"Finer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that no one could come up to him. Other fellows might have very good fathers, but they were not equal to him! He could be just like one of us at cricket, or out fishing, or shooting, and yet he was always right, and there was not a finer-looking gentleman in the county, and that every one said. We were all at home for the Midsummer holidays—that is to say, we boys; our mother was not a person to let her girls go to school. Who could say that we were not met for the ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... more successful. It was a series of gay and colourful pictures of Ukraine, the land he knew and loved, and if he is occasionally a little over romantic here and there, he also achieves some beautifully lyrical passages. Then came another even finer series called Mirgorod, which won the admiration of Pushkin. Next he planned a "History of Little Russia" and a "History of the Middle Ages," this last work to be in eight or nine volumes. The result of all this study was a beautiful and short Homeric ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... responsibility I take upon myself in making it; but more especially in order to impress you, oh reader, with the full significance of this apocalyptic and somewhat minatory utterance (that it may haunt your finer sense during your midnight hours of introspective self-communion), I have done my best, my very best, to couch it in the obscurest and most unintelligible phraseology I could invent. If I have failed to do this, if I have unintentionally made any part of my meaning clear, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Nothing was irreparable but a man's own weakness, and even in shame, disaster, and poverty, it was possible to lead a life that was not without grandeur. The man who was beaten to the ground by an outrageous fortune might be a finer thing than the unseeing, cruel powers that ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... we fished happily, working steadily upstream, and by evening we had one of the prettiest creels of fish that I had seen for a long while. Returning to the village, we made a good feed off our day's spoil, after which, having selected a few of the finer fish for our breakfast, we presented the remainder to the group of villagers who had assembled at a respectful distance to watch our doings. They seemed wonderfully grateful, and heaped mountains of what I presumed to be Irish ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... peculiar foggy air of Lancashire is essential to the weaving of the finer sorts of tissues, so an atmosphere of misunderstandings would really seem to suit the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... note—and this gathers from the surrounding atmosphere matter like itself in fineness from the elemental essence of the mental world. We have then a thought-form pure and simple, and it is a living entity of intense activity animated by the one idea that generated it. If made of the finer kinds of matter, it will be of great power and energy, and may be used as a most potent agent when directed by a strong and steady will. Into the details of such use ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... reawoke to the beauty of the arts of Greece and Rome, to the charm of their gayer life, the splendor of their intellect. We know now that there was no such sudden reawakening, that Teutonic Europe toiled slowly upward through long centuries, and that men learned only gradually to appreciate the finer side of existence, to study the universe for themselves, and look with their own eyes upon the life around ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Camp Fire a favor by joining it. The Camp Fire does not need any one girl, no matter how clever, or how pretty, or how able she may be, as much as that girl needs the Camp Fire. The Camp Fire, as a whole, is a much greater, finer ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... in the touch of hands, saying often inexplicably what the coarser medium of words would be powerless to say; revealing things not meant to be discovered; and also conveying sweeter, finer, more intimate touches of feeling and mood than tongue could tell if it tried. Wych Hazel remembered this clasp of her hand, and felt it as often as she remembered it. There was nothing sentimental; it was only a frank clasp, in ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... might as well have the painters and slaters together in the summer—and the house does want paint, indeed, but we all hate the smell of paint. See here, Mr. Furlong," and she turned up a quilt as she spoke; "just put your hand into that bed; did you ever feel a finer bed?" ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... any severe wrench of his finer feelings, the boundary man's hostility to the bullock driver, and was cultivating the same with all the energy of his race. His title, after all, was no more quizzical in its application than that of Ivan the Terrible; and to understand ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... night on which I brought these my treasures forth. Jupiter was blazing in the heavens, and challenged Art to seize his majestic lineaments. It turned out a point of fire much like that which my master had exhibited to me. I mixed a finer nitrate, repolished my plate, and was this time rewarded by seeing, under all the diameters which I had, the satellites also. Very much thrilled even with this degree of success, and taking the picture on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... demands different decorum for a girl is arbitrary, and not of divine origin. To go unveiled is not allowed in some countries. But conformity is surely enjoined upon us; and that, so far as it is reasonably observed, is a really womanly trait. I cannot help thinking that girls are made of finer material than boys, but of stuff that will wear just as well as the stockier goods in boys. Inasmuch as a girl has more confided to her keeping than a boy has, she ought to be so much the more watchful. A girl ought to guard purity, modesty, patience, hope, trust, because ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... south of Judaea, in the town of Bethlehem, which, in olden times, had been the native place of King David. Joseph, the carpenter, was not unwilling to speak of that, and even to let it be known that he was of the house of David, the great king. But yet he might well have thought it a finer thing to rise up from below than to come down from above. And is it not so? Does not man rise up from below, and God come down from high? In his boyhood David was a shepherd; it is said that he slew the leader of the enemy with stones from his ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... stand alone, and be Christlike; but only on condition that he yields to no temptation to drop his conduct to the level around him, and is never guilty of compromise. Once yield, and all is over. Flowers grow on a dunghill, and the very reeking rottenness may make the bloom finer. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... away from the docks and quays of London. You might live for a lifetime in London without ever knowing it had a harbor. Don't you be afraid, Sheila. You will live in a district where there are far finer houses than any you saw in Oban, and far finer trees; and within a few minutes' walk you will find great gardens and parks, with lakes in them and wild-fowl, and you will be able to teach the boys about how to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... home development on Long Island," the agent admitted readily, "The place I'm going to show you—I'm going to show you two or three—but the special place I want to show you, was built for a HOME. There isn't a finer building anywhere. Lansing, the man who built it, was a splendid fellow, with a lovely wife—lovely woman. But her mother lives in California, and she ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... if it only takes us to Timbuctoo, we shall not complain. Never was a finer voyage accomplished under ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,— He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck; When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... life at Sellanraa was having its effect on him again; it was an inglorious, commonplace life, but quiet and dulling to the sense, a dreamy life; there was nothing for him to show off about, a looking-glass was a thing he had no use for. His town life had wrought a schism in himself, and made him finer than the others, made him weaker; he began indeed to feel that he must be homeless anywhere. He had come to like the smell of tansy again—let that pass. But there was no sense at all in a peasant lad's standing listening in the morning ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the wilderness, held out as long as it did. Whether fact or fiction, it is one of the most melancholy records in human history. Whether as a mere work of the imagination, or the real experience of an afflicted people, our finer sentiments of pity and sympathy find relief only ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... teach us to remember what is best in what we are. But if the man you have chosen to lead this government can help make a difference; if he can celebrate the quieter, deeper successes that are made not of gold and silk, but of better hearts and finer souls; if he can do these things, then ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... well: Is he prepared to sacrifice the nation on the shrine of his own ambition? Ambition, although it may cost us our lives, can never lead to martyrdom. A martyr is made of finer stuff! ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... Thursday, and the men, hearing that Yale was going to shoot the Drum-Horse in the evening, determined to give the beast a regular regimental funeral—a finer one than they would have given the Colonel had he died just then. They got a bullock-cart and some sacking, and mounds and mounds of roses, and the body, under sacking, was carried out to the place where the anthrax cases were ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... illustrations of heroines of serials in old numbers of the "Girls' Own Paper." The dress was of dark blue velvet—very much rubbed and faded. Miriam liked the effect, liked something about the clear profile, the sallow, hollow cheeks, the same heavy bonyness that Anna the servant had, but finer and redeemed by the wide eye that was so strange. She glanced fearfully, at its unconsciousness, and tried to find words for the quick youthfulness ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... despatch rider's point of view Abbeville is a large and admiring town, with good restaurants and better baths. These baths were finer than the baths of Havre—full of sweet-scented odours and the deliciously intoxicating fumes of good soap and ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... the Irish Cause, and the Irish people, who were so near the goal of success, wasted many years, that might have been better spent, in futile and fratricidal strife, in which all the baser passions of politics ran riot and played havoc with the finer purposes of men engaged in a ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... that his son did not know him, that he could not love him like a father. Slowly, he also saw and understood that the eleven-year-old was a pampered boy, a mother's boy, and that he had grown up in the habits of rich people, accustomed to finer food, to a soft bed, accustomed to giving orders to servants. Siddhartha understood that the mourning, pampered child could not suddenly and willingly be content with a life among strangers and in poverty. He did not force him, he did many a chore ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... was perhaps the slightest bit shy on the finer feelings. He should have respected the grief of a fallen foe. He should have abstained from exulting. But he was in too exhilarated a condition to be magnanimous. Sighting Mr Rackstraw, he addressed himself joyously to the task of rubbing ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... baren is rubbed backwards and forwards, a full stroke each time, to the outside limits of the block, with a moderate, even pressure, moving the stroke in a zigzag towards the right end of the block (fig. 22). Once over should be enough. A second rub makes heavy printing of the finer lines. Then the paper is lifted from the block and placed on ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... try pricking it with the brush I have described for that operation, and it will not do it; then you resort to the needle itself, and you are startled at the little, hard, glittering specks that come jumping out of the black shadow at each touch. You get a finer needle, and then you sharpen even that on the hone; and perhaps then, by pricking gingerly round the edges of the shadows, you may get the drawing and modelling to melt together fairly well. But beware! for if there is one dot of light too many, the expression of the head goes to the winds. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... and things to wear, and comfort for them I love and protect that I needed, but it was downright, unselfish love for somebody. Alfred, to my dying day I shall shudder over all that parade yesterday. The man or woman who attempts to get pleasure out of sitting in a finer seat, or living in a finer house, or wearing finer duds than his neighbor, or even his enemy, will miss it, unless he is of a low order and taste. When I saw all them good folks gaping and staring at me like I was a comet with a tail, right there in the house of God, while a good man was teaching ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Aryans had met here in Taxila to exchange the best each had to offer. After many centuries the East and West had met once more, and it would be the test of the real greatness of the two civilisations that both should be finer and better for the shock of contact. The apparent dormancy of intellectual life in India had been only a temporary phase. Just like the oscillations of the seasons found the globe, great pulsations of intellectual activity pass over the ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... There are two ways in which it could be done, a cold administration by quite detached officials, which is called Collectivism, or a personal distribution, so as to produce what is called Peasant Proprietorship. I think the latter solution the finer and more fully human, because it makes each man as somebody blamed somebody for saying of the Pope, a sort of small god. A man on his own turf tastes eternity or, in other words, will give ten minutes more work than is required. But I believe I ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... we are indebted for ash-cake, hoecake, succotash, samp, hominy and many other productions made from the Indian maize. The Miamis of the Wabash, with a favorable climate and a superior soil, produced a famous corn with a finer skin and "a meal much whiter" than that raised by other tribes. How far the cultivation of this cereal had progressed is not now fully appreciated. In the expedition of General James Wilkinson against the Wabash Indians in 1791, he is said to ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... experiences during the last year and a half. The twilight darkened, and the fire brightened, and in the light of the fire the two sat and talked; till a door opened, and in the same flickering shine a figure presented itself which Mr. Dillwyn remembered. Though now it was clothed in nothing finer than a dark calico, and round her shoulders a little white worsted shawl was twisted. Mrs. Barclay began a sentence of introduction, but Mr. Dillwyn cut ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... were within thirty miles of Paris. Then Joffre quietly said, "This thing has gone far enough," and taking up a pad of paper he called to his troops to stand fast and die upon the Marne, if necessary, to save France. There is nothing finer ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... it might express the lover's passion, the mourner's grief, the artist's skill, the cynic's laughter, the satirist's scorn. It was all poetry in miniature. Point is not wanting, but its chief characteristics are delicacy and charm. 'No good epigram sacrifices its finer poetical substance to the desire of making a point, and none of the best depend on having a point at all.'[651] Transplanted to the soil of Italy the epigram changes. The less poetic Roman, with his coarse tastes, his brutality, his tendency to satire, his appreciation ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... have to pretend that you want it for yourself; and, above all, do not mention me, for he sets great store by it, and would never part with it to a stranger! To-morrow I will return with some jewels yet finer than those I have with me ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... which of the two was the greater, discussion is idle, but that Hawthorne was the finer genius few would deny. Poe, as cunning an artificer of goldsmith's work and as adroit in its vending as was ever M. Josse, declared that "Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality,—a trait which in the literature of fiction is positively worth all the rest." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... influence of Lionardo on that rare Assumption of Madonna by his pupil, Andrea Solari. Like everything touched by the Lionardesque spirit, this great picture was left unfinished: yet Northern Italy has nothing finer to show than the landscape, outspread in its immeasurable purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles and the ascendant Mother of Heaven. The feeling of that happy region between the Alps and Lombardy, where there are many waters—et tacitos sine labe laous sine murmure rivos—and where the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... temptations partly from a consideration of locality, the desert and the mountain being near each other, and partly in order to bring out a certain sequence in them. First comes the appeal to the physical nature, then that to the finer desires of the mind; and these having been repelled, and the resolve to worship God having been spoken by Jesus, Luke's third temptation is addressed to the devout soul, as it looks to the cunning ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... we came across ten or a dozen bilian-wood coffins, which were excavated in this spot about fifty years ago. They were of the plainest possible make, and were evidently rapidly falling to pieces. It is thought that further excavations will lead to the discovery of finer and older coffins, for it is almost certain that wherever these caves exist they have been extensively used at ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... larger and far less seaworthy than the lifeboat which hangs at a liner's davits. Pinching poverty forced him to dispense with the ornate, top-heavy cabins and forecastles of the foreign merchantmen, while invention, bred of necessity, molded finer lines and less clumsy models to weather the risks of a stormy coast and channels beset with shoals and ledges. The square-rig did well enough for deepwater voyages, but it was an awkward, lubberly contrivance for ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... naturally endowed. In very early life, we are told, he, by forging and grinding the blades of pen-knives, contributed greatly to the income of the parental household. It is said that even at a very early age, his quick perception and his acute nervous organisation enabled him to produce much finer work than others of far greater experience in the same trade, whose obtuseness had kept them in a state of comparative drudgery all ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... No finer Spring than the present one—I say that and also feel it, because I have made your acquaintance. You yourself have probably seen that in society I am like a frog (fish) on the sand, which turns round and round, and cannot get away until a well-wishing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... adding to the burden of our fellow-pilgrims, who like us toil heavy-laden through the wilderness of life. On the other hand those, who, when visited by irremediable affliction, give up their whole souls to the indulgence of grief, may dignify their passive dejection with the name of finer feelings, and more tender sensibility, but they will at last find, that they have submitted to the bondage of a tyrant who will deprive them of all their remaining comforts. Does gloomy despondence bespeak a higher degree of social virtue? Is melancholy an instance of the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... I could, and pulled the canoe up safe, and loafed about prospecting. It's rum how dull an atoll is. As soon