"Gratuitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such a publication. Being satisfied with this effort, I looked around for other worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece of gratuitous rascality and ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... Melville's advice and plans could be applied where they are needed they would be extremely valuable. Suppose we found a society and present them to it for gratuitous distribution." ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... black broth, first by Sandys, then by Burton, again by Blount, and concurred in by James Howell (1595-1666), the first historiographer royal, gave rise to considerable controversy among Englishmen of letters in later years. It is, of course, a gratuitous speculation. The black broth of the Lacedaemonians was "pork, cooked in blood and seasoned with salt ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... predominant from Wyossett to Wonder Head, made up parties to visit Selwyn's cottage, which had become known as The Chrysalis; and Selwyn good-naturedly exploded a pinch or two of the stuff for their amusement, and never betrayed the slightest annoyance or boredom. In fact, he behaved so amiably during gratuitous interruptions that he won the hearts of the younger set, who presently came to the unanimous conclusion that there was Romance in the air. And they sniffed it with delicate noses uptilted ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... neighborhood acquaintances of Mrs. Surratt for many years, bear witness to her untarnished name, to her discreet and Christian character, to the absence of all imputation of disloyalty, to her character for patriotism. Friends and servants attest to her voluntary and gratuitous beneficence to our soldiers stationed near her; and, "in charges for high treason, it is pertinent to inquire into the humanity of the prisoner toward those representing the government," is the maxim of the law; and, in addition, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... received my counsellor's degree and I took up that profession in Moscow. For want of time I did not succeed in getting any sort of a 'clientele'; in all, I pleaded but one civil case, which, however, I lost completely, and several gratuitous criminal cases. However, I was actively working in reporting these cases for an ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... States eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred, one-half was sent as exchange with other papers, and eighty of the other half were divided equally between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies for gratuitous distribution. The colored subscribers to the paper were to the whites ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... female schools. "France needs nothing so much to promote her regeneration," said he, "as good mothers." To attract the youth of France to these schools, one millions of dollars was appropriated for over six thousand gratuitous exhibitions for the pupils. Ten schools of law were established, nine schools of medicine, and an institution for the mechanical arts, called the "School of Bridges and Roads," the first model of those schools of art ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... not; and so you can defer writing so much till you happen next upon an idle moment which you may think as well devoted to me; you being the only man, except Donne, who cares to trouble himself with a gratuitous letter to one who really does ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... bethought him of a retired physician, who lived with a maiden sister in a cottage at no great distance from the Tower, and who often gave gratuitous advice to his poorer neighbours. If he prescribed anything beyond their means, himself or his sister was always ready to supply it. Though their own means were limited, they were the good ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... when weighed in the balance against the vote of the majority. Very recently the members of an honourable and useful profession represented to a minister that his extension of a scheme of more or less gratuitous relief to a class which hitherto had been able and willing to pay its way, was likely to deprive them of their livelihood. His reply, inter alia, contained the argument that the class in question was very numerous and had many votes, and that ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... stomach that is empty shall be filled; the throat that is dry shall be wetted with wine. Labour itself shall be all one as rest; not grievous, but joyous. Wheatfields, one would think, cannot come to grow untilled; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby;—unless indeed machinery will do it? Gratuitous Tailors and Restaurateurs may start up, at fit intervals, one as yet sees not how. But if each will, according to rule of Benevolence, have a care for all, then surely—no one will be uncared for. Nay, who knows but, by sufficiently ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... altogether gratuitous description of a spot celebrated in America for its picturesque situation and horrors, I resume the rhythmical tale of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... mass of Southern white men, emancipation was a measure born of malicious spite in the breast of the North, what should they say of that which followed—the enfranchisement of the black? It was a gratuitous insult—a causeless infamy! It was intended to humiliate, without even the mean motive of advantage to be derived. They did not for a moment believe—they do not believe to-day—that the negro was enfranchised for his own sake, or because the North believed that he was entitled to self-government, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the matter, but for the sake of one simple passing hint,—one phrase, one epithet." Now observe; can there be a plainer testimony borne to the practical character of my Sermons at St. Mary's than this gratuitous insinuation? Many a preacher of Tractarian doctrine has been accused of not letting his parishioners alone, and of teasing them with his private theological notions. The same report was spread about me twenty years ago as this writer spreads now, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... said it was as immoral to be too far in front of one's own age, as to lag too far behind it. If a man can carry his neighbours with him, he may say what he likes; but if not, what insult can be more gratuitous than the telling them what they do not want to know? A man should remember that intellectual over-indulgence is one of the most insidious and disgraceful forms that excess can take. Granted that every ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... independence, who constitute the basis of an aristocracy; and if the people still retains its right of election, that election can only be made from a certain class of citizens. When a democratic republic renders offices which had formerly been remunerated gratuitous, it may safely be believed that the State is advancing to monarchical institutions; and when a monarchy begins to remunerate such officers as had hitherto been unpaid, it is a sure sign that it is approaching ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... ring out the evening chimes. Many women had been busy in filling these magazines for the instruction and the pleasure of their fellow-townsmen. Lady ——, the wife of the captain of the garrison, grateful for the gratuitous admission of the soldiers once a month,—a privilege of which the keeper of the Museum (a woman also, who took an intelligent pleasure in her task) assured me that they were eager to avail themselves,—had given a fine collection ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... is so only to the nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders; and an American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last man to quarrel with what affords him so much gratuitous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative as England is, and though I scarce ever found an Englishman who seemed really to desire change, there was continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old foundations ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to break her heart—well and good. Everything was permitted to Gian' Battista. But why trample upon the pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He could not break that. She dried her tears. And Giselle! Giselle! ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Swimming Bath. The coast near the town being rocky, and in many ways inconvenient for bathing, sea-water is to be pumped into this bath daily by a steam-engine. A professor of swimming is appointed to give gratuitous instruction in his art. The bath is to be in two parts—one for ladies, one for gentlemen—and will have dressing-boxes all round, besides diving-boards and every sort of convenience. At certain hours of the morning and evening it will be open free of charge to all comers; ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... Church. When the time for the concert under Edward's presidency came around, he decided that the occasion should be unique so as to insure a crowded house. He induced Mr. Beecher to preside; he got General Grant's promise to come and speak; he secured the gratuitous services of Emma C. Thursby, Annie Louise Cary, Clara Louise Kellogg, and Evelyn Lyon Hegeman, all of the first rank of concert-singers of that day, with the result that the church could not accommodate the crowd which naturally was attracted ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... educational endeavour, is positively ungenerous. To speak of the article in Ole Miss' entitled "Manuscripts and Silver" as "mercenary", is the summit of injustice, for it was nothing more or less than the absolutely gratuitous offer to the United of what is now the Symphony Literary Service. We are rather at a loss to divine Mr. Macauley's precise notion of amateur journalism. He speaks of it as a "tarn", but we cannot believe he would have it so stagnant a thing as that name implies. Surely, the United ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... she should be put to torture when they had ample material for judgment without it? One cannot but feel that the proceedings on this occasion were either intended to beguile the impatience of the English authorities, eager to be done with the whole business, or to add a quite gratuitous pang to the sufferings of the heroic girl. As the men were not devils, though probably possessed by this time, the more cruel among them, by the horrible curiosity, innate alas! in human nature, of seeing how far a suffering soul could ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... particularly my Critical Notes on Gibbon's 'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' and the 'Annals of Education,' a periodical miscellany in which I had touched upon some leading questions of public and private instruction, obtained for me the notice of literary men.[2] With gratuitous kindness, M. de Fontanes, Grand Master of the University, appointed me Assistant Professor to the Chair of History, occupied by M. de Lacretelle, in the Faculty of Letters in the Academy of Paris. In a very short time, and before I had commenced my class, as if he thought he ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... building them a chapel, where the dead may be buried and the sacraments administered to them; also a barracks, where they can live comfortably. I am endeavoring that [the expense of] this may be met by donations and gratuitous services, and not from the royal treasury of your Majesty. I have ordered that a large house, in which the governors were lodged when they came to this port, be set aside for a royal hospital. I have had it repaired, and two wings added; and thus medical treatment can be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... of eleven centuries. Anderson, in a note to the song, says: 'Yvetot, a district in the north of France, possesses a monarch of its own, a sort of burlesque personage, whose royal charger is a donkey; his guard, a dog; his crown, a night-cap; and his revenue, a gratuitous draught of wine at the ale houses of his liege subjects!' Young, another translator of Beranger, not any better informed, tells us that 'the Lords of Yvetot claimed and exercised, in the olden time, some such fantastical privileges ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... the origin and establishment Of Christianity in the world, with a denial at the same time of its miraculous pretensions—a problem, the fair solution of which is obviously incumbent on infidelity—has necessitated the most gratuitous and even contradictory hypotheses, and may safely be said still to present as hard a knot as ever. The favourite hypothesis, recently, has been that of Strauss—frequently re-modified and re-adjusted indeed by himself—that Christianity ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... woman, who has twelve hours more than you have each day to reflect and to study you, reads the suspicion written upon your face at the very moment that it arises. She will never forget this gratuitous insult. Nothing can ever remedy that. All is now said and done, and the very next day, if she has opportunity, she will join the ranks of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... taking up a pair of hinged school slates, began to clean them with a cloth. I am not going to detail my precautions. You must take my detective work for granted. Moreover, in this case I was awaiting the voices; the slate-writing was gratuitous. She took the slates (between which I had dropped my slip of paper), and, putting them beneath the table, asked me to ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... he says, "regarded as an animal, belongs to one of the singing species; but his notes are always associated with ideas." The youth who were educated at the public schools of ancient Mexico—for that realm, so far from neglecting the cause of popular education, established houses for gratuitous instruction, and to a certain extent made the attendance upon them obligatory—learned by rote long orations, poems, and prayers with a facility astonishing to the conquerors, and surpassing anything they were ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... out more gratuitous advice than Philip Armour. He was the greatest preacher in Chicago. With every transaction, he passed out a premium in way of palaver. He loved the bustle of business, but into the business he butted a lot of talk—helpful, good-natured, kindly, paternal talk, and often there was a suspicion ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... such men in the face of difficulties, I had already witnessed; and I had hired three of the old hands, in order the more readily to introduce my accustomed camp arrangements. Volunteers of all classes had certainly come eagerly forward, offering their gratuitous services on this expedition of discovery; but discipline and implicit obedience were necessary in such a party to ensure the objects in view, as well as its own preservation; and it was not judged expedient, where some prisoners were indispensable as mechanics, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... asked De Marsay, with a laugh. "My dear fellow, discretion is the best form of calculation. Listen—however, no! I will not say a word. You never teach me anything; I am