappointment seemed disproportionate to the occasion. He endeavored to disguise his feeling by saying, lightly: "You are breaking into exclusive circles. He lives in quite a palace, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... were not in keeping with that of her tabooed race; and in the set of the toque there was a certain air of coquetry. The features, small and regular, might have once passed for handsome; but they were now nearly eliminated by her obese condition, which produced a disproportionate rotundity of face. The eyes, moreover, had lost all loveliness, if ever they had been endowed with such an expression. Their glance, in its brightest day, could have been only animal. It was still sufficiently ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... long veil, surmounted by a diadem, hangs from the back of the head. This statue is in no respect narrow or flat, as may be seen especially from the side view given by Di Cesnola;[77] but it is short and inelegant, though not wanting in dignity; and it is disfigured by sandalled feet of a very disproportionate size, which stand out offensively in front. The figure has been viewed as a representation of the goddess Astarte or Ashtoreth;[78] but the identification can scarcely be regarded as ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Southey's poem all this cock-and-a-bull story of Joan, the publican's daughter of Neufchatel, with the lamentable episode of a wagoner, his wife, and six children. The texture will be most lamentably disproportionate. The first forty or fifty lines of these addenda are no doubt in their way admirable too; but many would ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... on the uninquiring mind and passing themselves off at an inflated value. No process is more familiar than that by which words in the course of a long life lose all their original power, and yet they will sometimes continue to exercise a disproportionate authority. Then comes the original mind, which, looking straight at the thing instead of accepting the specious title, discovers the incongruity between the pretence and the reality, and in the first shock of the disclosure annoyingly overturns our settled ideas. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and entering fully into the spirit of the scenes he describes. He has endeavored to combine healthy moral lessons with a sufficient amount of exciting interest to render the story attractive to the young; and he hopes he has not mingled these elements of a good juvenile book in disproportionate quantities. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... word too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere with the spontaneity ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... than 37 per cent of the total number of Muhammadans live in towns, though the general proportion of urban population in the Provinces is only 7 1/2 per cent. The number of Muhammadans in Government service excluding the police and army, is quite disproportionate to their small numerical strength in the Provinces, being 20 per cent of all persons employed. In the garrison they actually outnumber Hindus, while in the police they form 37 per cent of the whole ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... admired the beautiful picture before him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman's powers of attainment. He was acquainted with d'Aiglemont; and now, at the first sight of d'Aiglemont's wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon) so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her husband. And yet—the Marquise d'Aiglemont's life was above reproach, and for any observer the mystery about her was the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... bishop of Bath. Sir Thomas More, on the contrary (and here it is that I am unwillingly obliged to charge that great man with wilful falsehood) pretends that the duchess of York, his mother, endeavouring to dissuade him from so disproportionate an alliance, urged him with a pre-contract to one Elizabeth Lucy, who however, being pressed, confessed herself his concubine; but denied any marriage. Dr. Shaw too, the preacher, we are told by the same authority, pleaded from ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... and the leopard, again, make the identity of these little people more certain. The quaint little trees bear most disproportionate fruits, the acorn and pears being about the same size, but all beautifully worked in Point-lace stitches over wooden moulds. The hound and the hare, the butterfly and the grub, and the strange birds make up one of ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... seem disproportionate to you, as I am pleased to think it will not, and if it suits you to publish other pieces of my composition, I shall have the pleasure of sending you in the ...
— 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
... the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous circumstances in the world,(337) because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... for its action, in the proportion of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off, by the process of voluntary manumission or sale. This effect must result inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their disproportionate multiplication. The depreciation would be relieved and retarded at the same time by the process. The two operations would aid reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree beneficial. It was ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... least. I enjoy it excessively. Besides, the shower is just over.—What church is that, Monsieur, with the very disproportionate steeple?" inquired Miselle, pointing to a square gray box, surmounted by a ludicrously short and obtuse spire, expressive of a certain dogged obstinacy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... age are not minds which owed their intellectual superiority to a disproportionate development of certain intellectual tendencies, or to a dwarfed or inferior endowment of those natural affections and personal qualifications which tend to limit men to the sphere of their particular sensuous existence. The ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... cervicem jungere equinam[Lat]. Adj. disagreeing &c. v.; discordant, discrepant; at variance, at war; hostile, antagonistic, repugnant, incompatible, irreconcilable, inconsistent with; unconformable, exceptional &c. 83; intrusive, incongruous; disproportionate, disproportionated[obs3]; inharmonious, unharmonious[obs3]; inconsonant, unconsonant[obs3]; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, unapt, inappropriate, improper; unsuited, unsuitable; inapplicable, not to the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... organs. Another traveler, a clergyman,[2] has described the same worship in this tribe. He has observed idols in priapic attitudes, rudely carved in wood, and others made of clay. On the lower Congo the same worship is described, where both male and female figures with disproportionate genital organs are used for purposes of worship. Phallic symbols and other offerings are made to these ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... them; when, even after the light of the burning huts had made ignorance impossible, the gentle Hun, swooping low, swept with machine-gun fire the nurses and doctors who were attempting to remove the wounded. That, I think, is a memory that will linger. Another picture, queerly