as I had found a spring all the interest seemed to vanish. When I was a kid I thought nothing could be finer or more adventurous than the Robinson Crusoe business, but that place was as monotonous as a book of sermons. I went round finding eatable things and generally thinking; but I tell you I was bored to death before the first day was out. It shows my luck—the very day I landed ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... supernumerary, the damster's son, staggered along slowly with our traps. Iglesias and I, having nothing to carry, enjoyed the carry. We lounged along through the glades, now sunny for the moment, and dallied with raspberries and blueberries, finer than any ever seen. The latter henceforth began to impurple our blood. Maine is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... as well as in the manner of her rearing, having been brought up in the court of Louis XV., where she saw shameless vice tolerated and even condoned. Although she preserved her virtue in the midst of all this dissipation, she became callous to the shortcomings of her friends and her own finer perceptions became blunted. Thus, in the most critical years of her reign, her nobler nature suffered deterioration, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... found myself on board was the 'Victory.' There wasn't a finer ship in the navy, more weatherly or more handy—steered like a duck, and worked like a top. Lord Nelson himself got me appointed to her. Away we sailed for the Mediterranean. While Admiral Cornwallis watched the French fleet at Brest, we kept a look-out over that at Toulon under the command ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... strongly as he walked up its unfinished lawn, amid the heaps of huge limestone blocks, his eyes upon the looming facade of the west front. He walked the echoing rotunda with a timid air; and the beautiful soaring vault was so majestic in his eyes, he wondered if Washington could be finer. There were a few other greenhorns, like himself, looking the building over with the same minute scrutiny. He entered all of the rooms into which it was possible to penetrate, and at last into the library, a cheerful, rectangular room, into which ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... prepared to matriculate at the university as all but the very foremost scholars from the public schools. Mr. Morgan thought his intellect equal to that of his brother Robert, who had taken a double first-class, but of a finer order, being open to those poetical instincts which went for nothing with ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... taught his children and they taught their children, and Little Chief of today does it just as his great-great-ever-so-great-grand-daddy did. I don't see why you don't do the same thing, Peter. You would make me a great deal finer ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... to recognize that while we seek to outlaw specific abuses, the American objective of today has an infinitely deeper, finer and more lasting purpose than mere repression. Thinking people in almost every country of the world have come to realize certain fundamental difficulties with which civilization must reckon. Rapid changes—the machine age, the advent of universal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... had, as Abdul believed, discovered the jewels and the gold, where were they now? It was very odd that, even with this damning evidence that she had anticipated his find before his eyes—for she and she alone could have known of it—his finer senses refused to believe that she had cheated and tricked him. He had no argument to put forward to justify his belief; it was one of those beliefs which are rooted in something finer and truer than circumstantial evidence. His only argument in ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Spirit of hers would not suffer me to sleep, with its continual startings in search of what it had lost, and its returnings empty-handed. Well, have no fear, for at the worst the bowl can be broken and the blood poured upon the earth, as I have broken finer bowls than this before; had I all the bits of them they would make a heap so high, Macumazahn!" and he held out his hand on a level with his head, a gesture that made my back creep. "I will tell her this and it may ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... operatives or laborers in his employment, whose wages have not been increased by it. Articles of prime necessity or of coarse quality and low price, used by the masses of the people, are in many instances subjected by it to heavy taxes, while articles of finer quality and higher price, or of luxury, which can be used only by the opulent, are lightly taxed. It imposes heavy and unjust burdens on the farmer, the planter, the commercial man, and those of all other pursuits except the capitalist who has made his investments in manufactures. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... in me too, and I am just now in a place not calculated to develope or cultivate the finer part of a man's nature. My associates, without an exception, are boors and donkeys, not unfrequently combining the agreeable properties of both in one anomalous animal yclept a clown. With them my days, for the greater part, are spent; and ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... truthful in speech, and firm in the observance of austere vows. At the appointed time he took food which consisted of fruit that had dropped from the trees. That jackal dwelt in a vast crematorium and liked to dwell there. And as it was his birth place, he never wished to change it for a finer locality. Unable to endure the purity of his behaviour, the other members of his species, endeavoured to make him alter his resolve by addressing him in the following words fraught with humility: 'Though residing in this terrible ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... fellow! Where did you get it? I never saw a finer pearl, and I have seen a few in my days. Fair numbers have passed through my ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... fatal injury is usually the consequence. Under the saddle is laid a horse-cloth, called the pellon, about a yard long, and a yard and a half wide. The common sort of pellones are composed of two rough sheep-skins, sewed together. In the finer kind, the raw wool is combed out, and divided into numberless little twists, of about the length of one's finger; so that the pellon resembles the skin of some long-haired animal. The finest Peruvian pellones are made of a mixture ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... restoring to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. They are much bigger and finer things than the symmetrical, stuccoed cubes which have lately been piled up everywhere in heaven-offending masses, and one is glad to come back to them after the nightmare that has lasted twenty years. Moreover, one is surprised ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... is