not disposed to make you a gratuitous present of the treasures of my policy. Life is a river which is of use for the promotion of commerce. In the name of all that is most sacred in life—of cigars! I am no professor of social economy for the instruction of fools. Let us ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... his time in sanitary work rather than in treating sick individuals, but it is, of course, impossible for him always to refuse to treat such persons, and we encourage gratuitous work for the poor when it can be carried on without interfering too seriously ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... off under the sting of that gratuitous insult. She held Pard quiet and looked down at him with hate in her eyes. "I expect," she said in a queer, quiet wrath, "to prove before long that my own money has been paying for my 'keep' these last three ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... a didactic point of view, this prologue is a gratuitous impertinence. Not so its music. Structurally, it is little more than a loose-jointed pot-pourri; but it serves the purpose of a thematic catalogue to the chief melodic incidents of the play which is to follow. In this it bears a faint resemblance ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... true opinions of St. Augustine on those century-long disputed questions of Grace, Free-Will, and Predestination. Taking ground against the Molinists, he contended for the doctrine of Predestination antecedent and absolute, a gift purely gratuitous, of God's free grace, independent of any virtue or merit in the recipient soul. This doctrine, set forth in five propositions, was condemned, in the middle of the seventeenth century, by Popes Innocent X. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... there was much joking and laughter, particularly between Master Simon and a hale, ruddy-faced, white-headed farmer, who appeared to be the wit of the village; for I observed all his companions to wait with open mouths for his retorts, and burst into a gratuitous laugh before they ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... parliament should be held once in two years at least; that the short adjournments de die in diem should be made by the parliaments themselves as in England; and that no officer in the army, customs, or excise, nor any gratuitous pensioner, should sit as an elective member. The commissioner being apprised of their proceedings, called for such acts as he was empowered to pass, and having given the royal assent to them, prorogued the parliament to the twelfth ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... single phrase: "In case of doubt, look wise and work on his 'bowels.'" This simple equipment soon gave me a surprisingly high standing among the men. I was a medicine man of repute, and soon had a larger practice than I desired, as it was entirely gratuitous. ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Maupassant to English readers with apologetic explanations as though his art were recondite and the tendency of his work immoral would be a gratuitous impertinence. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... be a sexless enthusiasm and a contagious juvenile disorder. It was also a fine advertisement for the organ. Madame Bance smiled blandly, improved the occasion by thanking Mr. Hamlin for having given the scholars a gratuitous lesson on the capabilities of the instrument, and was glad to be able to give Miss Brown a half-holiday to spend with her accomplished relative. Miss Brown was even now upstairs, putting on her hat ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... certainly was not for the pot to call the kettle black. The aristocracy he defended, in spite of the political marriages by which it tried to secure breeding for itself, had its mind undertrained by silly schoolmasters and governesses, its character corrupted by gratuitous luxury, its self-respect adulterated to complete spuriousness by flattery and flunkeyism. It is no better to-day and never will be any better: our very peasants have something morally hardier in them that culminates occasionally in a Bunyan, a Burns, or a Carlyle. But observe, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... not one of those men who, when wine or good humor unloosens their tongue, become loquacious, and tell all that lies hidden in their heart, speak of the past and future, chatter and boast. No, he never used gratuitous words. There was some one else in our family just as serious, our grandmother; she was just as taciturn, just as careful about contracting her thick eyebrows, which were already white at that time; just as careful about uttering ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... of Cologne, as the main bastion of the impregnable Hindenburg Line, cannot be over-rated. Our strategical, voluntary and gratuitous crossing of the Rhine was carried ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... Such teaching is interesting as showing how the admission of caprice in the world of phenomena reacts upon the moral sense and depraves our conception of God and salvation. The faculty of contemplation, according to Roman Catholic teaching, is acquired "either by virtue or by gratuitous favour." The dualism of natural and supernatural thus allows men to claim independent merit, while the interventions of God ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... words more literally Scriptural and less markedly theological than those at present in use. Eager defenders of the faith instantly leaped to their feet in various parts of the House, persuaded that a deadly thrust had been aimed at the doctrine of the Trinity. Never was there a more gratuitous misconception. The real intrenchment of the doctrine of the Trinity, so far as the Litany is concerned, lies in the four opening words of the second and the five opening words of the third of the invocations, and these it had not been proposed to touch. In confirmation ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... eagerness of anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and take possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial flesh and blood display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... something like the implicit credulity of Anthonio; but the arts of the preceptors are quickly suspected by their subjects, and the charm is for ever reversed. When once a child detects you in falsehood, you lose his confidence; his incredulity will then be as extravagant as his former belief was gratuitous. It is in vain to expect, by the most eloquent manifestoes, or by the most secret leagues offensive and defensive, to conceal your real views, sentiments, and actions, from children. Their interest keeps their attention continually awake; not ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... save the stray albatross that winged from peak to peak. She thought without more zest of their cycle-rides; though there had been a certain grim pride in squeezing forty miles a day out of the cycle which, having been won in a girls' magazine competition, constantly reminded her of its gratuitous character by a wild capriciousness. And there were occasions too which had been sanctified by political passion. There had been one happy morning when Rachael and she had ridden past Prestonpans, where the fisher-folk ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... cheap volume is essential to every thoughtful and inquiring person in our beloved country. To enable those who are as yet unaware of the immense mass of interesting and important documents there are in its pages, AN INDEX OF ITS CONTENTS IS ISSUED FOR GRATUITOUS DISTRIBUTION—this will abundantly testify to the fact; and the Editor, in