disproportionate in the anger it excites, is that of the fruit garden in a great country house, with its wealth of famous old peach and pear trees still in place along the walls, but every one methodically sawn through. By comparison a trifling crime, but somehow I may forget ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... the mind's nobler temper which so often results from the possession of power. Long contact with the meaner qualities of men, to whose infection place and patronage are so unhappily exposed, could not fail of forcing to a disproportionate growth any germs of that cynicism always latent in temperaments so exclusively intellectual and unmitigated by any kindly lenitive of humor. Timid by nature, the war which he had prophesied, but had not foreseen, and which invigorated bolder men, unbraced him; and while the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... disproportionate detail on the above little incident, we must be forgiven in consideration of its real importance to our Madeleine, marking, as it did, the commencement of a new era in her life. The sudden inspiration that had kindled for a moment ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... him—wished very much indeed, yet she felt it would have been difficult even if he had encouraged her. As he kept silence and walked so quickly, speech on her part was utterly forbidden. Kirkwood, however, suddenly remembered that his strides were disproportionate to the child's steps. She was an odd figure thus disguised in his over-jacket; he caught a glimpse of her face by a street lamp, and smiled, but ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... these writers, Chapman has had much uncertain and some improbable work fathered on him, his certain dramas supply one of the most interesting studies in our period. As usual with everyone except Shakespere and (it is a fair reason for the relatively disproportionate estimate of these so long held) Beaumont and Fletcher, they are extremely unequal. Not a certain work of Chapman is void of interest. The famous Eastward Ho! (one of the liveliest comedies of the period ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... reached the dirty paving. Bristol directed the light of a pocket-lamp upon the hunched-up figure which lay in the dust, and I saw it to be that of a dwarfish creature, yellow skinned and wearing only a dark loin cloth. He had a malformed and disproportionate head, a head that had been too large even for a big man. I knew after first glance that this was one of the horrible dwarfs employed by the Hashishin in their murderous business. It might even be the one who had killed ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... Burgh. It was dated from Paris, and told her of his intention to be absent from England for some time; he pleaded earnestly for pardon with a certain rough eloquence, and repeated the arguments he had previously urged, evidently thinking that his punishment was greatly disproportionate to ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... will confiscate her fleet. They will remove the treasures of her galleries and museums, and take toll of her libraries, to make compensation for her pillage and incendiarism in Belgium. The measure of punishment is always a matter of difficulty. But surely anything less than this would be wholly disproportionate to the rank offences of Germany. The reckoning, the retribution, the retaliation to be just must be most stern. The victorious Allies, who will be her judges, will not be moved by "mealymouthed philanthropies." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... made upon us by Mr. Masson's work as a whole, we are inclined rather to regret his copiousness for his own sake than for ours. The several parts, though disproportionate, are valuable, his research has been conscientious, and he has given us better means of understanding Milton's time than we possessed before. But how is it about Milton himself? Here was a chance, it seems to me, for a fine bit of portrait-painting. There is hardly a more stately figure in literary ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... but such things as are conducive to health and good condition of body, being also pleasant, these he will grasp at in moderation and as he ought to do, and also such other pleasant things as do not hinder these objects, and are not unseemly or disproportionate to his means; because he that should grasp at such would be liking such pleasures more than is proper; but the man of Perfected Self-Mastery is not of this character, but regulates his desires by the dictates of ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... which the book had excited was out of all proportion to its merits, Johnson's unqualified condemnation was more than equally disproportionate ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... affect the character or standing of Attorney-General Robinson, who was ready enough to apply much stronger epithets to his enemies. But, however that might be, there could be no sort of doubt that the punishment awarded was wholly disproportionate to the offence, more especially when the defendant's circumstances were considered. If persisted in, the sentence really involved the latter's perpetual imprisonment, for no two men of substance were ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... time I was fifteen I was as tall as the captain himself, and then my share of bruises ceased to be so disproportionate. In skill, whether with the fists or the foils, he was always vastly my superior; indeed, to this day I have never met his equal. But I had youth on my side, and sometimes the old man at the end of a particularly arduous bout would sigh, and wish he were ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... distinctly given than those orders, so that I cannot account for the panic which seized some of the natives when close to the ship. Whatever was the cause, its effect was such that many of them let go their slew-ropes, and thus cast a disproportionate share of burden on the others, whose strength, or rather weight, proving unequal to counterpoise the load, the cylinder began to turn back again. This soon brought the whole strain, or nearly the whole, on the stern of the launch, and had not the tackle been smartly let go, she ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... wind. I have said, and so will do, That to some infernal sprite I would offer with delight (And the pledge I now renew) Even my soul for her I woo. But my offer is in vain, Hell rejects it with disdain, For my soul, it may allege, Is a disproportionate pledge For ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... this presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the midnight desecrators of the stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... unfavourable rate after harvest, and since the transaction was by a regular deed the lender no longer took any share of the risk of a bad harvest, as it is probable that he was formerly accustomed to do. The rates of interest for cash loans afforded a disproportionate profit to the lender, who was put to no substantial expense in keeping money as he had formerly been in the case of grain. It is thus probable that rates for cash loans were for a considerable period unduly severe in proportion ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... render such a mass of taxation, so disproportionate to the whole wealth of the kingdom, in any degree supportable, recourse