one of those female cosmopolitan adventurers, whom steam brings nowadays to us from all the four quarters of the world. Like so many others, she, also, has come to Paris to spread her net, and catch her birds, But she is made of finer stuff than most of them, and more clever. Her ambition soars higher; and she possesses a real genius for intrigues. She means to have a fortune, and is willing to pay any price for it; but she is also desirous to be respected in ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... anything finer than that in Virginia?" asked the governor. "I have never been in Virginia, but I take this to be in some ways like that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... It had something to do with their going together that afternoon, without her mother, to look at certain out-of-the-way pictures as to which Ruskin had inspired her with a desire to see sincerely. Mrs. Tramore expressed the wish to stay at home, and the motive of this wish—a finer shade than any that even Ruskin had ever found a phrase for—was not translated into misrepresenting words by either the mother or the daughter. At San Giovanni in Bragora the girl and her companion came upon Mrs. Vaughan-Vesey, who, with one of her sisters, was also endeavouring to do ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... was brought into a common heap, as in Caxamalca; and after some of the finer specimens had been deducted for the Crown, the remainder was delivered to the Indian goldsmiths to be melted down into ingots of a uniform standard. The division of the spoil was made on the same principle as before. There were four hundred and eighty soldiers, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... has been called Terburg's masterpiece: but the girl in his "Paternal Advice," No. 570 at the Ryks, seems to me a finer achievement. The grace and beauty and truth of her pose and the miraculous painting of her dress are unrivalled. Yet judged as a picture it is, I think, dull. The colouring is dingy, time has not dealt kindly with the background; but the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... opposites.' We have settled to our satisfaction that, although mankind believe themselves to be dependent upon air, food, and water for existence, nevertheless they are really dependent upon something vastly finer, which is back of those things. That 'something' we call God, for it is good. Matthew Arnold said that the only thing that can be verified about God is that He is 'the eternal power that makes for righteousness.' ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... down, say that no finer action was ever performed, and acknowledge that we all owe our lives, and His Majesty owes his ship, to it. Then, soon after we had hauled Sir Cyril on board, the Dutchmen boarded us, and there was a stiff fight, all hands doing their ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... general cycle in the prospects of orange farming. Two crops are gathered annually, the principle one in December and the other at Eastertide, the fruit produced by the later and smaller crop being far finer in size and flavour than those of the Christmas harvest. Mandarin oranges are gathered on both occasions, but the large luscious loose-skinned fruit of March and April—Portogalli as they are commonly termed—are far superior ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... represents the Virgin Mary adoring her son. Sometimes she kneels before him, sometimes she sits with clasped hands, holding him in her lap. Whatever the variation in attitude, the thought is the same: it is an expression of that higher, finer aspect of motherhood which regards infancy as an object not only of love, but of reverent humility. It is a recognition of the great mystery of life which invests even the helpless babe with a dignity ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... so large, by far, as the lions, but rather larger than a common seal. They have none of that long hair which distinguishes the lion. Theirs is all of an equal length, and finer than that of the lion, something like an otter's, and the general colour is that of an iron-grey. This is the kind which the French call sea-wolfs, and the English seals; they are, however, different from the seals we have in Europe and North America. The lions may, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... their saving-pots, then, where the money was turning green from age; better for them if they had less avarice. Why did not he himself bring him some gold, in place of dressing up his wife in silks and jewels, finer than the Princess Erdmuth herself, his own princely spouse? Then, indeed, the courts might be soon opened," &c. So the sorrowing knight took his leave, and each ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... one sentenced person," said Pearson, "a noble wolf-hound, finer than any your Excellency saw in Ireland. He belongs to the old knight Sir Henry Lee. Should your Excellency not desire to keep the fine creature yourself, might I presume to beg that ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... brick, and of a very dark colour. It was then removed from the small vessels, and a fresh quantity poured into them. That part of the sap which would not crystallise was carefully strained from the vessels, and became molasses; and these, let me tell you, are much finer than the molasses that are made from the sugar-cane—much richer in colour, and pleasanter ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... a treasure house. Nature portrayed as everyman's Holy Land; descriptions of mountain or landscape, and more beautiful descriptions of leaf or lichen or the glint of light on a breaking wave; appreciations of literature, and finer appreciations of life itself; startling views of art, and more revolutionary views of that frightful waste of human life and labor which we call political economy,—all these and many more impressions of nature, art and human society are eloquently recorded ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... would understand him he would have made his observation in Greek, but even that would have been impolite to the rest of the company. So he kept his joke to himself, and, for fear that any one should perceive his amusement, he asked Mrs. Petter if she had ever noticed how much finer was the fur of a cat which slept out of doors than that of one which had been in the house. She had noticed it, but thought that the cat would prefer a snug rug by ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... Fortune, what you me deny: You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living stream at eve. Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave; Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... must be worse for them to walk over than the stony ground. From Camp 60 the general course of the creek is north-west, but it frequently disappears on the earthy plains for several miles, and then forms into waterholes again finer than before. At our first depot, Camp 63, in latitude 27 degrees 36 minutes 15 seconds south, longitude 141 degrees 30 minutes east, there is a fine hole about a mile long, and on an average one chain and a half broad. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... see me at my own house," said Barbarina, quietly. "Indeed, madame, I understand your language perhaps but poorly. Is it according to the forms of etiquette to say, 'I have commanded you to come to me?' In my own fair land we give a finer turn to our speech, and we beg for the honor of a visit." As Barbarina said this, she bowed with laughing grace to the proud woman, who gazed at her with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... snugness, and historical interest were all we could expect of the Low Country. Elegance and beauty of form we mustn't look for: but I found myself surrounded by it in The Hague. There were streets of tall, brown palaces, far finer than the royal dwelling which Robert pointed out; the shops made me long to spring from the car and spend every penny set apart for the tour; the Binnenhof—that sinister theater of Dutch history—with its strangely ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... itself, and impose itself not insidiously and gradually, but immediately and with force? Why does it not pay the penalty of expressing an idea and being founded on one?—such scant impunity seeming usually to be enjoyed among us, at this hour, by any artistic intention of the finer strain? But I put these questions only to give them up—for what I feel beyond anything else is that Mr. Saint Gaudens somehow takes care ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... smaller, and more active than the mastiff, from which he is descended by a cross with the foxhound. He is not nearly so powerful a dog as the former, but is more fierce in his natural disposition; and from his descent possesses a finer sense of smelling. His hair is rougher, generally of a yellowish or sandy grey, streaked with shades of black, or brown, and semi-curled over his whole body, excepting his legs, which are smooth. Although he generally attacks his adversary in front, like the mastiff and bull-dog, it is not ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... which its life is passed. More especially is this to be seen where such characters as size or weight are concerned. More sunlight or a richer soil may mean stronger growth in a plant, better nutrition may result in a finer animal, superior education may lead to a more intelligent man. But although the changed conditions produce a direct effect upon the individual, we have no indisputable evidence that such alterations are connected with ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... Western States appears, however, more favourable to it, and I think I saw more handsome women at Cincinnati than in any other city of the Union; their figures were more perfect, and they were finer grown, not receiving the sudden checks to which the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... difference between me, Manuel-del-Popolo Isturiz, and this Tomas Castro? The Senor Caballero can tell at once. Look at me. I am the finer man. I would have you ask the ladies of Rio Medio, and leave the verdict to them. This Castro is an Andalou—a foreigner. And we, the braves of Rio Medio, will suffer no foreigner to make headway with ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... M. de Baisemeaux to return in time for dessert, and he kept his word. They had just reached the finer and more delicate class of wines and liqueurs with which the governor's cellar had the reputation of being most admirably stocked, when the silver spurs of the captain resounded in the corridor, and he himself appeared at the threshold. Athos and Aramis had played ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... threads of the wick, and especially the still finer spaces between the fibers that make up the threads, act like fine tubes and the liquid rises in them just as it did in the fine glass tube. Wherever there are fine spaces between the particles of anything, ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... own coin. It was fair enough—to use every advantage you had. Good Lord, have you forgotten that I am holding you here by force? But instead—you saved me, when you might have killed me—and won the fight. All you've done is to show yourself the finer clay—that's what you've done. God knows I suppose the woman is always finer clay than the man—yet it comes with a jolt, just the same. It's not for you to be down-hearted—Heaven knows the strength you've shown is above any I ever had, or ever will have. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... stuff's much grander. We make finer cloth than Howroyd's, and turn out ten times as much, I'll warrant,' said Mr Clay, with his ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Petronius quoted by Charles Lamb in the Specimens. In a space of twenty lines the author has concentrated a world of wisdom. One knows not whether to admire more the justness of the thought or the exquisite finish of the diction. Few finer things have been said on the raison d'etre of tragedy from the time when Aristotle in the Poetics formulated his memorable dictum. The admirable rhythmical flow should be noted. There is a rare suppleness ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... much finer," she observed. "Come to the window and I'll show you where it stood. They were fine folk, ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... gave a smile of incredulity, yet with an air of so much politeness that I really could not be angry with him; indeed it would have done me no good if I were. We were in a short time joined by Mynheer Van Deck, who came galloping up on a much finer horse than any possessed by the French soldiers. I found from my captor that the journey would be far longer than I had expected, as we had to make a considerable detour to visit a native chief, or prince, to whom he had a message. My belief was that he was beating up for native recruits ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... boarding-school, and, by all accounts, she acted wonderful well. But she too was not altogether without a flaw, so that there was a division in the town between their admirers and visiters; some maintaining, as I was told, that Mrs Beaufort, if she would keep herself sober, was not only a finer woman, but more of a lady, and a better actress, than Miss Scarborough, while others considered her as a ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... as he set a chair for her very polite, but she would not sit upon it; "Saturday morning I was a wife, sir; and Saturday night I was a widow, and my children fatherless. My husband's name was John Ridd, sir, as everybody knows; and there was not a finer or better man in Somerset or Devon. He was coming home from Porlock market, and a new gown for me on the crupper, and a shell to put my