conclusion, thinks it only necessary to state that, with scarcely an exception, the whole of the documents are printed, verbatim, as they originally ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... white satin she had worn as a bride. So little was needed to make her happy—that was the pathos! She was satisfied with the crumbs of life, and yet they were denied her. Though she had been alone ever since Lucy's wedding, she accepted his belated visit as thankfully as if it were a gratuitous gift. "It is so good of you to come down, dear, when you are needed every minute in New York," she murmured, with a caressing touch on his arm, and, looking at her, he was reminded of Mrs. Pendleton's tremulous pleasure in the sweets that came to her on little trays from ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... as the monks in the monasteries, used to give regular performances in which the Madonna, the saints, the angels, Christ, and God himself were brought on the stage. In those days it was done in all simplicity. In Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in the Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI. in honor of the birth of the dauphin. It was called Le bon jugement de la tres sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie, and she ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... his powers. The general character of the play shows that Shakspeare, at any rate, merely contributed to it. It is conceived and developed in the hot and hectic style of Fletcher, and abounds in his strained heroics and gratuitous obscenities. The Jailor's Daughter, a coarse caricature of Ophelia, is one of the greatest crimes against the sacredness of misery which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... keep the peace. Incidentally one tall and angular witness refused to testify, and was sentenced to pay a not insignificant fine for contempt of court. That his fine was promptly paid by Corliss furnished a more or less gratuitous excuse for a wordy vilification of the rancher and his "hireling assassin," "menace to public welfare," and the like. Sundown, however, stuck to his guns, even to the extent of searching out the editor of the "Mesa News" and offering ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... psychological method is thus wholly inadequate to solve the question, physiological reasoning appears also to be not perfectly conclusive. Many physiologists, not unnaturally desirous of upsetting what they regard as a gratuitous metaphysical hypothesis, have pronounced in favour of an absolutely dreamless or unconscious sleep. From the physiological point of view, there is no mystery in a totally suspended mental activity. On the other hand, there is much to be said ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... settle the Irish question? I've heard that somebody proposed sinking the country for twenty-four hours. That might do. Or you could withdraw the police and military, and in every market town open a depot for the gratuitous distribution of arms and ammunition. In ten days there would only be a very small population, and you could then plant the country with people who would make the best of it, and mind their work, instead of spending their time standing about ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of the Tabard, was, first, that each pilgrim should tell a couple of tales while going to Canterbury, and another couple during the return to London; secondly, that the narrator of the best one of all should sup at the expense of the whole party; and thirdly, that the Host himself should be gratuitous guide on the journey, and arbiter of all differences by the way, with power to inflict the payment of travelling expenses upon any one who should gainsay his judgment. During the intervals of the stories he is accordingly the most prominent ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... easier subjects, and began several in succession. The first was, "The Instruction of Children by means of the Eye." He wanted gratuitous theaters to be established in every poor quarter of Paris for little children. Their parents were to take them there when they were quite young, and, by means of a magic-lantern, all the notions of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... went on and the day grew warmer, the crowd grew visibly less enterprising, and business flagged. The man with the lifting-machine pulled at the handles himself, a gratuitous exhibition before a circle of boys now penniless. The man with the metallic polish dipped and redipped his own watch-chain. The men at the booths sat down to lunch upon the least presentable of their own pies. The proprietor of the magic arrow, who had already two large ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... an able orator, as he is, begins with giving me a great deal of praise for talents which I do not possess. He does this to entitle himself, on the credit of this gratuitous kindness, to exaggerate my abuse of the parts which his bounty, and not that of nature, has bestowed upon me. In this, too, he has condescended to copy Mr. Erskine. These priests (I hope they will excuse me; I mean priests of the rights of man) begin ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... colony of house-building insects, their faithful co-operation, their steady, exact adaptation of right means to a fixed purpose, and compare their activity with that of a troop of ball-playing boys. Does not the gratuitous ingenuity of the young bipeds indicate a far higher degree of intelligence? Does it argue against the quality of that intelligence that any novel phenomenon—a funnel-shaped cloud, the appearance of a swarm of bats or unknown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... animals—was referred, at least in part, to the direct influence of external factors, but the facts can best be explained by referring them to the processes of selection, for then it is unnecessary to make the gratuitous assumption that many species are sensitive to the stimulus of cold and that others are not. The great majority of Arctic land-animals, mammals and birds, are white, and this proves that they were ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... his own inclinations and do that which is politic rather than that which is most pleasing in his own eyes. Here was this banquet, for instance. He would much rather not have been present at it; but it was an official affair, and to absent himself from it would simply be to inflict a gratuitous slight upon every guest present, and sow a seed of unpopularity that might quite possibly, like the fabled dragon's teeth, spring up into a harvest of armed men to hurl him from his throne. With a sigh of resignation, therefore, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... it open, disdaining to reply in words to a gratuitous taunt I could soon answer by deed. The doctor having handed me his lantern, I held it in one hand, the letter in the other. The writing was that of Philip Winwood, and the letter read ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... give way in my head one of these days. She wants me to go home for a rest, but if I did, then Mama [her own mother] wouldn't come here for a rest, and I want her to have a rest, and then, too, I would have to ask them to send me money to go home on. [Lucy's services were gratuitous.] ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... spared her this gratuitous insult. As a farther illustration of the characters of this singular couple, the following anecdote is told. Esther Orton having frequently declared, that she should "never die happy until she had rolled in riches," Job, like a good husband, determined to secure ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... is to me all a riddle, And left Hallelujah broke off in the middle: Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut— To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged and silly, Pouring a watering-pot over a lily, Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf, Leave her to water her lily herself, Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it: Remember the loss is her own if ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... War, and those following, in which his Britannic Majesty played chief counter-tenor. From 1741, in King Friedrich's First War, onwards to Friedrich's Third War, 1756-1763, the volunteer French found a great deal of work lying ready for them,—gratuitous on their part, from the beginning. And the results to them came out, first completely visible, in the World-Miracles of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... science now requires the operation of a Supreme Mind to be posited in a super-scientific sphere, then in a super-scientific sphere it ought to be posited. No doubt this hypothesis at first sight seems gratuitous, seeing that, so far as science can penetrate, there is no need of any such hypothesis at all—cosmic harmony resulting as a physically necessary consequence from the combined action of natural laws, which in turn result as a physically ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... and said I had had a gratuitous sight of a spectacle which was worth money, and that if I were not going so suddenly she would gladly have ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... well accustomed. So far as appears from all the authorities, his invasion was a sort of promenade of defiance or bravado, though it seems unlike the character of that astute prince to have undertaken so gratuitous a demonstration. He penetrated as far as Leith, and lay there for some time threatening, or appearing to threaten, Edinburgh Castle; but all that he seems to have done was to make proclamation by his knights and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... gate-posts, gave an added interest to the event which I was quite ready to appreciate. Approaching this group, I assimilated myself with it as speedily as possible, and, having some tact for this sort of thing, soon found myself the recipient of various gratuitous opinions as to the significance of the find which had offered such a problem both to the professional and unprofessional detective. Two mis-mated shoes! Had Gwendolen Ocumpaugh by any chance worn such? ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... quite, whom I have been regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you (also) from me, or me from you, I don't know which. But that breach is closed. The dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work "telling again," as they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and has caused a coolness betwixt me and (not a friend exactly, but) [an] intimate acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's faith in me, who am to Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his writing verses about you. Will your ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the royal ordinances passed from time to time. The settlers in Hispaniola were to have their passage free; to be excused from taxes; to have the absolute property of such plantations on the island as they should engage to cultivate for four years; and they were furnished with a gratuitous supply of grain and stock for their farms. All exports and imports were exempted from duty; a striking contrast to the narrow policy of later ages. Five hundred persons, including scientific men and artisans of every description, were sent out and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... expert secured the information that its title in science is VULSELLA LINGULATA; that some twenty species are known; that they all associate with sponges, and that possibly different species inhabit different kinds of sponges. It may seem unpardonably gratuitous on the part of one professedly ignorant to offer general observations upon natural phenomena; but as I find myself among the great majority who do not know and who may be more or less interested and anxious to learn, I claim justification in describing that ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time; at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous after-thought. We began the composition together, on that to me memorable evening: I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the Association. From the first, however, there were many calls for tracts for free distribution. To meet this demand, there was formed in Boston, by a number of young men during the year 1827, The Unitarian Book and Pamphlet Society, for "the gratuitous distribution of Unitarian publications of an approved character." It undertook especially to distribute "such publications as shall be issued by the American Unitarian Association or recommended by it." This society also circulated tracts printed by The Christian Register and The ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... health. Every evening, except when there were guests, he spent at his club; he came to bed late, and his waking hour was filled with complaint about the number and the size of his bills. He treated these bills as if they had been gratuitous insults, as if they had leaped, without reason for being, out of a malign world to assail him. As yet Gabriella had bought nothing; and she dreaded the time when her clothes would wear out beyond the hope of repairing, and she should be obliged to add another ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of the following passage, a specimen of that lofty style, in which, as if under the influence of Eastern associations, almost all the Managers of this Trial occasionally indulged: [Footnote: Much of this, however, is to be set down to the gratuitous bombast of the Reporter. Mr. Fox, for instance, is made to say, "Yes, my Lords, happy is it for the world, that the penetrating gaze of Providence searches after man, and in the dark den where he has stifled the remonstrances of conscience ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... addition to the items mentioned above, donations were received during the year, of money, food, clothes, books, boxes, coal-hods, ornaments (to be sold), etc.; also, the offer of gratuitous medical attendance, and medicine. Up to the close of 1836, seven hundred and seventy pounds and ninepence halfpenny had been given, and forty ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... and gave gratuitous details of the scene that had taken place in his room that afternoon. Most of those present were in ecstasies at this divulging of his private life, which went forward to the accompaniment of snores ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... four times in the week to the council chamber to be instructed by gratuitous teachers. On Sunday evening service is performed according to the Church of England by Mr. Fleming, and the children are said to be attentive and well-behaved. The Methodists of the New Connection have them also under spiritual instruction in the morning and afternoon of each Sabbath, assisted ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... display the hidden beauties of Canto First. You will notice that the author, who now sleeps with the unnumbered dead—a presumption on my part—has no dedication, no introduction, no preface. He scorned a dedication, that misnomer for gratuitous advertising. He wanted no patron, no Lord or Count somebody or other, who might, perhaps, insure the sale of one more copy. No. He determined to paddle his own canoe. And he did, you bet.