has been had, either from ignorance or design, to the most monstrous schemes in tampering with the currency, or circulating money of the country, at one time by greatly diminishing the value of the same, and at another ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... remark, that the images which most excite devotion are generally those which are most ugly and most disproportionate. The Virgin of Zaragoza, the devotion of all Spain to which touches the borders of enthusiasm, and on which statue Ferdinand VII. conferred the office of field marshal (capitan general), is very small, and has the appearance ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... of Representatives is chosen by less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely independent of the choice of the people, and of their control; his Council equally so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... remaining guests came in all together; and in another five minutes Audrey was suffering from that kind of nightmare in which some grave issue—you don't know precisely what—hangs on the adjustment of trifles, absurdly disproportionate to the event, and which disarrange themselves perversely at the dramatic moment. Everything seemed to go wrong. She had relied on Knowles and Miss Gladys Armstrong for a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks; but ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... he looked at that picture in just that way. He had known longing before it, and he had known bitterness quite as misplaced and quite as disproportionate. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... preparations into which the United States are at length driven for maintaining their violated rights have caused this augmentation of business to press on the Department of War particularly, with a weight disproportionate to the powers of any single officer, with no other aids than are authorized by existing laws. With a view to a more adequate arrangement for the essential objects of that Department, I recommend to the early consideration of Congress a provision for two subordinate ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... were distributed in Paris, and in a circle of four leagues around it, including Versailles. You will undoubtedly ask me, even allowing for our extension of territory, what can be the cause of this disproportionate increase of distrust and depravity? I will explain it as far as my abilities admit, according to the opinions of others ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the traces of the most remote antiquity and supplying from its later rules the staple of the civil institutions by which modern society is even now controlled. The necessity of taking the Roman law as a typical system has compelled the author to draw from it what may appear a disproportionate number of his illustrations; but it has not been his intention to write a treatise on Roman jurisprudence, and he has as much as possible avoided all discussions which might give that appearance to his work. The space allotted in the third and fourth chapters to certain philosophical ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... pages about inspiration, and the limitations of Christ's human knowledge, which are from the editor's own pen, as the most significant part of the book. The authors are believed to have been annoyed by the disproportionate attention paid to this short section. But in truth these pages indicated a new departure among the High Church party, a change more important than the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, which was being made smoother for the religious public by the brilliant ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... misery and external meanness were here entitled to give the key-note and that her magnificence derived no especial grandeur from contrast with all these modest accessories, amid dust, gloom, and suffering, but rather became disproportionate and hideous, like a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his already recognized financial means. It should never be so beyond his usual ability as to arouse among his neighbors the wonder, how he could afford it? When people who are known to have only a moderate income give "spreads" disproportionate to their daily mode of living, the thoughtful observer instinctively questions their taste and good sense. Usually such ostentatious display brings more or less derision on the ones who are foolish enough ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... of the injury to the nerve-cells and fibers. But under long-continued discipline, or influenced by emotion, the conscious mind may not recognize the neurosis; whereas, in the hypersuggestible, consciousness will translate it into entirely disproportionate suffering. ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... once thus knit together, the progress of cerebral complexity is traceable through a complete series of steps from the lowest Rodent, or Insectivore, to Man; and that complexity consists, chiefly, in the disproportionate development of the cerebral hemispheres and of the cerebellum, but especially of the former, in respect to the other ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... ordinarily discharges into the Mississippi is vastly disproportionate to its length, or the number and size of its tributaries. I have seen less than six feet depth of water at St. Charles at a low stage, and it was once forded by a soldier, at Bellefontaine, four miles above its junction ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... permanently succeeds. A refined taste for the best kind of music is not consequent upon the erection of an opera-house, nor is it a feeling to be created at will. Even in the metropolis of England, with a capital so disproportionate, and possessing such superior facilities for the attainment of novelty, did the continuance of this refined amusement depend solely upon the love of good music, it would quickly die, if not ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... I fear some disagreeable facts are being concealed. The reticence imposed by the Censor is deplorable. We have suffered heavy casualties in winning a sector of two miles wide by one mile long: our gains disproportionate to our losses. We ought to have shaken the German ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... is. There is something in human nature which makes anything that is lost precious by reason of its loss. Nobody can tell how large a space a tree fills until it is felled. If you lose one tiny stone out of a ring, or a bracelet, it makes a gap, and causes annoyance altogether disproportionate to the lustre that it had when it was there. A man loses a small portion of his fortune in some unlucky speculation, and the loss annoys him a great deal more than the possession solaced him, and he thinks more about the hundreds that have vanished than about the thousands that remain. Men ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... temple-court, with more or fewer stone or bronze lanterns; amainu, or heavenly dogs, in stone on stone pedestals; stone sarcophagi, roofed over or not, for holy water; a flight of steps; a portico, continued as a verandah all round the temple; a roof of tremendously disproportionate size and weight, with a peculiar curve; a square or oblong hall divided by a railing from a "chancel" with a high and low altar, and a shrine containing Buddha, or the divinity to whom the chapel is