hair up—oh, John, how ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the Portuguese were sovereigns of Macao, as of other places in India: But they never were, and the Chinese are too wise a people to suffer any thing of the kind. Macao certainly is as fine a city, and even finer, than could be expected, considering its untoward situation: It is also regularly and strongly fortified, having upwards of 200 pieces of brass cannon upon its walls. Yet, with all these, it can only defend itself ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... production which would be obtained by importing one and exporting another. This is the case with numerous commodities of common consumption, including the coarser qualities of many articles of food and manufacture, of which the finer kinds are the subject ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the pen of one of the brightest lights of the American pulpit. We scarcely know of any living writer who has a finer command of powerful thought and glowing, impressive language ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Gurd is very wishful to marry me; and you must understand this clearly, Job. If it had been any lesser man than him, or any other man in the world, for that matter, I wouldn't have taken him. I'm very fond of you, and a finer character I've never known; but when Richard offered—well, you're among the clever ones and I'm sure you'd be the last to put yourself up against a man of his standing and fame. And my first husband's lifelong friend, you ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... she had dreaded was come, and all her powers were collected to support her. The moment had arrived—the time of trial—and she would not fail. Her hand was steady and her head clear, as is the case with finer natures when confronted with deadly danger. This simple girl suddenly became like one of the women of tragedy, fighting, still and strong, with a desperation beyond all symbols—the fight with death. But Sir Tom took it differently. A ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... for rude and coarse implements. The steel of the blades of Damascus or Toledo is not here needed; nor that of the chisel, the knife-blade, the watch-spring, or the surgical instrument. But the steel of the mediaeval lance-head or sabre was hardly finer than that which is here built into a Castle, which the sea cannot shake, whose binding cement the rains cannot loosen, and before whose undecaying parapets open fairer visions of island and town, of earth, water, and sky, than from ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... her in haste, as a species of female fury. In the two essays on Macbeth already mentioned, she is passed over with one or two slight allusions. The only justice that has yet been done to her is by Hazlitt, in the "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays." Nothing can be finer than his remarks as far as they go, but his plan did not allow him sufficient space to work out his own conception of the character, with the minuteness it requires. All that he says is just in sentiment, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... have been damped so as to permit of the colour sinking into the lime; there were two methods, the fresco secco and the fresco buon; in the first the wall was sprinkled with water, and the colours were then worked into the damp surface; in the second process, in which finer and more permanent effects were obtained, the artist worked upon the fresh plaster of the wall (which is laid for him as he proceeds), pouncing or tracing his designs with a stylus; only colours which are natural earths can be employed, as they require to be mixed with lime ere being ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... cow died,' said another, 'she was seen going round and round the cowhouse the same night. To be sure she left a fine calf behind her—I mean the cow did, not the witch. I wonder she didn't kill that, too, for she'll be a far finer cow than ever ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... there arose another Bubble divided into three Receptacles by thin membranes, with passages from one to the other, which were fill'd with an aerial substance, not much unlike that which was in the first Receptacle, only the first was something finer; and in each of these three Ventricles,which were all taken out of one, were plac'd some of those Faculties, which were subject to this governing Spirit, and were appointed to take care of their respective Stations, and to communicate every ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... acquiring knowledge or refinement. If Mary and Salome were sisters, the blood of David's line was in John as well as in Jesus. It is something to have back of one's birth a long and noble descent. Besides, John was one of those rare men "who appear to be formed of finer clay than their neighbors, and cast in a gentler mould." Evidently he was by nature a man of sympathetic spirit, one born to be ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... number of the Northmen settled in Iceland, and our knowledge of their civilization and customs comes chiefly from the Icelandic sagas, or tales. Some of these are of great interest and beauty; perhaps none is finer than The Story of Burnt Njal. This and others may be read in ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... font in England more wonderful than that square black marble basin sculptured in the twelfth century with the story of St Nicholas? Is there any series of chantries in England more complete or more lovely than these at Winchester, or anywhere a finer fourteenth century monument than that of Bishop Wykeham? Nowhere in England certainly can the glorious choir stalls be matched, nor shall we easily find a pulpit to surpass that in the choir here dating from 1520. If the restored retablo over the high altar is disappointing in its sophistication, ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... adapt it to the demands of aesthetics, if we define art to be Nature infused with and shaped by the imaginative faculty of man; thus, as Bacon says elsewhere, "conforming the shows of things to the desires of the mind." Art always platonizes: it results from a certain finer instinct for form, order, proportion, a certain keener sense of the rhythm there is in the eternal flow of the world about us, and its products take shape around some idea preexistent in the mind, are quickened ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... feel a blind, vague, ineffable urge within you, stealing out to tangibility in colour and form! Earth—nor Heaven, either—can produce no finer rapture. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... note the splendid last line, a masterpiece brought about by the influence of Sir Oliver Lodge and his spiritistic ilk! Could anything be finer? What imagery for a last line! What a break-off, leaving the gasping reader in a state of choking suspense, of avid, ungratified curiosity! A great poem indeed, and influenced by ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... A finer lot of sports I shall probably never travel with again. Among them we had men of all classes—judges' sons, doctors' sons, squatters' sons, bootmakers' sons, butchers' sons, all happy together, and ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... a man covered with a red cloak, whom he had taken for a Frenchman. I knew enough to convince me that the Unknown was not entirely devoid of generous feeling. In my new house I found all arranged in the best style; a shop, moreover, full of wares, finer than any I had ever had. Ten years have elapsed since then; more in compliance with ancient custom, than because it is necessary, do I continue to travel in foreign lands for purposes of trade, but the land which was so fatal to me I have ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... we should take all of love And much of labour, patience, and keen joy; Then mix the elements of earth's alloy With finer things drawn from the realms above, ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... finer contrast of silver light and black shadow in any landscape than surrounded these two persons, as they sat together side by side, both thinking of the same thing, and both reluctant ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... not at all grand. The Royal Palace is larger and considerably finer. At the head of a stairway is a good picture of Prometheus tortured by an eagle. The visitor is shown the war room, a large hall with war scenes painted on the walls and old flags standing in the corners. ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... behind, and, turning, there was a man in a velveteen jacket who had just stepped out of the bushes. The keeper was pleasant enough and readily allowed us to handle his gun—a very good weapon, though a little thin at the muzzle—for a man likes to see his gun admired. He said there were finer nuts in a valley he pointed out, and then carefully instructed us how to get back into the waggon track without returning by the same path. An old barn was the landmark; and, with a request from him not to break ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... my lad," said the officer addressed as Murray. "There's nothing like a fine healthy appetite in a boy. It means making bone and muscle, and growing. Oh yes, he'll be as big as you are, Gowan. Make a finer ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... through the closed circuit where they are rectified by the crystal detector and transformed into sound waves by the telephone receiver as described in connection with Set No. 1. The variable condenser shunted across the closed circuit permits finer secondary tuning to be done than is possible without it. Where you are receiving continuous waves from a wireless telephone transmitter (speech or music) you have to tune sharper than is possible with the tuning coil alone and to do this a variable condenser connected in parallel with the ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... of apparel in Pegu.] In Pegu the fashion of their apparel is all one, as well the noble man as the simple: the onely difference is in the finenes of the cloth, which is cloth of Bombast one finer then another, and they weare their apparell in this wise: First a white Bombast cloth which serueth for a shirt, then they gird another painted bombast cloth of foureteene brases, which they binde vp betwixt their legges, and on their heads they weare a small tock of three braces, made in guize ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... to let my valet-de-chambre into the secret; never was a conspiracy treated so lightly. Great enterprises require mystery. This would be an admirable one if some trouble were taken with it. 'Tis in itself a finer one than I have ever read of in history. There is stuff enough in it to upset three kingdoms, if necessary, and the blockheads will spoil all. It is really a pity. I should be very sorry. I've a taste for affairs of this kind; and in this one in particular I feel a special interest. There ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... opposite doors. All that was settled; but at breakfast the Emperor had calculated how he should manage, without appearing to assume anything, to get on the righthand side of the Pope, and everything turned out as he wished. "As to the Pope," said Rapp, "I must own that I never saw a man with a finer countenance or more respectable appearance ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... education! But for the shot he had fired in the lonely house by the sea, he would never have known that girls like Sally existed. As he assisted her to restore the dishes to the pantry, she crossed the kitchen with queenly stride. Isabel hadn't a finer swing from the hips or a nobler carriage. When he abandoned his criminal life he would assemble somewhere all the girls he had met in his pilgrimage. There should be a round table, but where Isabel sat ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Sol has been finer, a better horse since you owned him. He loves you, Dick. He's always watching for you. See him raise his head. That's for you. I know as much about horses as Dad or Laddy any day. Sol always hated Diablo, and he never ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... another mountain stream, joins the Morumbidgee opposite to Mr. Whaby's residence. It is little inferior to the latter either in size or in the rapidity of its current, and, if I may rely on the information I received, waters a finer country, the principal rock-formation upon it being of limestone and whinstone. It rises amidst the snowy ranges to the S.E., and its banks are better peopled than those of the stream into which it discharges itself. Of course, such a tributary enlarges ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... commerce by the act of Congress of last session prohibiting, absolutely, during the pending war, the importation of any articles not necessary for the defense of the country—namely: wines, spirits, jewelry, cigars, and all the finer fabrics of cotton, flax, wool, or silk, as well as all other merchandise serving only for the indulgence of luxurious habits,—has not had the effect to reduce the number of vessels engaged in blockade-running; but, on the contrary, the number has steadily increased within ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... that were performed there. Such behavior on his part was variously criticized. He was thought by many to act thus out of pure compliance with his own natural indolent and vicious inclinations; while finer judges were of opinion, that in all this he was playing a politic part, with a design to be contemned among them, and that the Corinthians might not feel any apprehension or suspicion of his being uneasy under his reverse of fortune, or solicitous to retrieve it; to avoid which dangers, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