—He wrote no preface. What was it to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... least. I should like to have my uncle—and Helen here immensely. But if the visit wasn't a success I should be proportionately disappointed and vexed. So is it worth the risk? Disappointments are sufficiently abundant anyhow. Isn't it slightly imbecile to run a wholly gratuitous risk of adding to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... moon's voracity will lead to the upsetting of all the views, the studies, and the well-digested plans of several architects. Place a meteorologist on the council, and, despite the authority of the nurses, a whole scaffolding of gratuitous suppositions will be crumbled to dust by these few categorical and strict words of science; the moon does not exert the action ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... mutual protection against the reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and recondite mysteries—it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the misanthropy of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the rowdiness of Marlowe?—the higher ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... ordinary attendance. There are hundreds in this city, especially little children, that, through vice, ignorance, or poverty, never receive proper attention in illness. My services would not be refused by this class, especially if they were gratuitous." ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... disengaged herself imperiously. Had he called her aside for this gratuitous insult? Contrite, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... encouraged the collection of chestnuts in Windsor Park, and by giving a small reward to old people and children for every bushel collected, has not only found an occupation for many of the unemployed poor, but, by providing a gratuitous food for their pig, encouraged a feeling of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... said, wondering what such gratuitous information had to do either with being a minister or riding a gate, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... Mrs. Lascelles not only made me a contemptuous present of information which I had never sought, but tacitly rebuked poor Bob for his gratuitous attempt at concealment. Clearly, they had nothing to conceal; and the hotel talk was neither more nor less than hotel talk. There was, nevertheless, a certain self-consciousness in the attitude of either (unless I grossly misread them both) which of itself afforded some excuse for the gossips ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... private as well as public life Ralegh was open-handed and liberal in kind offices. Those are not unpopular characteristics. He was a patron of letters. His name may be read in many dedications. Few of them can have been gratuitous. Martin Bassaniere of Paris inscribed to him very appropriately his publication of Laudonniere's narrative of the French expedition to Florida. Richard Hakluyt, junior, during his residence in France, had ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Columbus is 1436. "Beyond the Azores, but at no great distance toward the west, occurs the Ysola de Antilia, which we may conclude, even allowing the date of the map to be genuine (in the library of St. Mark, at Venice, date 1436), to be a mere gratuitous or theoretic supposition, and to have received that strange name because the obvious and natural idea of antipodes has been anathematized by Catholic ignorance." He elsewhere says that "some Portuguese cosmographers have inserted the island described ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Samoa Irishman is writ large; over all his doings a malign spirit of humour presided. No malice was too small for him, if it were only funny. When night signals were made from Mulinuu, he would sit on his own poop and confound them with gratuitous rockets. He was at the pains to write a letter and address it to "the High Chief Tamasese"—a device as old at least as the wars of Robert Bruce—in order to bother the officials of the German post-office, in whose hands he persisted in leaving it, although ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arsenal had flung three gratuitous bombs at the camp itself, one had fallen in the Serbian hospital yard, and had killed an Austrian prisoner; one had fallen in the top corner of the camp field, but had not exploded. The third had missed, only by a little, the room in ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... I continued, to some few that remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where they left gratuitous advertisements ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay,—where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs,—find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little underdone, through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just so, in talking with any of the characters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... exempt, immune, independent, unrestrained; liberated, freed, released, emancipated, delivered; unconstrained, unreserved, informal, familiar, frank, ingenuous, communicative, artless, candid; gratuitous, spontaneous, voluntary, optional; liberal, open-handed, generous, bountiful, lavish, flush, munificent, hospitable; unrestrained, immoderate, prodigal, dissolute, lax; ready, eager, prompt, willing. Antonyms: subject, reserved, formal, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... ceasing to be privileged. Once a captain in his district and a permanent gendarme, he is to become the resident and beneficent proprietor, the voluntary promoter of useful undertakings, obligatory guardian of the poor, the gratuitous administrator and judge of the canton, the unsalaried deputy of the king, that is to say, a leader and protector as previously, through a new system of patronage accommodated to new circumstances. Local ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... information would, I presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. If it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which you disliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. Nearly ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... momentum of the spirit that carries one on rapidly and cheerfully. One has an irresistible impulse to give something away, to stroke the noses of horses, to write a kind letter to the fuel administrator or do almost anything gentle and gratuitous. The Caliphs of the world don't know it, but that is the effect ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... and deep well in one corner of the play-ground was invested with a horrid interest in our imaginations by tales of noyades on a small scale supposed to have been perpetrated in its depths by his orders. This charm of terror was, I think, rather a gratuitous addition to the attractions of this uncommonly fine well; but undoubtedly it added much to the fascination of one of our favorite amusements, which was throwing into it the heaviest stones we could lift, and rushing to the farthest end of the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... cured of lesions in the lungs, expressed their delight at going back to work and to a normal life. Coue in the midst of those people whom he loves, seemed to me a being apart, for this man ignores money, all his work is gratuitous, and his extraordinary disinterestedness forbids his taking a farthing for it. "I owe you something", I said to him, "I simply owe you everything. . . ." "No, only the pleasure I shall have from your continuing to keep well. ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... reached her coign of vantage, the cavalcade was already nearing the prescribed mile where the final parting would take place, to the strains of "Auld Lang Syne"; a piece of gratuitous torment, honoured by custom, which many ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... certainly pushes the brilliant fantasy of the saga beyond his strict needs. The romance of the blood-royal, for instance—it would be hard to argue that the book honestly requires the high colour of that infusion, and all the pervading thrill that Meredith gets from it; Richmond Roy is largely gratuitous, a piece of indulgence on Meredith's part. But that objection is not likely to be pressed very severely, and anyhow Harry is firmly established in the forefront. He tells his story, he describes the company and the scenes he has lived through; ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... reiterated experience, she was inclined to believe that they cannot balance the evils of quarrelling. Mrs. Somers was one of those, who "confess their faults, but never mend;" and who expect, for this gratuitous candour, more applause than others would claim for the real merit of reformation. So far did this lady carry her admiration of her own candour, that she was actually upon the point of quarrelling with Emilie again, the next morning, because she did not seem sufficiently sensible of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Belsize, an apparently impecunious widow reduced to "semi-detachment down the river" and suburban neighbours whose manners and customs my companion hit off with vivacious intolerance. She told me how she had shocked them by smoking cigarettes in the back garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction that I of all people would have been no less scandalised! That was in the uttermost vinery, and in another minute two Sullivans were in full blast under the vines. I remember discovering that the great brand was not unfamiliar to Miss Belsize, and even gathering that ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Dodger act to escape the withering storm of indignation which the pitiful episode called forth from the American people. The most encouraging feature of the whole affair is the withdrawal of several of Chillicothe's society girls from the contest because of the gratuitous insult tendered Miss Whitney in the Halliwell telegram, thus indicating that the old town's upper ten is not composed exclusively ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a few days after, she received, addressed in Lord Fitzjocelyn's handwriting, an Illustrated News, with a whole page containing 'the reception of Mrs. Dynevor of Cheveleigh,' with grand portraits of all the flounces and veils, many gratuitous moustaches, something passing for Oliver standing up with a wine-glass in his hand, a puppy that would have perfectly justified Mr. Ponsonby's aversion representing Lord Fitzjocelyn, and no gaps ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slaters and tilers, tinmen, firemen, needlewomen, &c., while the inventory of objects used by this formidable array of workpeople comprises no fewer than 1,500 distinct heads. A medical man attached to the establishment gives gratuitous advice to all those employed, and a chemist dispenses drugs and medicines without charge. While suffering from illness the men receive half-pay, but should they be laid up by an accident met with in the course of their work full salary is invariably awarded to them. As may be supposed, so vast ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... the prosecution of its gratuitous task, devised the scheme of a Constitution wholly in the interest of its members and of the meagre minority they represented,—and so objectionable in many respects, that not one in twenty of the voters of the Territory, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... offered. He addresses himself, in the first place, to honest, industrious workmen, with families, whom the want of work often reduces to the most cruel extremities. It is not a degrading alms which he gives to his brothers but a gratuitous loan which he offers. May this loan, as he hopes, prevent them often from resorting to those cruel pledges which they are forced to make (while awaiting the return of work), for the purpose of sustaining a family of which they are the sole support. The only guarantee for this loan ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... with a keen relish for the act itself. It is but justice to the officer, prejudiced though he was, to say that he was entirely sincere in the belief that his prisoner had stolen the miser's gold. He was needlessly rough and severe in the discharge of his duty, and the irons were a gratuitous indignity. Mr. Watson protested vigorously against the constable's useless display of authority. Bessie was frightened and terribly grieved by the harsh treatment bestowed upon her ideal ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... ground for the upheaval in the middle of the eighties. It also brought the Order to the attention of the public press. The labor press gave the Order great publicity, but the Knights did not rely on gratuitous newspaper publicity. They set to work a host of lecturers, who held public meetings throughout the country adding recruits ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... cried Val, as his hand pulled her out, and the others extricated themselves, still laughing, go that they could hardly stand, and Fly declaring, 'Oh, daddy, daddy, it is such fun! I am so glad we came,' and taking a gratuitous ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... abroad. No more was thought of the matter, and in due time the little bard had forgotten that he had ever done it. But when a genuine distinction had been earned by poetry that was in no way immature, Rossetti discovered, by the gratuitous revelation of a friend, that a copy of the youthful production—privately printed and never published—was actually in the library of the British Museum. Amazed, and indeed appalled as he was by this disclosure, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... very curious and interesting work which is now reprinted, and intended for a wide and gratuitous circulation, is also of uncommon rarity; there is not a copy of it in the library of Trinity College, or in any of the other public libraries of this city, which have been searched on purpose. (One was purchased some {200} years ago for the library of the Royal Dublin Society, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... dinner-party, she was thinking of a gratuitous piece of information an old woman, who brought her some milk on one occasion at the Great Hospital, had given her. Ideala had noticed that the old woman had a bad cough, and had asked her, in her usual kindly way, if she were subject to it, and what she ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... measure to declare it void and by doing so would have made good their censorship of acts of Congress with the approval of even the Jeffersonian opposition. Instead, they enforced the Sedition Act, often with gratuitous rigor, while some of them even entertained prosecutions under a supposed Common Law of the United States. The immediate sequel to their action was the claim put forth in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that the final authority in interpreting the National Constitution lay with the local ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... administration of supposed infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever cease to be, is a pure assumption for the nonce; but if it will one day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it might not have ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... in top form. A four-handed game of snooker is in as rapid progress as is reasonably possible. Every