dedicated; an incense-burner, and a ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... that makes any pretensions to appearance, and that is merely a low whitewashed cottage or bungalow. Yet there is one thing in which civilization exhibits itself—officials in black and white European costume, and officers in gorgeous uniforms abound in a degree quite disproportionate to the size or appearance of ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... spitefulness and dishonesty and cruelty. There is nothing more utterly confusing to the childish mind than to have trifling faults treated with wrath and indignation. It is true that, in the world of nature, punishment seems often wholly disproportionate to offences. Nature will penalise carelessness in a disastrous fashion, and spare the cautious and prudent sinner. But there is no excuse for us, if we have any sense of justice and patience at all, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... government in that year had a visible effect upon the ecclesiastical power. Louis XIV. had declared himself to be the State, and thus acquired a personal and selfish interest in the controversy. Moreover, Talon, the skilled agent of Colbert, wishing to readjust and balance the disproportionate elements of the body politic, had written in 1670 advising the re-introduction of the Recollet priests, who arrived eight years later to counterbalance the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the intention of the above authors to claim an entire absence of the grotesque method of treatment in specimens of the Mound-Builder's art, since elsewhere they call attention to what appears to be a caricature of the human face, as well as to the disproportionate size of the heads of many of the animal carvings. Not only are the heads of many of the carvings of disproportionate size, which, in instances has the effect of actual distortion, but in not a few of the sculptures nature, instead of being copied, has been trifled with and birds and animals show ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... his disapprobation of ornamental architecture, such as magnificent columns supporting a portico, or expensive pilasters supporting merely their own capitals, 'because it consumes labour disproportionate to its utility.' For the same reason he satyrised statuary. 'Painting (said he) consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of the national Church, with its disproportionate wealth and its selfish, incompetent, and often degraded officials, could not but be a growing offence to the developing intelligence of the nation; and to quicken this feeling there were minor grievances which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... girls who did not care for dolls. In the old-fashioned story for girls there was invariably one such. In "Little Women," as we all recall, it was Jo. No doubt the persons who say that little girls no longer play with dolls count among their childish acquaintances a disproportionate number of Jos. Playing with dolls would seem to be too fundamentally little-girlish ever to ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... days and nights of toil, after his long, manly, noble struggle to show his penitence, after his heavy and disproportionate punishment, it was hard to be so addressed by one whom he respected, in the presence of all the idlest in the school, and in consequence of a purely accidental and isolated failure. Walter looked up with an appealing look in his dark blue eyes; but ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... bring them nearest to him. Sociable like him, they have undergone an evolution parallel to his which has placed them at the head of Insects in the same way as he has become superior to all other Mammals. The brain in Ants as in Man has undergone a disproportionate development. Like Man, they possess a language which enables them to combine their efforts, and there is no human industry in which these insects have not arrived at a high degree of perfection. If in certain parts of the earth human societies are superior to those of Ants, ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... absentee involved a resident middleman, who contracted to pay a stipulated rent to the absentee, and had to extract that rent, plus a profit for himself, out of the occupiers, whether Catholic serfs, Protestant tenants, or both, and usually did so by subdivision of holdings and disproportionate elevation of rents. Over three of the four Provinces of Ireland—for a small part of Ulster was differently situated—the middleman himself frequently became an absentee and farmed his agency to another ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... was an additional aggravation to the other. "What do you want me to do," he burst out with an amount of passion absurdly disproportionate to the matter at issue, "cut it open and count it over and ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... forty-two, that I, PETER VON GEIST, found myself, in the natural course of events, journeying on horse-back along the northern bank of the Ohio river, in the state of Illinois. The space between me and the house where I designed to stop, and the time between then and sun-down, were somewhat disproportionate; so I pricked gallantly forward; as gallantly at least as could be expected from a tired horse, and a knight whose recreant thoughts were intensely fixed on dollars and cents, supper, and other trifling affairs. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... it, pertesser. I done 'spress mahself in de most disproportionate language what I knows how, an' yet it seems laik some pussons cain't understand de ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... eyed the big bed curiously. All his life he had heard of it, and now he had traveled far to see it. It was a lumbering structure of great width and of strangely disproportionate length. And the coverlet and the canopy were ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... side, two tapirs, the guanaco, three deer, the vicuna, peccari, capybara (after which we must choose from the monkeys to complete the number), and then place these two groups alongside each other, it is not easy to conceive ranks more disproportionate in size. After the above facts, we are compelled to conclude, against anterior probability, [8] that among the mammalia there exists no close relation between the bulk of the species, and the quantity of the vegetation, in ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... understandings, their contemporary historians generally enter into their views less than any one else, and it is only the result that proves their wisdom and far-sight. Moreover, their temptations and their sins are on a larger scale than those of other men, and some of the actions that they perform make a disproportionate impression by the cry that they occasion—the evil is remembered, not the good that ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... pages to accept my assurance, that whatever the number and extent of the passages which I publish that are necessarily in themselves of more interest to myself personally than to the public generally, they are altogether disproportionate to the number and extent of those I withhold. I cannot, however, resist the conclusion that such picture as they afford of a man beyond the period of middle life capable of bending to a new and young friend, and of thinking with and for him, is not without an exceptional ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... their active zeal in detecting smugglers, principally arose from the association which existed in the minds of the inhabitants between the Board of Customs and an American revenue. The Declaratory Act of 1766, the Revenue Act of 1767, together with the pomp and expense of this Board, so disproportionate to the small income of the present duties, conspired to convince not only the few who were benefitted by smuggling, but the great body of enlightened freemen, that further and greater impositions of parliamentary taxes were intended. In proportion as this opinion gained ground, the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... straightforward letter and well fitted for the purpose to which Mr. Wilkins knew it would be applied—of being forwarded to the young man's father. One would have thought that it was not an engagement so disproportionate in point of station as to cause any great opposition on that score; but, unluckily, Captain Corbet, the heir and eldest son, had just formed a similar engagement with Lady Maria Brabant, the daughter of one of the proudest earls in —-shire, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... bombarded Paris since 23 March. These annoyances would have been serious; but the British public paid itself a very bad compliment when it seemed to assume that the distant bombardment of London would have an effect upon the war disproportionate to that of Paris; and the notion that an impetus which carried the Germans to Calais would transport them across the Channel was merely another illustration of the comprehensive popular ignorance of the meaning ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... very feeble powers which were found by those philosophers to belong to bismuth and antimony, when moving, of affecting the suspended magnet, and which has been confirmed by Mr. Harris, seem at first disproportionate to their conducting powers; whether it be so or not must be decided by future experiment (73.)[A]. These metals are highly crystalline, and probably conduct electricity with different degrees of facility in different directions; and it is not unlikely that ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... along the old path, my belief, I said, is that we shall find the answer. And our answer will be that, even as they are, our guardians may very likely be the happiest of men; but that our aim in founding the State was not the disproportionate happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the whole; we thought that in a State which is ordered with a view to the good of the whole we should be most likely to find justice, and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... historians are admired by those dry critics who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... used by an unscrupulous Administration to debauch political conventions and fraudulently overcome public sentiment, especially in the "rotten borough" districts—those where the party is not strong, and where the office-holders in consequence have a disproportionate influence. This was done by the Republican Administration in 1912, to the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are numbers of States and municipalities where very little has as yet been done to do away with the spoils ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the cards were out; the "society columns" of the local journals had revelled in the plans of the event; the gold and silver shower of the bridal presents was raining down. The determining cause of the catastrophe was never quite clear to the community—whether a lover's quarrel with disproportionate consequences, by reason of the marplot activities of a mercenary relative of the lady's, advocating the interests of a sudden opportunity of greater wealth and station; or her foolish revenge for a fancied slight; ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... grounds their opposition is based: should we not consider the health of society in the present and the future well-being of the race as more important than our personal distaste and intellectual dislike of interference? Even liberty must not take up a disproportionate amount of space in our view. My own belief in the efficacy of making right doing as simple as is possible by lessening temptation, is based on what life has taught me, that the fundamental character of people is not greatly ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... I was not like any of them. But I could not endure their taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble readiness with which they gave in to one another. I hated them from the first, and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and disproportionate pride. Their coarseness revolted me. They laughed cynically at my face, at my clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces they had themselves. In our school the boys' faces seemed in a special way to degenerate and grow stupider. ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... moulded jamb next the door. The arch itself is terribly decayed, but one of its orders still has the remains of a series of large cusps, arranged like the horseshoe cusps at Santarem but much larger. Above the door gable is a circular window of almost disproportionate size. It has twelve trefoil-headed lights radiating from a small circle, and curiously crossing a larger circle some distance from the smaller. Unfortunately the spaces between the trefoils and the outer mouldings have been filled up with plaster and the lights themselves ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... flowing muslin, with the narrowest sash in the room, and no ornament but a necklace of large pearls and her own vivid beauty. She had altered her mind about coming, with apologies for her vacillating disposition so penitent and disproportionate that her indulgent and unsuspecting mother was really quite amused. Alfred was not so happy as to know that she had changed her mind with his note. Perhaps even this knowledge could have added little to that exquisite moment, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... very distinct Account; and far from accurate in the details,—which are left without effectual correction even in the best Editions).]—and that it is impossible to force this place, without a loss of life disproportionate even to its importance at present. Not to say that the Saxons will make terms all the easier, BEFORE bloodshed rise between us;—and furthermore that Hunger (for we hear they have provision only for two weeks) may itself soon do it. "Wedge them in, therefore; block ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... the party's progress were affected by Mrs. Westmore's appearance, even Amherst, for all his sympathy with their views, could not detect. They knew that she was the new owner, that a disproportionate amount of the result of their toil would in future pass through her hands, spread carpets for her steps, and hang a setting of beauty about her eyes; but the knowledge seemed to produce no special interest in her ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... population, the number of voters in them was too considerable to be justly denied their due representation.[5] The apportionment of delegates was based upon this defective registration and census, and this alone would have given the pro-slavery party a disproportionate power in the convention. But at the election of delegates on the 15th of June, the free-State men, following their deliberate purpose and hitherto unvarying practice of non-conformity to the bogus laws, abstained entirely from voting. "The consequence was that out ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... our being; for the superpositions of destinies that we find in the hive are surveyed by us from an eminence loftier than any we can attain for the contemplation of the destinies of man. There we see before us, in miniature, the large and simple lines that in our own disproportionate sphere we never have the occasion to disentangle and follow to the end. Spirit and matter are there, the race and the individual, evolution and permanence, life and death, the past and the future; all gathered together in a ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the instalments paid. Three years is the number within which the whole amount of the purchase money is to be paid. The sales of town lots, water lots, and park lots, in Upper Canada, are not included in this table, on account of the disproportionate effect which the comparatively large sums paid for these small lots would have on the average price per acre. They are given, therefore, separately, in ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... traced. The moment we extend our observations beyond our cattle and fowls, and enter upon a wider field of investigation, we are met by the most startling facts. Not the least baffling of these are the disproportionate numbers of males and females in certain kinds of animals, their unequal development, as well as the extraordinary difference between the sexes among certain species, so that they seem as distinct from each ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Either we are tempted to neglect an object, and so to give it too little influence over us; or else we are tempted to be carried away by an object, and to give it an excessive and disproportionate place in our life. Hence the resulting vices fall into two classes. Vices resulting from the former sort of temptation are vices of defect. Vices resulting from the latter form of temptation are vices of excess. As ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... therefore, that speed,-the ability to move rapidly from place to place,—a disproportionate reward of physical over intellectual science, an intense desire to be rich, which is strong enough to compel even education to grind in the mill of the Philistines, and an inordinate elevation in public consideration ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... metaphor, we may find out, on examination, that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the greater, of course, the probability that a small change will disconcert him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have to wait for certain ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... and we may add that it is applicable as a criticism to some of his earlier descriptive pieces, where the intense personal feeling is somewhat too intense and disproportionate; so that a reader gifted with less keenness of sensibility is disconcerted by insistence on effusive moods with which he cannot be expected to be in full sympathy. Mr. Swinburne might reply that for such dullards he does not write; ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... nature, the Member States shall finance and implement the environment policy. 5. Without prejudice to the principle that the polluter should pay, if a measure based on the provisions of paragraph 1 involves costs deemed disproportionate for the public authorities of a Member State, the Council shall, in the act adopting that measure, lay down appropriate provisions in the form of: - temporary derogations and/or - financial support from the Cohesion Fund to be set up no later than 31 December 1993 pursuant ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... by exclaiming, how hard it is to be (practically) a Christian; and how disproportionate to our endeavour is our success in becoming so. The sceptic replies that to his mind the only difficulty is belief. "Let the least of God's commands be proved authentic: and only an idiot would shrink from martyrdom ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... zeal did not end here. He convinced the Governor that the taxes exacted from the Jews were not only excessive, but disproportionate, and, as a result, they were lowered to a level with those paid ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... said, "The curse of this country is eloquent men." And one cannot wonder at the uneasiness sometimes manifested by trained statesmen, with large experience of public affairs, when they observe the disproportionate advantage suddenly given to oratory over the most solid and accumulated public service. In a Senate or other business committee, the solid result depends on a few men with working talent. They know how to deal with the facts before them, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... ability is requisite to make you a good physician, but by no means that disproportionate development of some special faculty which goes by the name of genius. A just balance of the mental powers is a great deal more likely to be useful than any single talent, even were it the power of observation; in excess. For a ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... whom the college has set apart certain means of assistance. From this body have come some of the most distinguished men whom Saint Werner's has ever produced; and many of the Fellows, (indeed quite a disproportionate number), began their college career in this manner. Now tell me—should you care the snap of a finger for the opinion or the acquaintance of a man who could be such an ineffable fool as to drop intercourse with you because you are merely less rich than ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... incident of the Deluge, which has been merely mentioned above, not to interrupt the narrative by its disproportionate length, (the eleventh tablet being the best preserved of all), is too important not to be ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... 1835 and 1836, whilst in the preceding year the sales amounted to only four and a half millions; the creation of debts, to an almost countless amount, for real estate in existing or anticipated cities and villages, equally unproductive, and at prices now seen to have been greatly disproportionate to their real value; the expenditure of immense sums in improvements which in many cases have been found to be ruinously improvident; the diversion to other pursuits of much of the labor that should have been applied to agriculture, thereby contributing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... peace; but though great policy was used on both sides, they broke off without coming to any terms. This was done by the nabob to my great mortification, for he and all the country despaired of my being able to resist such disproportionate force, and he was therefore willing before hand to conciliate the viceroy by presents; considering, if I were once overthrown, his own turn would come next, either to endure a severe assault, or to make such ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... take wrong steps in life, they may be unsuccessful, their stupidity may lead them to the poorhouse, their recklessness may lead them to the penitentiary. And yet we do not speak of them as patients because their disproportionate mental features may be sufficiently corrected by