easy-chair is filled with a would-be player offering gratuitous advice in order to speed things up. A young war-scarred Captain is balanced on a rickety side-table, offering odds on the game in a raucous voice. The Mess-waiter strives to be in three places at once. Through all, the players, totally unnerved, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... tutelage in 996, and made his first Italian expedition as an autocrat of sixteen. He went to free the Papacy from the bondage of a Roman faction, the party of the infamous John XII, again rearing its head under a new leader. The boy-ruler suppressed the rebels with some gratuitous cruelty. But he was not without noble ambitions or the capacity of appreciating finer natures than his own. Called upon to nominate a Pope he selected his cousin Bruno, a youth little older than himself, but a statesman and an idealist, who ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... seemed to find a morbid pleasure in such confessions. As regards herself, they were accurate enough; the dear creature was a singularly good judge of her own character. What I objected to was her assumption, so calm and gratuitous, that her individuality, with all its confessed limitations, was, of course, superior—stronger, wiser, subtler than mine. She never allowed me to argue with her; or if she did, she treated my remarks ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... the suggestion, reaching the point where Cousin Julia came in, the girl's heart smote her. Cousin Julia would be startled—yes, frightened. What a wretch she was deliberately to plan to cause her utterly gratuitous anxiety! And how practised, how grounded, in deceit she had grown, to turn thereto so readily for help out of difficulty! How very far she was getting from her class motto, "Per aspera ad astra"! And she recollected a word, strange ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... suppression of criticism? Certainly, to some extent. For even if the professional critics tell little more than the amateurs who offer friendly advice, their remarks have a greater weight—partly, indeed, because in a sense they are not gratuitous. All observers have noticed the fact that we rarely act on the opinion of mere friends, however sound. Moreover, no one can deny that when the critics, belonging as they do to many schools of thought and thoughtlessness, agree, they are likely to ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... things in between, of America in the making, that these new writers, whose lack of pure beauty we deplore, and whose occasional gratuitous ugliness we dislike, are writing. They are protesting against its sordidness and crudity far more effectively than the cloistered reader who recites Shelley, saying "Why can't they write as he does." Like all that is human they share the qualities of their environment, like ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... condition, which varies from time to time. When the curve is downward in both the physical and the spiritual case, drugs are of no more value than stones. When the curve is upward in both cases, drugs may be totally gratuitous, and they may actually retard the combined movements. When the health-curve is downward, the psychic curve may follow suit, but it need not necessarily do so. When the psychic curve is downward, the health- curve tends in the same direction. When the health-curve is upward, ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... buys a horse in public, I thought nothing of it. As I stood with my hands behind my back, I well recollect the expression of delight on Chanden Sing's face when I approved of his choice, and, as is generally the case on such occasions, the crowd behind in a chorus expressed their gratuitous opinion on the superiority of the steed selected. I had just stooped to look at the pony's fore-legs, when I was suddenly seized from behind by several persons, who grabbed me by the neck, wrists, and legs, and threw me down on ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... executive council a mandate to establish the bank, with the head office in Victoria, and four branches, one each at Nanaimo, New Westminster, Yale and Cariboo. The bank was under commissioners, Mr. Roscoe and Mr. Langley being nominated to that office; their services were purely gratuitous. The head office of the bank was in the Treasury, but to accommodate working men, an office was opened at Government Street, not very far from Sehl's furniture store, for, I think, two hours two days ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... was a good deal taken aback. He was not indeed unaccustomed to plain speaking, and to the receipt of gratuitous abuse; but his experience invariably was to associate both with more or less of a stern voice and a frowning brow. To receive both in a soft voice from a delicate meek-faced child, who at the same time professed to like him, was a complete ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... parting of Hector and Andromache by the story of the child and the nodding plumes, yet does not use the incident, as many writers would have used it, to heighten the tragedy, which indeed it neither emphasizes nor diminishes: it is merely a gratuitous touch of delight in children, as accidental and natural as the brighter moments which, in life if not in realistic novels, diversify the darkest hours. Thus too Aeschylus preludes the bloody slaughter of Salamis with the white horses of the dawn, the echoes in the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... enclosure, and seat myself in a first-rate position for witnessing the gambols of some talented wolves, when I was informed that I could not do this without extra payment. Unwilling to "bang" an extra sixpence (two had already been expended) I tried to find a gratuitous coign of vantage, but (I am sorry to add) unsuccessfully. But I was not to be disheartened. Could I not see "KENNEDY, King Laughter-Maker of the World," or "a Grand Billiard Match," or (more interesting still) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... "atmosphere" I can only meet with a short, sharp, and indignant denial. I know of no such "atmosphere" in all America; if it anywhere exists, I certainly never lived, moved, or worked in it. The statement is a gratuitous, impertinent, and totally false allegation of fact, wholly outside of my book and its contents, and is used in this connection solely to feather an arrow shot at my reputation; it is a pure invention, a manufactured assertion which is absolutely without foundation, and, when thus artfully ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... had thus cast ridicule upon his friend and patron is no doubt a gratuitous and insulting libel: there is no telling whether or not Urban believed it, but certainly his countenance changed to Galileo henceforward, and whether overruled by his Cardinals, or actuated by some other motive, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... smiled darkly. Richelieu's precocious gallantry evidently was not considered as gratuitous as his experimental metallurgy. But as his eyes followed his daughter's wholesome, Phyllis-like figure, a new idea took possession of him: needless to say, however, it was in the line of another personal aggrievement, albeit it took the ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... universe of solar systems, wherever and however investigated, Immutability necessitates "Non-Being" in the physical sense given it by the Theists-Non-Being which is nothing in the narrow conceptions of Western Religionists—a reductio ad absurdum. This is a gratuitous insult even when applied to the pseudo-Christian or ecclesiastical ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various |