other mental states which are perhaps ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... to the Ameto an altogether disproportionate amount of the space at my disposai I must before passing on attempt to give some notion of the kind of narrative contained in the romance, all the more so as it is little known except to students. With this object ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... of the sight of them already. When he came across his wife or children, he began grumbling crossly. It seemed to him, for some reason that day, that his children's manners were revolting, that his wife did not know how to look after the servants, that their expenditure was quite disproportionate to their income. All this meant that "the ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... meanwhile that the mathematics are already well represented in our courses of instruction, then much of Mr. Spencer's eloquent appeal is simply wasted by misdirection. All that he had really to claim is, that a disproportionate time is now surrendered to the studies of the symbols, as such, and too often to characteristics of them not yet brought in any way into scientific cooerdination, nor of a kind having practical or peculiarly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... experience. Under (1) the overpressure on medical skill and time is bound to diminish tact and sympathy. Under (2) the serious or interesting cases are apt—as everyone who has mixed with hospital staffs knows very well—to receive attention not disproportionate to the nature of the malady, but disproportionate to the bodily, and particularly to the mental, suffering. The poor man can appreciate sympathy better than skill. He may not know how ill he is, but he knows how much he suffers. He is quick to detect and to resent preferential treatment. From the ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... has discovered the use for the remarkable and, indeed, what appears disproportionate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... failings are just those which are least to be commended to the emulation of youth. It is, for instance, constitutionally timid. Violent action of any kind will stampede it in a panic, and, like the Countess in Evan Harrington, it "does not ruffle well." It betrays (I think) ill-breeding in its disproportionate terror whenever an anarchist bomb explodes, and in the ferocity of its terror it can be crueller than the assailant. "My good people," it provokes one to say, "by all means stamp out these dangers, but composedly, as becomes men conscious of their strength. Even ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Bussy's life has given his career an interest disproportionate to his historical importance. But the drama of La Coutanciere was only the final episode in a career crowded with romantic incidents. The annalists and memoir-writers of the period prove that Bussy's exploits as a duellist and a gallant had impressed vividly the ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... corrupt, the phallus cult is no longer met with. In the forests between Manyanga and Stanley Pool it is not rare to come upon a little rustic temple, made of palm fronds and poles, within which male and female figures, nearly or quite life size, may be seen, with disproportionate genital organs, the figures being intended to represent the male and female principle. Around these carved and painted statues are many offerings, plates, knives, and cloth, and frequently also the phallic symbol may be seen dangling from ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... something of the former? The luxurious mist in which he had been living, dispersed before his sister's bitter words, and, as she designed he should, he felt himself her accomplice. But, again, reason struggled to enlighten him; for surely he would never have done a thing so disproportionate to the end to be gamed! It was the unconnected action of his brain that thus advised him. No thoroughly-fashioned, clear-spirited man conceives wickedness impossible to him: but wickedness so largely mixed with folly, the best of us may reject as not among our temptations. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... oppressed with many misgivings at having to hand over three hostage umbrellas—one being masculine and two feminine gender—and receiving nothing in exchange but a wooden medallion of no intrinsic worth, bearing the utterly disproportionate number of over one thousand! Next, after, at Miss JESSIMINA'S bidding, having purchased a sixpenny index, we ascended the staircase, and on shelling out three shillings cash payment, were consecutively squeezed through a restricted wicket as if needles ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the enemy, not only satisfied me that Loring's forces had been greatly exaggerated, but led me to estimate them at a lower figure than the true one. In reporting to General Wright on 1st November, I gave the opinion that they amounted to about 3500 infantry, but with a disproportionate amount of artillery, some twenty pieces. The cavalry under Jenkins numbered probably 1000 or 1500 horse. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 531.] About the first of October Loring, in a dispatch to Richmond, stated his force at "only a little more ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... druggists; 1 bishop; 1 curate; 1 Protestant minister; and 10 others of sundry occupations. The difference in composition between this republican Assembly and our own Congresses is in some respects remarkable; for, independently of the very large and indeed altogether disproportionate representation of the nobility or titled classes, we observe a very great preponderance of rich land-owners, representing in their own persons the agricultural and vine-growing interests. Very singular, also, is the small proportion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... lived in the minister's house, bearing a large, if not a disproportionate, share of the expenses. When they returned to England in 1800, Hamilton was L2,000 in his debt. The intimacy and the manner of life, in the midst of the Neapolitan court, whose corruptness of manners both Nelson and Troubridge openly condemned, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... she—Honoria—of course, set forth likewise. And yet, in good truth, the whole affair rubbed her not a little the wrong way! She recognised in it a particularly flagrant example of masculine aggression. Some persons, as she reflected, are permitted an amount of elbow room altogether disproportionate to their deserts. Be sufficiently selfish, sufficiently odious, and everybody becomes your humble servant, hat in hand! That is unfair. It is, indeed, quite extensively exasperating to the dispassionate onlooker. And, in Miss St. Quentin's case, exasperation was by no means lessened ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... striking peculiarity in his life. If it were not so, I should have seriously transgressed in keeping the reader's attention so long upon a point which, aside from such peculiarity, would yield no sufficient, at least no proportionate value. But, in the treatment of any life, that cannot seem disproportionate which enters into it as an element only and just in that ratio of prominence with which it enters into the life itself, No stream can rise above the level of its source. No life, which lacks a prominent interest as to its beginnings, can ever, in its entire ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Nobility.—The disproportionate increase of the wealth of the landowners threw into their hands a disproportionate amount of power. The great landowner especially was able to gather bands of retainers and to spread terror around him. The evil of liveries and ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... according to his needs"—these great economists discover that they have forgotten something, the needs of the producers, which they now admit. Only it is for the State to estimate them, for the State to verify if the needs are not disproportionate to ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... a stage villain at all if you can help it. The life is too harassing and the remuneration altogether disproportionate to the ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... sunlight took its deepest gold the tea-tray was brought in. Hester had left the room a short time before the footman appeared with it, carrying it with the air of disproportionate solemnity with which certain male domestics are able to surround the smallest service. The tea had been frequently served in Hester's boudoir of late. During the last week, however, Lady Walderhurst's share of the meal had been a ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... governor's veto, and, through its powers of confirmation and appointment, it may measurably control the executive department and the judicial. Moreover, apart from these defects in the constitution, certain economic changes have resulted in a disproportionate representation in the House of Representatives. The Joint-Stock Act of 1837 gave birth to great corporations, and with railroads soon developed the formation of large manufacturing plants. As a result, there ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... adoption of the constitution, the General Government had been administered but four years by a northern President. It was insisted with much force that the southern portion of the Republic had thus far exerted a disproportionate influence in the executive department of the nation. While the north, although far the most populous, and contributing much the largest portion of the means for defraying the national expenditures, would not claim to monopolize an undue degree of power in controlling ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... it has been already enfeebled by continual association with cases of an unimpassioned order. But a character of deeper passion has a perpetual standard in itself, by which as by an instinct it tries all cases, and rejects the language of passion as disproportionate and ludicrous where it is not fully justified. 'Ah Heavens!' or 'Oh my God!' are exclamations with us so exclusively reserved for cases of profound interest,—that on hearing a woman even (i.e. a person of the sex most easily excited) utter such words, we look round expecting ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... I beheld my son - Augustus George - in Mrs. Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee, being dressed. He was at the moment, comparatively speaking, in a state of nature; having nothing on, but an extremely short shirt, remarkably disproportionate to the length of his usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. Prodgit's lap, on the floor, was a long narrow roller or bandage - I should say of several yards in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit tightly roll the body of my unoffending infant, turning him over ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling more the chaos of some primary elementary upheaval than the work of man; while, halfway down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their shallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below. Here and there the ruins of some ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... intended to precipitate a European war to determine the hegemony of Europe is not satisfactorily established, although their whole course of conduct suggests this as a possibility. They made war almost inevitable by (a) issuing an ultimatum that was grossly unreasonable and disproportionate to any grievance that Austria may have had, and (b) in giving to Servia and Europe insufficient time to consider the rights and obligations ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... is a charming creature; with her you can be happy for the rest of your life; your health is so sound that the difference in your ages won't seem disproportionate. But, all the same, you mustn't think it an easy thing to change a dreadful fate to a pleasant one. To turn a woman who loves you into a friend and confidant is as perilous a business as crossing a river under fire ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... should reflect that my eyes will presently decay, or (if such is your good pleasure) be consumed with fire; after which I shall have no occasion to notice either light or darkness. However, let that pass. But all this lamentation, now; this fluting and beating of breasts; these wholly disproportionate wailings: how am I the better for it all? And what do I want with a garlanded column over my grave? And what good do you suppose you are going to do by pouring wine on it? do you expect it to filter through all the way to Hades? ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... never at his best in doing any unless his own personal interests, his likings and hatreds, his sufferings and enjoyments, are concerned. He was a kind of actor-manager in his Comedie Humaine; and perhaps, like other actor-managers, he took rather disproportionate care of the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... her, but the majority accepted her return with local pride as a practical compliment to the educational facilities of Indian Spring. The Tuolumne "Star," with a breadth and eloquence touchingly disproportionate to its actual size and quality of type and paper, referred to the possible "growth of a grove of Academus at Indian Spring, under whose cloistered boughs future sages and statesmen were now meditating," ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... with our notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he has, in fact, done himself. Moreover, just punishment bears a proportion to the offence, while suffering which is infinite is ipso facto disproportionate to any ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the disappointment may be attributed, it was certainly not due to any lack of pains on the part of Don Jorge. The labour which he bestowed upon his Life was immense, quite disproportionate to his previous efforts. "The Gypsies in Spain," for instance, was built up upon already existing jottings, extracts, and notes, very loosely thrown together; while "The Bible in Spain" itself was, in regard to its composition, nothing more than an olla podrida of journalized ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... moving bedwards round the corner of the house, and up the plank that brought us to the bedroom door; under the immense spread of the starry heavens, down in a crevice of the giant mountain, these few human shapes, with their unshielded taper, made so disproportionate a figure in the eye and mind. But the more he is alone with nature, the greater man and his doings bulk in the consideration of his fellow-men. Miles and miles away upon the opposite hilltops, if there were any hunter belated or any traveller who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
